Reading to Write in Science Classrooms: Teachers' and Students' Joint Action

RONI, CAROLINA; CARLINO, PAULA

Research on Writing: Multiple Perspectives

The WAC Clearinghouse and CREM

Lugar: Fort Collins, Colorado; Año: 2017; p. 415 - 436

By means of a study of didactic design in secondary school classrooms, we describe the actions that two teachers take so that students read and write to widen their understanding of difficult concepts related to Molecular Biology. Our observations show that students resorted to reading only when the teacher was able to involve them in a reading purpose and gave them situated guidance on how to use the texts. Furthermore, students turned to reading to write about Protein Synthesis when the teacher delayed the institutionalization of concepts and monitored how to check divergent interpretations through consulting the literature. On the contrary, reading was considered superfluous when the teacher provided early validation to incipient students´ knowledge.