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The paper reports about the outcome of a systematic review of research on family resemblance approach (FRA) to nature of science in (NOS) science education. FRA is a relatively recent perspective on NOS being a system of cognitive-epistemic and social-institutional aspects of science. FRA thus consists of a set of categories such as aims and values, practices, knowledge and social organizations in relation to NOS. Since the introduction of the FRA, there has been increasing interest in investigations about how FRA can be of use in science education both empirically and practically. A journal content analysis was conducted in order to investigate which FRA categories are covered in journal articles and to identify the characteristics of the studies that have used FRA. These characteristics included the target level of education and focus on pre- or in-service teachers. Furthermore, epistemic network analysis of theoretical and empirical papers was conducted to determine the extent to which the studies incorporated various key themes about FRA, such as its transferability to other domains and differentiation of the social-institutional system categories. The findings illustrate an increasing number of empirical studies using FRA in recent years and broad coverage in science education. Although the social-institutional system categories included intraconnections, these were not as strong as those intraconnections among categories within the cognitive-epistemic system. Future research directions for the use of FRA in K-12 science education are discussed.

Background: Intercoder reliability is a statistic commonly reported by researchers to demonstrate the rigour of coding procedures during data analysis. Its importance is debatable in the analysis of qualitative interview data. It raises a question on whether researchers should identify the same codes and themes in a transcript or they should produce different accounts in analyzing the transcript. Purpose: This study reports how articles in four science education journals, "International Journal of Science Education," "Research in Science Education," "Journal of Research in Science Teaching" and "Science Education" report intercoder reliability in their analysis of interview data. Methods: This article explores whether 103 papers published in these science education journals in a single year (2019) have reported intercoder reliability test when the authors analyse their interview data. It was found that 19 papers have reported the test results. Findings: The authors of these studies have different interpretation towards a similar value of intercoder reliability. Moreover, the percentage of data used in the intercoder reliability test and the identity of intercoder vary across the studies. As a result, this paper aims to raise an issue on whether a replicability of coding can show the reliability of the results when researchers analyze interview data. Conclusion: We propose two major principles when authors report the reliability of the analysis of interview data--"transparency" and "explanatory." We also argue that only when the authors report intercoder reliability test results that are based on these two principles, the reliability statistics of studies are convincing to readers. Some suggestions are offered to authors regarding how to carry out, analyze and report the intercoder reliability test.

Background: Photomicrographs are major biological representations which help students understand more about the structures of cells and tissues. Owing to their abstract nature, students often rely on representations in textbooks to develop their understanding of photomicrographs. Purpose: This study investigated how students with low, medium and high competence for visualizing photomicrographs integrated textbook representations into their understanding of visual aid. Sample: Twelve 14-15 year-old students who were studying biology in a UK secondary school participated in this study. Design and methods: We carried out semi-structured interviews with these students. A modified model of integration of text and picture was used to interpret students' verbal response and their drawing. An innovative discourse analysis approach, Epistemic Network Analysis, was used to analyse the connections between codes which were informed by the model. Results: Compared to students with high competence, students with low and medium levels of competence did not necessarily understand the structure-behaviour-function relationship of the textual representation, or notice the visual elements in the diagrams. Hence, they could not transfer their understanding of textbook representations into that of the photomicrograph. Conclusion: This study suggests that the modified model of integration of text and picture can potentially reveal how students with different levels of visualization competence access information from textual and pictorial information. Equally importantly, the study argues for using epistemic network analysis as a tool to examine how students integrate textbook representations.

