Lilian Pozzer

Biography

Dr. Lilian Pozzer joined the University of Manitoba in August 2012 as an assistant professor in the department of Curriculum, Teaching and Learning. Her work revolves around science teaching, both in research and in the courses she teaches at the University of Manitoba. With a background in biology teaching at the secondary level, her research focuses on multimodal science teaching and classroom interactions, taking into account the integration of verbal and nonverbal aspects of communication during teaching. Teaching is a social practice that relies primarily on multimodal communication and direct interaction with people and artifacts. Especially in science teaching, teachers make use of several resources (verbal, visual, gestural, material, graphical, embodied) to communicate scientific concepts and ways of understanding the world. Thus, it is particularly relevant to further investigate and understand teaching practices in terms of communication and interaction in the classroom. Accordingly, her master's degree thesis research focused on the use of photographs as pedagogical tools in biology textbooks and lectures. For her PhD research, the focus shifted to teachers' use of gestures integrated with speech and other nonverbal resources, such as inscriptions (graphs, photographs, etc.). Expanding on this same area, her post-doctoral research investigated multimodal classroom interactions from sociocultural perspectives, focusing on identity negotiation in secondary science classrooms.

Research Interest

Science education, Secondary science teaching, Biology teaching, Classroom interaction, Communication, Gestures and inscriptions