There is growing interest in the construct of "transduction", first introduced by (Kress, Cope and Kalantzis (eds), Multiliteracies: Literacy learning and the design of social futures pp.153-161, Routledge, 2000), p. 159) to name how meanings in one mode are remade in another. Science educators now broadly agree that students need to…

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…

There is currently a lack of systematic study examining the integration of verbal-visual elements in science textbooks. In particular, few research has investigated how different types of visual representations (e.g. photograph, diagram, table) vary across the major written genres of science (e.g. information report, explanation). Based on the…

In science education, there is a now established focus on fostering students' meaning making through/as multimodal representations as part of their induction into the epistemic practices of the discipline. Increasingly, this agenda is aligned with an emphasis on nurturing students' creative reasoning, as researchers move to enrich theories of…

This paper discusses how multimodal creative inquiry might be conceptualised and implemented for children's meaning-making in science. We consider Halliday's (1978) and Vygotsky's (1987, 2016) theoretical ideas for showing how the most important characteristics of social semiotics are connected to imagination, play-based and creative inquiry for…

This classroom-based study aims to contribute knowledge about children's opportunities to make use of drawing to make meaning in science. Employing a social semiotic approach to drawing, we examine what ways of representing science content that are: (1) made available by the teacher; and (2) adopted in children's drawings. We analysed observation…

Teaching and learning in science disciplines are dependent on multimodal communication. Earlier research implies that students may be challenged when trying to interpret and use different semiotic resources. There have been calls for extensive frameworks that enable analysis of multimodal texts in science education. In this study, we combine…

The construction of dynamic multimedia products requires the selection and integration of a range of semiotic resources. As an assessment task for preservice teachers, this construction process is complex but has significant potential for learning. To investigate how weaving together multiple representations in such tasks enables learners to…

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…

Many researchers have reported that bridging analogies can productively support students' scientific meaning-making. How this can be understood semiotically is, however, not well understood. This research followed an ethnographic case study approach to investigate Year 11 students meaning-making through a process of transduction (Kress, 2000;…

Assessments in tertiary science subjects typically assess content knowledge, and there is current need to both develop and assess different forms of knowledge and skills, such as communications and digital literacies. A digital explanation is a multimodal artefact created by students to explain science to a specified audience, which is an…

In English-medium instruction (EMI), English-as-a-second-language students will learn all/some subjects through English. Although there are a considerable number of studies which explore classroom interaction in Hong Kong (HK) secondary EMI schools, few studies have investigated EMI lessons which involve South Asian ethnic minorised students.…

The meaning-making practices of science are multimodal and include representational forms such as spoken and written language, diagrams, graphs, equations, and images. Science learning proceeds through an ever-increasing grasp of such resources. This study aims at providing insight into how a combination of Interaction Analysis (IA) and social…

Integrated science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education is becoming increasingly common in K-12 classrooms, and small group activities are ubiquitous to STEM instruction. This article includes both theoretical and practical descriptions of a microethnographic approach to critical multimodal discourse analysis that we used to…

From a social semiotic perspective, image designs in science textbooks are inevitably influenced by the sociocultural context in which the books are produced. The learning environments of Australia and Taiwan vary greatly. Drawing on social semiotics and cognitive science, this study compares classificational images in Australian and Taiwanese…