Background: Constructing knowledge through collaborative practical work is a complex process and involves the use of multiple modalities by group members. In practical work sessions, students often manipulate visual objects or textual materials but do not develop their scientific ideas. Purpose: This study illustrates (a) the challenges that science students face when they create thematic patterns in a laboratory class and (b) characterises the processes of how students make meaning of practical work activities. Sample: Drawing from a video database, we chose to investigate an 80-min chemistry lesson with eight Year 10 students who were unpacking the complex ideas behind practical work. This lesson episode was transcribed multimodally, with snapshots of the pictures of students' actions and gestures. Methods: This study adopts a case-study approach. A multimodal discourse analysis approach was taken to examine the classroom discourse of the students when they were determining the strength of acids and alkalis through electroconductivity. Results: We identified various challenges when students integrated gestures, pictures and verbal discourse during the practical work section. These challenges include those when students realise textual and visual modes and those when students associate components of apparatus into a system of functional set-up. Moreover, students cannot construct thematic patterns because they reorient their focus from the domain of ideas to the domain of objects and observables. The study recorded a number of strategies that students use to overcome these challenges that impede their meaning-making. Conclusion: The findings of this study contribute to the literature by identifying the challenges and strategies faced by students when they were connecting the scientific ideas with the practical work. When science education researchers advocate an inquiry oriented approach, they should provide ample scaffolds for these multimodal challenges.

Photomicrographs are representations of small-scale entities. It has been long argued that students can be weak in perceiving microscopic entities compared to macroscopic entities. However, only a small body of research has investigated how students utilise photomicrographs to make sense of biological phenomena. This study uses a theoretical construct, 'visualisation competence', to explore students' skills and practices in utilising photomicrographs. Fifty UK students' visualisation competence with photomicrographs of villi were measured by open-ended questionnaires. Content analysis showed a wide range of students' performance in all components of visualisation competence with photomicrographs, namely constructing, interpreting, transforming and critiquing. Students' performance on sub-components within each skill component of visualisation competence for the photomicrograph of villi were also analysed. The mean scores of constructing a biological diagram resembling the photomicrograph and critiquing whether a representation resembles the photomicrograph were higher than that of interpreting the photomicrograph. Transforming the longitudinal section of photomicrographs into the transverse section had the lowest score among all four skill components. Moreover, the sub-components which rely heavily on textual processing were found to be significantly correlated with each other. Implications for teaching and learning of photomicrographs were discussed.

Nature of science (NOS) has become one of the major emphases in curriculum and assessment. This study explores "what" NOS is included and how this is achieved in the Hong Kong biology curriculum and 7-year high-stakes assessments. While conceptualizations of the official definition of NOS differ, this study employs the family resemblance approach (FRA) to analyze the inclusion of NOS in the curriculum and the high-stakes assessments. In one characterisation of FRA (i.e. Erduran and Dagher 2014), NOS comprises a cognitive-epistemic system and a social-institutional system. There is a total of 11 categories in these two systems and these categories are interconnected with one another. By adopting the epistemic network analysis (ENA), the frequency of connections among these NOS categories in the curriculum and the high-stakes assessments can be visualized and compared. Two main similarities are observed when comparing the epistemic networks of the curriculum and the high-stakes assessments: (1) a greater emphasis on the cognitive-epistemic rather than the social-institutional system and (2) the rarity of connections between categories in the social-institutional system. However, the high-stakes assessments differ from the curriculum in that they have more connections between the cognitive-epistemic system and the social-institutional system. Moreover, assessment items in the Hong Kong biology examinations involve a limited range of contexts and skills. Implications for the design of curricula and high-stakes assessments will be discussed.

