Science in the rhymes of a cordel: chemistry students' senses from multimodal representations
Cordel literature. Multimodality and science teaching. Social semiotics.
The present study comprised an exploratory qualitative research aimed to understand how chemistry undergraduate students construct and express senses through the production of image representations, under the influence of a cordel poem with a scientific theme (thermodynamic heat). The work involved the participation of twenty (20) chemistry students who read the cordel individually and then freely produce or create image representations (or sequence of images) related to it as extra-class activity. The analysis of the productions was based on social semiotics along the lines of Visual Design Grammar (GDV). Three main categories for representations emerged as results: a) relationship between technological advances in machines, as well as intrinsic explanations of atomic and molecular movement (04); thermodynamic concepts in steam engines (13);and, discussion of the concepts of temperature and heat in everyday life (03). We identified that the cordel raises thoughts from different perspectives of students and dialogues with the level of knowledge on the topic, which is reflected in the construction of images in a creative way.