Science and Culture: Cartoons to better communicate science.

Words often fail when teaching science. Although some scientific concepts lend themselves to easily articulated descriptions and definitions, others consist mostly of a language of symbols only decipherable by knowledgeable experts. Diagrams can help. However, some researchers and science educators believe another medium, known more for its entertainment value than its educational value, is often superior. Cartoons, they argue, catch the eye, engage the reader, and incorporate narrative in ways that make them important teaching tools. Medicine has made use of illustrative drawings for half a millennium, a way of graphically demonstrating physiological objects and processes. However, the use of cartoons or comics—simple, often humorous drawings, or strips of them—is a recent phenomenon. Social sciences researchers have found in studies that they can be very effective when done well, offering a level of engagement few other media can match. “Diagrams extract critical information. Comics can do that as well,” says Barbara Tversky, professor of psychology and education at Columbia University Teachers College. “Comics can also be very effective in tutoring, setting up social relationships. They can tell stories.” Cartoons are particularly good at showing spatial and temporal relationships, she adds. “That’s hard to do and to do well.” The panels commonly used in comics can show processes and offer explanations in a stepby-step fashion, and can break up time into sensible units, showing what happens in each unit. (See, for example, Fig. 1.) Cartoonists typically find visual ways of connecting panels to each other, Tversky notes. “I take great pains to strip away extraneous information and leave the main thread of the narrative,” says Larry Gonick, a cartoonist who provided “Science Classics” for Discover magazine and has drawn for Science magazine. “Students often discover relationships among things that may not be obvious when freighted with details.” Studies suggest cartoons can be valuable, but it’s difficult to say whether they are actually a more effective medium than text or diagrams or whether the students are simply enjoying having something different in the classroom. One study in a Catholic high school in the Philippines followed 78 students enrolled in an environmental science course; 38 were taught conventionally, and 40 were taught with cartoons. The study ran for 4 months Some argue that comics like this one offer a valuable teaching tool for science concepts. Image courtesy of Larry Gonick.