High school science infographics: Multimodal meaning complexes in composite image-language ensembles

Abstract

The complexity of science discourse has long been recognized as challenging for many students. Systemic functional linguistic accounts of technicality and meaning aggregation, differentiating scientific and everyday discourse, have explicated the linguistic complexity confronting students. The complexity of images and image-language ensembles in science discourse have not been similarly delineated. Two aspects of multimodal meaning-making have not been sufficiently theorized to support pedagogies of visualization interpretation and creation in science: (1) the role of the verbiage within scientific visualizations has been largely ignored; (2) image analysis has emphasised single-structure images e.g. narrative or classificational or analytical, whereas multiple structures in a single image is a frequent and significant resource in science. This paper outlines a framework describing the co-deployment of image and verbiage to construct multi-structure image-language ensembles in high school science textbooks. Using this framework two investigations are described: (1) variation among textbook infographics in image-language co-articulation representing meaning complexes of phenomena such as mitosis; (2) the relationship between co-articulation of image-language resources and achievement level in infographics constructed by senior high school students. Implications are drawn for extending transdisciplinary research in educational semiotics and science education and for pedagogies of multimodal disciplinary literacy development in high school science.