Abstract
Drama is a way of teaching that has been suggested to support learning, but studies in science education are limited and the potential of using drama needs further scrutiny and design development. In this study, we investigate how creative drama may afford students’ meaning-making of abstract non-spontaneous chemical concepts related to chemical bonding, by exploring what kind of semiotic work students are engaged in when given the opportunity to use their own bodies as semiotic resources.We combine sociocultural theory of learning with multimodal social semiotic analysis. Our results show how creative drama opens up for different types of transductions and transformations that have consequences for students’ meaning-making. A conclusion is that the creative drama activities may afford student exploration of intermolecular forces in new ways in particular when students use bodily mode in combination with other semiotic resources.
Highlights
Chemistry in upper secondary school is a subject that students often find challenging
Thereafter, we describe and illustrate the different types of transformations that became visible in the drama activity
The episodes presented are chosen to illustrate how the different types of student semiotic work may unfold within the drama activity
Summary
Chemistry in upper secondary school is a subject that students often find challenging. Students encounter many terms that are new to them (Markic, Broggy & Childs, 2013) and they are expected to interpret a variety of symbolic representations to develop their understanding of concepts (Taber & Coll, 2002). Chemistry is often found to be abstract and hard to grasp (Smith, 2011). There is a need to develop teaching methods that can make chemistry more vivid and tangible. We investigate the ways in which drama can be used to support student chemistry learning in upper secondary school. The aim is to investigate how creative drama may afford student meaning-making in relation to chemical concepts
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