Primary Teachers’ Understanding of the Linguistic and Visual Modes of Scientific Informational Texts

Abstract

Informational texts have the potential to engage students in both literacy and scientific enquiry. The question of including more of these books in teacher‟s daily literacy blocks has been widely debated in the literacy field; with scholars arguing that teachers‟ own knowledge of the language and graphics of these texts plays an important role in how they use and present these texts to their students. The purpose of this thesis was to provide baseline information about primary school teacher‟s understandings of the linguistic and graphical features of scientific informational texts. This thesis addressed the issue of how teachers understand scientific informational texts multimodally, with special attention to the pedagogical implications of these texts. This study utilized a qualitative design with a case study form of enquiry to examine the way six K-2 primary school teachers understood scientific informational texts linguistically and visually, and how they incorporated these modes of meaning into their literacy teaching. Data was collected through semi-structured interviews, textual and visual annotations. Data was analyzed according to theories of multiliteracies, systemic functional linguistics, social semiotics and multimodality. This study found that teachers were capable of describing the linguistic aspects of these texts and the multimodal interactions that occur between the text and the graphics. Although there were similarities in how these teachers pedagogically addressed these texts, differences were found as the way they explained and discussed the graphics. The thesis shed light on two under-researched areas within the field of informational texts. Firstly, how teachers present and use these texts with younger students. Secondly, it provided insights into how teachers understood the language and multimodal aspects of such texts.