A methodology to analyze students' intertwined speech and drawings—Aesthetic experiences in science education

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to introduce a methodology for analyzing the complex configurations emerging in students' speech and drawing activities, having consequences for how and what students learn and make meaning of in science. Accordingly, we launch a methodology to unfold the multidimensional communication as to deepen the analysis of the science epistemic discourse. We present an empirical account of students' explorations through different signs to demonstrate the construction of the methodology step-by-step. This methodology, a “seven-concept-assemblage,” is rooted in Dewey's pragmatism and Deleuze's experimentalism broadening teachers' and researchers' possibility to target students' science explorations and meaning-making crosscutting different domains. The methodology diminishes the risk of interpretation when grasping unspoken messages and meanings. Empirical data were collected in an elementary school exemplifying the methodology and consist of audio recordings, photographs, fieldnotes, and students' drawings. The result reveals that the methodology in use exposed what and how students explored and learned cognitively and aesthetically. Imagination fertilized the process throughout. Learning then is suggested as a transductive meaning-making process shaped through oral and pictorial relations—always from a purpose.