“And? Did We Do Nice Things?” Children Documenting Their Emerging Inquiries in Early Science Learning

This study investigates inquiry-based science activities in elementary school and examines ways in which science emerges from young students’ interactions. Regarding the context-sensitive organization of children’s talk around and about collaborative inquiry processes, the research foregrounds the quality of the learners’ semiotic resources they rely on as they “do” science within multi-modal interactions. It stresses the spontaneous ways they describe, explain, interconnect and reason about science phenomena and, more generally, how they talk their joint experiences into being. Particular attention is paid to possibilities for including students’ insights about their inquiry and learning processes in the analysis. The study explores to what extent learners manage to document ‘doing science’ with handheld cameras and how this can open a dialogue between students and teachers.