Jumping pepper and electrons in the shoe: using physical artefacts in a multilingual science class

ABSTRACT

This article concerns how teachers can use physical artefacts as mediating means to support emergent bilingual students’ learning in science class. The data consist of non-participant observations in a Swedish 3rd grade (9–10 years old) class working with electricity. All students were bilingual, but in different minority languages and the teacher was monolingual in Swedish. The study focused on four students, all of whom had Turkish as their minority language. The findings show that the teacher used physical artefacts in two different ways. First, the physical artefacts implied that the students experienced the science content by actually seeing it. The students talked about their observations in everyday language, which the teacher then drew on to introduce how the phenomena or process in question could be expressed in scientific language. Second, when students’ proficiency in the language of instruction limited their possibilities to make meaning, using physical artefacts enabled them to experience unfamiliar words as related to the science content and thus learn their meaning. The findings contribute to knowledge concerning how teachers can create learning contexts where physical artefacts are used to mediate scientific meaning.

KEYWORDS:

• English as a second/additional language
• language in classroom
• multiple representations

Introduction

This article concerns how teachers can use physical artefacts as mediating means to support bilingual students’ learning in science. Bilingualism is increasing in several countries around the world (Eurostat, 2017) and some bilingual students are not yet fluent in the language of instruction, that is, they are emergent bilinguals (García & Kleifgen, 2010). Research and reports from different parts of the world have shown that emergent bilingual students’ achievements in science are on average lower than those of their monolingual peers (Buxton & Lee, 2014; The Swedish National Agency for Education, 2018a). In the following, we will start by reviewing the circumstances resulting in this achievement gap. We will continue by presenting some research findings about how to overcome this gap and improve equity in science education.

Bilingualism is a well-investigated area in science education research (Buxton & Lee, 2014). However, it has rarely been integrated in science teacher education and curriculum development. As a consequence, many teachers still need more knowledge about how to support bilingual students’ learning in science (Lee, Miller, & Januszyk, 2014). Scholars are agreed on that language and content learning should be integrated. Still, many teachers assume that emergent bilingual students need to reach a certain level in the language of instruction before they can join science lessons. These students fall behind in their knowledge development in comparison to their peers (Buxton & Lee, 2014).

In science class, conversations are often conducted in a specific genre in comparison to everyday life. Even though there is not a sharp line between them, the terms everyday language and scientific language are used to describe this difference. Scientific language makes demands on all students regardless of their linguistic background. To give some examples, it involves concepts that are new for most students, such as ‘photosynthesis’ and ‘gravity’. Other words, for example ‘energy’ and ‘power’, might be known from everyday life, but have another meaning in science. Knowledge about how words are used in science class is certainly not enough to learn science. Students need to understand how these words are related to each other and create larger patterns (Lemke, 1990; Wellington & Osborne, 2001).

To support students’ learning in science, researchers have suggested teachers to relate the science content to everyday language (Wellington & Osborne, 2001). Nevertheless, emergent bilingual students are not yet fluent in the language of instruction, which means that not only scientific language but also everyday language might be a challenge (García & Kleifgen, 2010). For example, Ünsal, Jakobson, Molander, and Wickman (2018a) made classroom observations in a 7th grade (13–14 years old) chemistry class in order to examine how emergent bilingual students construe relations between everyday and scientific language. The teacher intended to support the students by giving examples from everyday life. However, since some everyday words used were unfamiliar to the students, the students did not understand the given examples. Furthermore, interviews with the students revealed that unfamiliar everyday words resulted in students leaving questions in written examinations unanswered.

In order to develop a deeper understanding of science, students need to participate in more advanced conversations such as argumentations and discussions (Lemke, 1990). These conversation types require language proficiency on a certain level, which emergent bilingual students might lack. Classroom observations in a 3rd grade (9–10 years old) science class have shown how bilingual students’ possibilities to make meaning of the science content can be influenced by the character of the conversations. Answering the teacher’s questions by giving short answers mostly proceeded without language limitations, but when the students were asked to participate in more advanced conversations, their language limitations increased (Ünsal, Jakobson, Molander, & Wickman, 2018b). Accordingly, emergent bilingual students face a dual task as both everyday and scientific language might be a challenge (Buxton & Lee, 2014). Based on this, we argue that teachers need to consider how to use other recourses besides the language of instruction to support emergent bilingual students’ learning in science (Ünsal et al., 2018a, 2018b). Researchers have suggested teachers to relate the science content to everyday language to support students’ learning in science (Lemke, 1990). Bilingual students’ ‘everyday’ language consists in itself of at least two languages. For example, the students in this study speak Turkish and Swedish in their everyday lives. Several studies have shown how bilingual students use both their languages to make sense of the science content (e.g. Ünsal et al., 2018a, 2018b; Msimanga & Lelliott, 2014). Including bilingual students’ minority language (mother tongue, first language) at school, support both linguistic development and students’ overall achievement, e.g. learning science (García, 2009).

Nevertheless, in some countries, bilingual students have limited possibilities to use their minority language due to the class compositions. Students from several linguistic backgrounds are represented in the same class without sharing their minority language with any or most of their classmates and teachers (e.g. Blackledge & Creese, 2010). It should be emphasised that it is possible to include students’ minority language also in these class compositions. One way is to allow students speaking the same minority language, work together during group activities. However, linguistic communication with teachers and classmates not speaking the same minority language can only be in the language of instruction (Ünsal et al., 2018b). This calls for an attention to resources beside language to support bilingual students’ learning in science, for example pictures gestures and physical artefacts (Kamberelis & Wehunt, 2012). This article focuses on physical artefacts.

