The importance of how classroom discourse can be used to support science learning has gained national attention with respect to both science teaching and research across K12 and higher education. In this review article, we examine a commonly referenced set of nine frameworks for use in "science" classrooms. Specifically, we examine the…

This research draws on Legitimation Code Theory (LCT) to understand the epistemic dimension of the higher education classroom discourse of a professor who is well evaluated by his students. In expository science classroom discourse, concepts are loaded with different meanings, a process that is called "condensation of meanings" in LCT,…

One of the challenges for analysing science classroom discourse is a better understanding of intercontextual relationships in the learning process. In this paper, we used orientations from ethnography in education to organise and propose an analytical metaphor called the hourglass approach. It involves three phases of analysis that correspond to…

This article provides rich insights into the process of data generation for discourse analysis from three separate studies of the video recordings of a single science classroom in action. The central claim is that multimodal transcription can contribute to developments in discourse theory. A three-stage reflective heuristic is developed and used…

Science teaching and learning are discursive practices, yet analysis of these practices has frequently been grounded in theorizations that place language at the forefront of interaction and meaning-making. Such language-centric analytic approaches risk overlooking key embodied, enacted aspects of students' engagement in science practices. This…

In science classrooms, the epistemic practices of explanation building and argumentation often extend over multiple episodes of talk during a single lesson or across several lessons. Analyzing this kind of discourse requires a way to identify patterns that emerge over time to better understand student participation and how teachers support…

This study investigated science classroom discourse in terms of the types of teacher discursive moves (TDMs) and the relationships between the types of TDMs and student-led cognitive contributions in different science concepts by considering the classroom context. An experienced seventh-grade science teacher and her 19 students were engaged in…

This study identified the accumulated distributions of the enacted discursive moves during classroom inquiry to demonstrate how a science teacher reacted to the existence of two mutually exclusive social languages: everyday social languages of the students vs. social languages of school science. The participants were a science teacher and 26…

Large enrolment science courses play a significant role in educating undergraduate students. The discourse in these classes usually involves an instructor lecturing with little or no student participation, despite calls from current science education reform documents to elicit and utilize students' ideas in teaching. In this study, we used the 5E…

This study investigates Swedish biology teachers' inclusion of proteins when teaching genetics in grade nine (students 15-16 years old). For some years, there has been a call to give attention to proteins when teaching genetics as a means of linking the concepts "gene" and "trait". Students are known to have problems with this…

Uncertainty is an essential component of scientific inquiry and it also permeates our daily lives. Understanding how to identify, evaluate, resolve and live in the presence of uncertainty is important for decision-making strategies and engaging in transformative actions. In contrast, confidence and certainty are prized in elementary school…

Climate change is a complex environmental problem that can be used to examine students' understanding, gained through classroom communication, of climate change and its interactions. The present study examines a series of four science sessions given to a group of primary school student teachers (n?=?20). This includes analysis of the…

Over the past twenty-five years researchers have been concerned with understanding the science student. The need for such research is still grounded in contemporary issues including providing opportunities for all students to develop scientific literacy and the failure of school science to connect with student's lives, interests and personal…

The demographic changes in Greek schools underline the need for reconsidering the way in which migrant pupils move from their everyday culture into the culture of school science (a process known as "cultural border crossing"). Migrant pupils might face difficulties when they attempt to transcend cultural borders and this may influence…

The importance of argumentation in science education is outlined and the relatively low level of argumentation typically observed in classrooms in the UK is noted, along with possible reasons for this. The research sets out to determine the extent to which primary school pupils engage in argumentation and to characterise their arguments in primary…