It has previously been suggested that there is a need for a more language focused science instruction, especially in linguistically diverse classrooms, where many students are second language learners. But it has also been suggested that teachers may feel uncertainty about how to teach in ways that promote learning of both subject matter and…

Our study examines the scaffolding strategies employed by secondary biology teachers to support multilingual learners (MLs) in engaging with Science and Engineering Practices (SEPs). Rooted in sociocultural theory, we focus on the integration of academic language in disciplinary practices. Data from video-recorded observations of 12 secondary…

Research from the fields of science representation, genre pedagogy and disciplinary literacy for adolescents indicates that achievement for students, including those from linguistically diverse backgrounds, will improve if they engage with the meaning-making conventions of disciplinary texts, but there is no current agreement on the nature of…

This article examines the key change processes (KCPs) in the critical systemic functional linguistics praxis (CSFLP) of a science teacher, the first author, as she learned SFL theory as a metalanguage for thinking about language and for teaching science writing to culturally and linguistically diverse students. In this case study (Yin, 2012),…

This paper arises from research undertaken by educational semioticians and science educators investigating the use of student generated digital artefacts as assessment tasks in pre-service science teacher education. Part of a broader shift toward student-generated media in tertiary science, the use of such tasks is driven by the need to deepen…

Language ideologies profoundly shape and constrain the use of language as a resource for learning in 'multilingual' or linguistically diverse classrooms. In this paper, we draw attention in particular to the ideology of languages as stable, boundaried objects and to the colonial invention of African languages. Against this backdrop, we analyse an…

This paper reports on research which has explored essential requirements for pedagogies of hope, including the expansion of teachers' semiotic knowledge. The study, a professional learning intervention with teachers of young multilingual learners engaged in science inquiry, was informed by Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) descriptions of…

The Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) call for students to exhibit an in-depth understanding of scientific inquiry practices, including direct observation, creative design thinking, and argumentation based on evidential learning. To support academic equity for multilingual learners, these new expectations require reconceptualization of…

This article explores how opportunities and limitations in creating intercontextualtiy between everyday and scientific ideas emerge in teacher-student interactions, with a particular focus on the teacher's role. The article draws on data from an empirical, longitudinal, study in a lower secondary school in Norway to analyze student-teacher…

Highly explicit language use is prized in scientific discourse, and greater explicitness is hypothesized to facilitate academic achievement. Studies in the mid-twentieth century reported controversial findings that the explicitness of text differs by the income and education levels of authors' families. If income-related differences in…

Collaborative problem solving, when students work in pairs or small groups on a curriculum-related task, has become an increasingly common feature of classroom education. This paper reports a study of a topic which has received relatively little attention: how teachers can most usefully intervene when students are working in a group, but have…

There has been a rich literature on the role of language in learning and on its role in knowledge (co-)construction in the science classroom. This literature, rooted in social semiotics theories and sociocultural theories, discussed research conducted largely in contexts where students are learning content in their first language (L1). In this…

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…

Increases in the number of English language learner (ELL) students in the United States has led to a significant need for research that explores teaching and learning for ELL students in science and other content-area classrooms. This qualitative study investigated middle-school ELL students' (N = 12) beliefs and practices surrounding science…

Content-based instruction (CBI) adopts a second language (L2) as the medium of instruction for some or all academic subjects to facilitate L2 learning. There seem however, no uniform policies concerning which academic subjects should be taught in L2, in case only some subjects are involved. Conventional wisdom tends to favour Humanities subjects…