Physical artefacts in science class

According to Buxton and Lee (2014), the main focus in research on emergent bilingual students’ learning in science has been on hands-on activities. In a literature review, the authors list four benefits of conducting hands-on activities in classes with emergent bilingual students. First, hands-on activities are less dependent on students’ language proficiency and reduce the occurrence of language limitations. Second, using physical artefacts give students the possibility to develop their language proficiency at the same time as they learn science. Third, reporting the results of hands-on activities enable students to use several other mediating means, such as diagrams and language. Fourth, students have the possibility to develop communication skills going beyond factual knowledge, for example arguing and reflecting.

To give some further examples, Amaral, Garrison, and Klentschy (2002) summarise the findings of a project in which over 1200 emergent bilingual students in the 4th and 6th grade (9 and 11 years old) joined a kit- and inquiry-based science instruction. The number of years that the students had participated in the project differed even though they were the same age. Some of the students in the 4th grade had been part of the project for four years, whereas others had joined it more recently. A quantitative analysis of the students’ achievements on different tests, including science, showed that their scores increased in relation to the number of years they had participated in the project. The authors argue that the diversity and quantity of communicative modes afforded by the inquiry type of instruction supported emergent bilingual students’ learning at school.

Gibbons (2008) investigated how secondary and primary school bilingual students could be supported to become successful participants in programmes characterised by intellectual challenge where ‘students are afforded the opportunities to engage in higher-order thinking, transform information, engage in inquiry-oriented activity, and construct their own understandings through participating in substantive conversations with others’ (Gibbons, 2008, p. 157). Some of the lessons included physical artefacts and the study demonstrated that the science content became less abstract for students when physical artefacts were used. Hence, Gibbons concludes that the production of meaning by using different resources besides language, promote bilingual students learning as it offers alternative ways of understanding.

The strengths of using physical artefacts when teaching science to emergent bilingual students are still valid. However, research has also highlighted that teachers tend to simplify the science content when they use hands-on activities to teach emergent bilingual students. These lessons often concern basic skills focusing on how the artefacts are supposed to be used and lack clear learning goals related to science (Buxton & Lee, 2014). Moreover, emergent bilingual students might have difficulties in figuring out the names of the physical artefacts used, as shown by Ünsal et al. (2018b). In one of the activities, the students were given a bag with different objects and asked to connect them to an open electrical circuit to see whether or not the bulb would light up. The purpose of the activity was to learn that metals conduct electricity while some other materials do not. Although the teacher started the lesson by telling the names of the objects in the bag, remembering this during the hands-on activity appeared to be difficult. As a consequence, figuring out the name of the objects became the main focus for the students and the purpose of the activity was disregarded.

To summarise: Emergent bilingual students are learning science in a language that they are still acquiring (Buxton & Lee, 2014). Simultaneously, some emergent bilingual students have limited possibilities to use their minority language because of the class compositions (Blackledge & Creese, 2010). This means that we need to pay attention to other resources beside language to support bilingual students’ learning in science (Kamberelis & Wehunt, 2012). There is a need for developing lessons with physical artefacts that have clear learning goals related to scientific knowledge, and simultaneously promote students’ language development (Buxton & Lee, 2014). The purpose of this study is to address this research gap by examining the following research question:

How can teachers use physical artefacts to support emergent bilingual students’ learning in science?

Theoretical framework

Learning and mediating means

This study is based on a sociocultural (Leontev, 1981; Vygotskij) and pragmatic perspective (Dewey, 1925/1998; Wittgenstein, 1953/1967) on learning. Both language and learning are here regarded as action situated in a historical, cultural and social context (Vygotskij, 1978; Dewey, 1925/1998). Learning, in particular, is conceptualised using Dewey’s (1938/1997, p. 35) principle of continuity which states that:

every experience both takes up something from those which have gone before and modifies in some way the quality of those which come after.

According to Dewey (1925/1998), an experience is not a representation of the external world or solely an internal process. Instead, the term refers to the interaction between the individual and the surrounding context as an inseparable unit. An experience is gained by acting in different situations. Students make meaning of a new situation by considering the purpose of the activity and then relate it to their earlier experiences. This means that earlier experiences are reactualised. Simultaneously, students act in the new situation and reflect on the consequences of their actions. The combination of action and reflection results in learning, which in turn implies a transformation of earlier experiences (Dewey, 1938/1997; Wickman, 2006). It should be emphasised that learning from a pragmatic perspective does not mean being acquainted with how phenomena and processes in the world ‘out there’ look like or function. Instead, learning concerns developing new patterns of actions, or habits as Dewey calls this, to make meaning of different situations (Biesta & Burbules, 2003).

The learning process entails using different resources, for example language, gestures and physical artefacts. Since these resources mediate meaning, they can be approached as mediating means, and learning as mediated action (Leontev, 1981). Mediating means are part of, and simultaneously shape, our actions (Säljö, 2000). Mediating means are social constructions rather than entities with universal meanings (Wertsch, 1993). The meaning of them is not static, but continuously change and shown through their use in a specific context (Jakobson & Wickman, 2008 cf. Wittgenstein, 1953/1967).

In this study, we examine the process in which artefacts are used in a specific context to make meaning. The term artefact refers to different tools, such as language or physical objects used in communication and learning (Almqvist, 2005). Vygotskij (1978) made a distinction between psychological artefacts (language and gestures) and physical artefacts (objects). This study concerns objects used in communication and learning. Physical artefacts have several intertwined functions at school. Hands-on activities sometimes require that the students are acquainted with how physical artefacts are supposed to be used in certain situations. Simultaneously, some knowledge has been ‘moved’ to physical artefacts. For instance, the possibility to write by using paper and pen enables students to remember things without actually memorising them. Thus, students’ learning in science is never merely a question of cognitive capabilities (Säljö, 2000).

