Block 2 Structural Assessment of Learning Object (15 points)I

Block 2: Structural Assessment of Learning Object (15 points)
In my long experience as a teacher and university professor, I
have seen many instructors who use one or more methods or
features as part of their course without ever asking themselves
about those aspects that support and those that might interfere
with learning. On the other hand, when I was a middle and high
school teacher, I wanted to know what each of the resources
provided to students allowing them to learn and what might
actually interfere with their learning. So from early on, I
developed the habit of critically analyzing learning resources.
In this second block, you will engage in the analysis
(assessment) of a learning object / resource. The purpose is not
to acknowledge and praise fancy gimmicky designs but to look
at the learning objects through the eyes of the learner (as per
the readings in Block 1).
To set the stage for this second part of this course, the analyses
of 3 actual investigations of learning objects are provided—
research articles adapted for the purpose of this course. The
object of the first analysis is a BBC online feature in the
science section.This is considered a learning object because
readers will learn something new; moreover, it is precisely by
reading such and similar pieces that some readers get hooked
into the respective field (e.g. science, anthropology). The object
of the second analysis is one of the Bill Nye the Science
Guyshows that you may be familiar with. There are many who
have learned and gotten hooked into science because of these
and similar learning objects. Certain lectures that can be viewed
on YouTube have many comments about how the particular
learning object has helped them understanding the topic. The
third text features many analyses of photographs in biology
textbooks that one of my former students conducted just after
graduating with her BSc. When you read these exemplary and

exemplifying analyses, you should ask yourself questions such
as: “What does the resource (learning object) make available for
making sense?,” “What structural resources does the resource
provide to reading?,” and “What does the resource draw on in
the existing experience of the recipient?”
The point for providing the three text excerpts is to provide you
with examples of how some learning object (learning resource)
is critically analyzed. You learn how to write a critical analysis
by emulating the forms from one or the other example.
Activity of Block 2
1. Read the sample analyses (initially, this might be done
rapidly for you to get a sense of what is done in a critical
analysis of a learning resource.
2. Select some resource or learning object understood in the
widest sense, anything that teaches the recipient something or
that could be used to teach something (e.g. from your academic
discipline, your hobby, where you already know what can /
should be learned).
3. Conduct an analysis of the resource or learning object—e.g.
from your academic area, but it could be something else as well
from everyday life. Your analysis should be guided by questions
such as: What does the resource make available for making
sense? What background understanding does the resource
presuppose? What background understanding does the resource
solicit for assisting recipients in learning? What are the
structural features of the resource? (HINT: Use the texts you
read as EXAMPLES of how to conduct the analysis. EMULATE
the form of those descriptions and analyses in your own text.)
4. Write a report. Because of the great variance in projects,
there are no single hard criteria for length, content, or format—
but think 4,000+. At a minimum, your report should include:
a. Some appropriate title, author/s of the report
b. Brief summary of the entire report and keywords
c. A brief introduction to the topic, including some references

to the readings
d. An explanation of the knowledge to be learned by perusing
the resource,
e. A list of the guiding questions that you used in the analysis,
f. The analysis, including materials from the source, such as
video offprints (see the reading on the Bill Nye video) or screen
prints (see the BBC online article), (the predominant part of the
report, 60%)
g. A discussion / conclusion section, and
h. A reflection where you state what you learned about learning
resources / objects through this activity. Whatever you analyze,
you should provide the data. Thus, if you analyze an
audiovisual resource, you should include some form of
transcription, which serves as the data of your analysis. In
addition, provide a link to the resource if it is available online.
i. A brief description of the ways in which the authors have
contributed
Go to website: https://hbsp.harvard.edu/import/789079
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Complete the Strategic Innovation Simulation: Back Bay
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After submitting online, submit word document along with the
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This text is an adaptation of an excerpt from: Roth, W.-M.
(2010). A social psychological reading
multimodal scientific texts in online media. Reading
Psychology, 31, 254–281. (You can access the
original with your UVic access here: https://www-tandfonline-
com.ezproxy.library.uvic.ca/doi/pdf/10.1080/027027109032564
11.) I did this work because I wanted to
know the resources made available by online materials that
enable reading for understanding. The text
provides some conceptual tools for the analysis of online media
contents, all exemplified in an analysis of
a BBC online science article (Figure 1, p. 2). The article
provides some answers to the problem
researched in Block 1 readings. This analysis teaches you a lot
about design issues with respect to
how readers / viewers approach learning objects. It teaches you
what in reading we often do
without even being aware of it.
A competent news reader is one who can: follow narratives
across columns and pages of texts,
tell apart such objects as news stories, news features, editorials,
advice columns and
advertisements, relate what is said today to what was said
yesterday, and so on.

Over the past decade, some science educators have come to
realize that reading in science has
received a short-shrifted treatment. If acknowledged at all, the
main focus of instruction lies on
vocabulary development. Even though textbooks are the
predominant resources in science instruction,
reading in science has not been a major concern for teachers and
researchers alike. Yet many people read
science-related articles in their daily newspaper, science-related
fiction, or in online news features. Thus,
topics such as nanotechnology not only lead the general public
to read more books in science technology
but also such texts incite many members of society to become
new readers of science. News coverage of
certain scientific problems such as climate change has increased
exponentially over the past decade or
two, which, given the demand-driven market forces that the
media are subject to, reflexively means that
the public consumption of science-related features has
increased. This is an interesting trend in the face of
evidence that science instruction continues to turn students off.
If there are new science adepts because of
publicly available science texts, then even novice science
readers already enact (sets of) skills and
practices that allow them to understand science-related texts
with and for understanding. What are such
skills and practices that allow reading to organize itself in a
novel domain, here science, often said to
employ language with particulars that make reading difficult? If
members of the public generally are able
to be uninstructed new readers of science and science-related
texts, then the prerequisite practices and
background understanding have to be available in society
broadly. By participating in society, members
concretely realize intersubjectivity, common knowledge, and

cultural practices in their daily actions in
recognizable (correct) ways precisely because any higher
psychological function was external and
therefore available to anthropological study. Any particular
reading of online materials therefore merely
realizes possibilities already available in culture. These same
cultural competencies allow readers to read
this text, though it is a different genre from what they are
familiar with and used to. Any set of particular
reading does so concretely, thereby revealing cultural
possibilities generally. By enacting within-
individual readings, we therefore get at not only the range of
readings but more importantly the conditions
for any one particular reading more generally.
As every morning, I begin the day of February 13, 2007 with a
quick look at the home page of BBC
News (news.bbc.co.uk). There are headlines with one-sentence
texts and images on the top half of the
page, a line of images, titles, and text under the rubric of
“Features, Views, Analysis” in the center part,
and regions or topical rubrics with one or two bulleted items in
the bottom part. All headlines and bulleted
items are in blue, the color that links to other pages take on my
screen. I scan the titles and bullets, and
click on some, but not on others often within the same category.
This morning I click a hyperlink that
reads “Ancient chimps ‘used stone tools’” and is listed under
the category “Science.” It takes me to a
page that bears as title the same phrase as the hyperlink that has
taken me there. In addition to the title, the
page contains one boldfaced 1-sentence paragraph, 10 Roman
printed 1-sentence paragraphs, one subtitle,
and two captioned photographs (Figure 1). But before I actually
read the text, I begin to reflect asking
questions such as, “What was it about this title that has made
me click the link to read the associated

article or at least check out whether I want to read the article in
its entirety? Why did I click on the link
and read the article? Why did I go to the BBC website scanni ng
the titles, texts, and images and select this
one over many other ones? What is the purpose of this reading?
What effects do this reading have on my
private and professional lives? And equally importantly, what
are the practices that allow me to make
sense of the titles and the texts that make me return on a daily
basis? Rather than actually read the article,
I begin to reflect about possible answers to this question.
Figure 1. Offprint of a science article published online by BBC
on February 13, 2007. (Permission granted by the
BBC on November 7, 2007) You can access it here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6356773.stm
The hyperlink constitutes an invitation; and like all invitations
there are those we follow and others
that we do not. My cultural competence allows me to recognize
the invitation as invitation, and this
recognition is realized and expressed in the clicking of the
hyperlink. I am not likely to click a link
containing the name “Britney,” especially when it is categorized
under “Entertainment,” which is likely
but another story about the stupidities of Britney Speers, which,
from my perspective, ought not be

making (the) news in the first place. I am not likely to click the
link “Americans turn to online videos”
(news item on January 10, 2008) but I may, depending on many
other mediating elements, click the link
“New study says 151,000 Iraqi dead” (January 10, 2008)
especially at a moment that the false pretenses
under which the Iraq war was begun are salient. That is, it is not
the reference to America, Americans,
and American culture that determines whether I follow a link,
but an interaction of a variety of
circumstances, including the predicates linked to the subject of
the topic. A hyperlink seeks to interest,
articulate newsworthiness by announcing that something we
need or ought to know is provided in the text
to which it leads us if we click it. The hyperlink does so, like a
headline, by announcing a continuation or
conclusion to something we are already interested in or by
announcing that something extraordinary has
happened. But the interest cannot be in the link, as there are
other hyperlinks equally designed by the
same editors that I, as others, do not follow. Interest therefore
has to be the result of a mutually
presupposing text|reading constellation; but results presuppose
work, however much it is or has been
made invisible.
Reading, even if it only concerns a hyperlink on a website,
does work. This work is so ordinary that
we normally do not reflect upon what we do and how we do it.
After all, I did follow the hyperlink
without stopping to reflect, but I did not follow the hyperlink
mechanically, as there were many other
links that I did not follow. This work of reading inherentl y has
a public (social) dimension, which is the
source of all individual cognition. The social psychological
(anthropological) project aims at
understanding the often-invisible work of cognition, here

reading, by rendering the familiar strange. Even
attitudes and interests need to be approached from a social
psychological, sociological, and cognitive
anthropological perspective rather than from within the
individual and by means of a framework that
considers cognition as something private.
The purpose of this text is to present an approach to the social
psychology of reading grounded in
cultural-historical activity theory and one particular branch of
sociology, ethnomethodology. To achieve
this, I bring together ethnographic descriptions, cultural
artifacts, and concrete descriptive analyses to
exhibit more so than to explain a social psychology of reading.
Here, I am not concerned with my
personal, singular reading or with a collection of specific
readings (and correlation to knowledge,
interests) some population sample may provide. I am not
interested in whether any part of the BBC
website I studied can be interpreted in this or that way; nor am I
interested in the different ways in which
various readers interpret the text—this work I leave to
phenomenography. Furthermore, I am not
interested in a social constructivist analysis that focuses on the
media’s representation of science,
ideology, and the politics of science. Instead, what I am
interested in is the more general and
generalizable question of how this or that reading is enabled,
the resources and conditions that afford
(enable) the different types of text|reading pairs to occur in the
first place. That is, in this article I focus on
the cultural practices of reading and the possibilities that they
constitute; and in my reading, these general
possibilities are also concretely realized. A coherent and
comprehensive social psychology of reading is a
very large undertaking—necessitating, for example, hitherto
untried marriages of the technical and the

