G. Michael Bowen

Differences in Graph-Related Practices between High School Biology Textbooks and Scientific Ecology Journals.

Our research program is concerned with the trajectory of individuals from their initial participation in science-related activities to their full participation in scientific research. This study was designed to provide answers to questions about (a) the practices required for reading graphs in high school textbooks and scientific journals, and (b) the role of high school textbooks in the appropriation of authentic scientific graph-related practices. For our analyses, we selected five leading ecology-related journals and six representative high school biology textbooks. Although there were no differences in the total number of inscriptions used in journals and textbooks, there were significant differences in the frequency with which Cartesian graphs were used. To allow more detailed analyses, an ontology of graphs was developed. Our fine-grained analyses based on this ontology yielded qualitative differences between the uses of graphs and associated captions and main text as they appeared in high school textbooks and scientific journals. Scientific journals provided more resources to facilitate graph reading and more elaborate descriptions and interpretations of graphs than the high school textbooks. Implications of this study are outlined as they relate to (a) producing graphs, captions, and main text in high school textbooks; and (b) teaching and researching graph-related practices from anthropological perspectives.

Professionals Read Graphs: A Semiotic Analysis

Graph-related practices are central to scientific endeavors and graphing has long been hailed as one of the core “general process skills” that set scientists apart. One research question that has not received much attention is, “Are scientists generally competent readers of graphs, or are graphs indissolubly tied to practices and understandings of their everyday workplace?” This study was designed to better understand the reading and interpretation of familiar and unfamiliar graphs by (mostly) scientists. From an extensive database on graphing involving university students to professionals, we selected two case studies and interpret them within a theoretical framework grounded in semiotics and hermeneutic phenomenology. The first case study provides a detailed analysis in which a scientist wrestles and in part inappropriately interprets an unfamiliar graph used in undergraduate ecology courses; the difficulties of the scientist include some of those identified among students in the graphing literature. The second case study provides an example of the transparent use of graphs in the work of a water technician who is not only familiar with her graphs, but who has an intimate, embodied knowledge of the world to which the graph refers. When it comes to reasoning, scientists are often taken as experts against which the performance of other individuals (“novices”) are judged (as inferior). If scientists’ own graphing practices are not general but tied to their embodied understanding, then the teaching of decontextualized graphing skills loses its legitimacy. Our results therefore have considerable implications to mathematics education. Professionals read graphs 2

Why Students May not Learn to Interpret Scientific Inscriptions

Recent research in scientific laboratories shows that inscriptions – graphs, diagrams, photographs, tables, mathematical formulae, and so forth – are central to scientific practice. Research also shows that inscriptions are pervasive elements in science textbooks. This study examines inscriptions in texts usually available to students in high school and undergraduate science courses: course textbooks and journal articles. Four complementary analyses of the content of these resources are presented: (i) an enumeration of the types of inscriptions in those resources; (ii) a semiotic analyses of the content of representative inscriptions; (iii) an interpretation by graduates of a science program of an inscription common to all three resources; and (iv) a comparison of an inscription found in textbooks and lectures with its original presentation in a scientific journal. Differences exist in frequency of different types of inscriptions; these frequencies appear unrelated to interpretive competencies of the students for whom they are intended. We suggest alterations made in inscriptions as they are moved from professional journals to textbooks contributed to confounding their interpretation. Implications for both science education and the use of inscriptions in textbooks are discussed.

Complexities of Graphical Representations during Ecology Lectures: An Analysis Rooted in Semiotics and Hermeneutic Phenomenology.

Abstract Graphing-related activities are notoriously difficult for students of science. In this article, we examine cognitive complexities when graphs are used in lectures. All 39 lectures of a second-year university course in ecology were recorded and transcribed for analysis. To understand student problems with graphing, we also videotaped all 36 seminars in which students engaged in solving problems related to the lecture topics. Finally, 14 scientists interpreting graphs were videotaped. Our analyses show that lectures present a scant image of everyday scientific practices related to the use and interpretation of graphs. In particular, (a) the normally existing mutually-constitutive relationship between phenomena and their graphical representations is not sufficiently elaborated and (b) important relationships proper to ecology are not maintained when mundane examples are chosen ad hoc. Our analytic method, which draws on semiotics and hermeneutic phenomenology, reveals cultural and personal dimensions of the difficulties of learning graphical representations.

Applications of Science and Technology Studies: Effecting Change in Science Education.