Students’ and teachers’ use of physical artefacts depends in general on two aspects. First, there are socially created habits (Dewey, 1925/1998), or customs as Wittgenstein puts it (1953/1967). For example, drinking water from a test tube during a chemistry lesson is possible but would in most situations seem like a strange thing to do; it is not customary. Furthermore, a physical artefact might be viewed differently depending on the participant’s earlier experiences (Almqvist, 2005). If a student has never experienced the use of a test tube before, it might be difficult to understand how it is supposed to be used in a certain activity. To summarise, physical artefacts gain their meaning, just like language and other resources, through their use in a specific context (Dewey, 1925/1998; Wittgenstein, 1953/1967).

Bilingualism

Researchers and policy-makers have for a long time attempted to define what it means to be bilingual and the discussion is still ongoing. Some researchers (e.g. García, 2009; Grosjean, 1985) are sceptical to this discussion. By showing how bilingual students have various linguistic backgrounds and use their languages differently, they argue that it is not possible to make a fixed description of what it means to be bilingual while at the same time embrace the heterogeneity among bilinguals. In this study, we use Grosjean’s (1985, p. 468) definition of bilingualism as the regular use of two (or more) languages and bilingual students are defined as students who need and use two (or more) languages in their everyday lives. All students using more than one language in their everyday life, irrespective of language proficiency, are regarded as bilingual. This broad definition of bilingualism does, however, not mean that we disregard the fact that bilingual students have different levels of proficiency in the language of instruction. Some students are fluent in two languages while others are still learning a language. This study concerns the last mentioned: students not yet fluent in the language of instruction. Different terms have been used to refer to these students. In the United States, the terms ‘English Language Learners’ (ELLs) or ‘Limited English Proficient students’ (LEPs) are used (García & Kleifgen, 2010). In Sweden, the students are called ‘second language learners’ (Wedin, 2011) or ‘students in Swedish as a second language’ (The Swedish Parliament, 2017). In this thesis, the term emergent bilinguals (García & Kleifgen, 2010) is preferred since it has a prospective approach, advocating educators to focus on the students’ potentials rather than their limitations.

The heterogeneity among bilingual students also needs to be taken into consideration when referring to bilingual students’ languages. Traditional terms, such as mother tongue, first- and second language are insufficient since they do not involve all bilinguals. For instance, the term second language indicates a language being introduced later in a students’ life, which is not always the case. In this article, two alternative terms are used. The principal language of a country or a society will be called majority language and other languages represented minority languages (García, 2009). In Sweden, where data for this study were collected, Swedish is classified as the majority language and other languages spoken by the population are considered minority languages

Methods

Contextualising the study

The Swedish education system consists of several different types of schooling depending on the students’ age and needs. The first step is preschool, to which children 1–5 years old have the possibility to attend. From the age of 6, students attend to preschool class. When students are 7 years old, they start compulsory school, compulsory school for learning disabilities, Sami school or special school. The compulsory school and the compulsory school for learning disabilities consist of 9 years of schooling. Children of Samis can attend to Sami school during 1–6th grade. Then, they continue their education at compulsory school. Special school is for students with functional impairments and consists of 10 years. Students wanting to continue their education can attend upper secondary school for three more years. Some of the programmes there give a foundation for vocational activities, while others are aimed at preparing the students for further studies. All of these school forms are either municipal or independent, but the majority is municipal. The independent schools have different organisers or owners, for example a company or a foundation (The Swedish National Agency for Education, 2017). Sweden is a multilingual country. About 150 languages are represented at schools and approximately 25% of the students are bilingual (The Swedish National Agency for Education, 2018b). In general, ‘ordinary’ lessons are conducted exclusively in Swedish, but students are also offered lessons in their minority language. The lessons are optional, often scheduled after the ordinary school day and amount to about 1–2 hours/week. The schools sometimes also provide extra support to bilingual students. Students then receive tutoring in their minority language and/or lessons in ‘Swedish as a second language’ instead of ‘Swedish’. The principal decides if this support is needed (The Swedish Agency for Education, 2008).

The study setting

The class in which the observations were made consisted of 31 students, 9–10 years old (3rd grade). All students were bilingual and several minority languages were represented in the class, for example Arabic and Turkish. The teacher was monolingual in Swedish and qualified to teach 1st–6th grade students in diverse subjects, including science and language development. It was her first year as a teacher. During the data collection, the class worked with electricity by following the Swedish version of Science and Technology for Children – STC (STC, 2018). The programme was developed in the USA to support elementary school students’ learning in science. It has a general approach and is not developed specifically for emergent bilingual students. The programme is divided into different themes, for example ‘electricity’ and ‘space’. Every theme consists of several hands-on activities with explicit learning goals. The programme includes teacher guides, student worksheets and boxes with practical equipment to perform the activities. In order to use the programme, teachers need to attend a training course consisting of three steps: First, a half-day introduction course about the programme as a whole. Second, a whole-day course for every theme, respectively. Third, a half-day meeting where the teacher can discuss their use of the actual theme with each other (NTA, 2018).

In this article, the term physical artefacts refer to the equipment used during these activities, for example bulbs and wires. Every lesson was about a new hands-on activity, but the physical artefacts were not constantly present in the classroom. Some exercises concerned talking or writing about the hands-on activities without having the artefacts at hand. Typically, the teacher initiated a lesson by asking the students to summarise the previous one and then continued by introducing the hands-on activity they were to perform. The activities were conducted in smaller groups of 2–4 students. The students wrote a prediction, carried out the activity, discussed their results in their groups or in whole-class and finally wrote a report.

