Curating blood: how students’ and researchers’ drawings bring potential phenomena to light

D. B. Hay*, S. Pitchford

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

11 Citations (Scopus)
650 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

This paper explores students and researchers drawings of white blood cell recruitment. The data combines interviews with exhibit of review-type academic images and analyses of student model-drawings. The analysis focuses on the material aspects of bio-scientific data-making and we use the literature of concrete bioscience modelling to differentiate the qualities of students model-making choices: novelty versus reproduction; completeness versus simplicity; and the achievement of similarity towards selected model targets. We show that while drawing on already published images, some third-year undergraduates are able to curate novel, and yet plausible causal channels in their graphic representations, implicating new phenomenal potentials as lead researchers do in their review-type academic publications. Our work links the virtues of drawing to learn to the disclosure of potential epistemic things, involving close attention to the contours of non-linguistic stuff and corresponding sensory perception of substance; space; time; shape and size; position; and force. The paper documents the authority and power students may achieve through making knowledge rather than repeating it. We show the ways in which drawing on the images elicited by others helps to develop physical, sensory, and sometimes affective relations towards the real and concrete world of scientific practice.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)2596-2620
Number of pages25
JournalInternational Journal of Science Education
Volume38
Issue number17
Early online date18 Nov 2016
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 21 Nov 2016

Keywords

  • drawing to learn
  • Higher education
  • models and modelling
  • visualisation

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