The point of departure of this study is the increasing use and popularity of so-called
socioscientific problems in educational practice. For the study of learning, such
problems are interesting from theoretical as well as methodological points of view.
Such problems can be articulated in terms of the relationship between learning in the
context of science education, and what Bakhtin (1986) referred to as “heteroglossia.”
This exotic term captures something that is, we argue, not so cryptic. In fact, it is close
to our everyday experiences. What the term alludes to is the observation that there are
diverse ways of communicating and knowing about objects and events. In other
words, and to continue in Bakhtinian parlance, in the complex society there are many
“speech genres” that reflect how different social groups or institutions communicate
about what they do. If we take a simple object as, let us say, an orange, it can be
discussed, analysed, and thought about in many different ways and in many different
genres. The satisfied consumer may speak of its delicious taste and its juicyness, the
dietician will speak of it in terms of nutritional value and richness in vitamin C, and the
artist may attend to it in terms of its colour, shape and texture in the context of what is
to be a still life. At more abstract levels, we can think of the importer of oranges, the
transport companies shipping oranges from their sites of production to consumers all
over the world, and the economist, in her role as advisor to a multinational company,
analysing the supply and demand in the market for oranges, as thinking and
communicating about oranges in very diverse manners. In the latter cases, the terms
and concepts that are productive are very different from those that characterize the
consumer enjoying his morning fruit or the shop owner trying to persuade customers to
purchase fresh oranges. Thus, the orange as a physical object is embedded in diverse
social practices where very different “speech genres” and conceptual frameworks are
relevant. Learning, in the sense of mastering what Vygotsky (1986) refers to as
scientific concepts, implies being able to contextualize phenomena in discourses that
are often at odds with those that are used in everyday settings. Furthermore, in many
situations there will be multiple, sometimes rivalling, scientific discourses that are
relevant.
In the present chapter, we want to illustrate how heteroglossia, and complexities of
speech genres, are related to learning and thinking in the context of understanding
scientific argumentation. Our ambitions are a) to argue for the significance of
Å MÄKITALO A JAKOBSSON R SÄLJÖ
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considering the complexity and diversity of speech genres (or discourses) when
studying and theorizing about learning, and b) to illustrate the difficulties students
encounter when faced with problems where multiple contextualisation must be handled
in face-to-face interaction.
We will do this by means of some examples from a case study, which illustrate the
difficulties students have in dealing with so-called socioscientific problems (see below)
that have become so popular in many science classrooms. We will also address the
analytical challenges related to studying the demands on students in such complex
settings. In our opinion, the methodological and theoretical consequences of this
complexity of speech genres for our understanding of human learning are significant.