Dialogic Pedagogy: The Importance of Dialogue in Teaching and Learning 9781783096220

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Dialogic Pedagogy

NEW PERSPECTIVES ON LANGUAGE AND EDUCATION Series Editors: Professor Viv Edwards, University of Reading, Reading, UK and Professor Phan Le Ha, University of Hawaii at Manoa, USA Two decades of research and development in language and literacy education have yielded a broad, multidisciplinary focus. Yet education systems face constant economic and technological change, with attendant issues of identity and power, community and culture. This series will feature critical and interpretive, disciplinary and multidisciplinary perspectives on teaching and learning, language and literacy in new times. Full details of all the books in this series and of all our other publications can be found on http://www.multilingual-matters.com, or by writing to Multilingual Matters, St Nicholas House, 31–34 High Street, Bristol BS1 2AW, UK.

NEW PERSPECTIVES ON LANGUAGE AND EDUCATION: 51

Dialogic Pedagogy The Importance of Dialogue in Teaching and Learning

Edited by David Skidmore and Kyoko Murakami

MULTILINGUAL MATTERS Bristol • Buffalo • Toronto

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Names: Skidmore, David (Language teacher) editor. | Murakami, Kyoko, editor. Title: Dialogic Pedagogy: The Importance of Dialogue in Teaching and Learning/Edited by David Skidmore and Kyoko Murakami. Description: Bristol; Buffalo: Multilingual Matters, [2016] | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2016022322| ISBN 9781783096213 (hbk : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781783096220 (pdf) | ISBN 9781783096237 (epub) | ISBN 9781783096244 (kindle) Subjects: LCSH: Dialogue analysis. | Language and languages—Study and teaching. | Language teachers—Psychological aspects. | Conversation analysis. | Pedagogical content knowledge. | Dialogism (Literary analysis) Classification: LCC P95.455.D473 2016 | DDC 401/.4—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016022322 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue entry for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN-13: 978-1-78309-621-3 (hbk) Multilingual Matters UK: St Nicholas House, 31–34 High Street, Bristol BS1 2AW, UK. USA: UTP, 2250 Military Road, Tonawanda, NY 14150, USA. Canada: UTP, 5201 Dufferin Street, North York, Ontario M3H 5T8, Canada. Website: www.multilingual-matters.com Twitter: Multi_Ling_Mat Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/multilingualmatters Blog: www.channelviewpublications.wordpress.com Copyright © 2016 David Skidmore, Kyoko Murakami and the authors of individual chapters. All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the publisher. The policy of Multilingual Matters/Channel View Publications is to use papers that are natural, renewable and recyclable products, made from wood grown in sustainable forests. In the manufacturing process of our books, and to further support our policy, preference is given to printers that have FSC and PEFC Chain of Custody certification. The FSC and/or PEFC logos will appear on those books where full certification has been granted to the printer concerned. Typeset by Nova Techset Private Limited, Bengaluru and Chennai, India. Printed and bound in Great Britain by the CPI Books Group Ltd.

Contents

Contributors 1

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Dialogic Pedagogy: An Introduction David Skidmore and Kyoko Murakami Freire’s Theory of Dialogic Pedagogy What is Dialogism? Prosody The Scope of the Book Overview of the Book Dialogism and Education David Skidmore Dialogue and Creativity Speech and Consciousness Different-languagedness: Heteroglossia Many-voicedness: Polyphony Dialogism and Education Vygotsky and Dialogic Pedagogy Harry Daniels Dialectical or Dialogic Vygotsky and Bakhtin Developmental Teaching Conclusion

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The Conceptions of ‘Dialogue’ Offered by Bohm and Buber: A Critical Review Michelle Brinn Bohm’s On Dialogue (1996) Buber’s Between Man and Man (1947) Conclusions

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Classroom Discourse: A Survey of Research David Skidmore The Essential Teaching Exchange Exploratory Talk in Small Groups The Lesson as a Speech Event Transformational Solutions to the Dilemma of Academic Language Pedagogy and Dialogue David Skidmore Shaping the Agenda of Classroom Discourse Dialogic Instruction Dialogic Enquiry Dialogic Teaching The Affective Conditions for Learning The Small Group Writing Conference as a Dialogic Model of Feedback Julie Margaret Esiyok Introduction Dialogic Classroom Talk Methodology Analysis Summary Appendix 7.1 Frequency of Active and Dialogic Indicators and Idea Development Giving Learners a Voice: A Study of the Dialogic ‘Quality’ of Three Episodes of Teacher–Learner Talk-in-interaction in a Language Classroom Jean Baptiste Kremer Introduction Theoretical Framework Context Methodology Analysis and Discussion of Data Conclusions and Recommendations Authoritative Versus Internally Persuasive Discourse David Skidmore The Source of the Transcripts Talk About Texts in the Classroom From Pedagogical Dialogue to Dialogic Pedagogy

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10 Once More With Feeling: Utterance and Social Structure David Skidmore The Profit of Distinction The Polyphonic Utterance Ideologeme: The Inflected Sign Further and Further Apart: Rehearsed Improvisation Utterance, Genre and Society 11 How Prosody Marks Shifts in Footing in Classroom Discourse David Skidmore and Kyoko Murakami Introduction Theoretical Background Methods Results Discussion Conclusions: The Implications of Prosodic Analysis for Our Understanding of Classroom Discourse 12 Prosodic Chopping: A Pedagogic Tool to Signal Shifts in Academic Task Structure Xin Zhao, David Skidmore and Kyoko Murakami Introduction Prosody in Classroom Interaction Scaffolding Methodology Data Analysis Discussion Conclusions

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13 Claiming Our Own Space: Polyphony in Teacher–Student Dialogue David Skidmore and Kyoko Murakami Talk and Learning The Essential Teaching Exchange ‘Mother, Any Distance Greater Than a Single Span’: An Excerpt From an Episode of Plenary Discussion Discourse Analysis: A Teaching Exchange ‘He Wants His Own Space’: Analysis of Teacher–Student Dialogue Using CA Notation Claiming Our Own Space: Polyphonic Dialogue

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Appendix: Conversation Analysis Conventions Used for Data Transcription Index

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Contributors

Dr Michelle Brinn has worked in the field of early years education for 25 years. Currently an Assistant Leader of Learning in a large international school in Bangkok, she has taught and lectured in Poland, Malaysia, England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Her interest in dialogue arose due to a desire to enhance communication between home and school within international education, wherein vastly different expectations regarding learning may exist. This desire prompted a doctoral research project with the University of Bath, the initial stages of which are discussed within this chapter. Professor Harry Daniels is Professor of Education at the University of Oxford. He has directed research for more than 40 projects funded by ESRC, various central and local government sources, The Lottery, The Nuffield Foundation and the EU. Much of his recent research draws on cultural historical and activity theory approaches to learning and organisational change, focusing on professional learning, processes of social exclusion and practices of collaboration in a variety of educational, medical and emergency settings. He is also: Adjunct Professor, Centre for Learning Research, Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia; Research Professor, Centre for Human Activity Theory, Kansai University, Osaka, Japan; and Research Professor in Cultural Historical Psychology, Moscow State University of Psychology and Education. His CV witnesses an extensive publication list including a series of internationally acclaimed books concerned with sociocultural psychology. Julie Esiyok is a classroom teacher and a member of her school’s Middle Leadership Team. She holds a BA (hons) in Linguistics, a Postgraduate Certificate of Education and a MA in Education from the University of Bath. Her school-based research has so far focused on feedback through writing conferences, wait time and teacher-to-teacher coaching. She is keen to explore how language and silence can be used effectively in schools to improve teaching and learning. Jean Baptiste Kremer has a BA in English and German from the University of Hull, and qualified as an English teacher in Luxembourg in 1982. In 1990 ix

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he was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to teach French in Wisconsin, USA for a year. From 2005 to 2015 he led the English Teacher Education programme at the University of Luxembourg. After graduating with a Master’s degree in Education from the University of Bath in 2014, he became general coordinator of teacher education in Luxembourg. He is currently working for the Luxembourg Ministry of Education. Dr Kyoko Murakami is an Associate Professor at the Department of Psychology, University of Copenhagen. Her research involves examining language use and social relations configured and reconfigured in social and cultural practices. It draws on discourse analysis, discursive psychology and cultural psychology and related areas in the social sciences. The topics of her recent publications include the discursive psychology of remembering and reconciliation (2012), an ethnography of battlefield and prison camp pilgrimages by British veterans (2014), and family reminiscence as memory practice (2016). With her educational research colleagues, Dr Murakami explores dialogic spaces in both formal and non-formal education settings – group work in higher education and the experiences of international students in the internationalisation initiative of a Danish university. Dr David Skidmore is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Education at the University of Bath. He has published widely in the fields of dialogic pedagogy and inclusive education, has held research grants from the ESRC and other bodies, and has supervised a number of doctoral studies in these areas. Dr Xin Zhao is a Teaching Associate at the Information School at the University of Sheffield. She obtained her PhD from the Department of Education at the University of Bath, UK. Her PhD research investigates the functions of conversational prosody of classroom talk-in-interaction in the field of second language learning. Her research interests include dialogic pedagogy, sociocultural theory and internationalisation.