sociological literature.
On Finding Newsworthy Science Content in
Hyperlinks/Headlines
In this section, I analyze the lived work of reading that each
and every reader accomplishes following
online media hyperlinks such as “Ancient chimps ‘used stone
tools’.” Reading the news is not an
invitation to engage in a post-modernist game of interpretation
where any reading (interpretation) is as
good a reading as any other. I do not have the license to invent
any form of possible meanings, at least not
if I want to report “the news” to other individuals and groups.
News headlines are not “open texts” (e.g.,
like James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake) or poems that await a
range of interpretations. Reading news for the
newsworthy events that they have been written to communicate
requires specific readings rather than
readings where anything goes.
Science and scientific literacy is deployed beginning with the
reading of a hyperlink that takes us
from the main page to the page with the specific article
announced in and by the hyperlink. Because some
hyperlink hooks novice science readers, understanding the way
such links function is an important step to
understanding reading literacy online materials. Headlines,
which in print media appear directly above the
article, are used in online media also on the main page without
or with limited amount of text and images.
That is, these hyperlinks are to be read as announcing the
contents of the news and to draw readers to the
stories, which are accessed by clicking (following) the

hyperlink. Because of the limited amount of space
available the hyperlink (headline) cannot say everything that the
associated story says; in fact, the
hyperlink does not have to say everything because the story
itself is saying it. But the hyperlink (headline)
is (needs to be) such that it draws the potentially interested
reader to the story itself, which is accessible
only by “following the link,” enacted by means of a movement
of mouse-cursor and clicking the
hyperlink once the cursor hovers over it. In fact, for novice
readers who eventually become interested in
some science topic, reading the hyperlink text has to configure
the process of reading itself for interest to
emerge.
On Seeing that Chimps Living a Long Time Ago already Used
Stone Tools
The hyperlink reads, “Ancient chimps ‘used stone tools’.” One
can read the this hyperlink (headline)
to be about chimps that lived a long time ago, perhaps at the
same time or before humans (homo sapiens)
or one of its predecessors; these chimps apparently have been
documented to use tools either by picking
up suitable natural materials or by modifying stone splinters.
How does one arrive at such a reading,
which, as a possibility, is figured both in culture (after all, the
news editors figured the text) and in the
concrete realization of its possibilities in this and similar
readings? What in this hyperlink (headline) is it
that it is, and announces something, newsworthy? Answers to
the questions are important for
understanding reading, as I do not inherently click on every
hyperlink featuring the word “chimpanzee,”
even though I may be interested in chimpanzees as a particular
context for thinking about the emergence
of culture and the specifics of human culture that makes it
different from cultural rudiments observed in

animals. I do not attempt to find articles, even the latest ones,
on chimps and chimp culture, though when
I see one then I will download or immediately read it.
These are ancient chimps, not the ones that have been used in
primate research since the work of the
gestalt psychologist Wolfgang Kohler had done on the mentality
of this primate or the ones that Jane
Goodall brought to the attention of millions of scientists and
just plain folks alike. These are ancient
chimps that predate science and record keeping so that the
primates themselves must have left records in
and through their practices that allow researchers today to make
inferences about the chimps living a long
time ago. In the hyperlink, these ancient chimps are said to have
used stone tools. They are said to have
used the tools rather than definitely used the tools: this reading
outcome is the result of the quotation
marks that we read as reporting (quoting) the speech (claims) of
someone else. Tool use is part of the
news, but tool use itself is less than certain, made as such by
the use of inverted commas that constitute a
form of modalization common among scientists when statements
about some phenomenon do not go
uncontested and are still some way away from being taken as
fact in the community. Chimpanzees today,
those that Jane Goodall and others have been writing about,
frequently use plant-based tools, such as
leaves or parts of branches stripped of leaves to pull termites
and ants from their habitations (ant hills,
termite mounds). “Stone” can be read in contrast to these wood-
based tools, a reading consistent with
predominant anthropological discoveries of tools from non-
decaying inorganic materials—stone, metal,
shards from backed clay. The reading of “ancient” as “a long
time ago” therefore is supported by the
material nature of the tools, which is from non-decaying

inorganic rather than decomposable organic
materials.
Historically, “tool use” has been a predicate solely attributed to
humans; in recent years, an increasing
amount of evidence shows that not only primates but also birds
(e.g., the New Caledonian crow) may use
tools. The link and distinction between humans and animals
based on tool use has been ascribed to
Benjamin Franklin, but other scholars have variously expressed
this idea including Karl Marx: (Hu)mans
are tool-using animals. In the present context, tool use stands
out because it is linked not to animals
(chimpanzees) generally but to ancient chimps specifically. We
can read the predicate “tool-using
animal” as establishing a commonality (category) and a
distinction: humans are animals, but they
distinguish themselves from the latter in that they use tools.
Here, then, not only do chimps use tools,
which many readers may already be familiar with, but also they
did use tools and these tools were made
of stone.
Finding “The Discovery,” that is, the Newsworthy Item
If reading has not found the newsworthy part by the time it gets
to the first paragraph in normal
(rather than boldfaced) type, it is provided with further
resources in the first two words of the regular text.
The term discovery literally means “taking away a cover,”
which, as covers generally do, hide things
from our gaze. A discovery reveals something not known
before, and therefore constitutes something new
and perhaps unexpected. As definite article, the “the” allows us
to read “discovery” as something already

known or announced. If the text linearly proceeds from left to
right and top to bottom, whatever
“discovery” denotes already is/should be familiar to the readers
and has to be some common knowledge
or has to be available in the text itself. The previous sentence —
in the paragraph appearing in boldface
type—constitutes a statement about chimpanzees having used
stone tools a long time ago, which, in fact,
is an elaboration of the title. The discovery has to be found in
this statement, which, to the knowledgeable
reader, constitutes a fact deserving the denotation discovery.
The “The” therefore allows reading to
organize itself such as to seek what it is that we already should
know, or reorganizes any previous reading
of a mere statement that now becomes a discovery after a fact.
The “The” therefore also constitutes an
integral part of a pedagogy that allows reading to recognize the
discovery in what the previous statement
describes. The use of the definite article in this way is prevalent
throughout the remainder of this text
(“The skills,” “The tools” [caption], “The excavated stones,”
“the age of the tools”).
Cultural-Historical Resources Available to Reading
What allows me and any other reader to produce a reading are
available contextual resources, that is,
categories, category collections, devices, and predicates that
online media (here the BBC homepage)
make available for the reader looking for “the news.” In
particular, a social psychology of categories,
category collections, devices, and predicates focuses on how
members of society, thought of as lay and
professional social analysts, use membership categories,
membership categorization devices, and category
predicates to accomplish naturally occurring, ordinary,
everyday activities. Membership categories may

be interactionally linked together to form families, collections,
or classes referred to as “membership
categorization devices.” In the following, I discuss the main
cultural resources that allow reading to do its
work.
Categories, Category Collection Devices, and Heuristics
In the present context, whether explicitly named or
thematically present, “animals,” “humans,” and
“primates” all fall into a membership categorization device,
because they “go together.” This
specification to the present context is important because of the
contingent ways in which members of
society produce and use membership category devices for the
purposes at hand. We cannot therefore in a
definitive manner speak of what a membership categorization
device consists in without saying what it
consists in this time.
There are two heuristics for using membership categorization:
adequate reference (sometimes also
economy) and consistency. The first heuristic means that a
single category reference suffices to
characterize a person or thing. Thus, it suffices to categorize
chimpanzees as mammals; an additional
reference to their inclusion in the animal category would be
read (heard) as superfluous. The heuristic
holds that once a first category from a category device has been
used, other categories from the same
collection may be used to categorize further members of the
population. Therefore, once the term
“mammal” has been used, other terms from the same collection
(“animal,” “human”) may be used.
The particular reading of “Ancient chimps ‘used stone tools’”

is in part configured by the fact that the
link appears under the heading of Science rather than under
“Americas” (the researcher making the
finding works at the University of Calgary”), “Africa” (the
findings were made in Ivory Coast),
“Technology” (tool use), or general news. Following a link that
appears under the heading “Science”
allows reading to configure itself to anticipate a particular
genre of text rather than a poem, an open
literary text, and so on. It also configures reading to produce
understanding of content in science-specific
rather than in other ways, for example, as science fiction, in
which case the article might appear under the
heading “Entertainment” (as it would be if the article reported
the production of a sequel to or remake of
the Planet of the Apes). The boldfaced red-printed terms
“Science,” “Technology,” “Entertainment,”
“Business,” “Health,” and so on that appear on the BBC
homepage constitute category collections, which,
as such, bring together a great variety of articles and hyperlinks
that may not go together in other
instances. A first maxim states that if two categories are used to
categorize two members of some
population, and those categories can be read as categories from
the same collection, then should be read
that way. Thus, and relevant to the present instance, humans,
tools, and tool-using animals may be
brought together into a (named or unnamed) category collection.
Because the hyperlink “Ancient chimps
‘use stone tools’” appears under the heading Science, we
already and without having to reflect anticipate
and expect the newsworthy item to be a scientific one also of
interest to a general audience—not all
scientific discoveries are reported in the general news media but
rather remain relegated to the domain-
specific journals. “Science” therefore constitutes part of the

background that configures reading to read
the headline in a more constrained way than if the “category”
title had not been present. “Science” is the
background against which “ancient chimp ‘uses stone tools’” is
read and against which it becomes the
figure that it is, that is, takes on the salience that it does.
Science constitutes a particular category
collection device, which organizes the materials at hand to
allow some readings more so (rather) than
others to emerge from the text|reading pair.
Standardized relational pairs make for category collections
including, for example, husband-wife,
teacher-student, or perpetrator-victim. The standardized
relational pair allows reading to invoke one
member of the pair once the other is present. The members of
pairs are related to one another; the pair in
the present case is a category of inclusion (animal) and a
category of exclusion (human versus animal).
The contrast human-animal constitutes a standardized relational
pair. Another membership applies in this
particular situation is that of “online science news” (a collective
category that also includes the other
websites I regularly peruse: CBC, Le Monde, and Die Zei t) and
“science news reader” (here I, as
concretely realizing possibilities of reading and understanding).
These two are parties to an online news
feature reading, an example of a “standardized relational pair of
categories.” The knowledge and
orientation associated with this pair may be considered to be
procedural, embedded in a practice of
“looking for the news,” that is, reading in a way that allows me
to discover the newsworthy story. Science
news producers and newsreaders are oriented toward the
properties of phenomena and findings that make
them newsworthy rather than something else, literary texts,
poetry, and so forth. Part of the newsreader’s

