Multimodal Interaction Analysis: a Powerful Tool for Examining Plurilingual Students’ Engagement in Science Practices Proposed Contribution to

Science teaching and learning are discursive practices, yet analysis of these practices has
frequently been grounded in theorizations that place language at the forefront of interaction
and meaning-making. Such language-centric analytic approaches risk overlooking
key embodied, enacted aspects of students’ engagement in science practices. This
manuscript presents a case of a plurilingual student’s participation in science inquiry to
demonstrate how multimodal interaction analysis can be used to examine the highly
diverse array of communicative resources that she draws upon while participating in
science, including gestures, facial expressions, vocal intonations, and languages. Grounded
in dialogic theorizations of language, we first detail the multimodal interaction
approach, and second, we show how multimodal interaction analysis beginning first with
her embodied engagement, then coupled with her subsequent written and spoken engagement,
reveals robust views of her engagement in science practices. Key to this
methodological approach is multilayered analysis that backgrounds verbal or spoken
communication to allow for an identification of embodied interaction resources
employed. We emphasize how this analytical method allows us to conceptualize science
as a practice that unfolds through and in interaction, as compared to a static body of
concepts to be learned.