Freezing lizards, loving creatures, and flying pigs: tracing students’ meaning making about evolution through student-generated comics

This study explores how student-generated comic books can provide insight into students? meaning making about evolution. Despite the complexity of evolution, previous research indicates that students can grasp concepts like natural selection through age-appropriate activities. In this study, we followed a group of Grade 4 students over seven weeks as they engaged in meaning making about evolution. As part of the lessons, the students read comics about evolution, learnt about comic conventions, and at the end of the unit, they created their own comics to represent their understanding of evolution. Building on multimodal theory rooted in social semiotics, we have analysed 14 student comics, focusing on what evolutionary principles are shown in the texts and the semiotic resources used to express these. Findings reveal that all targeted evolutionary principles (variation, heredity, and selection) were represented in the comics, though not all comics included every concept. Evolutionary ideas were expressed multimodally, with common patterns showing evolution at a population level. The sequentiality of the comic format facilitated the depiction of adaptation through natural selection. This study provides insights into the potential of using comics as a tool for students to make meaning and communicate their knowledge about evolutionary concepts.