The material features of multiple representations and their cognitive and social affordances for science understanding

This article reviews experimental and naturalistic studies conducted by our research group to examine the role of multiple representations in understanding science. It examines the differences between expert chemists and chemistry students in their representational skills and in their use of representations in science laboratories. It describes the way scientists use the material features of multiple representations to support their shared understanding and laboratory practices and contrasts this with the way students use representations. Scientists coordinate features within and across multiple representations to reason about their research and negotiate shared understanding based on underlying entities and processes. Students, on the other hand, have difficulty moving across or connecting multiple representations, so their understanding and discourse are constrained by the features of surface individual representations. Implications are drawn for the design and use of technology-based systems that provide students with coordinated, multiple representations and collaborative activities that afford the development of shared understanding in science. These implications are explored in a pilot study.