Monica Axelsson

'Beating about the bush' on the how and why in elementary school science

In this article we examine teacher instruction on scientific literacy tasks and teacher expression of ultimate and subordinate purposes during one teaching sequence of a science unit. By using a Practical Epistemology Analysis and Systemic Functional Grammar we can provide a view of the direction learning takes and the consequences for student text production. The material comprises transcribed audio recordings of teacher instruction, students’ pair work and written texts. The results show that the students are mainly involved in hands-on activities while aspects of scientific literacy are not foregrounded. Language use is dominantly spoken and, when written text is requested, no explicit instruction on how to write is given, resulting in a variety of texts from ‘more-spoken-like’ to ‘more-written-like’ without adhering to scientific genre. Ultimate purposes are never expressed while subordinate purposes are to some extent made explicit, but obscured by the dominant focus on ‘doing’, resulting in uncertainty about why the activity is requested. As a result, the learning direction is not always in accordance with teacher intention.

Measuring time. Multilingual elementary school students’ meaning-making in physics

This chapter presents results from a study aiming at investigating multimodal classroom interaction and its contribution to multilingual students’ meaning-making. The focus is on how science conten ...

Building a Web in Science Instruction: Using Multiple Resources in a Swedish Multilingual Middle School Class.

ABSTRACT This study, on the unit measuring time, examines classroom use of different resources and their affordances for students’ meaning-making. The data, comprising audio and video recordings, fieldnotes, photographs and student texts, were collected during a lesson in a multilingual Swedish grade 5 classroom (students aged 11–12). In order to analyse the connections between the different resources, such as talking, modelling, using bodily action and practical equipment, reading and writing, and their affordances for meaning-making, we use pedagogical link-making, Deweys principle of continuity and Halliday´s Systemic Functional Linguistics. Findings show that in using these multiple resources, the teacher builds a web by linking various modes of representation, affording the multilingual students several opportunities for making meaning of the science content. Talk holds the prominent position and is linked to the other mediating resources, which in turn are linked to each other in all possible constellations. Science content is hereby mediated and reinforced through the web of multiple resources.