The main objective of this chapter is to extend the discussion of language and the use of semiotic registers in chemistry lessons. Audio and video recordings, students' notebooks, photographs of content, and activities recorded on the blackboard in chemistry lessons for high school students taught in a public school in the interior of the State of São Paulo enabled the construction of multimodal narratives (MNs). The qualitative analysis of the MNs allowed the identification and understanding of the semiotic registers present in eight lessons conducted by a chemistry teacher. The study revealed several semiotic registers present in the lessons, but there is little exploration of the processes of conversion between semiotic registers by the teacher and therefore by the students. The use of different semiotic registers without the necessary understanding of them can result in difficulties in the teaching and learning processes of chemical concepts.
TopBackground
Based on semiotic science, recent research on science education, mainly with a cognitive orientation (Zompero & Laburú, 2010), has provided important advances in understanding aspects related to representations, including mental, internal, and external (semiotics), involving the learning of concepts (Duval, 2003). For this author, the mental representations comprise a set of images and conceptions that an individual can have concerning an object; the internal aspects are those characterized by the automatic execution of information, and the external, or semiotics, are productions constituted by the use of signs belonging to a system of representation, used as a means of externalizing the mental representations for communication purposes.
According to Duval (1993) semiotic registers can be understood as any form of enabling the symbolic representation of the construction of cognitive thinking. In the case of sciences, we can highlight mathematical formulae, Cartesian graphs, and algebraic writing, among other semiotic representations present in teaching. Understanding of scientific concepts requires the engagement of several systems of representations called registers, such as verbal language, and graphical and numerical representations, etc. Each register can contribute in a specific way to a wider understanding of the context and therefore to the organization of the student's mental representations. This means that, when learning chemistry, the student must also learn the specific language.