The Semiotic Function of a Bridging Representation to Support Students’ Meaning-Making in Solution Chemistry

Abstract

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; Volkwyn, 2020) across the submicroscopic and symbolic domains of Johnstone’s (1991) chemistry triangle. A “cross-and-portion” (CPO) model was devised as a bridging representation for learning the molar concentration and dilution concepts, informed by Peirce’s triadic model (1931) which relates the meaning of a concept to its representation in a sign, and its referent. The study drew on video capture of the classroom and small group activity, and interviews.The research findings indicated that the CPO model acted as a visualisation tool that facilitated students to link from the submicroscopic to symbolic domains of Johnstone’s triangle. A recursive model of meaning-making was formulated to describe how bridging representations are re-purposed to occupy shifting positions in Peirce’s triad to enable meaning through the system of interpretance. Students constructed, critiqued and transducted across multiple, multimodal representations to achieve discursive fluency across the dimensions of Johnstone’s triangle. The recursive model provides a fresh perspective on how students coordinate multimodal representations to learn science/chemistry.