Language as a realization of scientific reasoning in scientific texts and its importance for promoting secondary school students' disciplinary literacy

Communication of scientific information in the scientific community is achieved mainly through scientific texts. The scientific discourse is often referred to as a “register,” a constellation of lexical and grammatical features that characterizes particular uses of language. Thus the language of different text genres (e.g. research articles, popular articles, books, etc.) varies as it is used in different contexts for different purposes. Research articles convey epistemological assumptions scientists operate with. Accordingly, these articles have evolved certain grammatical features, figures of speech and rhetorical patterns, which reflect on the scientist’s worldview and reasoning. In this chapter, we review the functionality of the scientific language in research articles for producing and organizing scientific knowledge. More specifically, we discuss how the language of research articles provides the semiotic means to build arguments throughout the article. Next we introduce Adapted Primary Literature (APL), an educational genre specifically designed to enable the use of research articles for learning biology in high-school. We discuss a pedagogical approach for promoting students’ and teachers’ epistemological understanding by using the APL as an apprenticeship genre, for learning the unique features of scientific language and of scientific communication and reasoning and for promoting scientific literacy.