Language within a Language Scientific Concept Formation within Integrated Science and Language Learning

Abstract

The aim was to investigate formation of specific concepts in some lessons of biology where English was the language of instruction.

Vygotsky's theory of meaning and sense realised during concept formation has become the background theory together with Lemke's notion of learning science through communicating science.

This case study research took place in a so called “total CLIL” environment. The concept formation was investigated by studying how the form in which the meaning of the concepts extracted from a textbook and represented by the teacher would change and develop when reasoned about by the students during the interviews. The content perspective focused on the semantic nuances between thematic patterns used in the textbooks and used by the teacher in relation to the thematic patterns presented by the students. The same thematic patterns were analyzed from the language perspective where it was investigated to what extent the thematic patterns represented by the students would approach semantically, by using school scientific and everyday language, the scientific patterns introduced in the textbooks and represented by the teacher.

The research concluded the notion that scaffolding of meaning making in the scientific subjects is essential for future appropriation and understanding. The research has found out that the students rather effectively use and combine school science language and everyday language in order to reason about the concepts, but that still only about half of them formed truly scientific concepts, and that the other half formed spontaneous concepts. The teacher’s scaffolding plays the most important role in forming and consolidating the concepts in competetion with students’ pre-understanding.