activity is the constitution of the other party, here the “BBC” or
its journalist, as an actor and participant
in the transactions. What the “BBC” reports about the
chimpanzees is a reportable and accountable
matter, for example, when I talk about the feature to my
colleague in New York using iCHAT or to my
wife over dinner after she has returned from work: “Did you
know …?” The category pair “online science
news” and “science news reader” centers on the collection of
tasks and cultural practices that make up
“reading what the BBC says about and constitutes as reportable
and newsworthy in the world.”
Predicates: Grammar of Actions for Identifying Membership
The predicate “used stone tools” normally is associated with
attributed to (early) human beings,
especially those that lived during what now is referred to as the
Stone Age. That is, the action of using
(stone) tools, the predicate in the link “Ancient chimps ‘used
stone tools’,” is bound to the category of
being human. Many actions are bound in this way to specific
categories, such as flying (birds), barking
(dogs), painting (humans), or growing (living beings). Thus, the
action of using tools had long be hailed
to be a specifically human activity—until evidence, such as the
one referred to in the online text analyzed
here dating to the 19th century, showed that animals too used
tools. A category is invoked when a
category-bound activity is asserted leading to the binding of
category and activity. This binding therefore
allows and affords categorization when the action is named or
seen. A description of this work of getting
to the category once a category-bound activity is seen has been

captured in a “viewer’s maxim” that ties
together the seeing of a category-bound activity and the member
of a category to which the category is
bound. That is, the doer is seen as a particular kind of
individual, namely the kind (category) of individual
who does engage in the form of actions/activities observed. But
because tool use is relegated to human
beings, its association with an animal (primate) elevates the
latter from other members of the animal
kingdom. That is, tool-use elevates the user from among mere
animals, making it, depending on context, a
special animal or something human-like, for example, a
hominid, humanoid, or anthropoid. That is, the
category-bound activity allows reading to co-select or partition
the categories, into those who are able or
normally engage in it and those who are not. An increasing
number of species formerly classified as
animals in contrast to human have been associated with
“intelligence” and “culture,” which used to be
typical and quintessential human characteristics. Thus, there are
scientists studying communication
among orcas and other whale species, cultural and society-
specific practices that are handed from one
primate (chimpanzees, orangutans) generation to the next,
studies of trading (food for favors) among bird
species, and tool-fashioning, tool-use, and handing-down tools
among (New Caledonian) crows.
Therefore, reading that ancient chimps have used stone tools
now has the possible meaning that tool use
never distinguished animals from humans but is a skill more
ancient than the human species (homo
sapiens).
Reading a Multimodal Science Text
In the foregoing sections, I describe the resources available to
the work that accomplishes finding the

news in the hyperlink (title). This work already mobilizes many
of the resources required in reading the
text itself. But the text provides further structures that reading
mobilizes both to configure itself and to
find the particular content the text was written to convey. New
resources become available as soon as we
get to the article (Figure 1): the first three paragraphs are of
one-column width, sharing the space with a
black-and-white photograph of entities that can be recognized
as stones, one of which easily may go for a
spear tip. The display provides a structured terrain that provides
resources to reading to organize itself,
structures that a physical geography of reading allows us to
uncover. I articulate the additional resources
in the following exemplary reading of the remainder of the
article.
A Physical Geography
The display is not the same throughout but physically differs in
its different regions. Such differences,
constitutive of the regions, are resources that allow cultur al
practices of reading to separate out and relate
different parts of text. Generally the text is black, but below the
images it is printed in grey. The text sizes
differ, being largest in the first line (which we recognize as title
both their position—English, as other
European languages is written from top left toward bottom
right, left column before right column). A
second type of text is smaller, but still larger than majority of
text, differing from the latter in that it is
printed in boldface type similar to the title immediately
preceding it. This text, therefore, physically
constitutes a transition, sharing physical characteristics with the
text preceding and, in length, with the
text succeeding it. It is a piece of text and an elaboration of the
title: a non-identical repetition
(elaboration) of the title and a subtitle. Further below, there is

another text of the same nature, that is,
larger than the majority of the text and in boldface type (“Nut
crunch”); it differs from the previous text of
the same physical characteristic in that it only contains a
compound noun (in other instances, a noun and
an adjective) rather than consisting of a full sentence.
The text beneath figures is smaller still than the main text and
always appears in the column not
exceeding the width of the image. Competent reading sees it as
different and associated with the image
rather than constituting part of the main text. That reading sees
caption and the remainder of the text as
different may be unremarkable and overstating some point. Yet
we may gain a new appreciation of this
relation in light of the fact that copy functions in computing
environments—e.g., in (scanned) PDF
materials—where the different columns remain unrecognized by
the optical character recognition
program. Again, therefore, the attribution of the grey text to the
image—that is, the relation between the
two—is the result of the work accomplished by the text|reading
pair rather than being exclusively to be
found in the text or in the reading.
There are other physical structures as well, which provide
additional resources for the reading to
configure itself. Among these we find what are known as
commas, periods, inverted commas (title),
quotation marks (third paragraph from the bottom, and inverted
commas. These can be made to work
together with the text, such as when the inverted commas
around “used stone tools” can be read as
decreasing the degree of factuality of the statement they enclose

much in the same way as the clauses
referring to their produced nature of (e.g., “say researchers”
[caption 1], “researchers say” [¶8], “write the
researchers” [¶9], “the authors say” [¶3]). Furthermore, not all
letters are of the same type: some are
recognized as capital letters in contradistinction to small letters.
Etymologically, “capital” means standing
at the head; and letters at the beginning of a paragraph or
chapter in certain literary books are not only in
capital type but also decorated, many times the size of the
remaining print. Capital letters stand at the
head of words (names) and sentences in much the same way that
subtitles and titles stand at the head of
text sections and entire texts. Reading knows a beginning to
occur, a new sentence or paragraph, and with
it, the possibility of a new topic. Capital letters also lead us to
read some words as names, even though
they may also exist as mere words (nouns, adjectives), such as,
for example, the words “Proceedings”
(third to last paragraph, Figure 1) or “Stone Age” (second to
last paragraph). Here, the capital letter
constitutes a resource that allows reading to read a name rather
than a category word. This is the case
even when there is a word that readers may have never
encountered before: Even when reading “Noulo”
for the first time, capitalization allows it to be recognized as a
name (especially together with the definite
article “the” discussed below) rather than as an adjective
modifying “site” (last paragraph before “Nut
crunch” subtitle).
On Bridging
The different characteristics not only mark out physical terrain,
but they also mark out conceptual
terrain. In the course of its unfolding local history, reading
organizes itself to establish relations, bridges,
between the different parts so that from the organized whole

emerges the sense of one narrative. The most
basic technique for establishing a bridge between multiple
pieces of the same type (within main text,
titles, captions) and different type of text (across title, caption,
main text) is the preservation of a category
or category membership device across the spatial and temporal
gap in the text|reading pair. Thus, action
verbs (e.g., “to crack nuts” [¶1], “tool use” [title, ¶2]) and skills
(“The skill” [¶3]) are from the same
collection, which allows us to read the third paragraph as
making reference to the topic of the title and the
first two paragraphs.
The bridge between text and image, however, is more complex
because there is a translation between
two very different domains of reading is involved (see below).
Yet even the replacement of a word by a
synonym constitutes a translation, which, as all translation,
relates two things that are non-identical and
therefore not replicas of one another. Thus, reading has to exact
work to make “Julio Mercader and
colleagues” (¶6), “the authors” (¶3) the agents of the report in
“the Proceedings of the National Academy
of Sciences journal” (¶4), and “the researchers” (¶9, caption 1)
all pointing to the same group of
individuals. To produce a sense of oneness, the text|reading pair
has to provide resources (text) and
linkages (reading) that relate different parts of the multimodal
display (Figure 2). These bridges and links
are not in the display: otherwise they would not have to be
made. But they are not in the making (reading)
alone, because then the reason for making them could be found
in the reading practice itself and it would
not require a or the text. It is in the dialectic of the text|reading
pair that the bridging links come to emerge
as the contingent product of this reading this text.

Figure 2. Category repetition and category complexes constitute
resources for producing connections between
different (textual, non-textual) parts of the online display.
Image|Caption
Photographs provide a textured surface that provides resources
for reading. On their own,
photographs share a lot with poetry in that they lend themselves
to very different even oppositive and
contradictory readings. This clearly was exhibited in an analysis
of the same images environmentalists
used to claim that some area is environmentally degraded
(polluted) and that it has already undergone a
lot of restoration work. The texts in the captions make the
difference for seeing a photograph in one way
rather than in another—or, equivalently, for reading to find
entities in the photograph that are expressions
of specific concepts. The image and the caption then stand in a
dialectical relationship, where the caption
states what can be seen but the photograph confirms the
appropriateness of statement in the caption. In
this case, the photograph motivates the reading of the
description in the caption and the caption motivates
the reading of the image. However, the relationship between
image and caption is not an easy one, as the
description the caption offers may in some instances be
plausible but not necessarily apparent from the
photograph. Here, the authority for the caption does not lie
within the photograph; rather, the caption
shifts attention away from the photograph. However, even if
there does not appear an easy and evident
connection, the co-presence and proximity of the text and

image, together with the markedly different
type (size, color) of the text invites reading to produce a
relation (Figure 2).
The caption of the first image in the feature online text reads,
“The tools are 4,300 years old.” The
caption says nothing about stones but rather has as subject “the
tools,” which are described by the
predicate “are 4,300 years old.” But what can be seen in any
one display is not self-evident. This as has
been clearly shown in an analysis of the court proceedings of
the Rodney King case, where a police
officer “taught” the jury and judge how it is that Rodney King
was not beaten gratuitously but displayed
aggressive behavior that required officers to subdue him with
force. Here, the definite article “the”
constitutes a resource for reading to organize itself to find the
determined and therefore determinate
objects/categories written about. In the same way as the definite
article “the” operates between two parts
(types) of text, it also operates between caption and image.
Thus, because “the tools” refers to something
(supposedly) already known or present, it encourages reading
that has not seen them yet to search for “the
tools.” Proximity and common hierarchical relations in Western
texts allow readers to seek and find the
tools in the photographs immediately above the text in the same
column. The text “The tools” then
functions as a pedagogy of naming accompanied by an index, as
if it had said “these are tools” in the way
a parent points to an image in a book for toddlers and young
children while reading with/to them. The
caption then not only provides a description but also, in fact,
constitutes an instruction for how to see:

tools rather than stones. It functions precisely like the parent’s
finger pointing to the stone tools in the
image while uttering, “these are stone tools [chimps use for
cracking nuts].”
As a description, the caption has been occasioned by the image,
which is the what that the description
describes. The text is in grey and printed precisely underneath
the image, allowing reading to associate it
first with the image before identifying or relating it with other
text. But being grey and smaller, the text
wants to withdraw, allowing predominance to the regular and
even more so to the bold-faced text. In its
attempt to withdraw into the ground, the caption also invites
reading to consider the image in itself.
In the caption, too, there are resources that structure reading.
Following subject “The tools” and the
predicate “are 4,300 years old,” there is a comma followed by
the words “say researchers.” The clause is
read as modifying the statement that precedes it; but it does so
not in a definitive way. One way in which
the clause may be read is as saying that “researchers” rather
than other individuals / professionals say,
which would confer authority to the statement. It also allows
reading the sentence as a modifier that
weakens the statement from actual fact to something (some)
people say. In this way, the clause supports a
reading structured by the inverted commas that indicate
something as reported speech. What in the
statement “the tools are 4,300 years old” may be the contested
or contestable part? That the stones are to
be seen as tools or their age in years? In fact, the stones
themselves are likely older. It is their tool age that
could be in question, and this is how we have to read the age to
make any sense at all. The tool nature
may be seen for those already familiar with some human stone

tools, arrow/spear head and a scraping tool
(bottom right). However, reading of the image cannot confirm
the age of the stone tools. It is impossible
to see the age of stone or stone-as-tool; this part of the caption,
as indicated above, therefore requires the
kind of authentication outside the image.
The second image/caption pair presents us with an additional
problem that often is present in the
online science texts: a gap between what the caption says and
what the image supports. Reading
encounters the photograph of a chimpanzee (for readers
knowing chimpanzees) accompanied by the
inscription “The use of stone tools may have a deep
evolutionary origin.” In the photograph, we do not
see any of the stone tools that are the topic of the article but a
member of the species that figures as the
subject. In fact, the caption predicatively relates the use of
stone tools to evolutionary origins. The only
other aspect of the display that falls into the category collection
or family with “evolutionary origin” is
the category of “common ancestor of chimps and humans.”
Here, there is an activity, the use of stone
tools, also bound to chimpanzees though normally only bound to
humans. The caption invites the
extension of the normally category-bound activity of stone tool
use to chimpanzees, a member of which
appears in the photograph. The caption thereby does not
actually describe the contents of the image—
stating what would be the obvious for the informed reader,
though in school textbooks an inscription such
as “A chimpanzee” would have definitive purpose. But the
collocation of stone tool use (caption),
chimpanzee (image), and the category binding to humans (“tool
use”) finds an equivalent concept of
“deep evolutionary origin.” Thus, even if unfamiliar with the
possibility of “a common ancestor of

chimps and humans” (¶3), reading would be configured to
anticipate reading about the evolutionary link
between chimpanzees and humans.
Subtitles
In contrast to the title, the boldfaced text immediately below it
does not use the same mediating
structure (ends with a period “.”) but elaborates the former in
several ways. First, in the same way that the
caption elaborated the figure, this title below the title
concretizes the term “ancient” by providing a
number to specify the period of time numerically: 4,300 years
ago. It elaborates the chimpanzees by
specifying a geographical location where they lived and,
therewith, where the research was conducted, or
at least, where the artifacts have been found (the age
determination using radiocarbon dating probably
was not done at the site itself). Finally, it elaborates the objects
that the tools were to be used for: the tools
were used to crack nuts. How does the text achieve
“elaboration,” or rather, how does the text|reading of
the first paragraph elaborate the results of the preceding
text|reading of the title? First, this text stands
between title and the text itself. It is boldfaced thereby
distinguishing it from other text. Its size is the
same as a subsequent title and as the title of the entire text,
printed in larger font size. Second, it is an
elaboration of the title, a fact clearly established i n the next
statement (retroactively), which specifies the
newsworthy item in and of the present page: “the discovery
represents the oldest evidence of tool use,”
modified by “our closest evolutionary relative.” Only in the
next paragraph is the statement categorized as

“ the discovery.”
All other subtitles, physically set apart as such by the different
size and type (boldface), engage in
different work, as they always consist of a noun phrase without
predicate (here “Nut crunch”). Because it
does not make a statement, the noun phrase serves as a sign to
look out for what is coming. Reading
subsequently discovers what the noun phrase announces: here,
two paragraphs in which (a) the stones are
linked inferentially to nuts in a complement to the verb and (b)
a justification for this inference in
identification of starch traces on the stones to locally found
nuts. However, the “nut crunch” does not bear
any (obvious) relation to the remaining three paragraphs—
repeating a standard patterns in this medium—
so that the “subtitle” may be more a resource for perceptually
structuring the display than serving a
conceptual function in the way subtitles do in scientific texts
(the “results” section features results, not
methods, discussions, or implications).
Main Text–Image/Caption
While reading the first mutually constitutive {caption | image}
pair, two questions may possibly
emerge in and from the text|reading pair (prompted by “the
author say”): (a) how can one determine that
this stones are tools and (b) how can the age be determined to
be 4,300 years. Following the boldfaced
noun phrase “Nut crunch” (which experienced reading
understands to be a “subtitle”), resources are
provided to attribute tool nature to the stones. Using the
definite article “the” and the subject “excavated
stones” the text then provides the predicate “showed hallmarks
of use as tools for smashing nuts.” The
modifier “when compared with ancient human or modern
chimpanzee stone tools” follows. How is it that
reading may take the last part of the sentence as a modifier? As

competent reading organizes itself
moving through the sentence, it can find a sense of completion
just after the first appearance “tools,” then
again after “nuts,” and again only after the second “tools.”
These “hallmarks” are not apparent in the
photograph and therefore have to be authenticated, if at all,
elsewhere in the text. The second paragraph in
this section of the display then provides this authentication: the
stones contained starch grains typical of
local nuts. A reasonable inference is that their use to crack nuts
left the starch grain on these stones. A
new question may arise, this time about the identification of
nuts as the object worked upon. An answer to
the question can and may be found in the next paragraph, which,
by means of a repetition of the naming
of the activity (“cracking nuts”)—cracking and smashing fall
into the same category of verbs.
The second question would be answered in the two last
paragraphs. In the first of the two, resources
in the form of a repetition of the topic “The tools were found to
be 4,300 years old” are provided allowing
the text/reading pair to establish a relation to the earlier
appearing dates (caption, first paragraph). The
commas provide resources for reading to produce at least two
elaborative clauses. In the first, resources
are provided for construing a correspondence with the human
stone-age culture: “which, in human terms,
corresponds to the later Stone Age.” A second clause adds,
“before the advent of agriculture in the area.”
An earlier sentence states that the “skill could have been …
learnt from humans by imitation.” In this
sentence, the stage of human cultural development is
characterized as “Stone Age.” The use of stone tools
is a category-bound activity: humans living during the Stone
Age used stone tools. In this area, Stone Age
people used stone tools, thereby providing for the possibility

that chimpanzees might have “learnt from
humans” using stones as tools.
In this text, you find many fine examples of analyses of
photographs in high school
textbooks that a student of mine conducted just after finishing
her undergraduate
degree in biology and pedagogy. She presented this work at the
annual conference of
the National Association for Research in Science Teaching. The
paper was called
“Toward a Pedagogy of Photographs in High School Biology
Textbooks.”
Photographs constitute a major aspect of high school science
texts; a recent study
showed that there are about 17 photographs on every 20 pages
of high school biology
textbooks. It is surprising then that a photograph (like a word)
on its own does not mean
anything; it is only through recurrent use in similar situations
that the relation of a word to

other words, a photograph to other photographs and words are
established. For example,
one might ask, “What is the content of the photograph in Figure
1?”, which was taken
from a Brazilian high school biology textbook. “What is its
meaning?” There are some
cows in the foreground, two trees and a fence further back.
Then there is a field or
meadow before an assembly of trees, which may be seen as a
“forest.” So what does it
mean? To find an answer, we have to seek recourse to the text
from which we culled it the
photograph. The caption to the photograph talks about there
being distinct biomes (“The
dividing line is a band with major vegetation that defines an
ecotone”). Knowing this, we
can now return to the photograph and attempt to discover
distinctness that would delimit
the different biomes that we are to find. Further reading of the
caption then tells us
something about changes to greater density. The caption also
talks about forest and
savanna, the later being a kind of field.
Once we find these descriptions, our gaze separates forest and

field, disregards the
trees in the foreground, and isolates changes in density. What
the text has done, therefore,
is not just described what there is in the image—if it was only a
description of something
self-evident, it would not have been necessary. Rather, the text
taught us what to look for
and how to parse a rather dense visual field. The text
contributes to teaching us how to
detect biomes, ecotones, and how to distinguish them—though
this particular photograph
Fig. 538. Two distinct biomes border on each other: the
forest and the savanna. The later is a variety of field. The
dividing line between both biomes is a band with higher
density of vegetation and what identifies the ecotone.
Figure 1. Example of a photograph and caption from a Brazilian
high school biology textbook in
the context of teaching the concept “ecotone.”
makes the concept of ecotone appears in a simplistic way as a

clearly identifiable
boundary. At the same time, the text in itself lacked something
that the image provides.
Here, the figure authenticates what the text is about, the
existence of biomes and
ecotones, and the borders that exist between biomes. In sum, the
texts that are copresent
with the photograph provide the pedagogy for reading the
photographic image, allowing
a small rather than a potentially infinite number of
interpretations to be viable.
“What can students learn from textbooks when they in fact
begin to study
photographs?” The question is salient particularly in the context
present photograph
because of the difficulties of making distinctions between forest
and savanna experienced
even by scientists. Thus, in one study Brazilian and French
scientists attempted to decide
whether the forest was taking over the savanna or whether the
savanna was taking over
the forest. A major problem to be resolved by the scientists he
studied was just where to
locate the boundary between forest and savanna; another

sociological study of ecologists
also showed the tremendous
collaborative work that went into deciding what constitutes the
boundary between forest
and brush. Other studies documented similar difficulties
experienced by amateur
birdwatchers as they attempted to identify birds even though
they had the photographs
of their bird field guide directly in front of them. In practice,
therefore, making a
distinction between forest and savanna appears much more
difficult than the high school
textbook leads us to believe. As science educators, we therefore
question,
what can and do photographs achieve when they are used in
high school textbooks? What
purpose do photographs serve if they cannot guarantee that
students identify their
equivalent in the natural world—after all, are science students
not supposed to understand
and be able to explain the world around them?

Photographs and Texts: Principles of Analysis
We began this article by making the point that a photograph in
and of itself means
little; it is full of “gratuitous” detail that allows many different
ways of looking at and
interpreting it. This photographic detail provides a space that is
continuous with our own
lived world, allowing readers to establish a link with the
everyday world that surrounds
them. At the same time, the photograph provides few cultural
codes (e.g., a line, letter, or
recognizable shapes) that could delimit its sense and meaning as
intended by the author.
To control the range of possible meanings that a photograph can
give rise to, authors use
captions and embed this photograph/caption combination in still
further text (main text)
that together constrain the meaning a reader can make. In this
section, we propose some
principles for the analysis of photographs in school science
textbooks.