Data generation and analysis

The data selection was made by having four criteria in mind. First, we were interested in conducting the study in compulsory school. Second, the students participating in the study needed to be emergent bilinguals. As described earlier, limitations in the language of instruction become even more challenging when students cannot speak their minority language with all of their classmates and teachers. Therefore, the third criterion was locating a multilingual class. Fourth, the lessons needed to involve physical artefacts. Based on these four criteria, a convenience sample was made and a class was located through personal contacts (Saumure & Given, 2008). The first author of this article is bilingual in Swedish and Turkish, and therefore the study focused on four students who are bilingual in these two languages. In this way, the data could be analysed without translators. The four students were born and raised in Sweden, but the teacher stated that all of them were emergent bilinguals and received lessons in ‘Swedish as a second language’. During the hands-on activities, the four students in focus worked together and were free to use both their languages. Whole-class instruction and all other conversations with the teacher was in Swedish.

Data were collected through non-participant observations (Bryman, 2016), implying that the observer (first author) did not interact with the teacher or the students during the lessons. To document students’ actions, both audio- and video recorders were used. The teacher wore an audio recorder, and a camera was directed at the whiteboard documenting her actions during whole-class instruction. In addition, the first author of the article was present in the classroom and made field notes during the lessons. In total, eight science lessons were documented during a period of 6 weeks, which resulted in approximately 20 h of data.

The study was conducted by following the ethical considerations stated by the Swedish Research Council (2011).

The recordings were fully transcribed and then analysed. The first step was finding data (Erickson, 2012). Transcriptions involving information not relevant to this study, such as the teacher and the students talk about an incident during the break, were disregarded. Then, situations in which the teacher’s use of physical artefacts supported the students’ learning in science class were searched and marked as data. Since this study concerns emergent bilingual students, the first criterion in selecting data was that the teacher’s actions were related to language support. The second criterion was that this language support was related to learning science. The second step of the analysis was finding assertions, which implied reading the transcription by having the research question in mind and making an initial analysis about what the data could possibly show (Erickson, 2012). The initial analysis indicated that the physical artefacts supported the students’ learning in two different ways.

The third step was searching data sources for evidence. The transcriptions were read in order to find evidence confirming or disconfirming the preliminary assertions. This step of the analysis needs to be conducted carefully and deeply to ensure that important data are not disregarded (Erickson, 2012). The categorisation was thus checked by the authors and adjusted until an agreement was reached. Even if the purpose of this study is to present findings showing how teachers can use physical artefacts to support emergent bilingual students’ learning in science, two disconfirming situations were detected. First, the names of some physical artefacts in use were unfamiliar to the students during one lesson. As a consequence, the students focused on figuring out the name of the artefacts at the expense of the science content (Ünsal et al., 2018b). Second, occasionally the students had difficulties in understanding how the hands-on activities were supposed to be conducted. This is shown in examples 1–2 in the ‘Results’ section. Although it is important to mention these disconfirming situations, it should be emphasised that they rarely occurred. Thus, it is reasonable to assume that their influence on the categorisation is negligible.

Finally, excerpts regarded as representative were chosen in order to empirically illustrate the findings of the study. During some conversations, the students used both their languages. To make a distinction between the languages, translations from Swedish are written with no emphasis and translations from Turkish are written in bold letters. Linguistic incorrectness in the excerpts corresponds to the teachers’ and students’ sometimes non-idiomatic ways of expressing themselves.

Analytical approach

Practical epistemology analysis (PEA) was used to analyse the data. PEA is a well-established analytical tool developed to analyse students’ learning in science class (Kelly, Mc Donald & Wickman, 2012). It is grounded in the ideas of Dewey, the later Wittgenstein and sociocultural perspectives (Wickman & Östman, 2002). The unit of analysis is students and teachers’ situated actions (cf. Harré & Gillett, 1994; Wertsch, 1995).

In PEA, four operational concepts are used: encounter, stand fast, relation and gap. We use an excerpt from the data collected for this study to describe the analytical tool. The conversation took place when the teacher asked the students to summarise the results of a hands-on activity they previously conducted. Sinem started by talking about the contact wire of a bulb:

Table

Sinem:	You know the wire (Swe. sladd).
Teacher:	Which wire?
Sinem:	The wire (Swe. sladd) that broke.
Teacher:	You mean this one (holds up a bulb and points on its contact wire)?
Sinem:	Yes, it …

Encounters are meetings between individuals, and individuals and physical objects (Wickman & Östman, 2002). In the conversation above, there was an encounter between Sinem and the teacher and eventually a bulb. In an encounter, there are constant gaps which concern the need to make sense of what occurs. Gaps are filled by construing relations to actions (including language use) standing fast. When an action stands fast, the participants through actions agree on their meaning. This is observable by there being no hesitations, further questions or explanations about what the participants mean. The activity just goes on. In some situations, it is not possible for the participants to immediately fill a gap, which results in additional encounters. These are observable as further questions and explanations (Wickman & Östman, 2002). In the conversation above, a gap occurred when Sinem said ‘you know the wire’. ‘The wire' did not stand fast in the encounter between her and the teacher since the teacher asked her ‘which wire’ she meant. The teacher’s question implied an additional encounter between her and Sinem. This time, Sinem construed the relation ‘the wire that broke’. This relation did not stand fast either as the teacher asked Sinem if she intended the contact wire by pointing on an actual bulb. Sinem confirmed the teacher. The gap concerning what Sinem intended was filled.

Actions standing fast are a necessary condition for communication to occur. If we always had to explain what we meant with our actions, communication would stall and it would be impossible to continue. In the conversation above, the meaning of ‘the wire’ did not initially stand fast and needed to be negotiated. In doing so, the teacher and Sinem used words, gestures and physical artefacts, whose meanings did stand fast. However, sometimes gaps cannot be filled despite additional encounters and are said to linger. In such situations, the activity stops or takes another direction (Wickman, 2006). This never occurred in the example above.