Researchers in science and technology studies appear to be more concerned with descriptions and explanations of social phenomena than with the potential applications of their findings. Science and technology studies should strive to change society by contributing to the design of learning environments that form future generations of producers and consumers of scientific and technological knowledge. In this article, the authors (a) illustrate how they used research findings from science and technology studies to design alternative learning environments and (b) summarize their principal findings from six years of ethnographic research in these learning environments. They conclude by pointing out some of the caveats inherent in theirapproach and by suggesting areas in science education of interest to science and technology studies.

From thing to sign and natural object: Toward a genetic phenomenology of graph interpretation

This study was designed to find out what scientists and science students actually do when they are reading familiar and unfamiliar graphs. This study provides rich details of the subtle changes in the ontologies (ensemble of elements perceptually available) of scientists and science students as they engage in the reading tasks assigned to them. In the course of the readers’ interpretation work, initially unspecified marks on paper (“ its ”) are turned into objects with particular topologies that are said to correspond to specific features in the world. We theorize this interpretive work as a transition of graphs from things to signs that come to stand for natural objects. Especially among physicists and theoretical ecologists, graphs enter new relations and become natural objects in their own right.

Of Disciplined Minds and Disciplined Bodies: On Becoming an Ecologist

Phenomenologically speaking, the body is the hinge between the sociomaterial world and individual knowing. To illustrate the importance of this hinge in the making of ecologists, we draw on a two-year ethnographic project among field ecologists. Our study shows that becoming an ecologist involves not just the acquisition of skills and conceptual knowledge or just enculturation to a set of practices, such as occurs in university schooling, but also a disciplining of both mind and body, deriving from the physicality of engaging in the fieldwork itself. Becoming an ecologist therefore involves a “disciplining” that mingles the mental and the physical.

Of Cannibals, Missionaries, and Converts: Graphing Competencies from Grade 8 to Professional Science Inside (Classrooms) and Outside (Field/Laboratory)

To date, little is known about when and to what degree science students begin to participate in authentic scientific graphing practices. This article presents the results of a series of studies on the production, transformation, and interpretation of graphical representation from Grade 8 to professional scientific practice both in formal testing situations (inside) and in the course of field/laboratory work (outside). The results of these studies can be grouped into two major areas. First, there is a discontinuity in the graph-related practices that marks a boundary between people who engage in work that requires them to transform data into graphical representations (converted) and people who do not have such experiences (cannibals). Second, the didactic practices of high school textbooks and university lectures exhibit a marked discontinuity relative to graphing practices in scientific journals. Graphs used in didactic circumstances may be associated with students’ difficulties in interpreting “real data.” It appears that school teachers and university professors (missionaries) do little to put their students on trajectories of increasing participation in authentic scientific graphing practices.

Decalages in Talk and Gesture: Visual and Verbal Semiotics of Ecology Lectures

Abstract Lectures are a predominant means for teaching science in universities. Graphs play an important role in these lectures both as evidence and explanation for natural phenomena. Yet there is mounting evidence that many students attending these lectures do not understand graphs and associated lecture talk. We conducted an analysis of the text and gestures of all 39 lectures from a second-year ecology course in which there were an average of 25.5 representations, 19.3 of which were graphs. Our analyses revealed that there were important semantic and temporal decalages (shifts) in talk and gesture. The lack of gestures and change in internal structure of the talk/gesture relationship provides additional hurdles to learning about graphs from lectures. Talk and gestures over and about one graph are used to illustrate our findings.

Lecturing graphing: What features of lectures contribute to student difficulties in learning to interpret graph?

Some studies suggest that individuals having completed undergraduate science programs are often poorly prepared to use graphs in ways typical of their disciplines. Science and technology studies have identified competency in graphing as being of central importance to the practice of a scientific discipline. Given the centrality of graphing to the practice of science, an important aspect of becoming enculturated into the practices of a scientific discipline is being able to use and interpret graphs in ways that are typical to that discipline. For example, competency in this usage is important to reading, interpreting and understanding journal articles in a discipline. Undergraduate science students spend a considerable amount of time in lectures where graphical representations play a major role in the presentation of subject matter. To gain an understanding of the use of graphs in lectures and how this use contributes to student understanding, this paper provides a microanalysis of graph use in lectures drawn from artifacts compiled from videotaping all lectures and seminars in a thirteen week ecology course. This analysis focused on both the text and the geestural references made in the reading of a graph in an ecology lecture. We conclude that the common ground existing amongst scientists that help them reach an agreed upon interpretation of a graph is missing from the present lectures and then discuss the constraints this places on students, learning about graphs in lectures.