Modern astronomy as a field of inquiry may be shaped by what we consider the "scientific" ways of knowing. However, the history of astronomy as a human endeavour dates back millennia before the "modern" notions of "science". This long history means that astronomy is, at its core, built on a rich cultural diversity and…

The current entrepreneurial pedagogy focuses on enhancing students' ability in discovering opportunities based on an understanding of users' needs. This study challenges this dominant pedagogy by proposing a method to help students generate innovative ideas and create entrepreneurial opportunities by transforming the existing product's meanings,…

Previous research suggests that the use of metaphors in science education have both possibilities and challenges. In this study, we analyse the role of metaphors in meaning-making in the upper primary science classroom. We investigate the potential of metaphors about nutrient uptake occurring in classrooms in which an animation was used. To…

The aim of this research is to study how students recognise the concept of gradient of a function of two variables in its different representations and how they make conversions between these representations. Three groups of university students with different profiles took part in this research, and Duval's theory of semiotic representations was…

This paper presents the findings of aesthetic qualitative research conducted in Israel for the purpose of increasing the understanding of the reception process among kindergarten children (aged 5-6). The paper focuses on the link between Theatrical Communication, personal 'Cargo' young audiences 'carry' upon attending a theatrical event and…

The notions of meaning and sense, which are closely related to understanding, play an essential role in educational processes in general and, therefore, in the teaching and learning of mathematics. However, the terms 'meaning' and 'sense' are unevenly used in the theory of language, semiotics, philosophy and psychology. After describing the main…

This paper argues that meaning-making with multimodal representations in science learning is always contextualized within a genre and, conversely, what constitutes an ongoing genre also depends on a multimodal coordination of speech, gesture, diagrams, symbols, and material objects. In social semiotics, a genre is a culturally evolved way of doing…

This paper aims to contribute to the construction of multiliteracies pedagogy. We argue that the analysis of focalisation is an essential dimension in multiliteracies pedagogy aimed at promoting the development of critical analysis of multimodal narratives. Our point is sustained by a case study of focalisation in an animated narrative comprising…

This study explores the instruction of "equestrian feel" as an interactional accomplishment. Equestrian feel is an embodied knowledge encompassing riders' ability to feel the horse's actions and to act appropriately. Building on ethnomethodological and conversation analytic analyses of video-recordings of riding lessons, we explore how…

We present a theoretical study that allows us to attempt framing in an embodied perspective the effectiveness of the drawing robot GGBot in the learning of geometry. The aim of the article is to set the intertwining of activity, semiotics, perception, and knowledge at the crossover of Radford's theory of objectification (TO) and Borba and…

This paper outlines the general influence of Halliday's (1994, 2014) systemic functional linguistics on TESOL curriculum. Halliday's explanation of language as a social semiotic and language learning as learning to mean has been applied internationally in genre and textbased teaching. The concept of register in systemic functional linguistics…

Gunther Kress's multimodal and social semiotic theory of communication has moved beyond the realm of linguistics, which originally framed his work, and has reached out to inform other fields, such as those of education, museum studies, as well as the humanities and social sciences more broadly. This article brings together our insights in relation…

This paper reports from a case study which explores kindergarten children's mathematical abstraction in a teaching--learning activity about reflection symmetry. From a dialectical perspective, abstraction is here conceived as a process, as a genuine part of human activity, where the learner establishes "a point of view from which the concrete…

This paper adopts a semiotic perspective on mathematical learning according to Peirce, in which the actions on material arrangements are considered the bases for diagrammatic work. The focus is on the learner's actions using digital and analogue material arrangements which are the starting point for the reconstruction of the learner's mathematical…

We propose a new relational direction in higher education that acknowledges external and internal images as integrated in thinking and learning. We expand educational theory and practice that commonly rely on discrete conceptual developments that exclude images. Our argument epistemologically relies on certain semiotic views that consider the role…