particles’ option the resources of movement as they are realised on the screen are
underpinned by different epistemological positions to knowledge. That is, in the ‘hide
particles’ view the resources of movement show ‘change’ while in the ‘view
particles’ option the resources of movement depict the motivating force behind these
changes.
As described in the previous section on the reshaping of the entities of school science
different epistemological positions are embedded in the ‘hide’ and ‘view’ particles
options of the CD-ROM. In selecting and switching between these two views of
‘states of matter’ what is ‘relevant’ or ‘significant’ to the construction of curriculum
entities is changed and what the students need to be attended to is altered, alongside
this the students’ position in relation to knowledge is also changed. The students
chose different viewing options when working with the CD-ROM in the lesson. The
viewing position that they chose contributed to the shaping of the curriculum entities
‘states of matter’ and ‘particles’ and themselves as learners. Students who worked
with the ‘hide particles’ viewing option were involved in the task of observing the
everyday for evidence of the phenomenon ‘states of matter’ and hypothesising the
reasons for the behaviour that they observed. Students who worked in the ‘view
particles’ option were engaged in observing the multimodal representation of
scientific theory of particles and recording the behaviour of particles in each state.
The students who switched between the two views were involved both in the
observation of ‘the empirical world’, prediction and scientific explanation.
The students’ comments on the work sheet and around the screen show that they
constructed their agency in relation to the CD-ROM ‘investigation’ in different ways.
Some students positioned themselves as active in the investigation displayed in the
‘screen within a screen’ and others positioned themselves as ‘passive’ observers of it.
The students’ positioning of themselves can be seen both as a sign of their response
to the ambiguity of the resources of the screen which displayed the students both as
active and as observers of the demonstration, and their appropriation of the genre of
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