A study of teachers’ perspectives about using multimodal representations of concepts to enhance science learning

This article reports on initial findings of a study that aims to devise, trial, and evaluate teaching and learning strategies to improve students’ learning of science in the middle years in schools in regional Australia through a focus on multiple and multimodal representations of science concepts. Initially, 20 teachers were surveyed about their planning and usage of different representational modes. These teachers tended to focus on resources and students’ learning styles rather than modal variation, sometimes confusing modes and resources. Few teachers expected students to be able to represent the same concept in different modes as part of understanding science. In this article we report in detail the beliefs and practices of two elementary teachers in the survey who focused on the value of representational diversity in learning science. In analyzing their beliefs and practices we identified some key implementation issues in pursuing this multimodal focus.