Deconstructing and Decoding Complex Process Diagrams in University Biology
This chapter explores a type of external representation used widely in biology instruction but rarely in physics and chemistry (Griffard, Decoding of visual narratives used in university biology. Paper presented at the National Association for Research in
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Deconstructing and Decoding Complex Process Diagrams in University Biology Phyllis B. Griffard
Introduction Students at all levels learn about biology via numerous communication modes. Direct experience, oral, text, and representations are but a few. These might include any combination of text, animations, verbal explanations, 3-D models, gestures, and printed images. This chapter explores one particular type of printed image, the complex process diagram. These are diagrams that represent complex biological processes that occur in multiple levels of organization over time. Although complex process diagrams are single static images, they are composites of pictorial, symbolic, and text elements related by devices such as telescoping and arrows. Therefore, they can be considered multiple external representations (MERs), and any findings about how learners interact with MERs may be relevant to this specific representation mode. Let me first begin with a sketch (Fig. 10.1a) created in my office by a scientist offering to have my first-year university students visit his research laboratory. As he was explaining his research, he spontaneously generated this representation on the whiteboard when words alone seemed inefficient. As an impromptu creation for negotiating shared meaning, it can be considered an inscription. It was not designed to be a self-explanatory, stand-alone representation. Rather it evokes a sense that you had to be there and that you need significant background knowledge to understand it. Judging by the common observation of such diagrams in laboratory areas and faculty offices, such inscriptions seem to be an essential communication tool of biologists and biology educators. The adjacent diagram (Fig. 10.1b) from a first-year biology university textbook represents a closely related phenomenon— intracellular calcium homeostasis. Unlike the whiteboard sketch, this diagram was designed to be used without an expert to explain it. The designer of this diagram P.B. Griffard (*) Department of Natural Sciences, University of Houston – Downtown, One Main Street, Houston TX 77002, USA e-mail: [email protected] D.F. Treagust and C.-Y. Tsui (eds.), Multiple Representations in Biological Education, Models and Modeling in Science Education 7, DOI 10.1007/978-94-007-4192-8_10, # Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2013
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Fig. 10.1 (a) A scientist’s sketch representing regulation of cytoplasmic calcium. (b) Textbook diagram summarizing intracellular calcium homeostasis (Campbell et al., 2008, p. 217). Red arrows indicate membrane channel icons (Reprinted with permission)
would have to make assumptions about the audience’s prior knowledge of the represented concepts and the meaning of graphic conventions for representing them—such as icons for membrane channels (red arrows in Fig. 10.1)—as well as about how much detail to include and how much to simplify without compromising fidelity to the accepted scientific model or inviting misconceptions. How such process diagrams are designed and how st
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