Abstract
This socio-cultural case study investigates students work and meaning making in a lower secondary school science class. The research question for the thesis are: 1. What characterizes group work in this multi-resource environment? 2. How do the students make sense of various representational forms? 3. How does the range of representational forms and resources challenge the class-room norms and rules? By employing an embedded strategy, this study s primary analysis is founded in interaction analysis, whilst quantitative data from student s written products and pre- and post-test are used for enriching and contextualization. Summed up, the main findings in this study are: Students are socialized into being students in schools, and changing the way in which they conduct their daily practices is not always without troubles. Removing the traditionally strong authority of the textbook, and allowing the students to freely inquire for information also removes the structures from the work. By lacking structures such as clear tasks, how to divide the labour and what representations and representational tools to use, students may easily lose track of the purpose of their activity. Without a clear object to direct their activity towards, the students in this study struggle to do fully collaborative work, and their meaning making processes with complex scientific concepts often stay procedural.