There has been a recent increase in research interest in the ways that visual representation is used to facilitate students’ understanding in science classrooms. Yet while many studies have explored individual students’ drawing, few studies have looked into drawing as a collective tool to engage students in thinking and talking together in science classrooms. This study employed a case study approach to understand some of the possibilities for visual representation construction as a collective reasoning tool. By examining two cases of visual representation construction during classroom talk in two elementary science classrooms, this study demonstrates how teachers use visual representation as an instructional strategy, and how visualization engages students’ reasoning, meaning making, and social interactions. We selected two cases that demonstrate the emergence of the teacher’s and students’ drawing activities and analyzed each with a focus on the interactions that occur during the construction of visual representation and how this interaction promotes scientific reasoning and meaning making. For the case analysis, three researchers reviewed the video cases separately several times, and then collectively developed in-depth discussion to bring forth possible themes. The findings include (a) that there were common grounds of visual representation established for collective reasoning, and (b) that visual representations expanded knowledge and reasoning from the individual to social level, thus playing a critical role in students’ reasoning and knowledge building during classroom talk. Pedagogical questions and reflection are discussed for further research on visualization as a cognitive and social tool in classrooms.

Utilisation of instructional videos for science teaching has become more widespread due to the expansion of online teaching and learning environments and growing awareness of benefits of videos, such as enabling use of effective multiple representations. With this in mind, this study aimed to examine features of instructional videos for teaching scientific inquiry, a key element of science education, and learners’ engagement, a crucial issue in instruction in terms of representational strategies used. We analysed 16 instructional videos for science teaching generated by pre-service teachers. We found that the instructional videos tended to focus on posing a question related to a phenomenon and constructing its explanation conceptually rather than conducting investigations and interpreting the data. It was also found that there were alternations between providing relevant and conceptual resources and affording learners opportunities to answer questions verbally and visually to prompt their engagement. Various representational strategies, such as summarising, comparing, highlighting, sequencing, and presenting vivid phenomena, were also employed for better teaching scientific inquiry as a part of learners’ ongoing cognitive activities. Based on the findings, we argue that there is potential for using instructional videos for teaching science, considering representational strategies in terms of scientific inquiry and learners’ engagement.