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This study is a secondary analysis of six previous studies that formed part of an ongoing research program focused on examining the benefits of using writing-to-learn strategies within science classrooms. The study is an attempt to make broader generalizations than those based on individual studies, given limitations related to sample sizes, topics, and classroom contexts. The results indicated that using writing-to-learn strategies was advantageous for students compared to those students working with more traditional science writing approaches. Using diversified types of writing enabled students in treatment groups to score significantly better on conceptual questions and total test scores than those in comparison groups. Importantly, when the cognitive demand of the question is increased from an extended recall to a design type question, there are significant performance differences between comparison and treatment groups in favour of treatment. The authors argue that the use of writing-to-learn strategies requires students to re-represent their knowledge in different forms and, as such, greater learning opportunities exist. Traditional writing strategies tend to favour replication of knowledge rather than re-representation knowledge.

In the study of science topics especially in physics students are expected to move between different modes of representation when dealing with a particular concept as any science concept can be represented in several different modes. The difficulty for students is that they are often unable to move between these multi‐modal representations and thus struggle with having a rich conceptual understanding of the topic. In this study students are asked to explain their understandings of the topic through writing and embedding different modes of representation, text only, text plus math, and text plus graph. A pre‐post test design was used to compare performances of groups who used different modes in their writing during a three‐staged unit of electricity. While students' scores were not statistically different at the end of the first stage, at the end of the stage 2, students who were asked to embed mathematical representation in their letters to explain concepts of Faraday's Law of Induction had test scores that were significantly better than either of the other two conditions. At the end of the stage 3 there were several statistical mean differences noted supporting the pattern of the advantage of using embedded text plus mathematical representation in writings. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 46: 225–247, 2009

This study aims to investigate the effect of integrating the Argument-Based Science Inquiry (ABSI) approach with multi-modal representations on students' achievement, and their argumentation and writing skills. The study was conducted with 62 female and 57 male college students at the Central Anatolian Turkish University. All participants were in their third year of the science education program. The study was carried out within four identical sections of a "Laboratory Applications in Science" course with an instructor and two lab assistants in the 2010-11 academic year. While the ABSI approach was implemented in all sections, additional multimodal awareness and integration instruction was carried out in two of the randomly assigned sections. The collected data included midterm and final exam scores, as well as science activity writing reports. Qualitative and quantitative data was analyzed to explore differences between ABSI only (comparison) and ABSI and Multi-Modal (treatment) groups on science academic achievement, argumentation and writing skills. Analyses yielded that the students in the treatment group not only outscored the students in the comparison group on the science achievement tests, but also demonstrated significantly higher performances in writing and argumentation scores.