Although previous research provides insights into how gestures function as a pedagogical tool, relatively little is known about how gesture is related to language, together creating a key meaning-making teaching resource. Drawing on the system of logico-semantic relations in Systemic Functional Linguistic theory and McNeill's description of…

Student engagement in science classroom is an essential element for delivering effective instruction. However, the popular method for measuring students' emotional learning engagement (ELE) relies on self-reporting, which has been criticized for possible bias and lacking fine-grained time solution needed to track the effects of short-term learning…

Advances in embodied learning and the use of gesture has gained greater interest amongst educators and researchers in recent years. The emerging evidence supporting the use of physical enactment rather than just auditory modes of instruction remains unresolved. This paper investigates the pedagogical methods used by a science teacher instructing a…

Background: Science teaching and learning, as discursive practices, occur through the utilization of various semiotic modes. Gestures play a pivotal role as an embodied mode that acts in conjunction with speech in oral communication settings, such as classrooms. Previous research on gestures in chemistry and science education has illuminated how…

It is beneficial for quantum mechanics students to have a unified understanding of eigentheory concepts, so they can recognize the shared structure of mathematized phenomena from the different quantum mechanical systems of spin, energy, or position and recognize those as instantiations of the same overarching concept. Quantum mechanics instructors…

As part of a series of investigations in which we explore the integration of verbal and nonverbal aspects of communication into a dialectical, sense-constitutive unit during science lectures, this study adapts the notions of catchments (i.e., repetitions of essential features of the gesture-speech dialectic) and growth points (i.e., moments in…

This paper examines the affordances of physical objects (e.g. apparatus, models, manipulatives) as they were used by teachers and students to make meaning in coordination with their speech and gestures. Despite the pervasive use of physical objects as material and tactile resources in hands-on investigations or demonstrations, there have been few…

The teacher's gaze attention can trigger interaction with the student. So if the teacher fails to equal attention during class, students may be alienated from the interaction. According to this perspective, this study aimed to establish the pattern of the teacher's gaze during science lecture classes and whether the change of the gaze when the…

This qualitative case study delved into students' understanding and positioning while they participated in solving an authentic, conceptually-based problem in a high-school chemistry class. Verbal and nonverbal cues, particularly gestures, offered broader awareness of students' engagement in sensemaking during the learning experience. The…

Using multimodal conversation analysis, this article examines how students strive to resolve non-understandings through requests for clarification during teacher-fronted physics lectures taught in English in Finland. The findings provide new insights on the sequential environments in which students launch the requests (i.e. between or during…

This article provides rich insights into the process of data generation for discourse analysis from three separate studies of the video recordings of a single science classroom in action. The central claim is that multimodal transcription can contribute to developments in discourse theory. A three-stage reflective heuristic is developed and used…

Biochemistry textbooks often provide a disconnected, highly mathematical, and decontextualized treatment of thermodynamic and kinetic principles, which renders topics like protein folding difficult to teach. This is concerning given that graduates entering careers, like the pharmaceutical industry, must be able to apply such knowledge and related…

Background: Video lectures which include the teachers' presence have become increasingly common. As teacher enthusiasm is a nonverbal cue in video lectures, more and more studies are focusing on this topic. However, little research has been carried out on the interactions between teacher enthusiasm and prior knowledge when learning from video…

Science disciplines are inherently multimodal, involving written and spoken language, bodily gestures, symbols, diagrams, sketches, simulation and mathematical formalism. Studies have shown that explicit multimodal teaching approaches foster enhanced access to science disciplines. We examine multimodal classroom practices in a physics extended…

Many undergraduate chemistry students struggle to understand the concept of stereoisomers, molecules that have the same molecular formula and sequence of bonded atoms but are different in how their atoms are oriented in space. Our goal in this study is to improve stereoisomer instruction by getting participants actively involved in the lesson.…