Elaboration and negotiation of new content : The use of meaning making resources in multilingual science classrooms

This presentation reports results from a study aiming at examining multilingual students’ meaning-making in science when instructed through Swedish. Focus is on how new content is elaborated and negotiated through various semiotic resources such as written and spoken language, still and moving images, gestures and physical artefacts. Data consist of video and audio recordings and digital photographs from two multilingual physics classrooms (students aged 11-12 and 14-15 respectively) and one biology classroom (students aged 14-15 years). Theoretically, the project takes its stance in social semiotics and pragmatist theory. Data are analysed through systemic functional linguistics, multimodal analyses and Dewey’s principle of continuity. The results show that the teachers and the students were engaged in meaning-making activities involving a variety of semiotic resources in ways that sometimes matched both students’ linguistic and scientific level. However, some observations indicate classroom practices that might constitute a hindrance for meaning-making. The study has implications for ways of promoting multilingual students’ meaning-making in science, including learning science, competent action, that is, norms about how to act in the science classroom, and communicating through different modes.Multilingual students' meaning making in school biology and physics. An interdisciplinary project