The paper focuses on students’ multimodal negotiations between peers when taking notes in science class. We demonstrate the ways in which processes of reading, writing and manipulating curriculum material intertwine. At the same time, the students also display epistemic positions and balance on a scale of knowing or unknowing participants.
Previous research into writing development in comprehensive school has placed emphasis on initial writing skills, analysis and assessment of texts, especially narrative texts, produced by students (for Finland, see Kulju et al. 2017; Juzwick et al. 2006). Our study contributes to research on writing development and practices in other school subjects than language arts and more generally, to the emerging field of research on writing in interaction (Mondada & Svinhufvud 2016). The paper focuses on literacy events of notes-taking in the context of comprehensive school environmental studies. The focus sheds light on the processes of reading and writing as we analyze how students read and manipulate curriculum materials in collaboration, and write down facts and details they treat as meaningful for the task at hands. In this context, we explore students’ negotiations between peers when they locate, evaluate and choose information in curriculum materials. The research data for the study consist of multi-angle video-recordings of comprehensive school environmental studies’ lessons. Four classes with altogether 86 students from two different schools participate in the study. The fourth and fifth grade classes differ from each other in their pedagogical emphasis and linguistic diversity to give a wide view to reading and writing practices. As a method, we draw on multimodal conversation analysis (Goodwin, 2000). In our analysis, we demonstrate the ways in which processes of reading, writing and manipulating curriculum material intertwine in sequences of taking notes. The negotiations do not only involve verbal practices but making reference to, manipulating and organizing bodies, hands and gaze to access material objects such as textbooks. In addition, we show how student adapt their actions to those of their peers. Through these multimodal actions, they also display epistemic positions and balance on a scale as knowing or unknowing participants (Sidnell 2012; Heritage 2013).