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Dialogic Pedagogy: An Introduction David Skidmore and Kyoko Murakami

Freire’s Theory of Dialogic Pedagogy Credit for initiating the theory of dialogic pedagogy belongs to Paulo Freire. His perspective is outlined in his seminal work, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Freire, 1993 [1970]), and further developed in other books such as Pedagogy for Liberation, jointly authored with Ira Shor (Freire & Shor, 1987). In most of the rest of this book, we draw more directly on dialogism, a theory of language associated with the Bakhtin Circle (Brandist, 2002), than on Freire’s work. However, it is appropriate to acknowledge at the outset that without Freire there would be no theory of dialogic pedagogy, and his thinking has been enormously influential on the tradition of critical pedagogy that has emerged out of his pioneering work. We do not, therefore, see the perspective developed in this book as counterposed to Freire’s vision, but as complementary to it. We have drawn on different theoretical sources to undertake a dialectical development of a view of pedagogy which has its origins in Freire’s work. The understanding of language as socio-verbal interaction which derives from Bakhtinian dialogism enables us to pay close attention to patterns of teacher–student communication in naturalistic classroom conditions, to scrutinise them in fine detail and to illustrate alternative modes of interaction to the dominant form of teacher-led recitation. It would be wrong to suggest that Freire ignored this level of analysis in his own work, and indeed he has many suggestions to make which translate quite directly into possibilities to be explored in the concrete practice of teaching. However, later research has investigated classroom discourse empirically and revealed an in-depth picture of typical modes of interaction in this context and ways in which this can be challenged, in a manner which was implicit but sometimes left underdeveloped in Freire’s more theoretical work. We begin, though, with a brief overview of some of the main aspects of Freire’s pedagogic theory, so that readers who are not already familiar with it will be able to trace the connections between his work on dialogic pedagogy and our own position. 1

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Freire’s work developed in the context of adult literacy education in Brazil at a time when there was a high rate of illiteracy among the adult population. He was forced to leave the country following a military coup in 1964, and continued to develop his pedagogic theory during a long period of exile, first in Chile and later in the United States. In Pedagogy of the Oppressed, he drew a distinction between the ‘banking concept of education’ and ‘problem-posing education’, which has much in common with the outlook on teaching and learning which we discuss in the rest of this book. In the banking concept of education, according to Freire, ‘knowledge is a gift bestowed by those who consider themselves knowledgeable upon those whom they consider to know nothing’ (Freire, 1993 [1970]: 53). In problem-posing education, by contrast, the teacher enters into dialogue with her/his students, acknowledging them as fellow beings capable of consciousness and intentionality, and treats them as co-investigators into the nature of reality. Freire’s description is worth quoting at length (Freire, 1993 [1970]: 64–65): Banking education … attempts, by mythicizing reality, to conceal certain facts which explain the way human beings exist in the world; problemposing education sets itself the task of demythologizing. Banking education resists dialogue; problem-posing education regards dialogue as indispensable to the act of cognition which unveils reality. Banking education treats students as objects of assistance; problem-posing education makes them critical thinkers. Banking education inhibits creativity and domesticates (although it cannot completely destroy) the intentionality of consciousness by isolating consciousness from the world, thereby denying people their ontological and historical vocation of becoming more fully human. Problem-posing education bases itself on creativity and stimulates true reflection and action upon reality, thereby responding to the vocation of persons as beings who are authentic only when engaged in enquiry and creative transformation. … Problem-posing education affirms men and women as beings in the process of becoming – as unfinished, uncompleted beings in and with a likewise unfinished reality. In fact, for Freire, in dialogic pedagogy, the strict opposition between teacher and students is transcended, so that it becomes more appropriate to speak of the ‘teacher-student’ thinking with ‘students-teachers’ (Freire, 1993 [1970]: 61). Freire develops the theory of dialogic pedagogy further in A Pedagogy for Liberation (Freire & Shor, 1987). Here he offers the following definition of dialogue: Dialogue is a moment where humans meet to reflect on their reality as they make and remake it. … Dialogue seals the relationship between the cognitive subjects, those who know, and who try to know. … Dialogue

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is the sealing together of the teacher and the students in the joint act of knowing and re-knowing the object of study. (Freire & Shor, 1987: 98–100) In the discussion with Shor presented in this book, Freire stresses that it is a mistake to think of dialogic pedagogy as a mere technique, a teaching method that can be mechanically transposed to any setting. Rather, it should be seen as an epistemological position, founded on an understanding of knowing as a social activity, albeit one that has an individual dimension; at the same time, it is a political practice, since it embodies a challenge to traditional forms of teacher–student relations, in which the teacher is the one who ‘knows’ and transfers this knowledge into students’ minds by telling them what s/he knows. For Freire, this kind of teacherly authority socialises students into passivity, whereas dialogic pedagogy invites them to participate actively in reshaping their own understanding of reality, and demonstrates in practice the possibility of an alternative mode of communicative practice in the classroom or other learning setting (Freire & Shor, 1987: 46). At the same time, Freire is clear that the relationship between students and teacher in a dialogic classroom is not one of equality (Freire & Shor, 1987: 92). Generally speaking, the teacher has greater experience of the activity of education, and may have a wider range of knowledge, both of the world and of disciplinary content, on which to draw. For Freire, this means that the teacher has a leadership responsibility; s/he is the leader of the learning process, but also ‘re-learns’ the material with the students in the course of teaching them. Likewise, the dialogic classroom (or other group learning environment) is not a free for all in which anything goes. The teacher exercises authority in steering the development of the collective learning activity, and if a student takes advantage of the openness of the discussion to disrupt dialogue (for example, by verbally bullying other students or insulting the teacher), then the teacher will chastise them. Nevertheless, the teacher’s authority rests on a different basis from that of the authoritarian teacher who demands obedience to their every word and discourages questioning of or challenge to the determinate knowledge that they present. The dialogic teacher’s authority has a democratic character, and requires them to demonstrate in practice their competence in directing the learning process to students. It is earned on the basis of experience rather than compelled in advance of mutual engagement, and rests on the basis of a respect for the other that bridges the gap between their different social positions. The democratic nature of the teacher’s authority also means that not everyone has to speak in the course of a dialogic lesson. Students will make a contribution when they have something to add to what has already been said, but they should not be forced to respond for the sake of it (in contrast to the norm in teacherled recitation lessons, when the teacher typically nominates the next student speaker, who must then answer the question asked by the teacher). Finally,

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Freire and Shor favour a model of the curriculum which starts from the everyday knowledge that students bring with them to the classroom, and validates reflection and critical examination of their experience of the world outside the classroom as a point of departure for the learning process (Freire & Shor, 1987: 48, 107). The dialogic method can be used in areas of the curriculum which have traditionally relied heavily on a textbook-centred, body-of-knowledge transmission approach. For example, physics students can be asked to research the cosmological views held by workers, people in the streets or members of their local neighbourhood community, and compare these with their own understanding, as an entry into reflecting on the historicity of scientific theories and their place in society. Dialogic pedagogy need not be confined to subjects like literacy education or the humanities. The strengths of Freire’s work lie in its clear commitment to a revolutionary political perspective and his insistence that, through a critical, problemposing educational praxis in which the educator is a ‘teacher-student’ working alongside and with ‘student-teachers’, dialogic pedagogy can enable the oppressed to penetrate the veil of mystifying ideology and derive interventions that bring about real social change. As noted above, he has many practical suggestions to offer which are of service to educators trying to work in this way under the unfavourable conditions we often encounter in underfunded schools and colleges in a capitalist society, where dialogic pedagogy necessarily involves ‘swimming against the stream’. We hope that in what follows, by drawing extensively on the wider dialogic theory of language developed by scholars in the Soviet Union in the 1920s and 1930s, we can add another dimension to the theory of dialogic pedagogy which Freire initiated, thereby building on and developing the legacy of his thought.

What is Dialogism? Dialogism is a philosophy of language which places central importance on the reality of socio-verbal interaction in understanding the kind of phenomenon that language is. It is most associated with the work of Mikhail Bakhtin (1895–1975), a Russian literary scholar, although important aspects of the theoretical perspective find their most fully developed statements in the writings of other members of the Bakhtin Circle, and sometimes in work by other authors who were not formally connected with this network (Brandist, 2002). According to this outlook, before it is anything else, language is a tool for communication. Every concrete instance of language use involves an address to some other participant in the act of communication, whether that be a friend, partner or work colleague to whom we are speaking directly in a faceto-face encounter, or the implicit readership of a written text that might have been set down centuries ago by an unknown hand. There are of course many degrees of immediacy and distance between these two extremes, and a wide

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range of possibilities in the number of people who might be involved in the communicative exchange. Everyday speech is commonly exchanged between two participants in a transient social encounter that happens in the here-andnow and is then gone for ever, in the sense of there being no lasting record of what is said. On the other hand, one thinks of the Voyager spacecraft, launched in 1977 and now heading into interstellar space, which carries a record containing audio recordings of spoken greetings from Earth in many different languages, from ancient Akkadian to Wu, a modern Chinese dialect. There is no knowing if or when this message will ever reach beings capable of interpreting it, but the very act of encoding speech produced by humans rather than random noise implies an attempt at communication, premised on the possibility that there might be ‘someone out there’ who would recognise the dialogic character of this artefact, i.e. that it represents someone else trying to say ‘hello’. In Chapter 2, Skidmore presents some of the core concepts of dialogism as a theory of language and its place in the workings of society. He emphasises in particular the implications of these ideas for pedagogy and the practice of education, with a particular focus on the sphere of language education. Since the translation and discovery of much of Bakhtin’s work in the Englishspeaking West in the 1970s and 1980s, the secondary literature on dialogism has become voluminous and is constantly growing. It is not our purpose in this book to attempt to deal with the many different interpretations of this tradition that have been put forward in the disciplines of cultural studies, literary theory, social psychology and linguistics (Bell & Gardiner, 1998; Hirschkop, 1999; Morson, 1981). Our aim is a more limited one: to develop a theory of dialogic pedagogy that is rooted in the insights of the founding texts of this tradition of thought. This does not depend on the rather tenuous evidence about whether Bakhtin ever wrote directly on the topic of education (Matusov, 2004). Dialogism as a philosophy of language is broader than Bakhtin’s work, and if we are to tease out its significance for educational praxis, we need to delve deeper into the tradition than simply identifying the scattered allusions to instruction that can be found in his writing. In spite of the limited scope of this book, our coverage of the concepts developed in this body of work is necessarily selective. It is in the spirit of dialogism to recognise that any individual text, such as this one, is only one contribution to an unfinalised discussion about approaches to pedagogy. We hope that, nevertheless, it will provide a sufficient idea of the flavour of this philosophy to provoke readers to explore the works referred to for themselves.

