Interpretations of graphs by university biology students and practicing scientists: Toward a social practice view of scientific representation practices

Using graphs is a key social practice of professional science. As part of a research program that investigates the development of graphing practices from elementary school to professional science activities, this study was designed to investigate similarities and differences in graph-related interpretations between scientists and college students engaged in collective graph interpretation. Forty-five students in a second-year university ecology course and four scientists participated in the study. Guided by domain- specific concerns, scientists' graph-related activities were characterized by a large number of experience-based, domain-specific interpretive resources and practices. Students' group based activities were characterized by the lack of linguistic distinctions (between scientific terms) which led to ambiguities in group negotiations; there was also a lack of knowledge about specific organism populations which helped field ecologists construct meaning. Many students learned to provide correct answers to specific graphing questions but did not come to make linguistic distinctions or increase their knowledge of specific populations. In the absence of concerns other than to do well in the course, students did not appear to develop any general interpretive skills for graphs, but learned instead to apply the professor's interpretation. This is problematic because, as we have demonstrated, there are widely differing viable interpretations of the graph. Suggestions for changes in learning environments for graphing that should alleviate this problem are made. © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 36: 1020–1043, 1999