Using Multimodal Narratives to Study Relationships Between Concepts

In conceptual teaching and learning, relationships between concepts play a key role. This chapter describes a case where two conceptual fields, water and energy, were treated in order to promote understanding of relationships between them. It deals with the importance of “potential relationships” and describes how multimodal narratives contributed to those elucidations and to these practices in the classroom and their interpretation, as well as to the professional development of teachers. The chapter elucidates concept use, relating concepts, ways of discerning relationships between concepts, loss of relationship opportunities that were created by students, and ways of verifying that certain relationships were achieved.