ABS246 - Interactions among students related to the construction of school scientific knowledge: a multimodal analysis

This is an ethnographic study that uses multimodal approach tools to investigate the role of interactions among Mexican students in a fourth-grade group in building knowledge during their science lessons. The analysis is based on two contributions of Vygotsky (1979 and 1981): 1) the role of social relations in shaping mental activity of individuals, allows me to consider the importance of interactions between students in the construction of school scientific knowledge; 2) the definition of the sign as a tool to psychologically influence the behaviour of both the other and the self, provides me the basis for consider the interactions among students as mediated actions by sign systems that allow communication and representation of school content and thus the collective construction of knowledge. The multimodal approach (Kress et al., 2005) gives me methodological tools to analyse students' speech, gestures, gazes as sign systems, which are the basis of communication processes, representation and production of meanings. The results show as many of the interactions among students occur around the lesson's contents. Through their interactions students: 1) share their experiences related to the content of the lesson that is being addressed; 2) share the findings obtained by themselves through experimental activities; 3) ask questions to each other about the school contents; 4) share their autonomous work initiatives. Thus, students are active participants in the collective construction of school scientific knowledge. The issue of students' agency, not as property of the individual but of social relations, is discussed (Wertsch, et. al, 1993).