For the analysis of textbooks, we developed a scheme that
articulates various semiotic
resources and the nature of their relations (Figure 5). We view
all relations between the
different parts of a book (main text, figure, caption, and
[sidebar] text box) as involving
double movements, each pair of entities mutually constituting
one another and the
relation. Thus, the title prepares the reader for what is coming,
and thereby organizes his
or her reading. At the same time, a title is not chosen
arbitrarily, but has been motivated
by the content of the main text. The main text makes certain
claims or seeks to explicate a
concept, which therefore motivates the use of a particular
figure. The figure in turn
validates the claims made in the main text. Finally, the caption
describes and teaches how
to read the figure (here photograph[s]) and the figure
authenticates the caption text.
Figure 5. The framework that we developed for the analysis of
inscriptions that accompany scientific texts
in general and for photographs in particular.

In the analyses below, we are centrally concerned with the
relationship between
photograph (figure) and caption, and their integration with the
main text. This integration
is achieved not only through the co-thematic nature of figure
and caption but also
through an index by means of which readers are referred from a
particular place in the
main text to figure and caption, which constitute a different
genre. The caption is an
essential part of the inscription that tells the reader what look
for in the photograph and
therefore how to read and understand it. The photographs are
associated with a text that
explains the phenomenon. Thus, photograph and text together
form the written correlate
of a demonstration; they constitute a particular form of
pedagogy, though our informally
acquired information in another study shows that most students
disattend to anything
other than the main text. If this is the case, then important
concepts and information

should be placed in the main text, with the appropriate reference
to the inscription that
would help the reader to make sense of the phenomenon under
scrutiny.
PHOTOGRAPHS IN BRAZILIAN HIGH SCHOOL BIOLOGY
TEXTBOOKS
In our analysis of the pedagogical role of photographs in high
school biology
textbooks, two themes emerged: there are different functions
that a photograph/caption
has with respect to the main text and there are different ways in
which the photographs
and the texts are structured, with implications for the
interpretation of these inscriptions
in the textbook. In the following sections, we describe and
provide evidence for these two
themes.
Functions of Photographs
In the ecology sections of the four Brazilian biology textbooks,
all 124 photographs
could be classified as full-filling one of four functions (roles),

which arise from the
relation of photograph/caption to the main text. However, we
also include in this
classification those photographs that accompanied other
inscriptions, as for example,
maps. Series of or pairs of photographs were considered one
single inscription in this
classification. Therefore, the total of inscriptions classified in
the four categories are
N=148.
The categories we identified are: decorative (n = 8 [5.4%]),
illustrative (n = 52
[35.1%]), explanatory (n = 42 [28.4%]), and complementary
function (n = 46 [31.1%]).
These functions—and therefore our categorization—largely
arise from the interpretation
Figure 6. Example of a decorative photograph; there was no
caption that accompanied it.
of caption, the text co-deployed and directly associated with
each photograph. These

functions also roughly define a hierarchy of increasing
informational value (explaining a
concept does more than simply illustrating a concept) and those
with higher information
value usually also do what the photographs of lesser
informational value do. We
exemplify and discuss each of these roles.
Decorative Function
A small number of photographs were classified as decorative.
These photographs
were not referred to in the main text, did not include a caption,
and usually appeared at
the beginning of a unit, chapter, or section of text. Figure 6, for
instance, appeared on the
opening page of a section on “energy and matter in the
biosphere.” This photograph does
not include a caption; there is no reference from the opening of
the main text to the
photograph. How the photograph functions in relation to other
texts deployed (its
intertextuality) requires analysis and does not “jump out” at the
non-initiate. At the

outset, it is a colorful plate from which relevant figure and
ground have to be separated.
Prior exposure to cultural categories allows readers of a certain
age—a one- or two-year
old may not perceptually differentiate what an adult sees as leaf
or caterpillar—to
identify a caterpillar on a leaf. That is, in the absence of a text
inscribed in the book with
reference to the photograph, the reader has to bring existing
understanding as the intertext
in reference to which the photograph becomes salient figure.
What is the role of this
photograph at this place in the book? What can a student learn
by looking at or analyzing
(studying) the photograph? A photograph can be viewed in
many different ways. To
understand what this photograph is intended to show in this
place, a reader may search
for clues in nearby texts, such as the title of the unit. Assuming
that the text is not only
codeployed but also cothematic with the photograph, a reader
seeks to relate individual

words “energy,” “matter,” or “biosphere” to the photograph. A
somewhat initiated reader
may see the caterpillar nibbling away on or “eating” the leaf;
but we insist that “nibbling”
as a process is not available to readers, it has to be inferred
based on extra-textual
experience. However, not until a reader knows the relationship
between “eating” and
“energy” household of animals can s/he establish a connection
with (one part of) the unit
title. At the same time, the leaf has to be understood as matter
rather than as an organism,
and both the caterpillar and the leaf have to be seen as aspects
of “biosphere” before the
relation of this photograph to the unit title can be established.
Students, however, are not
likely to bring this understanding necessary for establishing
these relationships between
unit title and photograph. In fact, the purpose of the unit is to
develop the understanding
necessary to deconstruct the relationship between photograph
and title.
This initial analysis shows how, for the initiate reader, unit title
and photograph can

be seen in a mutually constitutive relation expressed in Figure
5. The word “energy”
makes a reading of “caterpillar eating leaf” a reasonable reading
of the photograph,
which, in turn, establishes a concrete instance of the
relationship between biosphere and
“matter and energy,” concepts usually introduced in the
physical sciences. However,
because students do not bring the interpretive resources
required for the type of analysis
provided and because of the lack of a text that could guide
students in their analysis of
the image, we categorized such photographs as decorative. They
introduce color, may
provide for certain aesthetics, but lack informational function
for the individual who does
not already know what the subsequent text is intended to teach.
Illustrative Function
Photographs included in this category include a caption that
names or describes what
the reader is to see in the photograph but the caption does not

provide additional
information to the main text. Such photograph-caption
ensembles constitute a visual
resource for the reader in the sense that a concrete specimen of
a class or concept is
depicted (e.g., Figure 7).
Fig. 4.3 Photograph of plants of aguapé in blossom.
Figure 7. An example of an illustrative photograph.
This photograph gives the reader a visual representation of the
species mentioned in
the main text (aguapé), but this is not an essential piece of
information for the reader
relative to the subject matter treated in the text. In the present
case, the subject matter is
the introduction of certain species in biomes, exemplified by the
introduction of aguapé
in hot regions. “Aguapé” and “hot regions” are special instances
of the more general
concepts of plant and biome.
The photograph illustrates the particular plant but does not

show “introduction” that
causes changes in the ecosystem. To show the effect of
“introduction” of a plant, a
minimum of multiple photographs are required that show some
difference that can be
noted as a difference before it, according to Bateson (1972), can
function as
“information.” That is, if there is not a difference that makes a
difference, we cannot
speak of information at all. Therefore, the very concept taught
in the text is absent from
the photograph: it does not exist as information in the image.
The visual information
possibly provided does not alter the understanding of the
subject matter, that is, the
photograph does not show the phenomenon treated in the text,
but provides a visual
illustration of a plant that was only referred to in the text as an
example of a species
which introduction caused changes in the ecosystem. The reader
still is able to understand

the concept of ecological disequilibrium treated in the text
without the information
provided by this photograph and the caption.
There were several cases (n = 29) of illustrative photographs
that were not associated
with a (part of a) caption. Such photographs, a special case of
photographs without
caption, appeared together with “maps,” the dominant aspect of
the inscription (Figure 8).
Here, several photographs were co-deployed with the map but
were not described or
explained in the caption. One might therefore think that the
photographs are decorative,
especially because the caption of the inscription is related with
the map. However, there
is an important link between photographs and map: the color
scheme of the legend relates
photographs, presenting single (paradigmatic) instances of
different landscapes, and
regions. If map and photographs are interpreted as being
cothematic, by virtue of
appearing in the same plate, the different genres can be read as
linked via the concept of
biomes: “distribution of different biomes” and concrete

instances of individual biomes. In
this situation, there is one photograph for each biome but, in the
presence of six images, a
contrast is provided between what may be prototypical examples
for each biome. The
presence of only one example does not allow students to learn
what characterizes each
biome or more poignantly, how to distinguish one biome from
another in more
problematic cases near the border of the category. (See Lakoff
[1987] on examples of a
category that are nearer the center, and therefore more
prototypical for a category versus
those that are nearer the peripheries of two categories, and
therefore more problematic in
their assignment to one or the other.) But the presence of six
prototypes, given learners
attend to appropriate aspects of the landscapes depicted, may
allow the recognition of
some global distinctions between these biomes. Nevertheless,
some of the very features
that distinguish these biomes, the amount of water available,
temperature, and other

Fig. 7 Large biomes of Earth.
Figure 8. An example of a special case of illustrative
photographs, each ecozone identified in the map
exemplified by one member of the category.
physical and biological information, is not accessible by
students through the analysis of
the photographs.
Explanatory Function
This category includes photographs with captions that provide
an explanation of or a
classification of what is represented in the photographs. The
captions do not only name
the object or phenomenon in the photograph, but also add
information about this object or
phenomenon. Take the example of Figure 9. In the first part of
the caption we can read
“Aspect of a forest.” With this information, readers are guided
in what to look for in the
photograph, a forest. That is, what we see are not just a group
of trees along a river but

part of a larger whole. This information provided by the caption
is important in helping
the reader to make sense of what can be seen in the photograph,
however, this
Fig. 84.1- Aspect of a forest: climax community.
Figure 9. Example of an explanatory photograph. The words
“climax community” provide a frame that
allows the reader to establish a connection between the figure
and the main text.
information is not enough to guide the reader to establish
relations between the
photograph and the subject matter treated in the main text.
The index presented in the main text and replicated in the
caption allows the reader to
connect figure and text. However the reader is not able without
further information to
appropriately relate the “forest” in the photograph with the
concept of “ecological
successions” that is the corresponding topic of the main text.

