ABSTRACT
This chapter presents how student engagement in learning about representations occurred when teachers used a multiliteracies infused pedagogy. Teachers in the M3S project employed a range of practices to engage students effectively in dialogue about representations. Such work provided opportunities for students to discuss the conventions of scientific representations and to critique them. Some of the key strategies used by the teachers included deconstruction of representations, the joint and independent construction of representations, comparing and evaluating representations, cross-mode recasting and collaborative peer construction. Video data from the project are used to analyze how the various strategies engaged the students in discussion about representations of scientific concepts. Moments when teaching strategies could have been used to extend the amount and nature of student engagement in the dialogue are also considered. All of the teaching strategies presented supported student involvement in dialogue about representations, but the evidence from the M3S study suggests that some additional teacher facilitation at key moments could have enhanced the nature of the dialogue and supported greater participation from the more reluctant students. At times, opportunities arose for teachers to facilitate more discussion about the limitations of specific representations and to introduce more metalanguage into the dialogue.
