This paper analyses students’ conceptual sense-making of two representations of protein synthesis: animations and static visualizations. Even though several studies have focused on the effect of animations versus static visualizations or support aspects that enable students to effectively benefit from animations, existing research has not yet analysed the activity of students’ shared conceptual sense-making of these two modes of representation. Grounded in sociocultural perspectives, this study addresses this gap by investigating two classes of 10th graders working in the computer-supported Viten learning environment. One class worked on a unit containing animations, and the other on a unit where animations were replaced by static visualizations. Pre- and post-tests were administered to measure possible differences between the classes in their knowledge acquisition. Aiming to explain the quantitative findings, we performed an interaction analysis to scrutinize the interaction trajectory of two dyads, one from each condition, while working on an animation and static visualization of protein synthesis both in class and in conceptual interviews. Our pre- and post-test findings demonstrate that students in the animated condition outperformed students in the static condition. The analysis of a dyad’s interaction indicates that students’ conceptual understanding develops at the juncture of segmentation of animation and text and students’ collaborative conceptual sense-making. We argue that interacting with animations and static visualizations are two different interactional processes, and based on our theoretical grounding, we hypothesise that this difference explains the different learning outcomes in the two conditions. By taking a sociocultural approach, the study provides a deeper understanding of the very activity in settings in which students are introduced to the scientific concepts embedded in animations versus static visualizations. Cognitive theories explaining students’ learning from these two modes of representations dominate the research field. The current study contributes to the field by launching a hypothesis of why animations may be superior to static visualizations in supporting students’ development of conceptual understanding in science. We introduce the collaborative link-making hypothesis , which builds on the conceptualisation of pedagogical link-making introduced by well-known researchers in the field of science education.

中文翻译：

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学生对蛋白质合成的动画和静态可视化的概念理解：解释为什么动画可能对学生学习有益的社会文化假设

本文分析了学生对蛋白质合成的两种表示形式的概念性理解：动画和静态可视化。尽管有几项研究侧重于动画与静态可视化的效果或使学生能够有效地从动画中受益的支持方面，但现有研究尚未分析学生对这两种表示模式的共享概念意义构建的活动。本研究基于社会文化观点，通过调查在计算机支持的 ​​Viten 学习环境中工作的两个班级 10 年级学生来解决这一差距。一个班级在一个包含动画的单元上工作，另一个在一个用静态可视化代替动画的单元上工作。进行了前测和后测，以衡量课程之间在知识获取方面可能存在的差异。为了解释定量结果，我们进行了交互分析，以仔细检查两个二元组的交互轨迹，一个来自每个条件，同时在课堂和概念访谈中制作蛋白质合成的动画和静态可视化。我们的测试前和测试后结果表明，动画条件下的学生表现优于静态条件下的学生。对二元互动的分析表明，学生的概念理解是在动画和文本分割与学生协作概念意义构建的结合点上发展起来的。我们认为与动画和静态可视化交互是两个不同的交互过程，并且基于我们的理论基础，我们假设这种差异解释了两种情况下不同的学习结果。通过采用社会文化方法，该研究更深入地了解了在向学生介绍嵌入动画与静态可视化中的科学概念的环境中的活动。解释学生从这两种表征模式中学习的认知理论主导了研究领域。目前的研究提出了一个假设，即为什么动画在支持学生发展科学概念理解方面可能优于静态可视化，从而为该领域做出了贡献。我们介绍了协作链接制作假设，