Necessary conditions for learning? Modes of representation and the disciplinary discourse of university science
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- Last edited 16 days ago by Peter Riegler
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Abstract
In this article we explore student learning in university science from the perspective of entering a disciplinary discourse. We define disciplinary discourse as the complex of representations, tools and activities of a discipline, and describe how it can be seen as being made up of various modes. For university science, examples of these modes are: spoken and written language, mathematics, gesture, images (including pictures, graphs and diagrams), tools (such as experimental apparatus and measurement equipment) and activities (such as ways of working—both practice and praxis, analytical routines, actions, etc.). We present an extended analytical framework for exploring the relationship between the ways of knowing the world that constitute a discipline and the modes of disciplinary discourse used within the discipline to represent this knowing. In our study, Swedish physics undergraduates from two universities are interviewed about their learning experiences in lectures using a stimulated recall approach. These interviews are then interpreted using our analytical framework. Since we have documented lectures, the data best illustrates the representations aspect of disciplinary discourse. Students describe a temporal aspect to their learning, achieving "fluency" in the various modes of disciplinary discourse with respect a particular disciplinary way of knowing through a process of repetition. However, we find instances where students are seemingly fluent in one or more modes of disciplinary discourse but have clearly not appropriately experienced the related disciplinary way of knowing. By referring to the phenomenographic view that variation underpins all learning, our analysis leads to the suggestion that a degree of fluency in a critical constellation of modes of disciplinary discourse may be a necessary (though not always sufficient) condition for gaining meaningful access to disciplinary ways of knowing. Pedagogical implications are discussed.
Bibliographic data
Airey, John & Linder, Cedric. (2006). Necessary Conditions for Learning? Modes of Representation and the Disciplinary Discourse of University Science.