Thus, if this were the only
information provided in the caption, the photograph would
function as an illustration of a
forest, because somewhere in the main text the forest was
mentioned. It is the second part
of the caption that provides the information necessary to
interpret the forest in the
photograph as “something else,” which allows the reader to
explicitly relate the figure
and the text. These two words, “climax community,” represent
an entire different
perspective in the way in which the reader contextualizes the
photograph and relates it to
the main text.
The photograph not only represents a forest, but also is marked
as an example of a
climax community. Textual marks are not neutral but invite
making salient some things
to the exclusion of all the others that could be made salient
(Derrida, 2001). That is,
marked terms encourage readers to associate the characteristics
of a climax community
described in the main text with what they see in the photograph.
In this sense, this caption

not only classifies the forest as a climax community, but also
provides an explanation
about how to interpret and relate the photograph with the main
text.
At the same time, because this is a single photograph, the
concept of succession is not
available to readers, which would require several photographs
showing the same physical
location but with varying cover corresponding to varying stages
in the ecological
succession of the area. Similarly, the single photograph does not
allow the initiate reader
to learn how to distinguish climax forest from non-climax
forest, or between the climax
forest for different forms successions such as those that end in
maple-beech forest
(Northeastern US, Eastern Canada) or those that end in
coniferous forests (Canadian
shield, Newfoundland). Both types of forest are examples of
climax forest but are very
different in the way that they appear to the eye.

Complementary Function
Photographs in this category are associated with captions that
add new information
about the subject matter treated in the main text. This
information is not only new, but it
is also an important information, never mentioned before in the
main text, and that helps
readers to further understand the biological concept that is
being taught. Figure 10, for
example, presents two fishes against a black background. The
title of the section of the
text where this figure is inserted in is “Influence of light in the
marine ambient,” and in
the main text we can read about the distribution of species in
the ocean according to the
presence or absence of light. In the last paragraph the text
presents some characteristics
of fishes and other animals that live in the abyssal zone. Then
the text refers the reader to
the figure.
The text begins by providing a name and articulating it as an
example of an “abyssal
fish.” Inherently, the statement “linofrino, an example of an

abyssal fish” requires the
cultural competence of associating the name with the image,
even though there is no
specific index linking the name with the fish—parents reading
to their preschool children
might place their finger on the image and say, “linofrino.” The
remainder of the caption
Fig. 86.6- Linofrino, an example of an abyssal
fish, about 5 cm long, that lives at a depth of
1400 m in the ocean. The abyssal fishes usually
are small and dart-like and have sensitive eyes.
Figure 10. Example of complementary plate: the caption makes
factual statements not available in the
main text.
provides propositions with content not made available in the
main text, and therefore
constitutes new and relevant content. We therefore classify this
photograph-caption
ensemble as complementary.
The caption in this case provides information about what can be
seen in the

photograph, that is, characteristics of the abyssal fishes
represented. The caption also
adds new information, not directly related to the two fishes, but,
rather, associated with
the concept of abyssal fish treated in the text. Therefore, this
plate constitutes a
“complement” to the main text. The complementary
photograph/caption thus presupposes
continuity in the reading process, as readers iterate their reading
between main text and
plate. They are able to make sense of the concept presented only
through the reading of
all the information contained in these three elements. If the
information in the caption is
new and important, we therefore have to ask why this
information is in the caption
instead of in the main text—unless photographs/caption are
regarded by students and
teachers integral parts of the “material to be studied.”
Structures of Co-Deploying Photographs and Texts
Our analysis reveals considerable variation between and within
textbooks in how the

co-deployment of photographs and texts is structured. The
structural elements and the
relation between them are diverse among the selected textbooks
and even within the same
book. The variations include, for example, where the reference
to a photograph occurs in
the main text, the distribution and arrangement of photographs
on the page, and the co-
deployment of multiple photographs for teaching a particular
concept. These structural
elements, undoubtedly, provide different resources for
integrating co-deployed and co-
thematic but non-co-generic text.
Indexical Reference
Photographs represent a different genre than text. They are two-
dimensional
arrangements of colored or areas, which, because of our prior
experience in a three-
dimensional world, can be decoded to provide additional
information about depth. Color,

areas covering other areas, relative size of known objects and so
forth provide resources
for reading that are deployed as the eyes scan the image
according to the reader’s
preference. Verbal texts, on the other hand, are linear,
conventionally (in Euro-centric
cultures) requiring the eye to move from left to right and
jumping, at the end of a line,
downward to the left of the subsequent line. Because of the
different requirements for
reading verbal text and images, the latter cannot be placed at
the point in the text that is
directly pertinent (co-thematic). The link between the text
(word, sentence, or paragraph)
and the photograph that appears somewhere else on the same or
different page is
established via an indexical reference usually as a string of
letters and numbers in the
form “Figure 1.2,” “Fig. 2,” or “see Fig. 3.4.” A copy of this
index is also found in the
caption of the figure that the index is designed to direct the
reader. Here, the indexical
function is achieved by duplicating a string in the main text and
in caption. Whenever the

string appears in the main text, the reader is referred to the
photograph/caption that
features the same (co-generic) string. That is, the relationship
and “placement” of a
photograph with respect to the dominant text is achieved by
means of a string that
appears twice but in different locations on the page or in the
book. The role of the string
is salient when we consider that a similar relationship does not
suggest how to link
caption and photograph. Here physical proximity is used to
suggest that the text directly
bears on something in the image. How this bearing might be
achieved still remains
undetermined at this point. (We discuss the nature of this
relationship and how the reader
enacts it in the next section.)
Two textbooks consistently used the same way of referencing
photographs/captions
either placing the indexical reference at the end of a paragraph
in which the co-thematic
concept appeared or not using an indexical reference at all. The
two other books each

employed three different ways in placing the indexical reference
in the main text. Thus,
the indexical reference was placed either at the end of the
paragraph or directly with the
co-thematic word or sentence or was absent altogether.
When the indexical reference is placed immediately after the
word or after/within the
sentence that is co-thematic with the photograph/caption, a
direct link is established
between what are on the surface different (because non-co-
generic) representations. On
the other hand, if the indexical reference is placed at the end of
a paragraph where there
are potentially multiple concepts presented, the link is no longer
direct. One may consider
the index “misplaced,” because the photograph/caption is not
evoked simultaneously with
the verbal texts. There is the potential that misplaced indexical
reference in books
interferes with sense-making processes in ways similar to
misplaced gestural indexical
reference that make it difficult to learn from lectures. Finally,
when there is no indexical

reference at all, it is totally up to the reader to see whether
there is any relation at all between a photograph/caption on the
main text on the same
particular page.
Figure 11 exemplifies a “misplaced” indexical reference. In this
situation, because the
index is placed in the end of the paragraph, the reader may
associate the photograph more
spontaneously with the last phrase or statement—particularly in
those textbooks where
the indexical referencing changes. The photographs represent
(1) a burned area and (2) an
a. b.
Factors of Ecological Disequilibrium
Changes in the structure of ecosystems
Deforestation
One of the most important ecological problems today
is the destruction of forests, as these occur with the
Atlantic Forest in Brazil. Today less than 10% of this
forest type remains compared to the period of
colonization. Each year, the world loses forest areas;
forests are cut or burned, leading to serious soil
da mage and causing a tmosphe ric pollution.

Furthermore, many species become extinct, thereby
decreasing “global biodiversity,” as scientists call the
large variety of living forms produced by biological
evolution. (Fig 4.1) Figure 4.1 Deforestation is a common way
of
damaging terrestrial ecosystems. (A) Photograph
of burned area in the Amazonian Forest, used to
create pasture areas for livestock farming. The fire
kills the microorganisms that fertilize the soil, and
the rains wash the nutrients away since the vegetal
coverage was destroyed. (B) Photograph of
regions of soil erosion provoked by the
elimination of the forests.
Figure 11. Example of an inscription with a ‘misplaced’
indexical reference. a. Main text. b. Photograph
and caption referred to at the end of the corresponding
paragraph in the main text.
area of erosion of the soil. Although the main text mentions
burning and cutting the trees
as ways of causing deforestation, the index to the photograph is
physically far away from
the specific phrase where deforestation is mentioned.
To associate the photographs with the main text, the reader
needs to go back to the
middle of the paragraph and find the specific phrase that refers
to deforestation. Then, the

reader must go back and forth in his or her attempt to read the
text. This reading requires
the reader to work from the text and the photographs, at the
same time “reading” and
“seeing” to make sense of the biological concept presented.
Figure 12 presents an example of an inscription with no index in
the main text. This
inscription presents two photographs: the photograph in the left
shows a river with
abundant vegetation in both its banks, and the photograph in the
right shows a desert. The
caption reads, “The amount of water and the richness of life are
interdependent.” Because
the main text does not contain an indexical reference, we can
only try to establish a
Figure 10 Quantity of water and richness of life are
interdependent.
Figure 12. Example of a photograph without any indexical
reference in the main text.

relation between text and photographs, the relationship of the
photograph to the main text
can only subsequent to reading the entire main text section and
the photograph/captions.
When the photographs appear alongside one another, the
composition highlights the
importance of water for the existence of life. Thus, through a
comparison of both
photographs, the reader is supposed to associate life and water
in the way intimated by
the caption. However, this is just one way to interpret this
inscription, and many other
interpretations can also emerge since there are no explicit
directions or enough
information in the main text or caption to help the reader to
make sense of this.
The situation becomes even more difficult when the photograph
is physically placed
far away (several pages) from the corresponding text. In this
situation, the reader will
find him- or herself completely “lost in the book,” since s/he
will not find any direct
association between the text and the figure, because of the
absence of the index.

Furthermore, the reader will have difficulty to manage the book
pages to associate the
figure with the text, because of the disposition of the inscription
many pages after the
one in which the text was placed. At this point, the figures even
Fig. 581. At left, the vice-king butterfly. At right, the monarch
butterfly, which has repugnant taste for the birds.
Because of the similarity between them, many birds reject the
first one, which benefits itself from mimicry.
Figure 13. Example of photographs arranged in pair, which
allows the reader to look for variant and
invariant properties.
though associated with captions, may serve decorative rather
than higher functions in the
text.
Single and Multiple Photographs
The arrangement of the visual document within the text
mediates our ability to see the
phenomenon represented in the photograph, that is, part of our

interpretation of the
photograph depends on the way in which the figure is
organized, and how the photograph
relates to other photographs. One way in which a photograph
can be related to others is as
part of a pair or a series. Photographs arranged in series allow
the reader to progressive
focusing his or her attention on the concept examined by the
text. Consider for instance
Figure 13. At a first glance, the reader may see these two
photographs as presenting the
same butterfly, due to the enormous similarity between the
species represented in both
photographs. However, the caption cautions us that the
photograph at right presents one
species of butterfly, and that, actually, the butterfly in the
photograph at left only seems
to be the same species as the earliest, what constitutes the
phenomenon called mimicry.
The authentication of the phenomenon of mimicry is presented
in the main text is
possible due to the arrangement of the photographs in a pair,
which allows the significant

differences become evident trough the process of comparison.
Nevertheless, a
Fig. 3.10 (A) Photograph of a Hibiscus plant
covered by the cipo-chumbo. In the detail, in
higher magnification, the relation between the
parasite and the stem of the host plant.
Figure 14. Example of multiple photographs, one being
constituted by the text as presenting the detail
of the other.
comparison between the two photographs is not enough to give
the images meaning. The
caption is also necessary to guide the reader to look for the
differences—instead of the
similarities that are more evident in this case—between the two
photographs, to
recognize the phenomenon of mimicry. Similarly, in a series of
photographs, as for
example in Figure 4 (p. 14), the process of authentication of the
phenomenon presented in
the text depends on the reader’s perception of the differences
between the photographs. In

making the photographs part of a series, the uncertainty about
the meaning is reduced,
and the reader, then, is able to eliminate everything that does
not change, in a process that
progressively highlights what there is to look at and make sense
of in this figure.
Another way in which a photograph can be related to others is
when it presents the
same object as another photograph, but in a different way,
which allows both
photographs to become complementary to each other (Figure
14). The first photograph
shows the plant in a broader view, while the second photograph
focuses on a specific part
of the same plant. Together, the two photographs allow the
reader to identify the plant in
the way in which it could appear in nature, and, at the same
time, pay attention to the
specific detail relevant to the concept presented by the main
text. Both photographs,
therefore, function as complementary to one another, the second
photograph becoming

