This article is based on multimodal perspectives and contributes to research on how children deal with a multimodal illustration of scientific concepts used in emergent science (i.e., early years science) education. It presents a study of a group of 14 preschoolers observed when dealing with the concept of stability, as illustrated in a pedagogical drama during a visit to a science centre and follow-up sessions in the preschool. The results indicate the importance of educators paying attention to the balance between cohesion and tension among elements in multimodal illustrations (such as verbal language, images, gestures, etc.), when designing and presenting learning activities in emergent science education. Furthermore, it cannot be taken for granted that children by themselves are able to bridge gaps between modes. Educators should therefore be prepared to provide well-reasoned guidance for children's linking between everyday and scientific concepts.

Even though water is a frequently addressed theme in preschool education and illustrations of different kinds are typically used to explain pre-science concepts, there is a remarkable shortage of studies in this part of the educational research field. The present article deals with 4–6-year-olds making meanings about the water circle from a board and dice game. Video-recorded sessions with small groups of children have been used and analysed from socio-semiotic and cultural historical perspectives. The results show that even though the children referred to and made intended meaning of several of the illustrated water phenomena, it seemed difficult for them to come to grips with the water circle as such. In particular this seems to be a result of the fact that the concept of evaporation was a stumbling block that was too abstract to overcome.

Teaching and learning situations nowadays typically build on richly illustrated material or multimodal presentations. Under these circumstances, the transparency of images and models used for explaining various phenomena becomes central. The present study deals with 20 Swedish children, 9–12 years old, discussing an illustration meant to show the cause of the different appearances of the Moon in the sky. The students’ task was to place eight numbered moon phases in the lunar orbit in the image. The illustration in question was chosen (a) because it was of a kind frequently used to explain the lunar phases and (b) because the phenomenon is known to be difficult to understand for students of all ages. The analysis leans on historical and sociocultural approaches as well as on multimodal semiotics. The results show that a majority of students were able to make sense of the most central features of the illustration but that very few spontaneously reasoned in a way that could be interpreted as the intended meaning-making of the cause of the lunar phases. The results also indicate that the simultaneous adoption of two perspectives necessary for understanding the phenomenon was a stumbling block for most of the students.

The research presented in this chapter explores, using examples from an earlier version of the Swedish Scholastic Aptitude Test [the SweSAT], the possible environmental influence on cognitive test performance with respect to the effects of differences in earlier education. Relatively large differences in results between students having attended different tracks of study in upper secondary school have been noticed in the SweSAT. Obviously, this may be due to initial differences when entering these tracks. However, it may also be assumed that different tracks followed in the upper secondary schooling may influence abilities measured by the SweSAT in a different manner. The present study tentatively proposes the effects of track of study both on the observed results in a set of sub-tests and on certain ability factors previously proposed to lie behind performance on the test, after control for marks, at the end of lower secondary education.

Explanatory pictures and models are frequently used in teaching and learning situations. However, it seems to be simply assumed that they are always beneficial. In this article results from an investigation with 16 Swedish pupils aged 7–9 year are presented based on an analysis that has examined how well this assumption holds up. Concepts from multi-modal theory have been used to investigate how young learners deal with illustrations and text from an early reader booklet about composting domestic refuse. The analysis suggests that expectations that illustrationsfacilitate the meaning-making of young pupils may be exaggerated. Although the booklet claimed to provide interactive support between image and text most of the examples show pupils ignoring pictures or misinterpreting vital information about composting in both the verbal and non-verbal material. The illustrations did not compensate for the most crucial deficiencies in the written text. 

The present study explored data from a survey of students’ performance in English at theend of compulsory school in 6 European countries. The aim was to gain deeperknowledge of the internal structure of the test and to discuss similarities anddifferences between the different settings regarding patterns in language proficiency.The analyses, conducted by a factor analytic approach and 2-level structural equationmodelling (SEM) techniques, indicated an overall English achievement factor at bothstudent and school levels. Furthermore, an effect of format differences at the studentlevel, constituted by a factor related to tasks demanding constructed response, wasfound. Three correlated modality factors related to listening, linguistic, and readingskills were identified but not further elaborated on as they improved the model onlymodestly. Considerable differences in between-school variation were found in thedifferent settings. The results are discussed in relation to the instrument, studentachievements, and the state of English in the participating countries.

Data from a Swedish PISA-sample were used (1) to identify a digital reading factor, (2) toinvestigate gender differences in this factor (if found), and (3) to explore how computergame playing might relate to digital reading performance and gender. The analyses wereconducted with structural equation modeling techniques. In addition to an overall readingfactor, the hypothesized digital reading factor was identified. When the overall readingperformance was taken into account, a relative difference in favor of the boys fordigital reading was indicated. This effect was mediated by a game-playing factorcomprising the amount of time spent on playing computer games. Thus, the boys’better performance in digital reading was explained by the computer game-playing factor.

