Resourceful students : Engaging students in active and systematic investigations in laboratories involving thermal phenomena

Sammanfattning: This thesis focuses on students’ engagement in inquiry-based laboratory learning environments. The aim of the research is to explore what it is that makes students active and systematic in these types of lab learning environments. Two theoretical frameworks, social semiotics and the resources framework, are combined to describe how students activate and employ different types of resources (conceptual, epistemological and semiotic resources) in such learning environments. The thesis provides a model, the generalized resources triangle, which is used to synthesize ideas of the two theoretical frameworks. The concept of a barrier is introduced to emphasize resources that are in conflict with, inhibit or distract other resources that may be relevant for the learning environment. The thesis is based on five (I-V) publications (four empirical papers and one book chapter). Data for the individual empirical publications (II-V) have been gathered through video recording. The methods for analyzing the processed and raw data included multimodal conversation analysis and thematic analysis. The thesis argues that active engagement relates to how novel an encountered phenomenon is and how well students recognize the phenomenon. Several resources support students’ active engagement, primarily conceptual and semiotic resources (with a basis in an exploratory frame as an epistemological resource). Additionally, some of the conceptual resources (exemplars), instantiations of an exploratory frame (e.g. exploratory talk) and the employment of tools that afford instant inquiry, such as infrared cameras, can be used as indicators of active engagement. Importantly, the thesis also argues that students’ own systematic engagement relates to their epistemological resources, and the semiotic resources that mediate the epistemological resources. In particular, three epistemological resources that support students’ systematic engagement are identified: An exploratory frame, metacognitive reflection and procedural self-regulation (toward an inquiry-based approach). These resources are mainly practiced and developed by students’ engagement with inquiry-based activities and potentially also through education on learning and development (such as courses included in teacher education). The thesis includes a discussion about how the different types of resources can be used in addressing different types of challenges during inquiry-based labs: The activation of conceptual resources can be used as a short-term solution but a more long-term solution involves activation of epistemological resources. The thesis concludes by relating the findings of the thesis to the practice of teachers, that is, implications for teaching.