Scientific Practices as an Actor-Network of Literacy Events: Forging a Convergence Between Disciplinary Literacy and Scientific Practices

Abstract

Researchers working in the intersection of literacy and science education have increasingly acknowledged and emphasised the convergence between disciplinary literacy and scientific practices. Although there is a need to connect disciplinary literacy and scientific practices, there has been little theoretical development that bridges the two areas with a common conceptual frame of reference. In this chapter, I explore several key ideas that inform recent developments in disciplinary literacy and scientific practices and subsequently develop an approach based on actor-network theory to link those ideas. In particular, I conceptualise scientific practices as an actor-network of literacy events distributed across human and non-human actors over time and space. Using examples from classroom events, I illustrate how this approach provides a way to analyse the enactment and characteristic of scientific practices in terms of the network configuration of literacy events that are observable and interactionally constructed through language.