Prosody Much educational research has studied typical structural features of classroom discourse, such as the three-part sequence of teacher question–student

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answer–teacher feedback found in schoolrooms throughout the world. However, research into the prosody of teacher–student dialogue is in its infancy, and we are pleased that Chapters 10–13 of this book carry some of the first empirical studies of how this important phenomenon functions in pedagogic talk. Prosody has been described as the music of speech (CouperKuhlen & Selting, 1996a; Wennerstrom, 2001). The term corresponds to our common-sense idea of ‘tone of voice’ and refers to parameters of the speaking voice which vary dynamically during face-to-face interaction. Chief features include: intonation; loudness; and temporal phenomena such as rhythm, tempo, and pauses (Couper-Kuhlen & Selting, 1996b; Szczepek Reed, 2006). Figure 1.1 presents a visual model of how speech varies continuously along these parameters. It is organically linked to the dialogic theory of language through the related concept of evaluative accent (Voloshinov, 1973 [1929]), according to which every utterance conveys a value judgement, an evaluative orientation towards its (referential) theme (marked most obviously in speech by intonation). This connection is further discussed in Chapters 2 and 10. Prosody is integral to spoken communication and conveys an extra dimension of meaning beyond what is articulated through the words alone (vocabulary and syntax). Research shows that speakers use prosody for a number of communicative purposes, including: to place emphasis on new or important items of information in an utterance; to lend coherence to shared discourse, indicating how turns by different participants are tied together

Figure 1.1 The sphere of prosody

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into a cohesive, jointly assembled text; and to express their constantly shifting emotional stance towards the interaction-in-progress, for example the degree of enthusiasm or interest they feel for the current topic of discussion (Szczepek Reed, 2006; Wennerstrom, 2001). Speakers show acute sensitivity to one another’s prosody in spontaneous dialogue and use prosody as a resource to convey subtle nuances of expression; for example, when conversation is flowing smoothly, there tends to be a regular rhythm of stressed syllables which is maintained across turns by different speakers and, conversely, a breakdown in this rhythm often signals a difficulty or difference of perspective which needs to be negotiated (Wennerstrom, 2001). Researchers working in the field of conversation analysis (CA) were among the first to draw attention to the significance of prosody for the accomplishment of social actions through talk-in-interaction (Sacks, 1992; Sacks et al., 1974; Schegloff, 1998; ten Have, 1998), and most recent work draws on the findings and system of transcription developed in this tradition (Couper-Kuhlen & Ford, 2004; Couper-Kuhlen & Selting, 1996a; Ford et al., 1996). The studies presented in this book demonstrate that prosody is a vital, if hitherto neglected, resource for accomplishing intersubjective understanding in teacher–student dialogue under classroom conditions. Among other functions, speech prosody can signal how the teacher is modelling the tentative, reflective tone of exploratory talk, or ‘thinking aloud’ (in contrast to the authoritative tone of sequences of test questions designed to elicit the ‘correct’ answer); it can be used to invite a student to elaborate on their initial contribution to a discussion by making the reasoning behind their view explicit; it is critical to the successful accomplishment of turn taking in both whole-class and small group discussion, for students and for teachers; it can be used to establish an episode of ‘playful’ exchange, in which the teacher enters into the spirit of a student’s classroom joke, and to switch back from this to ‘serious’ work-talk; and changes in prosody constitute an important boundary marker between different formal activities within a lesson, e.g. from open discussion in which students are invited to participate verbally, to instruction giving, when they are expected to listen and take note. Most fundamentally, it is largely through the prosodic aspects of speech that the achievement of shared understanding between teacher and students (or between students themselves, in small group discussion), is signalled, for example in the co-construction of turns at talk where the rhythm and pace of utterances flow together to constitute a jointly assembled stretch of discourse. Conversely, mismatches in prosody can be a sign of discursive difficulty, for example when a pause before a student responds to a question indicates a reluctance to speak, perhaps because of a conceptual uncertainty, or perhaps because s/he is unsure what kind of response the teacher is looking for (such as a short recall answer or a longer, open response clarifying their opinion). These matters lie at the heart of successful pedagogy since, from a dialogic point of view, the coming together of the teacher’s and

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students’ understanding of the topic in hand is vital to the purpose of guided learning in formal education.

The Scope of the Book The purpose of this book is to explain and illustrate the importance of dialogue in teaching and learning. When the teacher enters into dialogue with students, it is possible for the two parties to build up a shared understanding of the educational activity in hand. Dialogue between students, when properly orchestrated, also enables them to explore and deepen their command of concepts and capabilities introduced in formal schooling and to bridge the gap between their existing knowledge and the goals of a particular sequence of instruction. The dialogic approach can be contrasted with monologic views of teaching, in which the teacher is seen as the possessor of knowledge of which students are ignorant, and which depend heavily on the teacher telling students what they are presumed not to know, then questioning them to see if they can remember what they have been told. A detailed overview of the contents of the book is set out chapter by chapter in Section 5 below; here we provide a brief outline of its scope and structure. Chapters 2, 3 and 4 set out the theoretical groundwork for approaching the topic of dialogue in education. They present and discuss core concepts from three distinct but interrelated sources for thinking about the role of dialogue in pedagogy: dialogism, the view of language and consciousness developed by members of the Bakhtin Circle in the Soviet Republic in the 1920s and 1930s; the sociocultural theory of obuchenie, often translated as instruction, but better understood as designating the dialectic of the teaching-learning process, as formulated by Vygotsky and developed by Davydov; and the theories of dialogue and its potential for the construction of intersubjective understanding put forward independently by Bohm and Buber. Chapter 5 surveys a number of seminal works in the field of classroom discourse research, while Chapter 6 reviews more recent research specifically concerned with dialogic approaches to pedagogy. These chapters provide a bridge between the theoretical focus of the opening chapters and the original empirical studies of talk and learning in that follow in Chapters 7–13. These later chapters make use of theoretical ideas about dialogic pedagogy to explore the kind of learning work exhibited in transcripts of group discussion recorded in naturalistic classroom conditions. The first three of these explore dialogic pedagogy in the context of English as a foreign language (EFL) and literacy education: the small group writing conference as a model of dialogic feedback in a primary school English class (Chapter 7); the dialogic quality of talk in a secondary EFL classroom established by a student teacher’s use of questioning (Chapter 8); and the possibility of encouraging children to

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retell a story in their own words in the context of small group guided reading discussion in a primary school in England (Chapter 9). Chapters 10–13 make use of the analytic lens supplied by CA to focus specifically on the contribution of prosody, or tone of voice, to the achievement of shared understanding between teacher and students in classroom settings. Chapter 10 discusses the connection between prosody and learning in an extract from a teacher-led whole class discussion of the meaning of a poem in a secondary English literature lesson in the UK; Chapter 11 examines this phenomenon in an episode of ‘thinking aloud’ modelled by the teacher, also in a secondary English lesson; while Chapter 12 shifts to the context of a lesson in EFL in a high school in China, again looking at the pedagogic function of prosodic devices in an episode of teacher-led classroom talk. Finally, Chapter 13 compares the results of analysing the same passage of teacher–student talk from a secondary English lesson in the UK, first by using the techniques of discourse analysis, and secondly by using CA to display prosodic features of the speech; this shows that paying attention to speech prosody can reveal aspects of the construction of intersubjective understanding in the classroom that it would be difficult to recognise by relying solely on looking at the structure of the discourse, for example how the teacher can incorporate divergent interpretations of a poem into a whole class discussion without becoming bogged down in disputation about which view is ‘correct’.

Overview of the Book Chapter 2, entitled ‘Dialogism and Education’, provides a theoretical underpinning of the work compiled in the book. In this chapter, Skidmore reviews a selection of the key concepts involved in dialogism as a social theory of language, and discusses the ramifications of these ideas for education and pedagogy. He explicates dialogism and its relevance to education research under these different themes: (1) dialogue and creativity; (2) speech and consciousness; (3) different languages: heteroglossia; and (4) manyvoicedness: polyphony. Yakubinsky first developed the concept of dialogic speech (Yakubinsky & Eskin, 1997 [1923]), and distinguished between monologue (such as religious liturgy) and other kinds of speech which have different degrees of dialogicality (such as everyday conversation). He connects monologue with social power, and stresses the creative potential of ‘automatic’ speech, or improvised dialogue, for developing new ideas and making novel connections between existing ideas. In Marxism and Language (Voloshinov, 1973 [1929]), Voloshinov sees individual consciousness as the product of social interaction mediated through speech, a position very similar to Vygotsky’s in Thinking and Speech (Vygotsky, 2004 [1934]). Voloshinov argues that language is realised in the exchange of spoken utterances in

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dialogue, and that these utterances always voice some kind of evaluation (or ‘accentuation’) of the topic under discussion. His work enables us to see how, when the teacher enters into dialogue with the class, this reshapes the kind of consciousness being socially produced in education, providing an opportunity for both parties to explore the extent to which a common understanding of the topic is shared. The concept of heteroglossia was coined by Bakhtin to refer to the way in which different styles of speaking are used by different sub-groups within a given linguistic community (Bakhtin, 1981 [1934– 1935]). He critiques the idea of a standard language (such as standard English) as an ideological notion. The linguistic diversity which is intrinsic to any speech community gives rise to a cultural pluralism which has potential educational benefits; dialogue with the unfamiliar broadens the mind. Bakhtin also introduced the musical metaphor of polyphony (Bakhtin, 1984 [1929]). This refers to the plurality of voices and minds that are party to any social encounter, including such educational activities as a classroom lesson in a school or a university seminar. In educational settings, it reminds us that the teacher needs to listen to her/his students as well as to talk to them, since it is only by so doing that s/he can know ‘what is going on in their heads’. By modelling a dialectic of enquiry in how they respond to learners, the teacher may be able to stimulate a ‘microdialogue’, an inner exchange in the mind of the student, which enables them to go beyond their familiar thoughts and accepted ideas and incorporate new knowledge into their own cognitive activity. It follows that dialogic pedagogy involves an element of improvisation on the part of both teacher and students, which turns the lesson into an emergent encounter between the co-developing consciousnesses of both parties in search of an enhanced shared understanding of the topic at hand. Teachers must enter into dialogue with students if we are to change their minds or, rather, support them in changing their own minds. When translating concepts from another language, there is often no oneto-one correspondence between the sense of words on which we can rely. This can lead to a very different understanding of concepts such as dialogue, dialectic and instruction. In Chapter 3, Harry Daniels addresses the debate on dialogue and dialogic in the sociocultural research community. At the heart of the Vygotskian understanding of obuchenie (trans. instruction) is a dialogic conception of pedagogy, which encompasses not only a dialectical understanding of the social relations of schooling, but also of conceptual development. Daniels insists that both aspects present educators with significant challenges. For example, teaching-learning is more appropriate as the translation of obuchenie, in that it refers to all the actions of the teacher in engendering cognitive development and growth (Davydov, 1995). According to Sutton (1980), the word means both teaching and learning, and refers to both sides of the two-way process, and therefore fits in a dialectical view of a phenomenon made up of opposites. Daniels emphasises that dialogic interaction between teacher and learners is necessary if ‘instruction’ is to give rise