This article is part of a larger project focusing upon explanatory illustrations thatchildren encounter in pre- and primary school education. The research questionsconcerned (a) how preschool children make sense of iconic symbols when placingitems of refuse on illustrations of refuse bins in a sorting task and (b) whatstumbling blocks they encounter when interpreting these symbols. Video datawere collected with 30 children between four and five years of age. From thechildren’s verbal and non-verbal interactions, four different categories of sensemakingwere constructed: by material, by object type, by appearance and byfunction. Three stumbling blocks were identified. The first had to do with givingthe symbols a different logical meaning to the intended one; the second relatedto what materials the different refuse items were made of; the third was beingable to stick to one correct way of interpreting each symbol.

New ways of presenting information have affected both contemporary society and education. School textbooks and other teaching aids for young pupils nowadays typically include, or sometimes entirely build on, illustrations and visual information. During the latest decades our view on literacy has shifted towards also comprising, as a necessity, visual and multimodal literacies Kress (2003). When using visual information in education, the transparency of pictures and models is often regarded as unproblematic. However, transparency is not an innate quality of illustrations and cannot be taken for granted (Pintó & Ametller, 2002). On the contrary, visual information is always coded and interpretations are always related to culture and context, so we must always ask what aspects of illustrations are easily understood by our young pupils’ and what aspects may be stumbling blocks for them.

The present study is one part of a larger research project dealing with the teaching and learning of mathematics in the latter part of the Swedish compulsory education and the first year of upper secondary school. The focus of the project as such is upon classroom communication with respect to teacher-student interaction on the one hand and students’ interpretation and understanding of the learning content on the other. The mathematical domain that is studied is algebra, and both mathematical concepts, which are new to the students, and concepts, which students are already familiar with, are of interest. It is frequently argued that algebra is an abstract and problematic area (e.g., Olteanu, 2007; Kieran, 1992; The Swedish National Agency for Education, 1999), which most students have not encountered in primary education in any formal sense, and which contains a body of new mathematical concepts. Thus, the teaching and learning of this particular area is an urgent domain for research on mathematics education.

This article presents results from a study of 36 pupils (8-10 years of age) in face-to-face conversations with their teachers about water as an environmental phenomenon based on a photograph of a rainforest. The teachers' rather vague goal was to have the pupils talk about the water cycle. The sessions were audio-recorded and analyzed with respect to: (1) scaffolding strategies used by the teachers, (2) possible implications of these strategies on the pupils' sense-making, and (3) what accounts of the water cycle as a school-science learning-content were made. Three different patterns of scaffolding strategies were found. Some pupils did not even come close to talking about the water cycle, whereas others arrived at a rather fragmented picture.

The focus of this article is on ten 5-year-old children and their teacher visiting a ‘Way of the water’ exhibition (a large scale model showing the flow of water from the mountains to the sea) at a science centre and a later follow up discussion at a circle-time back at pre-school. The aims of the study were to analyse, describe and discuss (a) what learning-content was focussed upon, (b) what communicative strategies were adopted by the adults (i.e. the teacher and a museum guide) when talking with the children about the natural phenomena met at the ‘Way of the water’, and (c) how different contexts framed the interaction between the adults and the children. The results show that both the guide and the teacher focussed mainly on single facts about nature and cultural phenomena and only to a lesser degree on environmental processes. The adults adopted three different strategies with respect to how the learning-content was approached, namely providing facts, directing attention by posing questions, and asking for accounts. We argue that each of these communicative strategies was related to a particular contextual framing. The children were, at times, very spontaneous and followed rules for everyday social interaction, whereas, when prompted by the teacher to arrive at ‘correct’ answers, they adapted to the well known ‘inquiry-response-evaluation’ [IRE] pattern. There are no instances in the data where the children express the idea of a large-scale coherent model. On the contrary, they talked only about individual parts of the exhibition — that is to say, things they actually saw, heard or felt. This may, to a large extent, be due to the fact that the adults did not on any occasion attempt to explain the model. Possible reasons for this are suggested in the concluding discussion.

This review of 30 years of research in small rural schools in Sweden includes projects focusing directly upon rural education and rural schools, reports from national agencies, and official statistics. Two main foci were found: (i) the quality of education and pupils’ academic performance, and (ii) the economics of running schools in different types of demographic areas. A concordant picture stands out: (a) there are no indications that small rural schools do not provide an equally good education as other schools, but (b) the higher expenditure per pupil and decreasing population in sparsely populated areas increases the risk of school closures. The importance of the small rural school to the community receives peripheral attention at best in this body of research.

Based on studies carried out on qualitative data an instrument was constructed for investigating how larger numbers of students handle graphics. This test, consisting of 18 pages, each with its own graphic display(s) and a set of tasks, was distributed to 363 students, 15–16 years of age, from five different schools. The format of the questions varied, as did the format of the graphics. As students’ performance was expected to be multidimensional, confirmatory factor analysis was carried out with a structural equation modeling technique. In addition to the identification of a general graphicacy-test factor (Gen) and an end-of-test effect (End0), a narrative dimension (Narr0) was vaguely indicated. This model was then related to a six-factor model of students’ formal academic achievement measured by their leaving certificates from compulsory education. The strongest correlation obtained was between the general graphicacy-test dimension (Gen) and a mathematic/science factor (MathSc0) in the grades model. In addition, substantial relationships were detected between the Gen factor and both an overall school achievement factor (SchAch) and a language factor (Lang0) in the grades model.