Disciplinary discourse, representation, and appresentation in the teaching and learning of science

Abstract

This article builds on a semiotic perspective of science learning that is framed in terms of achieving competency in a disciplinary discourse of a science such as physics. The aim of the article is to use this perspective, and the proposal that learning in a science discipline should be seen in terms of achieving fluency in a critical constellation of modes of representation, to explore how the affordance attributes of these representations work together to generate a collective disciplinary affordance. The idea of a collective disciplinary affordance is then used to argue for the importance of appresentation in science education. Recommendations are made for incorporating the discussion into teacher craft-knowledge.