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to cognitive development. For Daniels, this development is best characterised as a dialectical process. Depending on the history of their development and their social positioning in the discourses of the classroom, different learners may be in need of different forms of dialogic exchange if they are to make progress. This poses a further dilemma for teachers in terms of classroom interaction in that the teacher is also the learner who is trying to understand the consequences of the teaching they practise. Daniels argues that resorting to transmission-based pedagogies is not the answer if democratic solutions to mass education are sought. In extending the concept of dialogue from a sociocultural view of education, Chapter 4, entitled ‘The Conceptions of “Dialogue” Offered by Bohm and Buber: A Critical Review’ acknowledges the growing significance of social constructivist paradigms such those as outlined by Vygotsky (1962) and Bruner (1986) within current debate about theories of education. One consequence for educational research has been an increased examination of the social relations and interaction that take place not only within the classroom, but also between home and school. A clear understanding of theoretical perspectives surrounding ‘dialogue’ is therefore an essential prerequisite to an analysis of dialogue in practice. This chapter reviews two different theories of ‘dialogue’ and explores their relevance for education. The perspectives discussed are those of Bohm (1996) and Buber (1947), both of whom developed independent philosophies of dialogue outside the context of educational research and pedagogic practice and see it as a primary human concern. This chapter explores their work on dialogue and considers its relevance to current educational theory and practice. It illustrates their significance for education by examining initiatives to increase the effectiveness of home– school communication in a large international school in Bangkok where children are exposed to a variety of very different cultural expectations about behaviour and relations with teachers and adult caregivers. Chapter 5 provides a broader framework and background for the subsequent empirical work (reported in Chapters 7–12) with a survey of classroom discourse research. Skidmore begins by revisiting Sinclair and Coulthard’s seminal work Towards an Analysis of Discourse: The English Used by Teachers and Pupils (Sinclair & Coulthard, 1975). This established the nature of the ‘essential teaching exchange’, the initiation-response-feedback (IRF) sequence. The systematic framework for analysing teacher-led classroom discourse developed in this study remains an indispensable starting point for understanding how teachers and students learn to perform a lesson as a genre of social interaction. He then discusses From Communication to Curriculum (Barnes, 1992), in which Barnes draws distinctions between: exploratory talk and final draft talk; school knowledge and action knowledge; and transmission and interpretation models of teaching and learning. This is a classic book which puts forward the case for altering the predominant patterns of classroom interaction to make a much greater place in lessons for exploratory talk

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in small groups as a means for enabling pupils to participate actively in the shaping of knowledge. Following this, Skidmore examines Learning Lessons (Mehan, 1979). Here Hugh Mehan reports the findings of a study of social organisation in the classroom, and introduces several key concepts, e.g. the topic-related set (TRS); teacher elicitations, including the widespread initiation-response-evaluation (IRE) sequence; and the turn-allocation apparatus in classroom discourse. The findings of the study showed that students need to learn to produce responses which are both academically correct and interactionally appropriate in order to demonstrate communicative competence in the classroom. Finally, Skidmore reviews Cazden’s influential book Classroom Discourse: The Language of Teaching and Learning (Cazden, 2001). In this work, Cazden draws on Vygotskian theory to argue that classroom discourse can function as a scaffold for student learning. In this process, responsibility for task completion passes progressively from the teacher to the student through an intermediate phase of joint, guided practice. She also draws attention to the importance of spontaneous improvisation in the performance of lessons, a feature of skilled pedagogy neglected in more mechanistic models of ‘effective’ instruction. In Chapter 6, Skidmore provides a critical review of the existing research into pedagogy that draws on the theoretical ideas of Bakhtin on the dialogic nature of language. This body of research has stressed the educative potential of teacher–student interaction, which enables students to play an active part in shaping the agenda of classroom discourse. The review covers four proposals: (1) dialogic instruction, characterised by the teacher’s uptake of student ideas, authentic questions and the opportunity for students to modify the topic (Nystrand, 1997); (2) dialogic inquiry, which stresses the potential of collaborative group work and peer assistance to promote mutually responsive learning in the zone of proximal development (Wells, 1999); (3) dialogical pedagogy, in which students are invited to retell stories in their own words, using paraphrase, speculation and counter-fictional utterances (Skidmore, 2000); (4) dialogic teaching, which is collective, reciprocal, supportive, cumulative and purposeful (Alexander, 2004). These proposals are commonly concerned with the ritualistic nature of the predominant patterns of teacher–student interaction exposed by empirical observation studies. Furthermore, they tend to emphasise the importance of maximising active student participation in classroom talk as a means of enhancing intersubjective understanding. The review in this chapter is aimed at uncovering some unresolved questions and issues and identifying future research directions and lines of enquiry. Chapters 7–12 are based on empirical work that draws on the concept of dialogic pedagogy, the central theme of the book. These chapters make a direct link between the theories of dialogue and pedagogic practice. Starting with Chapter 7, Julie Esiyok investigates the small group writing conference as a dialogic model of feedback. In this chapter, she reports a small-scale case

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study of writing conferences in an English class in an International School and illustrates how the writing conference offered dialogic learning opportunities where the students and the teacher give feedback on poems drafted by the students and discuss how to go about improving them. The study found that small group writing conferences were helpful in encouraging some students to revise their writing. It also found that when the teacher is not speaking and assigning speaking turns, the students engaged in more exploratory talk and jointly developed solutions to the revision of the writing. The teacher’s role in the conferences is noteworthy. She acted as a dialogue partner, making it clear that her suggestions were not imposed on the students. The students had greater control and voice in the process, and the amount of talk they engaged in, although not equal, was greater than that found in a typical IRE sequence of talk. Furthermore, the study concludes that revisions made by two of the participants were superior to those they would normally have made using written feedback. In Chapter 8, Jean Kremer shows how, through a dialogic stance, the teacher can positively affect the learner’s linguistic and cognitive development by creating affordances of language use and self-expression. The study has as its main aim an analysis of the dialogic ‘quality’ of a student teacher’s talk during an EFL lesson. The investigation focuses on four episodes which are taken from key moments during the lesson to map dialogic progression and learner participation using CA. The findings indicate that an eclectic choice of dialogic methodology contributes to setting up a more dialogic framework of participation. The teacher’s initial, more monologic ‘tone’ proves essential in establishing a platform of confidence among interactants, which subsequently allows for dialogic progression and a gradual shift in footing to take place. The chapter also reveals that the inherently unpredictable nature of dialogic pedagogy requires a repertoire of talk strategies as well as improvisational skills. An implication of this study for teachers is the need to understand the importance of the quality of talk in the EFL classroom and to set up useful benchmarks to define good practice. Giving learners a voice in the language classroom is the prerequisite for deeper language learning to take place. In Chapter 9, Skidmore analyses two examples of classroom discourse with regard to literacy. Both are excerpts from discussions between a small group of primary school students and their teacher on the topic of short texts of narrative fiction. Based on contrasting findings emerging from the analysis of the two excerpts, he raises theoretical questions about what forms of verbal interaction between students and teacher might best contribute to the development of the students’ independent powers to engage in literacy practices. Drawing on concepts from the work of the Bakhtin Circle, he argues that one of the sequences exemplifies ‘pedagogical dialogue’, in which someone who knows and possesses the truth instructs someone who is ignorant of it and in error. He interprets the second sequence as an instance of ‘internally persuasive discourse’, in which students are encouraged to retell the

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story in their own words, rather than reciting it by heart. This analysis suggests that the discursive micro-economy of the classroom has its own relative autonomy. While recitation may be its ‘default’ script, alternative, more participatory modes of organisation are available. He concludes that, because talk about literary texts is a non-algorithmic form of knowledge, a dialogical pedagogy is better suited to enhancing pupils’ independent powers of comprehension than are approaches which emphasise recitation. Chapter 10 ventures out to draw on three theoretical sources on the relationship between language use and social structure. In explicating the concepts of symbolic capital (Bourdieu), social semiotic (Halliday) and ideologeme (Medvedev), Skidmore explores the significance of speech prosody as an integral part of speech communication, and suggests that the utterance needs to be seen as a complex whole in which the structural and dynamic elements of speech are functionally combined. Skidmore illustrates this position through the analysis of a sequence of naturalistic dialogue, highlighting aspects of prosodic orientation between speakers and discussing its semiotic significance. Skidmore suggests that the mediating concept of speech genre can be used to understand how fluent conversation has both a structured and an improvisatory character. He suggests that the activity of producing an utterance in everyday speech may be seen in terms of a musical analogy as performing a variation on a traditional theme. In Chapter 11, Skidmore and Murakami extend the conclusions of Chapter 10 to a specific case of prosodic phenomena observed in teacher– student dialogue in an English lesson at a secondary school in England. Features of prosody are made visible in using CA notation and the analysis is focused on Goffman’s theoretical concept of footing. Within an episode of teacher-led plenary discourse, prosody (e.g. intonation, volume and pace) is used to signal shifts in footing between different kinds of pedagogic activity. Identified shifts are: (i) teacher-led IRF discussion; (ii) the teacher’s modelling of exploratory talk; (iii) a shift to instruction giving. This study draws implications for teaching in terms of teacher’s modelling of exploratory talk. In Chapter 12, Zhao, Skidmore and Murakami explore further the pedagogical value of prosody in classroom teaching and learning. Informed by Erikson’s theory of academic task and social participation structure, which places participation at the core of learning development, they examine the function of speech prosody during the co-construction of classroom talk in teacher-led discussions in an EFL classroom in a secondary school in China, e.g. features such as pauses, volume, intonation and speech rate. They argue that prosody can function as a pedagogical tool to accomplish changes in classroom academic task and social participation structure. They also show that the triadic IRE sequences are presentational in nature and can scaffold students in their participation during a shift among different classroom tasks. Chapter 13 revisits the research tradition of classroom interaction pioneered by Sinclair and Coulthard’s Towards an Analysis of Discourse (Sinclair &

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Coulthard, 1975). Skidmore and Murakami reappraise their contribution to the study of classroom discourse. Despite a well-established tradition of research and theory that stresses the importance of talk in promoting learning among school students in classroom lessons (Cazden, 2001; Edwards & Westgate, 1994; Mehan, 1979), pedagogic practice continues to follow the monologic format described by Bakhtin in his account of ‘pedagogical dialogue’: ‘someone who knows and possesses the truth instructs someone who is ignorant of it and in error’ (Bakhtin, 1984 [1929]: 81; Skidmore, 2006). Building on the discourse analytic approach developed by Sinclair and Coulthard, the authors go on to re-analyse the same extract using CA (Hutchby & Wooffitt, 1998; Maxwell Atkinson & Heritage, 1984; Sacks, 1992) as the guiding methodology. They argue that CA makes visible the complex and intricate dynamics of classroom discourse and shows that the teacher in plenary discussion works on tasks more significant than the simple checking of students’ understanding by asking questions and evaluating their answers. While the framework for discourse analysis proposed by Sinclair and Coulthard shows the monologic character of teacher-led discourse in the IRF sequence, CA reveals the unfolding, dynamic nature of the plenary session as a jointly constructed interaction between the teacher and the students.