Practical epistemology analysis starts out from a first-person perspective, that is, from the participants’ point of view. Hence, relations construed might stand fast even though they are not scientifically correct or the activity does not take the direction the teacher intended (Wickman & Östman, 2002). So, if the teacher in the analysis above for instance had pointed at the socket of the bulb and Sinem had said that this was the ‘wire’ she was aiming at, the relation would be considered to stand fast even though it is not linguistically correct.

After the first-person analysis, the researcher continues with a third-person analysis by asking what the situations mean for the purpose of their study (Wickman, 2006). The relations Sinem construed did not stand fast between her and the teacher. A probable reason is that the word ‘sladd’ means an electrical wire in Swedish, whereas the word for ‘contact wire’ is ‘glödtråd’. Since the hands-on activity Sinem retold was conducted in whole-class, the teacher had also experienced what ‘broke’. The teacher’s use of a physical artefact in combination with gestures and oral language as mediating means resulted in the gap being filled and the continuation of the science activity.

This study draws on Dewey’s (1938/1997) principle of continuity. The chosen analytical tool then needs to deal with three interrelated aspects of learning: situational, continuous and transformational. These are all considered in PEA, which makes the learning process visible (Wickman, 2006, p. 53):

The situational aspects are the unique and often contingent aspects in every situation, such that there is something new in every situation we encounter. The continuous aspects describe how these different unique situations are reconciled and reciprocally related to each other in the learning process. The transformational aspects deal with how experience and what we know is changed as situations are made continuous.

Continuity is a central aspect in PEA in three different ways. First, actions standing fast in encounters imply that the participants have prior experience of what the actions in question mean in the current activity. Second, the participants also refer to earlier experiences. Third, continuity is demonstrated by the participants’ habits since their actions are a result of their earlier experiences. In addition, continuity is related to transformation, which is demonstrated as part of the process of construing new relations in order to fill gaps. It is by construing relations to what stands fast that we learn something new, which in its turn implies a transformation of earlier experiences. Accordingly, earlier experiences and current situations are made continuous (Wickman, 2006).

Results

The teacher’s use of physical artefacts supported the students’ learning in two different ways. First, in a ‘general sense’, the students experienced the science content by actually observing and talking about it in everyday language. The teacher then drew on students’ experiences of performing the hands-on activities to teach how the phenomena and processes in question were expressed and described in scientific language. This is illustrated under the heading

From students’ experiences to scientific language. Second, the teacher’s use of physical artefacts was supportive when the students’ proficiency in the language of instruction limited their meaning-making possibilities. This is shown under the heading Filling lingering gaps by using physical artefacts. During the group-activities, the students had access to another mediating mean besides physical artefacts: their minority language. The whole-class activities, on the other hand, were conducted in Swedish only.

From students’ experiences to scientific language

The following excerpts are from the first lesson. The students were told to rub a ruler against their hair and clothes and then hold it above a paper with black pepper on it. The activity was performed in groups, but each student had their own ruler and paper:

Example 1

Table

1.	Enes:	(holds the ruler above the pepper and the pepper sticks to it) Sinem, I pulled almost everything. Look!
2.	Defne:	It doesn’t work.
3.	Sinem:	(holds the ruler above the paper and the pepper sticks to it) Look, look!
4.	Enes:	Ohoho, so much (talks to Sinem)! Defne, do it very, very much. Then, do it very fast, hold it very fast.
5.	Defne:	(holds the ruler above the paper and the pepper sticks to it) Oh!
6.	Nisa:	It works nothing (rubs the ruler against her hair). My hair is too soft! I haven’t got anything (with an angry/irritated tone)!
7.	Teacher:	What’s happening with the pepper?
8.	Defne:	It’s jumping!
9.	Nisa:	It works nothing, it happens nothing (with an angry/irritated tone)!

Enes and Sinem succeeded to cause static electricity (1 and 3), but nothing happened when Defne held her ruler above the paper (2). Enes told her how the activity was supposed to be conducted by construing the relations ‘doing it very, very much’ and ‘holding it very fast’ above the paper (4). Defne performed the activity as Enes had told her to and succeeded (5). Nisa also performed the activity faster, but she was still not able to cause static electricity. She construed a relation to her hair being ‘too soft' (6). When the teacher asked the students about the results of the activity (7), Defne answered by saying that the pepper ‘jumped’ (8), whereas Nisa said ‘it works nothing, it happens nothing’ (9).

The physical artefacts mediated meaning by enabling the students to experience static electricity (1 and 3–5) before the teacher actually introduced the scientific concept (example 2). There was constant interaction between the artefacts and another mediating means: everyday language. First, Enes’s instructions regarding how the activity was supposed to be performed (4) resulted in Defne succeeding (5). Second, the students described their experiences by construing relations to everyday language, for instance Defne said that the pepper was ‘jumping’ (8). Nisa did not achieve the intended results (6 and 9), but she did experience static electricity by observing the other students’ results (1 and 3–5).