ABSTRACT Students' understanding of nature of science (NOS) has been largely examined primarily in written or verbal modes. The visual, verbal, and written modes are essential for students' meaning‐making of NOS. However, research has sidelined the interaction among these three modes in understanding students' collaborative discourse of NOS. Informed by theories of multimodality and social semiotics, this paper investigates the interactions between the visual, verbal, and written modes as groups of students engaged in explicit‐reflective multimodal representation during NOS instruction. Utilizing a collective case study approach, we planned NOS instruction with teachers, and videotaped how each focal group of students in two grade seven classes in Hong Kong constructed multimodal representations of NOS. Multimodal discourse analysis revealed that the three modes fulfill various purposes during students' co‐construction of multimodal representations of NOS. The interaction between the three modes facilitates meaning‐making of NOS in four ways: (a) students' re‐semiotization of discursive scientific practices into their multimodal ensembles; (b) bridging students' writing of scientific reports to scientists' social certification and dissemination; (c) connecting students' decontextualized meaning‐making to contextualized meaning‐making of methods and methodological rules; and (d) facilitating students' embodied semiosis in social organizations and interactions of science. Focusing on four episodes of co‐constructing multimodal representations of NOS, we illustrate how students' meaning‐making of NOS is multimodal in nature and how various modes have their own affordances. We discuss future research directions on how multimodality can facilitate students' meaning‐making of NOS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractLearning content subjects like science requires culturally and linguistically diverse students to learn abstract representations. Previous studies focused on how content teachers can use translanguaging to promote emotional engagement of students with homogenous cultural and linguistic composition. As students in culturally and linguistically diverse classrooms brought different emotive experiences to classrooms, it was important for teachers to leverage semiotic resources to evoke shared memory that reconcile backgrounds of different students. This bridged the gap between students’ lived experiences and learning of abstract content representations. In the current case study involving a seventh-­grade mixed medium of instruction (MMI) science classroom, we examined how a science teacher capitalised on culturally and linguistically diverse students’ shared emotive experiences to translate across different representational levels in science. Drawing on the socio-­cultural concept of perezhivanie, our findings showed that the science teacher leveraged the class’s collective experience of watching the Disney parade and linked it to water molecules moving around dissociated salts in blackboard drawings. We argue for the importance of reconciling lived experiences among students with diverse cultural and linguistic background, in order to facilitate their equitable access to content subjects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In classrooms worldwide, the use of English to teach science subjects is becoming increasingly common. There is an increasing number of English-as-a-second/foreign-language learners studying science in English. This review examines 66 empirical studies on this topic published from 2000 to 2021. We critically review and synthesise evidence of the language challenges faced by teachers and students in secondary and tertiary English medium instruction (EMI) science courses, as well as proposed coping strategies. By adopting a multidisciplinary approach, we examine our findings from three fields of research: science education, language policy and applied linguistics. Our study extends EMI research by combining language learning and canonical content learning. Our synthesis of previous findings enhances understanding of content teaching in a second/foreign language in language immersion classrooms (e.g. content and language integrated learning, content-based instruction) and provides evidence-based pedagogical suggestions for enhancing EMI science teachers' instructional practices worldwide. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

News media plays a vital role in communicating scientific evidence to the public during the COVID-19 pandemic. Such communication is important for convincing the public to follow social distancing guidelines and to respond to health campaigns such as vaccination programmes. However, newspapers were criticised that they focus on the socio-political perspective of science, without explaining the nature of scientific works behind the government's decisions. This paper examines the connections of the nature of science categories in the COVID-19 era by four local newspapers in the United Kingdom between November 2021 to February 2022. Nature of science refers to different aspects of how science works such as aims, values, methods and social institutions of science. Considering the news media may mediate public information and perception of scientific stories, it is relevant to ask how the various British newspapers covered aspects of science during the pandemic. In the period explored, Omicron variant was initially a variant of concern, and an increasing number of scientific evidence showed that the less severity of this variant might move the country from pandemic to endemic. We explored how news articles communicate public health information by addressing how science works during the period when Omicron variants surge. A novel discourse analysis approach, epistemic network analysis is used to characterise the frequency of connections of categories of the nature of science. The connection between political factors and the professional activities of scientists, as well as that with scientific practices are more apparent in left-populated and centralist outlets than in right-populated news outlets. Among four news outlets across the political spectrum, a left-populated newspaper, the Guardian, is not consistent in representing relations of different aspects of the nature of scientific works across different stages of the public health crisis. Inconsistency of addressing aspects of scientific works and a downplay of the cognitive-epistemic nature of scientific works likely lead to failure in trust and consumption of scientific knowledge by the public in the healthcare crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a proof‐of‐concept designer‐in‐the‐loop schematic map drawing tool, based on the marriage of two approaches—manual and automated, which provides the technical interactivity of drawing tools between the user and the computer. We focus on concentric circle maps as opposed to the commonly used orthogonal mode representation, which is suggested by previous studies that it could promote better network learning. In comparison with existing methods, the proposed method is more compatible with the framework of effective map design from psychological and aesthetic perspectives, and a range of options can be provided in conjunction with users' preferences. We evaluated our approach on a set of iterations with case studies of Hong Kong metro with a group of three co‐authors from the fields of geography, transport engineering, and education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]