Conference Agenda

Language is a central element of learning and essentially influences the development of students’ conceptions. Students do not only have to understand a language itself but must also apply it to structure their knowledge and conceptions (Beger & Jäkel, 2015; Ikuta & Miwa, 2021). Since the national language is predominant in most biology classes, students need to have a high level of national language proficiency to participate. This monolingual habitus (Gogolin, 1997) constitutes one of the main barriers for second language learners (SLL) in a considerable number of European countries when attending science classes.

As biological phenomena are often complex and abstract, the use of metaphors in biology is common to describe or explain the phenomena (Niebert et al., 2014). According to Conceptual Metaphor Theory (Lakoff & Johnson, 2003), people use embodied, physical experiences to understand abstract phenomena in an analogical way. Therefore, metaphors are used in biology education to support students in understanding abstract phenomena (Aubusson et al., 2006). This support can be realised when students transfer (embodied) experiences (source domain) to an unknown/abstract phenomenon (target domain) (Schmitt, 2005).

Due to the fact that metaphors must be understood in a transferred sense, metaphors might even impede conceptual understanding, especially for SLL. In addition, metaphors differ depending on language as well as culture (Danielsson et al., 2018). Therefore, students might not understand (some) metaphors if the language of instruction differs from their first language. In this way, the monolingual habitus would be putting them in a disadvantage in biology classes.

All biology textbooks contain metaphors and with respect to biology education, students need to understand those metaphors (Jahic Pettersson et al., 2020). However, even though metaphors play an important role for conceptual learning in biology, other science language characteristics, such as sentence structure and the use of biological jargon, are more prominently researched (e.g., Zukswert et al., 2019).

The study by Jahic Pettersson et al. (2020) shows first indications that students adapt metaphors of their teachers and textbooks and use their own-built metaphors to understand abstract biological phenomena. However, students often understand metaphors literally or misinterpret them (Beger & Jäkel, 2015) resulting in challenges according to their content learning. Therefore, metaphors put an especially high barrier on learning for SLL.

Since metaphors depend on both languages and cultures (Lakoff & Johnson, 2003), it can be hypothesised that the constructed metaphors of SLL differ from those of native speakers. First indications are shown in the research of Haddad and Montero Martínez (2019) as well as Conrad and Libarkin (2021). This research, however, refers to chemistry, physics or geoscience education and does not differentiate on different first languages.

This study aims at exploring which metaphorical expressions are used by native and non-native German students as an example while talking about biological phenomena and to what extent these metaphorical expressions differ. Beyond that, identified (linguistic) characteristics of students’ conceptions will be compared with those of their science teachers. By doing this, I will discuss to what extent the inclusion of different languages within student conceptions research may be important for biology education. The influence of teachers’ language will be identified by comparing the conceptions of all participants.

This leads to the following research questions:

(1) Which metaphors/ metaphorical expressions are used by students to explain biological phenomena?

(2) What differences can be seen according to characteristics and frequency of the use of metaphorical language between native and non-native students?

(3) To what extent do students use the metaphors of their teachers instead of their own-built metaphors?

Students’ language competences evidentially determine their learning outcomes in STEM subjects to a substantial degree (Bird & Welford, 1995). Societies, particularly in Europe but also beyond, have experienced a constant influx of migrants and refugees in recent decades, which has resulted in an increasing degree of linguistic and cultural diversity in school classrooms (OECD, 2019). Apart from migrant students acquiring the language of schooling and its academic register, large-scale assessment has additionally identified monolingual students with a low socioeconomic status and/or from households with a low level of education in the parental generation, who also struggle to meet the academic objectives (Reiss et al., 2019, S. 77). Consequently, teachers should try to scale down the burdens for an increasingly diverse population of monolingual as well as multilingual students and the integration of language instruction and subject-matter learning is regarded a key strategy to achieve educational justice (Gogolin & Lange, 2011).

To account for this challenge, researchers have developed approaches to the integration of subject- and language-learning like scaffolding (Hammond & Gibbons, 2005) or Translanguaging (García, 2011). So far, there is only scarce evidence from systematically planned intervention studies on the effectiveness of language-responsive teaching approaches from the perspective of individual subject didactics. We want to add to the scientific debate on subject- and language-integrated instruction in STEM subjects by presenting findings from a study that centers the promising Disaggregate Instruction approach (Brown et al., 2010) which has not been widely used in Europe to this day. In the present study we utilize an adapted and optimized version of Brown et al.’s (2010) Disaggregate Instruction which we named Disaggregate Instruction in Chemistry Education (DICE) to tackle the following research questions:

1) To what extent does teaching in accordance with the DICE result in higher student learning growths compared to Scaffolded, language-responsive science teaching designed for this purpose?

2) To what degree do students with diverging competences regarding the language of schooling benefit from the DICE?

The DICE distinguishes itself from other language-responsive approaches (e.g., Scaffolding) as students initially negotiate novel scientific concepts with the help of terminology that they are already familiar with. Only after the learners have developed a general understanding of the concepts, the teacher introduces the corresponding scientific terms and provides opportunities to practice those (Brown et al., 2010, p. 1474). This disaggregation of concept and scientific language learning prevents students from acquiring complex science concepts using abstract mental models and new terminology simultaneously and supports them to purposefully apply the limited capacities of their working memories (Brown et al., 2019). Brown and colleagues (2010) implemented and evaluated the approach with multilingual students studying the concept of photosynthesis in a digital learning environment where the use and presentation of everyday and scientific language varied according to the students allocation to either the treatment (‘disaggregate’) group or the control (‘aggregate’ also called ’textbook’) group (Brown et al., 2010).

Students in the treatment group, who received instruction in accordance with the ideas of Disaggregate Instruction, developed a superior conceptual understanding compared to the control group and were also able to communicate their understanding of the novel concepts in a superior way compared to control group students (Brown et al., 2010).