The interaction between physical artefacts and everyday language was also present when the class continued to the next step of the lesson. The teacher asked the students to summarise the results of the hands-on activity without having the artefacts at hand and wrote their answers on the whiteboard:

Example 2

Table

10.	Teacher:	Defne had an answer, what happened Defne? What happened with the pepper?
11.	Defne:	The pepper jumped.
12.	Teacher:	Jumped (writes ’the pepper jumped’ on the whiteboard). It does actually look like that’s what it’s doing. Yes Sinem?
13.	Sinem:	The pepper stuck to the ruler.
14.	Teacher:	The pepper … . (writes ‘the pepper stuck to the ruler’). You shall write this now, okay. Did anything else happen?
15.	Nisa:	It flew.
16.	Teacher:	The pepper flew (writes ‘the pepper flew’ on the whiteboard). You know, what you did when you rubbed your ruler against your hair and your clothes were that you produced static electricity. It’s this kind of electricity that causes that one sometimes gets a shock from a friend for example. Then, the static electricity increases and electrons are gathered in the shoes and when one touches someone else then it says khhh (imitating ‘the sound’ of static electricity) Cause, then you send away these electrons and the other one gets a shock.

The students construed the relations ‘the pepper jumped’, ‘the pepper stuck to the ruler’ and ‘it flew’ to summarise the hands-on activity (10–15). All of these relations stood fast in the encounter between the teacher and the students, meaning that the students’ answers were immediately intelligible to the teacher. By confirming the students’ answers and writing them on the whiteboard, the teacher demonstrated that the students’ ways of expressing themselves were valued and legitimised in her science classroom. The teacher then explained the results of the hands-on activity by construing the relations ‘static electricity’, ‘electrons’ and ‘shock’ (16).

This example aims to illustrate how the teacher increased the abstraction level by asking the students to summarise the hands-on activity without having the physical artefacts at hand. Using physical artefacts resulted in the students experiencing static electricity. The students described their experiences in everyday language, which the teacher then drew on to explain how the ‘jumping’ or ‘flying’ pepper could be expressed in scientific language (10–16). The lesson ended soon after the teacher’s explanation (16). Thus, the main part of the lesson was used to experience static electricity by using physical artefacts. As mentioned, this was the first lesson about electricity to give the students an introduction to static electricity rather than striving for a deeper understanding (16). The class then continued to work with the subject during a period of six weeks.

In addition, Nisa participated in the conversation by answering the teacher’s questions (15). This strengthens the assumption made earlier about Nisa experiencing static electricity even though she did not succeed to produce static electricity (example 1). The physical artefacts constituted the origin of the conversations, even though they were not actually present. The students gained a joint experience, which was reactualised and transformed in the on-going activity.

Filling lingering gaps by using physical artefacts

In some situations, unfamiliar words in everyday and scientific language limited the students’ possibilities to make meaning of the hands-on activities. Using physical artefacts in combination with both Swedish and Turkish was then supportive, as this enabled the students to relate these words to the science content. This will be illustrated with excerpts from a lesson about closed electrical circuits. The students received a worksheet with pictures of a bulb, a battery and a wire connected in different ways (Figure 1). They were asked to discuss whether or not the bulb would light up when the equipment was connected, as shown in the pictures, and then write ‘on’ or ‘off’ above each picture.

Figure 1. The worksheet with the electrical connections used in examples 3–6.

Example 3

Table

17.	Sinem:	Do you know what this is (points at the first picture from top left on Figure 1)?
18.	Defne:	What is it?
19.	Sinem:	It’s lighting.
20.	Defne:	Exactly. (Defne and Sinem write ‘on’ over the picture)
21.	Nisa:	Lighting is like this, like this … it comes … (waves her hands in the air). It’s lighting but you write on (with an questioning/angry tone)!
22.	Sinem:	This one is supposed to be off.
23.	Defne:	Which one?
24.	Sinem:	This (points at the first picture on the second row from left in Figure 1 (Defne and Sinem write ‘off’ over the picture)
25.	Nisa:	Does anything happen if you give the wrong answer? Back your hand (moves Defne’s hand from her worksheet and copies her answers)! I understand nothing, you say off, lighting, on. (the students continue to work with the worksheet. Defne and Sinem talk about the connections and write joint answers. Nisa copies their answers)

All three students were agreed that the bulb would light up when the equipment was connected as shown on the first picture (Figure 1, 17–21). Nisa questioned that Defne and Sinem wrote ‘on’ over the picture, showing that the meaning of the word did not stand fast between the students (21). Defne and Sinem ignored Nisa’s utterance (21) and continued with the next picture (22–24). Nisa then started to copy Defne’s answers, while at the same time saying that she ‘understand nothing’ when the other students said ‘off’, ‘lighting’ and ‘on’ (25). The activity proceeded in a similar way: Defne and Sinem talked about the pictures and wrote joint answers and Nisa copied their answers. Thus, the gaps concerning the meaning of ‘on’ and ‘off’ were still lingering.

The example above shows how Nisa’s repertoire in the language of instruction limited her possibilities to make meaning of the science content. The purpose of the activity was to discuss closed electrical circuits. However, since some words needed were unfamiliar to Nisa, her participation took another direction. To discuss whether or not the bulb would light up, she needed to understand the meaning of two everyday words: ‘on’ and ‘off’. Hence, this became the main focus for her (21 and 25). One probable reason for Nisa’s language limitations might be that it is not possible to describe bulbs as ‘on’ or ‘off’ in Turkish in the same way it is in Swedish and English. In the following, we show how this example is related to physical artefacts.

When the students had finished writing predictions about the connections on the pictures, the teacher asked them to connect the physical artefacts as shown in the pictures. Defne worked with Nisa:

Example 4

Table

26.	Defne:	Hold this one (wire), give me that (bulb). Lift it, lift it.
27.	Nisa:	I’m lifting it, girl. (the bulb is lighting)
28.	Defne:	It works (writes ‘on’ under the first picture from the top left in Figure 1). (Nisa copies Defne’s answer)
29.	Nisa:	Put it (battery) under it (bulb). (the bulb is not lighting)
30.	Defne:	Wrong (writes ‘off’ under the first picture on the second row from left in Figure 1). (Nisa copies Defne’s answer and the students continue to work with the connections for a while)

Defne construed the relations ‘it works’ and ‘on’ to describe a bulb that lights up (28) and ‘wrong’ and ‘off’ when talking about the bulb not lighting up (30). In both encounters, Nisa copied her answer (26–28). The activity continued in the same way for a while, that is, Defne wrote answers and Nisa copied them.

