Abstract:
There has been a growing awareness about the need to pay attention to the role of different semiotic modes, other than language, in the discursive construction of knowledge in the science classroom. Our research was conducted through extended videorecorded observations of secondary school Biology lessons and aimed at contributing to the current debate by analysing the multimodal character of discursive interactions in science classrooms with respect to two main aspects: (i) the context of use of different semiotic modes with respect to classroom activity in the context of four lessons (macroanalyses) and; (ii) the relationships between different semiotic modes through the analysis of one selected episode (microanalyses). Our results reveal that actions, gesture and verbal language were used in specific contexts, valued and legitimised by participants in the discursive interactions. The analysis also shows the teacher's ability in the rhetorical orchestration of the process through which students construct explanations.
Key-words:
multimodality; science classroom; science education; multimodal communication; gesture; language.