Author Description

"This innovative volume provides a new analytic framework for understanding how meaning-making resources are deployed in images designed for knowledge building in school science. The framework enables analyses of science images from the perspectives of both their complexity and recognizability. Complexity deals with the technical and abstract knowledge of school science (technicality), evaluative dispositions in relation to that knowledge (iconization), and the condensation of the technical and dispositional meanings as 'synoptic eyefuls' in discipline specific infographics (aggregation). Recognizability concerns the relationship between the appearance of phenomena in reality and the re-configuration of this reality in images (congruence), the perceptibility or discernibility of the features and contexts of phenomena in images (explicitness), and how images engage their viewers (affiliation). The framework is illustrated by over 100 images and will inform research into multimodal literacy pedagogy that incorporates an understanding of the role of images in the teaching and learning of school science. This book will be of particular interest to scholars in multimodality, semiotics, literacy education, and science education"--