| dc.description.abstract | This thesis investigates how students negotiate identity in school science discourse when working with representations. This thesis is written as part of the REDE-project, which conducts research on the use of representations in school science, in order to create resources for teaching. In this thesis, the aim is to investigate how students in upper secondary school negotiate identity in the subject of natural science. I achieved this through investigating different performances of student identity, as well as a number of states that detail the nature of students’ discourse. In this thesis, I considered identity something that can be performed in social interaction, rather than something a person possesses. I used data from video observation and student interviews from a Natural Science class in Norwegian upper secondary school for analysis. I have analyzed four groups of Natural Science students and how they perform identity in a group drawing project centered around the greenhouse effect and global warming. I constructed a framework for analyzing three different student identity performances, Assessment Performance, Behavioral Compliance and Muscular intellect. In tandem with these, I also used another framework for analyzing the students’ discursive identity status, ordered into four states of increasing incorporation of science in discourse. The results show that the students focused on making a representation where everyone in the group contributed and where the representation was easy to understand for other students, however the students did not associate their drawings or methods with representations in “real” science. Their negotiation in making the representations was closer to a school science approach that valued comprehension before scientific complexity. The results also show that students could negotiate to gain power and recognition within the group. The findings from this thesis show that students are possibly more connected to the school version of science culture, and that they incorporate everyday and “real” science identity elements only to a small degree in their representations. The identity performances and states I present only demonstrate a few of the characteristics of students’ identity negotiation, but nevertheless contribute to the students’ discourse. The findings can be used to further research in student discourse and in the interplay of everyday, school and science culture. | eng |