Science communication in teacher personal pronouns

In this study, I explore how personal pronouns used by elementary teachers during science inquiry discussions communicate science and frame teacher–student–science relations. A semiotic framework is adopted wherein teacher pronominal choices are viewed as symbolically expressing cognitive meanings (scientific thinking, forms of expression, and concepts) and indexically communicating social meanings (hidden messages about social and personal aspects of science—human agency, science membership, and gender). Through the construction of interactional maps and micro‐ethnographic analysis of classroom video‐recordings, I focus specifically on participant examples (oral descriptions of actual or hypothetical situations wherein the teacher presents herself and/or her students as characters to illustrate topics under discussion). This analysis revealed that the teacher use of the generalised you communicated to the students how to mean scientifically (i.e. to speak like a scientist), while I communicated scientific ways of thinking and reasoning. Furthermore, teacher pronouns communicated the social nature of science (NOS) (e.g. science as a human enterprise) as well as multiple teacher–student–science relational frames that were inclusive of some students (mainly boys) but excluded girls (i.e. positioned them as science outsiders). Exclusive use of he was taken as indicative of a gender bias. It is argued that science teachers should become more aware of the range of personal pronouns available for science instruction, their advantages and constraints for science discussions, their potential as instructional tools for humanising and personalising impersonal science curricula as well as the risk of ‘NOS’ miscommunication.