Fig. 83.1- Epiphyte plant
Figure 15. Example of photograph that carries too much
information and it is unclear which of the
many plant is the “epiphyte plant.”
“part” of the first one, as a detail in higher magnitude, that
provides the reader a better
visualization of the phenomenon treated in the main text.
Multiple photographs,
therefore, allow the reader to make external comparisons and
therefore visualize the
phenomenon presented by the main text. A single photograph,
however, can only provide
internal comparisons, leading the reader to find the relevant
details in the photograph on
his or her own. Thus, in the process of interpretation of single
photographs, the directions
in the caption and other indications, as for example, letters or
arrows added over the
photograph itself, are important resources that guide the
reader’s attention to the “right”
detail.
For example, Figure 15 fails to demonstrate the object that it
should represent

according to the caption. The caption reads “Epiphyte plant,”
but there are many different
plants without distinction that allows him or her to identify the
epiphyte plant. Even
though there is a tree placed in the center of the photograph,
which may draw the reader’s
attention, it is not possible to identify the epiphyte plant, unless
the reader already knows
what to look for. That is, the reader has to know what an
epiphyte plant looks like in
order to find it in this photograph. The difficulty, in this case, is
related to the “framing”
(Bastide, 1990) of photographs, that is, the process by which the
reader narrows the
Figure 3.9 Photograph of the interior of a tropical forest,
showing
epiphyte plants, associated with host trees by inquilinism.
Figure 16. In this photograph is possible to identity the epiphyte
plants, even though it still present other
plants in the background.
perceptual field to eliminate as many irrelevant elements as

possible from the background
while trying to show the object as a whole.
The aim in framing photographs therefore has to be making sure
that it contains the
least information possible, for fear of confusing the meaning.
The details in the
background seem to carry no relevant information at all, despite
their function of making
the photograph more “natural,” because it can be perceived as a
depiction of a particular
piece of nature. However, the effect of realism does not depend
on the complete
reproduction of the world, but on the viewer’s perception of the
narrative and perceptual
order. Therefore, it could be more appropriate, at least in
certain situations, to present an
object against a neutral background, even if it compromises the
‘reality’ of the photograph
as a depiction of the real world. Compare Figure 15 to Figure
16, which also represents an
epiphyte plant. The relevant element in this photograph—the
epiphyte plant—is clearly
distinct from the background, even though the photograph still
presents other plants. The

epiphyte plant is not only in the center of the photograph but
also the only object that the
reader can clearly distinguish. The figure was framed to show
just
this particular plant, and all other objects are out of focus,
becoming part of the irrelevant
details in the background.
Fig. 78.2- The dead organic matter is decomposed by bacteria
and fungus, as we can see in this photograph of a leaf laying
down in the floor for months, and in final process of
decomposition.
Figure 17. The black background highlights the object
represented in the photograph.
Sometimes a completely black background is a better alternative
for highlighting the
phenomenon or object in the photograph (Figure 17). The reader
is immediately directed
to whatever is shown against the black background that is easily
identifiable as irrelevant.
Thus, the arrangement of the photographs in the books, as well
as the intrinsic

characteristics of the photographs themselves, have an impact
on the process of
interpretation of the figures, and consequently, in reader’s
ability to relate the photograph
with caption and main text.
This text is an adaptation of Roth, W.-M., &
Friesen, N. (2014). Nacherzeugung,
Nachverstehen: a
phenomenological perspective on how public
understanding of science changes by engaging
with online
media. Public Understanding of Science, 23, 850–
865. You can access the original article through
the UVic
institutional subscription:
http://journals.sagepub.com.ezproxy.library.uvic.ca/doi/pdf/10.1
177/0963662513512441
I did the research because of my interest in
the kinds of things that online resources
make available for
viewers to make sense. Often people of all
sorts say that such online resources allow them to
understand
what they did not understand in a lecture. The
video analyzed in this text can be accessed
through a URL
given in footnote 2. You should watch the
video before reading this text.
This text also provides you with more understanding of

how and why humans learn.
– 1 –
3. Recreation and Re-understanding: An example
3.1 Background
In the following, we use an example from
the medical field, in part because of the
importance of William
Harvey to the development of science more
generally and because of the potential role of
health as a
context for developing learner interest in science
education more generally. Anyone wanting to be
informed about how the heart and circulatory system
works has opportunities to find relevant
information
online. In fact, the editor of a journal on
medical education praises the Khan Academy, a
YouTube based
system of tutorials, as an important tool for
teaching about cancer. There is an
emerging number of studies
investigating or advocating for the communicative
impact of YouTube on spreading medical
information.
For the following illustrative analysis, we randomly
took one of the items that resulted from an
online
search for videos using the terms “heart”
and “circulatory system.” The video turned
out to be from a
popular science series for children and youth:

Bill Nye the Science Guy. It has been suggested
that that
videos like the one Bill Nye produced entice teenage
students to return to the video. Typical
comments
accompanying the video suggest that viewers of all
ages appear to benefit from it—e.g., “Lol this
made my
day. I've been studying for the exam tomorrow for
over 4 hours a day for 3 days. This
video made me
understand it better, in a kinda fun way.
:P” and “lol I'm a college_ student, and I'm
still learning from this
guy.” The Nacherzeugung or Nachverstehen that this
video may make possible differs, however,
from
Harvey’s originary idealizations—and of course also
from the circumstances he offers for their
reproduction—because the common sense of the
early 17th century is different from common sense
one
today. Figure 2 presents the main part of the
transcription of a videotape, including key
images, from the
Bill Nye series available on YouTube on the heart
and circulatory system.1
1 The videotape is available at.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GbttJ-

5do9M&lc=TL2097SFBrASMlA0cL91_ZjOAXRQOeV0iwAb_a
_BwoI; Details and lesson guides are available at
http://www.billnye.com/for-kids-teachers/episode-details/
and
http://www.billnye.com/episodes/pdf/episodeguide76.pdf.
From Commonsense to Scientific Sense
2
Figure 2.
3.2 Analysis
The video makes available a wide range of
resources that offer the possibility of
Nacherzeugung and
Nachverstehen and, therefore, a transition from everyday
sense to scientific sense. Most importantly,
perhaps, as our analysis shows, the video
capitalizes on the learning opportunities that
come with
multimodality. Though any one particular viewing might
be insufficient to produce a complete
scientific
understanding, the possibility to do so is given
with the resources provided.
3.2.1 From commonsense to scientific sense
There are at least two lifeworld experiences to
which such a video on the motion of
the heart appeals.

On the one hand, there is the fundamental
experience of being in the world, and
knowing our way around
the world: persons exerting themselves, losing
consciousness in an extreme flight maneuver,
standing in a
doctor’s office, being auscultated. Second, these
fundamental commonsense ways of being in
the world
become the basis of an extension into the scientific
view of the heart and its motions in the way
that these
have been conceived of by Doctor Harvey (1628)
and his successors.
On the vertically subdivided screen, one part
continuing to show the busy exercise room,
Bill Nye
emerges, as if from exertion on the right, the
left part featuring a cross-section of the heart
filled with blue
and red liquid. An appeal is made to relate
the heart to the exercise in the gym behind
Nye, which may
3
evoke in the viewer past experiences of
exercise, and to the sound of the beating
heart, which is audible
together with the noise from the gym. The image
(turn 02) is also a representation or, in the
discourse of
the social studies of science, an inscription. It

is no longer a naturalistic depiction, such as
shown together
with the lungs in the human anatomy by
Descartes (1662) or verbally described by Harvey
(1628), but a
cross-section that is unavailable to natural
observation. It is also a form of presentation
that at the time of
Harvey was not yet used or known. (Contemporary
illustrations typically show figures with incisions,
layers of skin and muscle flayed to reveal
hidden bones or organs—with minimal
schematic simplification).
There is a slight “pumping action” that is
visible—a narrowing and widening of the lower
part of the
animated representation of the heart (turns 02, 10–12).
This is evident when the two extreme
configurations of the heart in Turn 10 are plotted
unto each other. The periodic expansion and
contraction
is of the kind that Harvey’s description in De
motu appeals to as visual experience: “the
heart is erected and
rises upward to a point … it is everywhere
contracted, but more toward the sides, thus,
using less
magnitude, it appears longer and more collected.”
That is, the animated illustration makes an
appeal to the
same form of visibility that emerged in Harvey’s careful,
in vivo studies of the hearts of different
animals,
especially in situations where the heart movements
were sufficiently slow to make precisely the
observations that could become the decisive

evidence for the associated idealization. The
observation is
based on and grounded in the everyday experience
of the world, against the resting earth as a
ground. The
motion, in contrast to rest, is itselfperceived and
perceivable only against an unthematic ground.
Harvey began his investigation not with the
intent to overturn the canonical explanation
that was
reigning at the time. Rather, his goal was to see
the motions and characteristics of the heart [usu
cordis] via
his own observations rather than by what he could
read in other people’s books. An important
dimension
of the video is that it makes these motions
visible for its (generally non-scientific) audience.
Harvey found
this a “truly difficult” exercise to the point that he
felt God alone could understand the
meaning of the
heart’s movements. He initially could not tell
systole and diastole apart, and dilations and
constrictions
were, as Harvey wrote, “like a flash of
lightening.” The systole appeared to him at
one time here, the
diastole there, then reversed, varied and confused. As
a result, he could not reach a
decision about what to
conclude on his own and what to believe based on
the writings of others. It is in the course
of his
investigation of cold-blooded animals and his

observation of the hearts in dying
creatures that he came to
identify those moments in the heart’s motion
that are so unproblematically depicted in the
Bill Nye video.
That is, this “larger-than-life” (turn 01) model
facilitates making the crucial observations that
Harvey’s
original transition to a scientific idealization
required.
Harvey makes reference to three significant
observations to be made: (a) the heart rises to
the apex
(where it strikes the chest such that it can be
felt); (b) the heart contracts, particularly on the
sides, which
makes it appear narrower and longer; and (c)
the heart feels harder when it moves then
when at rest. He
adds that in coldblooded animals the heart is lighter
in colorduring the motion phase than during
the
resting phase. The translator of the 1928 publication
comments on these observations in a footnote to
the
English text. “This is the first of that remarkable
series of extraordinarily acute observations on
the motion
of the heart and blood so simply and clearly
reported by Harvey in this book.” These
observations can be
made in different parts of the excerpt (turn 02,
07, 09) but especially when the cross-section of
the heart is
shown as it pumps the blood to the
pulmonary system and into the body (turns

