Building a web in science instruction: using multiple resources in a Swedish multilingual middle school class

ABSTRACT

This study, on the unit measuring time, examines classroom use of different resources and their affordances for students’ meaning-making. The data, comprising audio and video recordings, fieldnotes, photographs and student texts, were collected during a lesson in a multilingual Swedish grade 5 classroom (students aged 11–12). In order to analyse the connections between the different resources, such as talking, modelling, using bodily action and practical equipment, reading and writing, and their affordances for meaning-making, we use pedagogical link-making, Dewey's principle of continuity and Halliday´s Systemic Functional Linguistics. Findings show that in using these multiple resources, the teacher builds a web by linking various modes of representation, affording the multilingual students several opportunities for making meaning of the science content. Talk holds the prominent position and is linked to the other mediating resources, which in turn are linked to each other in all possible constellations. Science content is hereby mediated and reinforced through the web of multiple resources.

KEYWORDS:

• Multilingual students
• multiple resources
• middle school
• pedagogical link-making, Systemic Functional Linguistics

Acknowledgments

The authors thank the reviewers and the editor for their very useful comments and suggestions on an earlier draft of this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Swedish Research Council [grant number 2013-42867-99966-13].