Abstract
In this article, we assume that discursive language aspects of science education are highly intertwined with students’ knowledge-building and meaning-making in science. In an empirical case study, we investigate secondary students’ (ages 15 to 16) discursive language use during group interactions. The focus is on how students define and explain the content within everyday or scientific discourses and how their negotiations may influence discussion outcomes. The results suggest that students who can move between everyday and scientific languages benefit from this exchange, while students who only use colloquial language or relate the content to everyday experiences become disadvantaged. Furthermore, important general success factors are students’ abilities to establish solid relationships between words, expressions, and scientific terms to discuss, explain, and evaluate the scientific content. The results show important differences in discursive use of language within various school environments.
Highlights
A growing number of researchers have recently focused on school science instruction from a language or a discursive perspective (e.g. Knain, 2015; Serder & Jakobsson, 2016; Wallace, 2004)
We aimed to explore secondary students’ discursive language use during group interactions and problem-solving in science
This implies a focus on how students define and explain the educational content within everyday or scientific discourses and how their negotiations may influence the outcome of the discussions
Summary
A growing number of researchers have recently focused on school science instruction from a language or a discursive perspective (e.g. Knain, 2015; Serder & Jakobsson, 2016; Wallace, 2004). Jakobsson international student assessments (such as Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA)) frequently relate scientific issues to everyday contexts, implying that students must distinguish and move between discourses and interpret the tasks as specific scientific problems to provide satisfactory answers (Nygård Larsson & Jakobsson, 2017; Serder & Jakobsson, 2016). This type of language use in science education, with its distinctive linguistic and structural features, has been described within the framework of systemic functional linguistics (SFL) (Fang, 2005; Fang & Wei, 2010; Halliday & Matthiessen, 2004). In other words, learning science means developing both conceptual and discursive understanding, which includes the semantic relationships or specific thematic patterns (Lemke, 1990) and the distinctive linguistic and structural characteristics of scientific discourse
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