This part of the lesson implied using physical artefacts as mediating means alongside Swedish and Turkish. Defne and Nisa connected the artefacts as shown on the pictures without any visible limitations. From this point, all the students needed to do was to document their results by writing ‘on’ or ‘off’ under each picture. Although the students no longer had to predict the answers, but could actually ‘see’ them, Nisa continued to copy Defne’s answers. This supports the assumption made earlier (example 3). The gaps concerning the meaning of the words ‘on’ and ‘off’ were still lingering and limiting Nisa’s possibilities to make meaning of the activity (26–30).

When Nisa had spent some time observing Defne’s use of the words ‘on’ and ‘off’ together with the physical artefacts, she started to use the words herself. She simultaneously stopped copying Defne’s answers:

Example 5

Table

31.	Defne:	Let’s do this one. (points at the last picture on the second row in Figure 1) (the students connect the physical artefacts as shown on the picture without talking to each other. The bulb does not light up)
32.	Nisa:	Off. What a strange one (connection). (the students write ‘off’ under the picture)

Nisa construed the relation ‘off’ to describe the bulb not lighting up and both students wrote the word under the picture. The meaning of ‘off’ stood fast in the encounter between the students, and the lingering gap (examples 3 and 4) was finally filled (31–32).

Here (example 5) it is shown that Nisa had learnt the meaning of a word that previously limited her possibilities to make meaning of the science content (examples 3 and 4). Nisa did not discuss the meaning of the word with her classmates or her teacher between this example (5) and the previous ones (examples 3 and 4). During the hands-on activity (examples 4–5), Nisa experienced the words ‘on’ and ‘off’ being used together with physical artefacts and Swedish and Turkish. She observed the bulb lighting up and Defne describing this by construing the relations ‘on’ and ‘it works’ (26–28). A similar pattern occurred with the word ‘off’ (29–32). It is reasonable to assume that the physical artefacts used had an important role in Nisa learning the meaning of the words. In turn, this made it possible for Nisa to actively participate in the lesson (31–32).

After the hands-on activity (examples 4–5), the teacher asked the students to retell their predictions and results without having access to the physical artefacts:

Example 6

Table

33.	Teacher:	What about the next row? There (points at the first picture on the second row in Figure 1). Did this connection work?
34.	Nisa:	No, off.
35.	Teacher:	What about you, what did you write (to Enes and Sinem)?
36.	Enes & Sinem: Off.
37.	Nisa:	It wasn’t metal, that side because.
38.	Teacher:	It wasn’t in contact with the metal. Is it something that you all have concluded, that when the bulb is not in contact with the metal, then it won’t light?
39.	Students:	Yes.

A gap occurred with the teacher’s question, and Nisa construed the relations ‘no’ and ‘off’ to the electrical connection in the picture (33–34). Her answer stood fast in the encounter with the teacher and her classmates (35–36). Nisa then spontaneously explained why the bulb did not light up by saying ‘it wasn’t metal, that side because’ (37). Talking about the poles of the battery as ‘the metal’ had been introduced by the teacher in earlier encounters. Her classmates confirmed her conclusion, implying that it stood fast in the encounter as well (37–39).

This example further shows how understanding the meaning of two everyday words ‘on’ and ‘off’ by using physical artefacts supported Nisa’s meaning-making of the science content. In previous encounters, the meaning of the words was unfamiliar to Nisa, which resulted in lingering gaps (example 3). Eventually, using the physical artefacts enabled Nisa to understand what the words meant in this context (4–5). In this example, all gaps were immediately filled.

To summarise, these results show that teachers can use physical artefacts to support emergent bilingual students’ learning in science class in two different ways. First, physical artefacts were used before language limitations actually occurred and hence in a preventive sense (examples 1 and 2). Second, the physical artefacts enabled students to overcome language limitations and in doing so make meaning of the science content (examples 3–6). In this process, the development of scientific knowledge and language proficiency was simultaneous and intertwined. A common pattern was that the teacher’s use of physical artefacts in her lessons made it possible for the students to actually ‘see’ the science content. The students then described what they had seen by construing relations to their earlier experiences and using everyday Swedish and Turkish. Then, the teacher introduced how the phenomena and processes in question could be expressed in a scientific language.

Discussion and implications

The fact that emergent bilingual students’ learning and achievements in science class might be influenced by limitations in the language of instruction cannot be disregarded. Educators need to ask themselves how to create learning possibilities for bilingual students equal to those of their monolingual peers (Lee et al., 2014). In order to support these students, teachers need to discern how language proficiency limits students’ learning and achievements in science. However, we also need to consider how we might support the students to overcome language limitations and learn science. Earlier research has highlighted two concerns in relation to this. On one hand, some schools specifically focus on emergent bilingual students’ language acquisition, but do not allow them to participate in science lessons. This is based on an incorrect assumption that one needs to learn the language of instruction before learning science. On the other hand, other schools let emergent bilingual students participate in science lessons but with a simplified science content and lack of clear learning goals in science. For example, students may conduct hands-on activities only to focus on how the particular artefacts are supposed to be used or named (Buxton & Lee, 2014). In this study, we have shown how teachers can handle these concerns by using physical artefacts as mediating means to support bilingual students learning in science.

