Learning to Teach with Science Representations

Representation in science is anything that stands for something else--drawings, pictures, graphs, or other representational forms (Danish et al. 2020). Representations serve as public displays of phenomena that make aspects of those phenomena explicit (Gilbert 2008). They can serve to make the invisible visible, communicate ideas, display relationships, and explain mechanisms (NRC 2012). However, representational practices may be challenging for learners, including teachers as learners. For example, a drawing that closely resembles an object may be easy to understand, whereas a more abstract representation such as a graph or equation might be more difficult (Gilbert 2008). Therefore, to support learners in using representations, teachers need to consider what concepts students will learn and what activities students will do when choosing representations to support learning science. In this article the authors describe a project they are working on to address these needs.