References Alexander, R.J. (2004) Towards Dialogic Teaching: Rethinking Classroom Talk. Cambridge: Dialogos. Bakhtin, M.M. (1981 [1934–1935]) Discourse in the novel (trans. C. Emerson and M. Holquist). In M. Holquist (ed.) The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays by M.M. Bakhtin (pp. 269–422). Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. Bakhtin, M.M. (1984 [1929]) Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics (ed. and trans. C. Emerson; introduction by W.C. Booth). Manchester: Manchester University Press. Barnes, D. (1992) From Communication to Curriculum (2nd edn). Harmondsworth: Penguin. Bell, M.M. and Gardiner, M. (eds) (1998) Bakhtin and the Human Sciences. London: Sage. Bohm, D. (1996) On Dialogue. London: Routledge. Brandist, C. (2002) The Bakhtin Circle: Philosophy, Culture and Politics. London: Pluto Press. Bruner, J.S. (1986) Actual Minds, Possible Worlds. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Buber, M. (1947) Between Man and Man. London: Routledge. Cazden, C.B. (2001) Classroom Discourse: The Language of Teaching and Learning (2nd edn). Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Couper-Kuhlen, E. and Ford, C.E. (eds) (2004) Sound Patterns in Interaction: Cross-linguistic Studies From Conversation. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Couper-Kuhlen, E. and Selting, M. (1996a) Towards an interactional perspective on prosody and a prosodic perspective on interaction. In E. Couper-Kuhlen and M. Selting (eds) Prosody in Conversation: Interactional Studies (pp. 11–56). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Couper-Kuhlen, E. and Selting, M. (eds) (1996b) Prosody in Conversation: Interactional Studies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Davydov, V. (1995) The influence of L.S. Vygotsky on education theory, research and practice. Educational Researcher 24, 12–21.

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Edwards, A.D. and Westgate, D.P.G. (1994) Investigating Classroom Talk (2nd edn). Lewes: Falmer. Ford, C.E., Fox, B.A. and Thompson, S.A. (1996) Practices in the construction of turns: The ‘TCU’ revisited. Pragmatics 6 (3), 427–454. Freire, P. (1993 [1970]) Pedagogy of the Oppressed (trans. M.B. Ramos; revised edn). New York: Continuum. Freire, P. and Shor, I. (1987) A Pedagogy for Liberation: Dialogues on Transforming Education. Westport, CT: Bergin & Garvey. Hirschkop, K. (1999) Mikhail Bakhtin: An Aesthetic for Democracy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hutchby, I. and Wooffitt, R. (1998) Conversation Analysis: Principles, Practices and Applications. Cambridge: Polity Press. Matusov, E. (2004) Guest editor’s introduction. Journal of Russian & East European Psychology 42 (6), 3–11. Maxwell Atkinson, J. and Heritage, J. (eds) (1984) Structures of Social Action: Studies in Conversation Analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mehan, H. (1979) Learning Lessons: Social Organisation in the Classroom. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Morson, G.S. (ed.) (1981) Bakhtin: Essays and Dialogues on his Work. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Nystrand, M., with Gamoran, A., Kachur, R. and Prendergast, C. (1997) Opening Dialogue: Understanding the Dynamics of Language and Learning in the English Classroom. New York: Teachers College Press. Sacks, H. (1992) Lectures on Conversation. Oxford: Blackwell. Sacks, H., Schegloff, E.A. and Jefferson, G. (1974) A simplest systematics for the organization of turn-taking for conversation. Language 50 (4), 696–735. Schegloff, E.A. (1998) Reflections on studying prosody in talk-in-interaction. Language and Speech 41 (3–4), 235–263. Sinclair, J.M. and Coulthard, R.M. (1975) Towards an Analysis of Discourse: The English Used by Teachers and Pupils. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Skidmore, D. (2000) From pedagogical dialogue to dialogical pedagogy. Language and Education 14 (4), 283–296. Skidmore, D. (2006) Pedagogy and dialogue. Cambridge Journal of Education 36 (4), 503–514. Sutton, A. (1980) Backward children in the USSR: An unfamiliar approach to a familiar problem. In J. Brine, M. Perrie and A. Sutton (eds) Home, School and Leisure in the Soviet Union (pp. 160–191). London: George Allen & Unwin. Szczepek Reed, B. (2006) Prosodic Orientation in English Conversation. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. ten Have, P. (1998) Doing Conversation Analysis: A Practical Guide. London: Sage. Voloshinov, V.N. (1973 [1929]) Marxism and the Philosophy of Language (trans. L. Matejka and I.R. Titunik). New York: Seminar Press. Vygotsky, L. (1962) Thought and Language. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Vygotsky, L.S. (2004 [1934]) Problems of general psychology: Thinking and speech. In R.W. Rieber and D.K. Robinson (eds) The Essential Vygotsky (pp. 9–148). New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers. Wells, G. (1999) Dialogic Inquiry: Towards a Sociocultural Practice and Theory of Education. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wennerstrom, A. (2001) The Music of Everyday Speech: Prosody and Discourse Analysis. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Yakubinsky, L.P. and Eskin, M. (1997 [1923]) On dialogic speech. Publications of the Modern Language Association 112 (2), 243–256.

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Dialogism and Education David Skidmore

Dialogue and Creativity The beginnings of the dialogic theory of language can be found in an early article by the Russian linguist Yakubinsky (Yakubinsky & Eskin, 1997 [1923]). Yakubinsky’s work represents the first attempt to develop a theory of dialogue and dialogic interaction as the basis for the study of language. It predates the work of Bakhtin and Voloshinov on this topic, and anticipates many of their most important ideas. In brief, Yakubinsky emphasises the naturalness of dialogue and contrasts this with the artificiality of monologue. He argues that monologue is allied to power and authority, and suggests that it precludes the speaker’s psychological growth, since it does not allow for any response by listeners. In contrast, dialogue is characterised by its constant interruptibility. He points out that, during the interval between one utterance and another, a participant in dialogue must simultaneously attend to their interlocutor’s utterance and prepare their response. He describes this as the ‘apperceptive moment’ in speech reception: our understanding of another’s utterance is grounded in our turn of mind, our existing mindset, which is in turn governed by the entire history of our prior experience of interaction, or ‘apperceptive mass’, in Yakubinsky’s terms: The more our apperceptive mass resembles our interlocutor’s apperceptive mass, the better and easier we receive and understand his speech, which may be highly elliptical and teeming with allusions. Conversely, the more the interlocutors’ apperceptive masses differ, the more difficult mutual understanding becomes. (Yakubinsky & Eskin, 1997 [1923]: 253) We may feel that ‘apperceptive mass’ is not a happy expression; perhaps ‘complex’ or simply ‘stance’ would be a better way to capture the idea. But the point Yakubinsky is formulating is a significant one: the degree to which two speakers’ perspectives or outlooks on life are matched governs how well they understand one another, and affects (or finds expression in) the relative terseness or explicitness of their discourse. This insight essentially 17

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anticipates the concept of ‘speaker alignment’ in conversation analysis (CA) and the sociology of everyday life (Goffman, 1981). Yakubinsky grounds his argument about the dialogic nature of language by pointing out that human speech activity manifests functional diversity. Speakers employ different types of speech and fashions of speaking according to factors such as the conditions of communication (differences in the social environment, such as the home versus the workplace); the forms of communication (e.g. face-to-face talk versus writing); and the goals of communication (e.g. utterances designed to inspire, to persuade, to reprove, etc.). Yakubinsky’s classification here recalls Halliday’s concept of register (Halliday, 1978). He goes on to discuss different forms of speech utterance, distinguishing between the extremes of monologue (such as a speech in a courtroom) and dialogue, as represented by everyday unpremeditated conversation. He argues that between these two extremes lies a whole range of intermediate forms, such as the more or less ritualised exchange of greetings in a formal ceremony, which we might call ‘monologic dialogue’, and deliberate discussion, which typically has a more clearly defined topic and sense of purpose than everyday conversation, but may be less formalised in structure and more unpredictable in outcome than the discourse found on ceremonial occasions, or the kind of highly organised meetings used to conduct institutionalised public business in the workplace. Yakubinsky’s argument here is particularly salient to the question of the modes of discourse found in education. For example, his distinction between degrees of dialogicality in the forms of speech helps us to recognise how small group discussion in the classroom has some of the spontaneous character of informal conversation, but is framed by a definite purpose and scope which are usually set by the teacher. A highly didactic style of pedagogy, on the other hand, such as that found when the teacher cross-examines the class with a sequence of questions designed to test their recall of answers got by rote, may have a superficial appearance of dialogue, since there is a real exchange of utterances between different speakers, but this conceals the fact that the sequence of topics, pace of interaction and selection of speakers is wholly vested in the teacher; it thus constitutes a good example of ‘monologic dialogue’.