Mediating means are however not used in isolation. They gain meaning in interaction with the surrounding context, including other mediating means. The physical artefacts in this study were frequently related to everyday or scientific language. In doing so, the students used both their majority and minority language (examples 1–6). Although the students were not yet fluent in the language of instruction, they could experience the phenomena under study by using physical artefacts, which they then described by construing relations to words already familiar to them, thus gaining access to the science content. This may be true for all students learning science, but in this case students used their combined language repertoire consisting of Swedish and Turkish, even though they were still learning Swedish (examples 1-6), to make sense of the phenomena of interest and how it could be described and explained in a scientific way. It is important to stress that all three resources: the shared minority language, the majority language they were learning, and the shared experiences made possible by the use of physical artefacts, all helped to bridge the learning gap for the students.

Previous research has shown that including minority languages in science class supports students’ learning in science (Buxton & Lee, 2014). This study adds to these finding the potential role of physical artefacts to further support students learning. And although we did not study this in detail here, it is probably fair to say that through the study of science these students were also becoming more proficient in the majority language they were learning. Based on these findings, we argue that students need to be given the possibility to relate the science content to their earlier experiences (Lemke, 1990), regardless of their linguistic proficiency.

Learning science is a process involving the interaction between individuals and different resources, such as everyday language (both in majority and minority languages), scientific language (in this study only in the majority language), physical artefacts, pictures, etc. (examples 1–6). This means that if the students have a limited proficiency in the language of instruction, it is even more urgent to consider the use of other recourses. We need to step away from the traditional view of science knowledge as an entity being gained and expressed only through language (Kress, Jewitt, Ogborn, & Tsatsarelis, 2001). Even if the work of science teachers partly can be summarised as teaching how to express phenomena and processes in scientific language, the process to accomplish this might be designed in several ways. Throughout this article, we have argued for the importance of paying more attention to other mediating means alongside language to support bilingual students in science (see also Kamberelis & Wehunt, 2012; Kress et al., 2001).

This article contributes to the approach suggested above by showing how teachers can use physical artefacts in science classes with emergent bilingual students. In particular, the teacher actively created learning situations where physical artefacts were used to relate the science content to the students’ earlier experiences. As shown, the scientific language makes demands on all students, but especially on emergent bilingual students (Dutro & Moran, 2003). All students observed in this study were not yet fluent in Swedish, which the teacher was aware of. Instead of starting with scientific language, the teacher initiated her lessons by letting the students experience the phenomena under study by using physical artefacts. Static electricity was, for instance, observed and described as ‘jumping pepper’ or ‘pepper sticking to a ruler’ (turns 11 and 13). Talking about the science content in this way was legitimate in the teacher’s class. She did not dismiss or correct the students’ ways of expressing themselves. Rather, she even confirmed them. She for instance stated that it actually looked like the ‘pepper jumped’ and wrote it on the whiteboard (turn 12). However, the lessons did not end here as the aim was to learn to talk about static electricity in a more scientific language (Lemke, 1990; Wellington & Osborne, 2001). To this end, the teacher continued by drawing on students’ experiences during the hands-on activities to introduce new ways to talk about static electricity. Thus, students’ earlier experiences of static electricity were reactualised and transformed (Dewey, 1938/1997), which was enabled by the physical artefacts in use.

Using physical artefacts not only resulted in students observing the science content, it also helped them learn new words and overcome language limitations. One might question the importance of learning the meaning of everyday words such as ‘on’ and ‘off’ for students’ learning science. As shown, understanding the meaning of these words was a prerequisite to make meaning of the science content (examples 3–6). The fact that unfamiliar words might limit or even obstruct bilingual students’ meaning-making and achievements in science is not unexpected and has been shown in earlier studies (e.g. Ünsal et al., 2018a). In this article, we show how physical artefacts can support students to overcome language limitations. The physical artefacts made it possible for the students to experience the unfamiliar words as related to the science content. Eventually, this resulted in the students understanding their meaning and made it possible for them to actively participate in the activities, which in turn lead to them learning science (examples 3–6). This illustrates, as mentioned, that emergent bilingual students’ linguistic development is continuous with their leaning in science.

As most teachers know, using physical artefacts or any kind of hands-on activity in science class also involves some constraints. Not all hands-on activities help students to develop scientific knowledge (Buxton & Lee, 2014). And if bilingual students have to struggle too much simply to name the physical artefacts in use (Ünsal et al., 2018b) this may distract from the science learning. The choice of focusing on how physical artefacts support bilingual students’ learning in science does not mean that we disregard these limitations. However, it is important to remember that the affordances or constraints of physical artefacts are not necessarily a result of their existence per se but rather a consequence of how they are used in a specific context (Jakobson & Wickman, 2008; Wertsch, 1993; Wittgenstein, 1953/1967). For instance, a ruler would not have any particular consequences for Nisa’s learning about static electricity, if it was not used in the hands-on activity. Also, Nisa’s difficulties in causing static electricity might have been overcome if the teacher had noticed this and helped her (example 1). Rather than asking whether or not physical artefacts support emergent bilingual students’ learning, we need to ask how teachers can use physical artefacts in their science class to promote learning.

Science education often involves the use of different resources, and physical artefacts constitute one way to make abstract phenomena and ideas more concrete and accessible to students. However physical artefacts in themselves do not necessarily improve learning and only gain meaning through their use in a specific context (Dewey, 1925/1998; Wittgenstein, 1953/1967). The students in this study used their everyday language resources to reconstruct and transform earlier experiences in light of new experiences gain with the physical artefacts provided by the teacher, thus learning the science content. Because it is mainly the teacher who is in charge of how physical artefacts, as well as other resources such as language are used, teachers need to be aware that by allowing and supporting students use of both minority and majority languages in combination with physical artefacts, they can help emergent bilingual students’ learning in science.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.