Teaching Scientific Writing Through Multimodal Evidence: Changes in Students’ Use of Evidence and Written Reasoning in Environmental Literacy Contexts

Abstract

This study examined how multimodal evidence scaffolding supported undergraduate students’ scientific writing in an environmental literacy context. Using a quasi-experimental pretest-posttest design with a comparison group, the study involved 60 Biology Education undergraduates from two intact classes. The experimental group received explicit scaffolding for interpreting visual, spatial, numerical, and observational evidence, while the comparison group received regular scientific report writing instruction. Students’ scientific reports were assessed using an analytic rubric and coded for evidence use and written reasoning. ANCOVA results, controlling for pretest performance, showed higher adjusted posttest performance in the experimental group, particularly in written reasoning, F(1, 57) = 42.37, p < .001, partial η² = .43; multimodal interpretation, F(1, 57) = 31.28, p < .001, partial η² = .35; and evidence integration, F(1, 57) = 25.14, p < .001, partial η² = .31. Student-level analyses also showed higher adjusted posttest proportions of higher-level evidence use, F(1, 57) = 137.29, p < .001, partial η² = .71, and advanced written reasoning, F(1, 57) = 71.47, p < .001, partial η² = .56. Qualitative findings indicated that students increasingly connected maps, photographs, tables, field notes, and numerical data to scientific claims and causal explanations. The findings suggest that multimodal evidence can function as an epistemic scaffold when instruction explicitly supports students in transforming information into evidence and evidence into written reasoning.