Lecture

Recitation

Teacher-led plenary discussion

Small group discussion

Monologue

Monologic dialogue

Dialogic monologue

Dialogue

Figure 2.1 Degrees of dialogicality in classroom discourse

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In his article, Yakubinsky concentrates on the properties of the direct form of dialogue, of which informal everyday conversation is the prototype. He shows that the visual channel of communication is of vital importance in this context, incorporating such aspects of behaviour as facial expression, gesture and bodily movements. This ‘pantomime’ character of face-to-face conversation is crucial to the exchange of meaning between participants, as we see from the way in which people often convey a powerful reaction by means of facial expression alone, e.g. a frown versus a smile; and from the way in which a speaker will often ‘change tack’ in the course of an utterance in response to such an expression. Yakubinsky also highlights the vital contribution of other aspects of the auditory channel in face-to-face communication, apart from the words themselves, i.e. the intensity, intonation and timbre of voice, which combine to produce what we know as a ‘tone of voice’. Not only does one speaker adopt a certain tone of voice to convey a particular emotional nuance or shade of meaning, but the ‘temperature’ of the whole dialogue varies according to the mutual accommodation or divergence between the tones of voice employed by the different participants. Everyone knows the experience, for example, of how a disagreement can escalate into a row, or the infectiousness with which laughter can spread among a group of talkers, and likewise, the sense of coolness that affects an interaction if one speaker’s attempt at levity is met with blankness or unmoved solemnity on the part of the other. Yakubinsky describes how we ‘tune into’ another speaker’s utterance from the very first words spoken, what he calls the ‘apperceptional’ quality of the utterance (e.g. its hostile or sympathetic character), largely established through the tone of voice and non-verbal signals, which call forth an answering stance on our own part to which we wish to give voice, often before we have heard more than a small fraction of the words the other speaker actually utters in the course of their turn at speech. For Yakubinsky, dialogue has primacy over monologue in the sense that it is a universal form of communication; all human interaction, he argues, strives to be dialogic. We can see this from the way in which interrupting, or answering back, comes naturally to us, whereas special conditions need to be orchestrated in order to allow a group of people to listen to someone else’s monologue, e.g. the organisation of a meeting with a chairperson and recognised procedures for gaining the floor. Yakubinsky emphasises the connection between authority and monologic forms of speech, saying, ‘One listens to those who have power or authority’ (Yakubinsky & Eskin, 1997 [1923]: 250). For this reason, the process of monologisation is typically accompanied by ritual and ceremonial ways of behaving (cf. religious ceremony and judicial proceedings as well as business and political meetings). Again, this brings to mind the interaction order of the classroom where, customarily, the teacher exercises authority over the conduct of discourse by nominating student speakers, and where for long periods of time students are expected to

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listen in silence while the teacher transmits knowledge through extended verbal monologue. Finally, Yakubinsky compares dialogue as realised in spontaneous faceto-face conversation with monologue, whether spoken or written. He notes the condition of constant interruptibility which is characteristic of speakers’ turns-at-talk in dialogue, and draws attention to the fact that the pace of dialogic speech is faster than the pace typical of monologue (where the speaker does not normally have to worry about being interrupted). In part, this faster rate of speaking is a floor-holding strategy designed to communicate that the speaker’s utterance is not yet finished. In addition, when we act for the time being as the listener in a dialogue, we not only have to attend to and make sense of what the other speaker is saying, but also to prepare our response, our next turn-at-talk. The combination of these two circumstances, the fast pace of speaking and the requirement to prepare our next turn while listening to another’s speech, makes for formal simplicity in dialogic utterances in comparison to monologic speech or writing, according to Yakubinsky. To put it simply, under the pressure of immediacy that we experience in conversation, we are usually so concerned to get our message across that we do not have time to worry much about refining its form; it is more important to say the right thing than to say the thing right, i.e. correctly or with the fullness and precision that we look for in written communication. In dialogue, we speak ‘off the cuff’, with the creativity of spontaneous improvisation, whereas in writing we have time to go over, revise and polish our first attempt to produce something more fixed and permanent. This process of redrafting accounts for the relative compositional complexity of monologue compared with dialogic speech. Yakubinsky’s remarks here recall Barnes’s distinction between exploratory talk and ‘final draft’ talk in education (Barnes, 1992). Barnes argued that it was important for teachers to make space in the classroom for small group discussion activities, in which students had the opportunity to come to grips with new ideas in a less formal context of communication, as a preparation for the very public arena of whole class discussion, in which the teacher’s authority is very much to the fore, and when student contributions are often subject to immediate evaluation by the teacher for their use of correct academic terminology – a risky situation for a student to ‘have a go’ at if they are not quite sure of their grasp of the subject. Yakubinsky’s insistence on the primacy of improvised dialogue in the collective creation of meaning is salient here. He offers the following definition of ‘automatic speech’: The term speech automatism applies to speech as a simple volitional activity that uses familiar elements. (Yakubinsky & Eskin, 1997 [1923]: 255) For him, spontaneous, unrehearsed talk that is improvised on the spur of the moment provides the motor that drives language change, through the ad hoc

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innovations thrown out by speakers to streamline communication. Monologic forms, like the printed word, are by comparison inherently conservative. We might extend this argument to apply to the case of language development and concept formation at the intersubjective level, as well as to the largescale historical phenomenon of language change across a whole society. It may be that the imperfections, slips and tentative locutions characteristic of exploratory talk in small group discussion in the classroom are an important part of creating the attitude of mental permeability that is needed for developmental learning to occur: the sense that one’s mind is open to enquiry in this realm of knowledge. This connection between creativity and spontaneous discussion is further explored in Chapter 7.

Speech and Consciousness The most fully developed exposition of the dialogic theory of language is found in Voloshinov’s book-length work, Marxism and the Philosophy of Language, originally published in Russian in 1929 (Voloshinov, 1973 [1929]). For Voloshinov, an adequate theory of language is vital for the successful study of ideology, a traditional concern in Marxism from its inception (Marx, 1970 [1932]). He argues that an understanding of ideology depends on an understanding of signs, language being the semiotic medium above all others; that is, ‘the domain of ideology coincides with the domain of signs’ (Voloshinov, 1973 [1929]: 10). Language is ideologically neutral in the sense that it can be the bearer of any ideological message whatsoever; it is not tied to a particular field or system of ideology in the way religious symbolism or ritual is. Like Yakubinsky, he identifies everyday conversational speech as the major substantive area of study with which those interested in the relation between language and ideology should concern themselves. He goes on to say that dialogic speech of this kind is the material of consciousness (our inner life, or inner speech). Discourse is an objective, material phenomenon which occurs in outer experience, and consciousness can arise only in ‘the material embodiment of signs’ (Voloshinov, 1973 [1929]: 11). Indeed, for Voloshinov, the spoken word is an essential accompaniment to all conscious activity. As he puts it: Individual consciousness is not the architect of the ideological superstructure, but only a tenant lodging in the social edifice of ideological signs. (Voloshinov, 1973 [1929]: 13) Thus, he concludes, the study of ideology cannot be carried out without the development and application of an adequate sociological method for the study of spoken interaction. Voloshinov justifies his emphasis on the need for close attention to people’s everyday speech habits by pointing out that ‘the word is the most

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sensitive index of social changes’ (Voloshinov, 1973 [1929]: 19). Anticipating one of Bakhtin’s later arguments, he introduces the concept of speech genre, saying that each social group has its repertoire of speech genres. A speech community comprises different classes using the ‘same’ language to communicate and, because of this, there is a constant struggle for meaning in discursive interaction, a struggle which refracts the economic struggle between social classes. The ideological nature of discourse means that it cannot be treated as a transparent medium for the transmission of value-free knowledge, since differently oriented inflections, associated with the different standpoints of different social groups, intersect within the verbal sign. At the same time, it is just this struggle for inflection, what Voloshinov terms the ‘multiaccentuality’ of discourse, which imparts vitality and dynamism to a living language. The ruling class, he argues, always tries to standardise language use, i.e. to remove it from the sphere of conflicting social value judgements; but this is trying to hold back the tide, since social change is a continuous feature of class society, never more so than under capitalism. We can readily think of examples that illustrate the ideological struggle over language use that Voloshinov is describing. In the UK, for example, there are regular debates in the media about the alleged decline of English, the failure of schools to teach the rules of grammar, and the need to reinforce the hegemony of ‘standard English’ over regional, class-based and intergenerational variation in usage. From his stress on the social nature of language, Voloshinov proceeds to draw some conclusions about the nature of mind. He argues that inner speech, our experience of consciousness, needs to be understood as inner dialogue, as a continuously emergent exchange between possible socioideological points of view. Our most private thoughts have their posited social audience. He also takes to task the structuralist theory of language associated with the work of Saussure (de Saussure, 1974). For Voloshinov, Saussure’s dichotomy between the synchronic and diachronic study of language embodies a dualistic discontinuity between the history of language and the system of language (langue, which Saussure defined as the object of study in linguistics). The emphasis on the arbitrariness of the linguistic sign, seen in one of Saussure’s favourite analogies comparing language to the abstract symbols of algebra, suggests an image of language as a fixed, closed system, ignoring the ideological meanings that give the linguistic signs their content. Voloshinov believes that the structuralist view of language as a stable system comes from the historical domination of Western linguistic thought by philological concerns, i.e. the study of dead languages. In fact, Voloshinov argues, language is changing continuously; historically, it ‘presents the picture of a ceaseless flow of becoming’ (Voloshinov, 1973 [1929]: 66). Furthermore, if we think of social human beings engaged in the concrete activity of speaking to one another, then what is important to the speaker and to their interlocutor is not the supposedly stable, fixed identity of a

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linguistic sign, but precisely its changeable and adaptable quality, the potential it has to be filled with a particular meaning in a specific context: In actuality, we never say or hear words, we say and hear what is true or false, good or bad, important or unimportant, pleasant or unpleasant, and so on. Words are always filled with content and meaning drawn from behaviour or ideology. (Voloshinov, 1973 [1929]: 70) Voloshinov coins the concept of the ideological impletion of words to describe the process whereby speakers populate words with ideological meaning in practice, in the context of a specific act of speech communication. This leads him to the conclusion that it is utterances, not words or grammatical structures in the abstract, that are the real units of discourse. There is more to the matter than this, however, since any given utterance is ‘but one link in the continuous chain of speech performances’ (Voloshinov, 1973 [1929]: 72). Voloshinov proceeds to analyse in more detail the nature of verbal interaction in the exchange of utterances between speakers. He posits as a distinctive feature of the utterance the important concept of evaluative accent: every utterance, he argues, conveys a value judgement, an evaluative orientation towards its referential theme; this evaluation is marked most obviously in speech by intonation (cf. the concept of prosody, explained in the Introduction and Chapters 10–13, current volume). Meaning as created through dialogue is always saturated with such value judgements. Voloshinov connects this with the idea of the ‘evaluative purview’ of a social group, i.e. the things that have importance for members of that group; this purview is generated through the process of ideological struggle. Historical changes in linguistic meaning can thus be seen as a matter of reevaluation. One thinks, for example, of the struggle to define the usage of the English word ‘gay’ as a positive term for the sexuality of homosexuals and lesbians, where no such term previously existed. Because the society that comprises a speech community is stratified and therefore conflictual, Voloshinov argues that meaning is never settled and fixed once and for all, but rather that there is a ‘constant struggle of accents in each semantic sector of existence’ (Voloshinov, 1973 [1929]: 106). The preceding theoretical discussion of the nature of language allows Voloshinov to put forward the following general definition: Language is a continuous generative process implemented in the socialverbal interaction of speakers. (Voloshinov, 1973 [1929]: 98) If this seems obvious to us, we should note how different it is from the structuralist view of language embodied in Saussure’s definition of langue as an abstract system of signs in which the meaning (value) of each sign is wholly determined by its relationship with other members of the sign-system.

