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Apprenticeship and the associated support mechanism of scaffolding have received considerable interest by educational researchers as ways of inducting students into science. Most studies treat scaffolding as a one-way process, where the expert supports the development of the novice. However, if social processes generally and conversations specifically are dialogical in nature then we would expect to observe two-way processes. The purpose of this paper is to report the results of an ethnographic study of high school students' internships in a scientific laboratory. Data were collected through observation, fieldnotes, and videotaping. Drawing on discursive psychology and conversation analysis, we find that laboratory technicians and students draw on different forms of discursive strategies to articulate knowledgeability while transacting with each other. We put forth the notion of emergent expertise to describe new forms of expertise that are not a property of individuals but rather the product of collective transactions. Our study illustrates the importance of opportunities generated in the internship for both old-timers and newcomers to bring about knowledgeability. This study implies a rethinking of the role of the expert and the notion of scaffolding, which puts more emphasis on the transactional process rather than on learners as recipients.

One of the main objectives of many science educators is to enroll students into science majors and careers. Researchers have investigated students' views of science in terms of factors and influences that guide students to choose science as a career. However, few investigations exist that have studied the forms of language culture makes available for articulating possible careers generally or the ways of grounding (justifying) these possibilities particularly. The purpose of this study is to investigate ways of using language for supporting justifications of career choices in an interview situation. Thirteen high school biology students were interviewed about their career choices. Drawing on discursive psychology as theory and method, we identify four interpretative repertoires that are deployed during the interviews: the (a) formative, (b) performative, (c) consequent, and (d) potential repertoires. These interpretative repertoires do not merely characterize the discourse about different science‐related professions but in fact co‐articulate different science‐related identities. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 46: 1114–1136, 2009

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Systemic functional linguistics (SFL) was the foundation for this study that explored the effect of science text and image integration on grade 9 students_ reading comprehension. Two texts in Chinese on the moon phase with different print and image integration were comparedVa traditional textbook (TT) used in Taiwanese junior high schools and a systemic functional linguistics text (SFLT) created by the authors for this study. These two texts contained similar concepts but had major differences in several features: technicality, representational structure, degree of modality, and interaction between print and image. A control-experimental design with pretest, posttest, and semistructured interviews was used. In total, 132 junior high school students were randomly assigned to two groups: one group (n=69) read the TT and the other group (n=63) read the SFLT. Sixteen students with both high and low performances in the posttest were purposely selected as the subjects of the follow-up interviews. Major findings were: (a) students who read the SFLT demonstrated significantly better achievement than those who read the TT, and (b) students who read the TT generated more misconceptions about the moon phase and had greater difficulty in making sense of the images than the students who read the SFLT. Accordingly, SFL may serve as a useful theoretical framework and tool in the design of textbooks and may have a practical application in the science classroom.