10–12).
Central to the perspective Harvey developed
was the fourfold chambers of the heart and their
relative
sizes. This number is also made explicit in
the video, already apparent at turn 02, but
especially from the
image and text in Turns 10–12. What Harvey
first articulated as the different roles of the
two sides of the
heart, one in the circuit to the lung and back,
the other in the circuit to the periphery of
the body and back,
is indicated in the video in the different
coloring, blue for the left, and red for the right
(from viewer).
3.2.2 Visibilization
The motion of the heart is only very indirectly
accessible to everyday experience and, therefore, is
not
subject to the same kind of apodictic evidence that
provides us with our everyday, common sense of
the
world. The blood circuit is also not available to
observation as such. It is therefore not
surprising that these
4
features, do not generally appear in children’s
drawings or that even teachers have misconceptions
about

this bodily system. In fact, the blood circuit
was not available to Harvey, in whose time
the body was
thought more of as a collection of different
organs—much in the way that children represent
these today.
In fact, the translator of the 1928 edition notes
that Harvey, in his philosophical orientation, is
still
fundamentally Aristotelian. One way of describing
the issue, therefore, is in terms of a
transition made from
an Aristotelian perspective to what subsequently
was recognized as the first modern description
of the
motions of the heart and blood and a first modern
explanation of its circulatory function. That is,
on the
grounds of an Aristotelian worldview, as
embodied in the work of the ancient Greek
physician Galen, a new,
very different worldview arises. It is in and
through such representations as presented with Turn 09
and
Turns 13–14, that everyday experiences with liquids
flowing and under pressure may enable
idealizations
of the circulatory system. That is, although not
visible as such, knowledge of a
circulatory system is enabled
through the use of inscriptions that themselves
draw on experiences in our technologized world.
3.2.3 Appeal to everyday, practical understanding
As suggested above, our everyday lifeworld is

the intuitively concrete world that is
antecedent to
science, but which always relates to the former
with respect to the constitution of sense.
Any scientific
object, any scientific discourse, is based on our
mundane, everyday common sense, however much
the
former might seem to contradict the latter. These
understandings are extended metaphorically to the
aspects and functions of the body that are not
immediately accessible by the senses.
Following the part of the video featuring
representations of the heart and circulatory system
(turns 02–
17), the video appeals precisely to everyday
experiences in a scene shot on a lawn
involving a narrator and
a “subject.” The narrator, a young woman, talks
about normal heart rates and compares these to
rates while
sleeping (lower, with diminished need for oxygen),
when surprised or scared (when the heart
rate speeds
up), and while doing “intense physical exercise”
(the body needs more oxygen). In the background,
a young
man sleeps, is suddenly awakened, and then jogs.
The video finally shifts back to black
and white
documentary footage, with a doctor auscultating a
baby and then an old man, while explaining
that the
heart beats about two and one half billion times
over an average lifetime. Harvey, too, appealed to
the

everyday experiences of the pulse and its change
with various activities: “It is not supposed to be
that the
uses of the pulse and the respiration are the
same, because, under the influences of the
same causes, such
as running, anger, the warm bath, or any other
heating thing (as Galen says) they become more
frequent
and forcible together … but in young persons
the pulse is quick, whilst respiration is
slow. So it is also in
alarm, and amidst care, and under anxiety of
mind; sometimes, too, in fevers, the pulse
is rapid, but the
respiration is slower than usual.” In this
quotation, Harvey appeals to the very same
everyday experiences
as the analyzed video does. This highlights the
specific observations that can be made in
such situations:
the sound of an accelerated heartbeat is audible
after exercising, and illustrated when Nye is
moving into
and through the gym or the teen is jogging. These,
then, become part of the (what shall become
the
scientific) argument that respiration and blood flow
are two separate systems.
Prior to Harvey, a particular, shared
sense certainly did exist about the heart and
blood in the human
being. Shakespeare, for example, writes of “a
voice issu[ing] from so empty a heart,”
then confirms that the
common saying is true “The empty vessel makes

the greatest sound.” These types of sense
are based on the
self-evidently true (apodictic) experiences of people
generally and scientists in particular. Harvey’s
“discoveries” arose from and against this common
sense. But because Harvey himself grew up in
this
culture, in and through his scientific practice, a
new “sense” came to work against and overcame
his
existing common sense. At the same time, this
experience with the tools and materials for his
work
provided the foundation on which the new
scientific sense is to be built. Moreover,
the old sense does not
completely disappear: it continues to exist in the
general culture, as shown in the science
education
literature reviewed above.
The video, finally, is characterized by a
functional discourse prefigured, but not fully
realized, in
Harvey’s idealizations. Harvey generally did not writein
the functional language that would only develop
during the later part of the seventeenth century. In
his text, the word ūsus [use] and its inflections
are much
5
more frequent than the word fūnctiō [function].” But
his descriptions, by means of Recreating/

Re-
understanding, make it into a part of the general
culture and also into other sciences: they not only
lend
themselves to such developments, but also they became
the sources for metaphorical and analogical
extensions into other fields, such as economics,
where the idea—one might even say the
“culture”—of
continuous circulation took hold: It is only after
Harvey that the category of circulation became
a
fundamental analytical tool in many sciences. In
fact, it was over a century later that function
takes on the
dominant role over structure and other descriptive
approaches to organisms.
3.2.4 Appeal to other experiential modes
Besides the visual mode, the video also
provides resources for the auditory sense.
Throughout the
video, there are periods when the audience can
hear in the background of the soundtrack,
more or less
clearly, the beat of a heart (e.g., during the
opening part, when Nye shows up on the
split screen next to the
heart, turn 02). The beating heart, especially
following exercise, is something directly accessible to
our
senses. The pulse, too, is easily accessible;
and we learn early in life how to feel the pulse
on the neck or
near the base of the thumb. It is a common
experience that offers opportunities for an

idealization of the
organ. Harvey uses the analogy with a horse
that drinks, whereby the movements of the
throat can be
heard and felt. A similar case exists in the
heart, where with each portion of blood
transduced in the veins
and arteries, “a pulse is made, and can be
heard in the chest.” Harvey’s is one of
the first recorded
observations of the heart sounds. Today, such as in
the video, no special mention is necessary
that the
pounding we can hear while exercising is associated
with the heart.
4. Discussion
In this study, we use a phenomenological
perspective on the question of the overturning
of pre-
scientific understandings through common sense and
sensuous observation and evidence. The pre-
scientific understanding comes to be sedimented in,
and to form the basis of, scientific understanding
even
as the former is overturned. The essence of
our proposal runs like this: In every constitution
of (scientific)
sense that occurs as someone engages with online
materials such as a YouTube video on the
human body,
something of the original constitution and experience
of the body is relived and reenacted. However,
because culture has changed, the constitution as a

starting point is no longer exactly the same:
as that
which is apodictically self-evident, everyday
common sense itselfhas changed.
Such a phenomenological approach is fruitful
because it provides an answer to the
question how the
way in which we experience the world
everyday leadsto abstract scientific knowledge.
Even more
fundamentally, it answers how mundane, everyday
knowledge is used as a resource for
achieving a form of
knowledge that ultimately transcends, overcomes
and retains the quotidian. In our pre-scientific
life
experience, we participate in the flux of life.
Although things change, we are certain to
see, touch, and hear
them, that is, know these things in their
properties as objectively real things that are in
this and not in
another way. This certainty of things, and the
associated apodictic certainty that we associate with
the
everyday world, gives us a sense of
objectivity and reality. Our normal, everyday,
mundane, and practical
lives are characterized by this sense-certainty, to
which the video also appeals. We share
this sense with
others, because of the common experience of a
pathic life, which also is the ground of
empathy and
sympathy. It therefore becomes the basis upon which
the pedagogical function of the video rests.

This
everyday, common sense constitutes the ground
and horizon for everything else we do and
learn. It
circumscribes the source of sense on which
other, newly acquired sense is built in a
continuous expansion
and transformation.
In the online video, viewers come to be
presented with the image of a two-color circuit.
It is a finished
result from observations and inferences not thematized
in the video. In Harvey’s De motu cordis, on
the
other hand, we can clearly observe the descriptions
that serve as the basis of inferences. Some
of these
descriptions were already known to others and,
therefore, also part of the Aristotelian viewpoint
that was
6
integral to Galen’s doctrine about the heart and
blood. One of the ideasthat Harvey created, in
and with De
motu cordis, was that of a continuous circuit as
part of which the heart has a special role:
that of pushing the
blood into the arteries right to the peripheral vessels.
The parts and their names already existed. It
was the
function and the functional whole that changed with

the work of Harvey. There is empirical
evidence that
everyday folk today have to move through the
same sort of process to achieve a first
idealization. Thus, a
study that analyzed the differences between experts
and novices of complex biological systems,
including
the human respiratory system showed that
whereas there are little differences between the
groups on
structures, but significant differences existed
between them on understanding functions and causal
relations.
In the video, the heart is presented as a
pump. Harvey himself did not explicitly see
the heart as a pump
operating in a closed system to keep the blood
flowing. It was the French philosopher René
Descartes
(1662) who articulated, 20 years after De motu
was published (i.e., in 1648), the idea of the
human heart as
a pump, the blood vessels as a circulatory
conduit system, and the human body as a
machine. The video clip
appeals to this common experience in the world,
in which learners of all ages experience
the function of
liquids and gasses being pumped and under
pressure in a range of technical contexts
(e.g., swimming pools,
hospitals, bicycle repair). These everyday experiences
change in the course of human cultural
history. Thus,

what was part of the everyday experience of being
in the world at the time of Harvey was
different than
those into which we are born today. For
example, pumps, plumbing and other machine systems
are part of
the everyday world that constitutes common sense
and, therefore, the background against which
we
constitute the sense of every new experience.
These provide resources for understanding the
heart and
circulatory system as systems, powered and
sustained by the systemic operation of machine
parts that
together form a coherent and interdependent whole.

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