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Saussure’s linguistic theory explicitly excluded spoken interaction (parole) from the field of study, and thereby detached language from the sphere of social activity, in which it has its being and outside of which it cannot exist. Voloshinov’s outlook leads him to see the act of understanding another as fundamentally dialogic in nature, i.e. as an active, responsive process in which we attempt to match a speaker’s utterance with our own ‘counterutterance’. He sums this up with a telling analogy: Meaning is the effect of interaction between speaker and listener produced via the material of a particular sound complex. It is like an electric spark that occurs only when two different terminals are hooked together. (Voloshinov, 1973 [1929]: 102–103) Again, we notice how different this theory of meaning is from that implied by Saussure’s favourite analogy in which he compares language to a game of chess. For Saussure, it was essential to maintain an absolute dichotomy between synchronic and diachronic approaches to the study of language, and any given synchronic state of the language existed outside history; language change, in this view, is a series of discontinuous self-contained states of the system and the history of previous ‘moves in the game’ is irrelevant to the current conjuncture of pieces on the board. There is no room in this theory for an active struggle for meaning in the course of verbal interaction, still less for making any connection between a concrete episode of dialogic exchange between speakers and the ideological outlook of different social groups. Voloshinov’s concern with the centrality of the sign echoes Vygotsky’s thinking on the relationship between language and thought, as described for example in his discussion of the way in which human activity differs from animal behaviour by virtue of being mediated by the sign, allowing humans to break the tendency to react directly to stimuli and develop indirect, culturally based ways of regulating their own behaviour (Vygotsky, 1978: 40). Likewise, his theory of consciousness as inner dialogue is very close to Vygotsky’s views on mind as inner speech (Vygotsky, 2004 [1934]: 85; and see Daniels, Chapter 3, current volume), though it is fair to say that Voloshinov’s theory emphasises the dialogic nature of interaction and, hence, of consciousness, more explicitly than Vygotsky’s. As far as pedagogy is concerned, Voloshinov’s analysis of the ideological nature of different speech genres anticipates later insights into the nature of teacher-dominated classroom discourse, for example in the work of Mehan and Cazden, who demonstrated that one of the prime lessons that students must learn when they go to school is the nature of the classroom interaction order and the authority of the teacher to control turn taking and the selection of topics for discussion, and to evaluate the adequacy of student contributions (Cazden, 2001; Mehan, 1979). Perhaps his most important insight, however, is the theoretical concept of evaluative accent. This enables us to understand how every act

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of communication is embedded in the world of ideology and is predicated on the class-based and conflictual social order of which we are members. In drawing attention to the importance of intonation in speech, Voloshinov anticipates the analysis of the communicative function of prosody in CA and the linguistic analysis of natural speech (Couper-Kuhlen & Selting, 1996; Szczepek Reed, 2006; Wennerstrom, 2001), offering a vital insight into the intrinsically social nature of language and the primacy of speech in understanding how language works. His emphasis on understanding as a fundamentally dialogic act, embodied in his metaphor of the electric spark, is illuminating for the theory of pedagogy. Adapting this metaphor, we can say that pedagogy can only be considered successful when it elicits that leap of semiotic charge between the teacher and learner; when, in other words, students are potentiated as a result of the act of teaching, and their capacity for engaging in conceptually mediated activity is enhanced through the deliberate process of education.

Different-languagedness: Heteroglossia In his individual work, Bakhtin continued to develop the theory of dialogism which had been initiated in the work of members of the Circle in which he participated, and in the work of other contemporary thinkers, sometimes elaborating insights that other authors had adumbrated, and sometimes adding new concepts or bringing a different perspective to bear on the questions they had discussed (Brandist, 2002). In this and the following section of the chapter, I will concentrate particularly on two concepts which were more fully developed by Bakhtin than by other thinkers involved in developing the theory of dialogism. These are the ideas of heteroglossia and polyphony. In brief, heteroglossia can be understood as meaning different-languagedness, and polyphony as many-voicedness (Vice, 1997). While there is clearly an overlap between the two ideas, they can also be used to direct our attention to somewhat different aspects of language use and its significance for educational practice. Bakhtin first introduces and expounds the concept of heteroglossia in his long essay written in 1934–1935, Discourse in the Novel (Bakhtin, 1981 [1934– 1935]). The essay is principally concerned with the history of the novel as a literary genre, but along the way Bakhtin offers many reflections on the social nature of language and the process of psychological development which are suggestive for our thinking about pedagogy in general and language education in particular. He glosses the term as referring to ‘the social diversity of speech types’, providing the following fuller definition: The internal stratification of any single national language into social dialects, characteristic group behaviour, professional jargons, generic

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languages, languages of generations and age groups, tendentious languages, languages of the authorities, of various circles and of passing fashions … – this internal stratification present in every language at any given moment of its historical existence is the indispensable prerequisite for the novel as a genre. (Bakhtin, 1981 [1934–1935]: 262–263) This clearly echoes Voloshinov’s account of the ‘multiaccentuality’ of discourse, noted above. It also anticipates later work in sociolinguistics and points to the concept of sociolect (a variety of language associated with a social group, e.g. variation in usage according to class (Trudgill, 2000)), although it is noteworthy that the Bakhtinian concept posits linguistic diversity as intrinsic to the condition of a living language, rather than in terms of a departure from some underlying linguistic norm. As Bakhtin puts it: ‘[a] unitary language is not something given but is always in essence posited – and at every moment of its linguistic life it is opposed to the realities of heteroglossia’ (Bakhtin, 1981 [1934–1935]: 270). Again, we can see this insight as anticipating much later work in the West on the ideological nature of the concept of a standard language (e.g. ‘standard English’) and the fundamentally political nature of the drive towards linguistic standardisation in formal education and schooling. A comparable analysis is made in the work of Bourdieu on language and symbolic power, where he points out how the French school system was used by the state to inculcate a particular image of correct usage of the French language and to stigmatise regional and social variation as ‘patois’ (Bourdieu, 1991). We can also find parallel lines of thinking in critical sociolinguistics, e.g. the critique of linguistic prescription and the ‘complaint tradition’ which upholds the supposed superiority of ‘standard English’ (Milroy & Milroy, 1991), and in the theoretical perspectives of social semiotics and critical discourse analysis, with their emphasis on the hegemonic function of normative genres of text-construction in constricting the range of ideological standpoints that can be acceptably expressed in public discourse (Fairclough, 1989; Hodge & Kress, 1988). If we take this perception to heart, it has considerable ramifications for language education policies that privilege a specific stylistic norm, such as the idea of ‘standard English’, and insist that this is taught as the only acceptable way of communicating in educational settings and activities. Recognising that communicative practices within a given speech community are highly diverse, and that different forms of normative usage act as signifiers of the identity of different subgroups within that community, we are forced to concede that the patterns of language usage which receive approval and endorsement in most education systems are very selective, and do not represent the multifaceted reality of the world outside the classroom. At the very least, this suggests the importance of recognising a broad range of styles and registers of language use in the language education curriculum, rather than

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focusing on a notional ‘standard’ version of English (or other target language) to the exclusion of other varieties. Important to Bakhtin’s definition is the recognition that linguistic diversity is associated not only with regional and geographical variation, i.e. dialects in the usual sense, such as those of south-west versus northeast England, or British versus American English, but also with variation that is socio-ideological in nature. For example, there are certain ways of speaking that are ‘part of the job’ in particular professions and occupational groups. This is most visible in areas like law and medicine, where specialist technical vocabularies are in use, and where linguistic exchanges may be governed by rules which diverge significantly from other settings (e.g. the elaborate etiquette of courtroom proceedings). It is also true of most formal education settings, as we know from the tradition of classroom discourse research, which has highlighted the way in which lessons in school introduce students not only to subject-specific concepts and vocabulary (e.g. the language of mathematics or history), but also to a given interaction order (Mehan, 1979), in which the teacher typically controls the choice of topic and selection of student speakers, and often asks knownanswer questions, then evaluates the correctness of a student’s response – a very different pattern of talk from that of informal conversation between peers, or adult–child talk in other social settings. The language of formal education, then, can be seen as a socio-ideological language in Bakhtin’s sense, part of the internal stratification of the national language that forms the medium of instruction (such as English), a subtype of usage that is employed in this branch of the social division of labour and which differs systematically from modes of communication found in other spheres of activity. Furthermore, Bakhtin’s definition highlights the link between linguistic variation and social stratification. In connection with education, this aspect of the concept of heteroglossia helps us to be conscious that there is not simply a single undifferentiated language of the classroom, but that within this usage-type, different speakers must come to ‘know their place’ within the exchange-structure of the school lesson. The type of speech that is expected of the student is not the same as that which the teacher is entitled to use; most obviously, it is the teacher who has the right to ask questions of the students, for instance, not the other way round. The register of classroom discourse allots asymmetrical speaking rights to participants, and this asymmetry is bound up with the authority and status of their respective positions; from this perspective, the practice of recitation, in which the teacher asks a sequence of test questions on a topic which s/he sets, and evaluates each student’s answer in turn, locates the teacher as the sole ‘arbiter of valid knowledge’ in the conditions of the classroom, and constrains the function of students’ speech to the recall and display of knowledge selected and approved by the teacher (Edwards & Mercer, 1987: 47).

