Sixth Graders' Engagement with Prose and Graphics and They Read Science Texts.

Abstract

The purpose of this research is a better understanding of the ways students engage with prose and graphics when reading and making sense of science texts. Scientific texts typically entail prose (written language) and graphics (iconic representations, e.g., diagrams). Students must become critical readers of both representations if they are to make meaning from the text and fully access its science information. Therefore studying ways students engage with science texts with prose and graphics can lead to avenues to help students use science texts. I interviewed 20 students. Each student read two science texts with prose and graphics. The interview data included think aloud comments and responses to questions regarding stimulated recall, prior knowledge, interest, and comprehension. I used this data to identify and characterize mechanisms of students’ prose-graphic engagement. All students demonstrated facets of meta-representational competence (e.g., awareness of the function of graphics) in the context of reading science texts. Also, most intermediate and proficient readers demonstrated facets of meta-representational competence and indicated strategic use of graphics that few struggling readers demonstrated. These findings inform science curriculum design, suggesting value in incorporating strategic graphic use with instruction of reading comprehension strategies to support students’ access to science information from prose and graphics, and to promote students’ meta-representational competence. Also, students’ failure to comprehend the prose may contribute to misinterpretation of the graphic, which, for struggling readers, may lead to lack of full comprehension of the text as a whole. This finding reflects an imperative for science text designers and teachers to focus on the accessibility of the instructional ideas for both prose and graphics and incorporate a critical analysis of ways the prose might help or hinder understanding of the graphics. Additionally, students used, valued, and were aware of connective features in graphics as a means to support their interpretations of, understanding of, and interests in the entire science text. This finding also informs science text design, supporting the application of connective features in graphics as a means to mediate accessibility of science ideas and to scaffold students’ use of scientifically accepted signs and symbols in the science domain.