Abstract
Over the last 30 years science education researchers have focused intensively on the role of language, and increasingly the languages of science, to understand how to deepen student engagement and learning in this subject. The medium for learning as well as the content has been foregrounded in this agenda. Partly this focus was prompted by Lemke’s (1990) ground-breaking work on the key role of classroom talk in this learning, and the growing recognition that students in learning science had to learn a new literacy that underpinned and characterised scientific realities (Moje 2007). Partly this focus on richer pedagogy also arose from recognition that more effective teaching and learning practices were needed to address continuing widespread student lack of quality performance and sustained interest in this subject (Osborne and Dillon 2008; Weinburgh 1995). This led to an increased focus on researching the role of talk and writing as crucial epistemological tools for science learning (Halliday and Martin 1993; Prain and Hand 1996; Rivard and Straw 2000; Yore et al. 2003).
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Prain, V., Hand, B. (2016). Learning Science Through Learning to Use Its Languages. In: Hand, B., McDermott, M., Prain, V. (eds) Using Multimodal Representations to Support Learning in the Science Classroom. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16450-2_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16450-2_1
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