Ninth-Grade Students’ Use of Graphical Representations in Social Studies Writing

Graphical representations are frequently used but normally not explicitly taught in social studies. The authors explore how to utilize the often unused potential of disciplinary graphical representations in student writing by offering insight into a Norwegian ninth-grade classroom where students were scaffolded to use such representations. The authors scrutinized how these students invented connections between modes as they combined and transformed different representations in their texts. The authors found high density but not necessarily critical use of visuals. Texts designed with spatial and linear structures integrated visuals and verbal differently. The students’ main challenges concerned cohesion, redundancy, and utilization of modal affordances to communicate their message to a particular audience. To build students’ graphical literacy in social studies over time, the authors recommend overt instruction with model texts, critically framed with an emphasis on affordances and functions, and giving students opportunities to use this knowledge in a social studies practice.