ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the ways in which the biology teachers within the M3S project infused their pedagogy with multimodal disciplinary literacy. Placing multiliteracies at the centre of pedagogy in biology resulted in representations being used at certain points of time within learning sequences for specific purposes. The teachers used representations to orient students to the field of knowledge. They then extended students’ understanding of the field by including more than one representation and engaging students within the deconstruction of these varied representations. Joint and independent construction were also used as the teachers continued to develop students’ conceptual understandings. Through these pedagogical moves, the teachers aimed to build students’ understandings of key concepts, as well as to engage students in discussions about the conventions, affordances and limitations of the representations. Through such work, a metalanguage about the representations began to emerge. The ways in which pedagogy could have been extended at times to include more discussion of the conventions, affordances and limitations of certain representations are considered throughout the chapter. Teaching moments when a metalanguage about representations could have been extended are also considered.
