Global Developments in Literacy Research for Science Education

Kok-Sing Tang is a senior lecturer at the Science & Mathematics Education Centre, School of Education at Curtin University. He was formerly an assistant professor at the National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University of Singapore. He holds a BA and MSc in Physics from the University of Cambridge and a MA and PhD in Education from the University of Michigan. His research examines the disciplinary literacy of science, which comprises the specialised ways of using and thinking with the language and representations of science to learn and participate in the discipline. In particular, he examines how disciplinary literacy is a necessary process skill in order to learn the content of physics and chemistry, and designs scaffolding strategies to help students learn disciplinary literacy. Before joining academia, Kok-Sing was a high school physics teacher and worked at the Singapore Ministry of Education in various areas such as science curriculum design, technology integration, and science teacher professional development. Kristina Danielsson is a professor at Department of Swedish, Linnaeus University, Sweden. She has a PhD in Scandinavian languages and was formerly professor in reading and writing development at Department of Language Education, Stockholm University. Her research deals with multimodal perspectives of disciplinary literacy, in particular in science. She has been part of a number of interdisciplinary research projects and developmental projects in elementary and secondary science classrooms. In these projects she has examined the literacy practices as well as the ways in which different semiotic resources are used to talk about science phenomena, and what consequences this might lead to regarding the opportunities given for students’ meaning-making in science. A recent developmental project deals with the possibilities of letting young learners explain science phenomena through their own creation of stop-motion films.

• Foreword, Elizabeth Moje.- 1 The expanding development of literacy research in science education around the world, Kok-Sing Tang and Kristina Danielsson.- Part 1 National Curriculum & Initiatives.- 2 The implementation of scientific literacy as basic skills in Norway after the school reform of 2006, Erik Knain and Marianne Ødegaard.- 3 But I’m not an English teacher! Disciplinary literacy in Australian science classrooms, Chris Davison and Sue Ollerhead.- 4 Meeting disciplinary literacy demands in content learning: The Singapore perspective, Caroline Ho, Natasha Rappa, and Kok-Sing Tang.- Part 2 Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) in Science.- 5 Learning language and intercultural understanding in science classes in Germany, Silvija Markic.- 6 Supporting English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) learners’ science literacy development in CLIL: A genre-based approach, Yuen Yi Lo, Angel M. Y. Lin, and Tracy C. L. Cheung.- 7 Language, literacy and science learning for English language learners: Teacher meta talk vignettes from a South African science classroom, Audrey Msimanga and Sibel Erduran.- 8 The content-language tension for English language learners in two secondary science classrooms, Jason Wu, Felicia Moore Mensah, and Kok-Sing Tang.- Part 3 Science Classroom Literacy Practices.- 9 A case study of literacy teaching in six middle- and high-school science classes in New Zealand, Aaron Wilson and Rebecca Jesson.- 10 Analyzing discursive interactions in science classrooms to characterize teaching strategies adopted by teachers in lessons on environmental themes, Ana Lucia Gomes Cavalcanti Neto, Edenia Maria Ribeiro do Amaral, and Eduardo Fleury Mortimer.- 11 Measuring time. Multilingual elementary school students’ meaning-making in physics , Britt Jakobson, Kristina Danielsson, Monica Axelsson, and Jenny Uddling.- 12 Meaning-making in a secondary science classroom: A systemic functional multimodal discourse analysis, Qiuping He and GailForey.- Part 4    Science Disciplinary Literacy Challenges.- 13 Literacy challenges in chemistry: A multimodal analysis of symbolic formulas, Yu Liu.- 14 Gains and losses: Metaphors in chemistry classrooms, Kristina Danielsson, Ragnhild Löfgren, and Alma Jahic Pettersson.- 15 Image design for enhancing science learning: Helping students build taxonomic meanings with salient tree structure images, Yun-Ping Ge, Len Unsworth, Kuo-Hua Wang, and Huey-Por Chang.- Part 5 Disciplinary Literacy & Science Inquiry.- 16 Inquiry-based science and literacy: Improving a teaching model through practice-based classroom research, Marianne Ødegaard.- 17 Infusing literacy into an inquiry instructional model to support students’ construction of scientific explanations, Kok-Sing Tang and Gde Buana Sandila Putra.- 18 Representation construction as a core science disciplinary literacy, Russell Tytler, Vaughan Prain, and Peter Hubber.- Part 6 Science Teacher Development.- 19 Science and language experience narratives of pre-service primary teachers learning to teach science in multilingual contexts, Mariona Espinet, Laura Valdés-Sanchez, and Maria Isabel Hernández.- 20 Examining teachers’ shifting epistemic orientations in improving students’ scientific literacy through adoption of the Science Writing Heuristic approach, Brian Hand, Soonhye Park, and Jee Kyung Suh.- 21 Developing students’ disciplinary literacy? The case of university physics, John Airey and Johanna Larsson.- 22 Commentary on the expanding development of literacy research in science education, Larry Yore.