For Peer Review MULTIPLE PRESENTATIONS 1 The Joint Work of Connecting Multiple Presentational Forms in Science Classrooms

The aim of this study is to advance current understanding about the transactional processes that characterize students ’ sense-making practices when they are confronted with multiple presentations of what instruction considers instantiations of a common scientific phenomenon. Data for the study derives from a design experiment that involves a technology-rich, inquiry-based sequence of activities. We draw on Interaction Analysis to examine the work by means of which a group of upper secondary school students make sense of a number of different ways in which a physical phenomenon—a phase transition—is presented to them. Our analytical perspective, grounded in a cultural-historical framework, involves scrutinizing how the different materials emerge and evolve as signifiers for something other than themselves during student-student transactions. This approach allows us to trace the emergence of students ’ interpretations of the relations between phenomena and their diverse presentations without committing to any preconceived notion of what these presentations stand for. We describe how students ’ bodily and pragmatic actions become reified in conceptual terms, and how these index to lived-in experiences rather than to formal underlying concepts. Findings are discussed with regard to the central role of body and praxis in research on learning science with multiple presentational forms