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This aspect of the heteroglossia of the language of schooling, its stratification according to the differing social status of teacher and students, is overlaid by generational differences in ways of speaking, for example, the constantly changing vocabulary and style of youth slang, which often functions as a deliberate marker of distinction, a way in which young people signal the ‘Us’ that they affiliate to as against the official, approved language of ‘Them’. In multicultural societies, such as contemporary Britain or the United States, there is the further consideration that, while there may be one official medium of instruction (in this case, English), students may speak dozens of different tongues as their first language or as the language of the home; cf. the analysis of home–school communication in Chapter 4. The concept of heteroglossia can thus give us a powerful aperture on the rich diversity and internal differentiation of language as it is encountered in the national education systems of contemporary capitalist society, reinforcing Bakhtin’s judgement that ‘at any given moment of its historical existence, language is heteroglot from top to bottom’ (Bakhtin, 1981 [1934–1935]: 291). This emphasis on the primacy of linguistic diversity also leads Bakhtin to stress that living languages are in a state of continuous change; it is not simply that many different styles of speaking go together to make up the entity that we call a national language, but that the ensemble of varieties of the language is also dynamic, in a condition of perpetual flux that reflects the constantly changing nature of the society in which the language is spoken. From this point of view, Saussure’s strict dichotomy between synchronic linguistics, the study of language as a static system, and diachronic linguistics, the study of the historical development of language over time, cannot be sustained (de Saussure, 1974: 81). The reality of heteroglossia is readily apparent in the internationalised world of higher education in the Anglophone countries, where English may be the medium of instruction – this, indeed, being the attraction for many international students – but where dozens of different first languages may be spoken and heard on the campus of many institutions. If this were simply an empirical observation, the concept of heteroglossia would not add much to the more familiar term ‘linguistic diversity’. However, it is a common experience in teaching mixed groups of speakers of English as a first and as an additional language to find that language diversity intersects with different social and cultural understandings of what it is to be a student. It is possible, for instance, for students with an excellent formal command of academic English to come with quite different expectations of what is required in written coursework or examinations from those that prevail in universities in the UK, United States and other countries where the majority language is English. Likewise, some students can find it challenging at first to participate in group activities which require them to collaborate with their peers in informal discussion unsupervised by the tutor or lecturer, not necessarily because they lack competence in spoken English, but because this kind

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of group work is alien to their prior educational experience. Many contemporary universities, with their heteroglot community of academics and students, might indeed be called a microcosm of the multicultural society in which we live. This cultural and linguistic pluralism should not be seen as an educational disadvantage. On the contrary, an awareness of the existence of different language groups and the ‘worlds of meaning’ which they inhabit can help to relativise our own sense of linguistic identity and open our minds to the possibility of alternative ways of seeing the world. Seen in this way, participating in a heteroglot environment is a resource for enlarging and enriching our understanding of ourselves and our relation to others, and our place in the world we share. Bakhtin expresses this thought in a vivid extended metaphor: Languages of heteroglossia, like mirrors that face each other, each reflecting in its own way a piece, a tiny corner of the world, force us to guess at and grasp for a world behind their mutually reflecting aspects that is broader, more multi-levelled, containing more and varied horizons than would be available to a single language or a single mirror. (Bakhtin, 1981 [1934–1935]: 414–415) Bakhtin’s image may bring to mind the analogy used by Vygotsky when he compares word meaning to a drop of water that refracts different possible interpretations: Consciousness is reflected in the word like the sun is reflected in a droplet of water. The word is a microcosm of consciousness, related to consciousness like a living cell is related to an organism, like an atom is related to the cosmos. The meaningful word is a microcosm of human consciousness. (Vygotsky, 2004: 110) Vygotsky at this point is discussing the relationship between discursive meaning and consciousness, whereas Bakhtin is discussing the relationship between different languages (or language subtypes). Nevertheless, both thinkers are striving to articulate the subtle and elusive sense in which expressing our thoughts in words forces us to go beyond the limits of the single, self-contained ideological consciousness (if such a thing were possible). Speaking is a social act; to speak is to take part in the life of society, and necessarily involves an encounter with standpoints other than our own. It is in dialogue with others that our ideological consciousness is formed; as Bakhtin remarks, ‘consciousness awakens to independent ideological life precisely in a world of alien discourses surrounding it’ (Bakhtin, 1981 [1934– 1935]: 345). This is consequential for the practice of education, since it implies the need for teachers to furnish opportunities for students to engage

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actively with the conceptual material of the curriculum if they are to take over this knowledge and become capable of making use of it in due course in independent creative ideological activity without the guidance of the teacher. It also indicates that encouraging the practice of collective activity with others (including other students) lies at the heart of a dialogic approach to pedagogy, since through this the learner will engage in the kind of intermental border crossing that enables her/him to transcend the limits of their own current consciousness. There is a further aspect to the concept of heteroglossia which carries implications for the practice of education and our understanding of the process of psychological development. Given the primacy of social diversification in our experience of language use, it follows that we form our own subjectivities in the midst of a struggle between divergent, and sometimes contradictory, ways of speaking and thinking about the world. This means that, in the effort to communicate our point of view, we are obliged to take over concepts and formulations whose meanings are contested and which come ‘with strings attached’, in the sense that they have a history of social usage which brands them as belonging to one or another of the sub-groups referred to by Bakhtin in his account of the internal stratification of languages cited above. When we speak, we perforce use words and styles of verbal interaction associated with the young or old, women or men, working-class or bourgeois subcultures, and many other such group identities. There is no such thing as an ideologically neutral form of language and, for the purposes of education, this implies that learners must take over concepts that they do not invent from scratch, but which trail a freight of prior signification in their wake. This is not in itself a problem; indeed, it could hardly be otherwise. If each generation had to rediscover all knowledge from first principles, it is unlikely that human society would show much technological or cultural advancement. The educational question is whether learners are encouraged to accept the concepts, knowledge and values presented by their elders uncritically and adopt their view of the world on trust, or whether pedagogy invites them to question, explore and test new ideas against their own experience and understanding of the world, in such a way that they develop increased capabilities for informed praxis. The ultimate test of the success of teaching is whether learners are able to make creative use of the knowledge it equips them with for their own purposes. The concept of heteroglossia chimes with Bakhtin’s emphasis on the fundamental importance of actively responsive understanding in shaping discourse. Speech is not seen as the putting-forth of a set of linguistic tokens with a predetermined value of their own, independent of the interactional goals of the participants in a given exchange; rather, dialogue is a process of continuously shifting negotiation of positions, in which the local meaning of a particular term or phrase is always at stake. As Bakhtin puts it:

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The speaker strives to get a reading on his [sic] own word, and on his own conceptual system that determines this word, within the alien conceptual system of the understanding receiver. (Bakhtin, 1981 [1934– 1935]: 282) In many ways, this may remind us of the concept of ‘recipient design’ in CA, i.e. the manner in which as speakers we shape our turns-at-talk in ways which display an orientation to our co-participants, e.g. by agreeing with, modifying or disputing the formulation of the topic that they have put forward in a preceding turn (Hutchby & Wooffitt, 1998). It may also be a useful way of thinking about the task of teaching, in which the educator’s goal is to develop the ‘conceptual system’ of the learner, by enabling them to share the ‘reading’ of a concept-term held by the teacher (such as a scientific understanding of the term ‘energy’, or a literary understanding of what an ‘image’ is). The other pole of a dialogic approach to pedagogy, as we have already noted, is that the proof of the pudding is in the eating, so to speak: the demonstration that students have understood some new concept introduced by the teacher is that they become capable of deploying it to do their own thinking. Bakhtin writes: The word in language is half someone else’s. It becomes ‘one’s own’ only when the speaker populates it with his [sic] own intention, his own accent, when he appropriates the word, adapting it to his own semantic and expressive intention. (Bakhtin, 1981 [1934–1935]: 293) So long as understanding a concept is equivalent for students to being able to reproduce verbatim the definition printed in a textbook or written on the board by the teacher, the idea remains ‘someone else’s’, not a genuine psychological tool that they can put to useful work. It is only when the learner begins to make use of the new concept in constructing an argument, explaining their point of view, or questioning the interpretation put forward by another – including the teacher’s – that we can be confident that they are integrating it into their own emergent understanding of the domain of knowledge they are studying. This brings us back to the importance of allowing students to play with and explore the significance of newly taught knowledge as a means of increasing their command over it, their sense of what it can and cannot help them to accomplish. In this connection, Bakhtin draws a distinction between ‘authoritative’ and ‘internally persuasive’ discourse, which may be particularly significant for language education (including second language learning). He describes authoritative discourse as ‘the word of the fathers’; it is that mode of addressing listeners (for example, a class of students) which ‘demands our unconditional allegiance’ (Bakhtin, 1981 [1934–1935]: 342–343).

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In context, it is clear that one of the examples that Bakhtin is alluding to is religious dogma, such as the rote declamation of a formal creed in the liturgy of some hierarchically organised churches. This is not so far, we might think, from the suggestion that school pupils should be able to rehearse a chronological list of the kings and queens of England, or memorise a speech from a Shakespeare play. In this kind of ritual performance, it is the ability to reproduce the canonical text word-for-word that counts, not any understanding of what it means. The discourse that is the object of such exercises is authoritative in the sense that it is not open to negotiation, but is treated as a cultural ‘given’. Bakhtin contrasts the kind of rote learning which results from the use of authoritative discourse with what he calls internally persuasive discourse. The key feature of this mode of language use is that its meaning is not fixed once and for all, but is open to interpretation – and reinterpretation: The semantic structure of an internally persuasive discourse is not finite, it is open; in each of the new contexts that dialogise it, this discourse is able to reveal ever newer ways to mean. (Bakhtin, 1981 [1934– 1935]: 346) Bakhtin’s distinction between authoritative and internally persuasive discourse opens a window onto the role of teacher–student dialogue in pedagogy. We might say that the aim of pedagogy is to enable the learner to make the transition between receiving transmitted cultural knowledge as authoritative discourse which must be accepted as it stands, to being able to carry out new work with this inheritance in the form of internally persuasive discourse in which the learner turns knowledge to explore their own purposes. Particularly in the context of language education, it is surely the goal of the teacher to enable students to gain an all-round understanding of some new aspect of the communication system such that it becomes generative for them, whether that be an aspect of grammar, a new area of vocabulary, or a higher level structure such as the essay as a genre of writing, or the debate as a formal organisation of public speaking. Whether we are thinking of first or second language education, this is what we mean when we speak of the goal as being ‘language development’: not just that students can repeat what they have heard, but that they can creatively select and adapt the cultural tools for communication which they have been presented with in unforeseen circumstances, and amid the flux of a social life which refuses to ‘follow the script’. Bakhtin illustrates the pedagogic import of this distinction directly, by appealing to familiar patterns of classroom practice which are not confined to a particular national culture: When verbal disciplines are taught in school, two basic modes are recognised for the appropriation and transmission – simultaneously – of

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another’s words (a text, a rule, a model): ‘reciting by heart’ and ‘retelling in one’s own words’. (Bakhtin, 1981 [1934–1935]: 341) It is only by the active effort of reformulating presented knowledge, by ‘trying it on to see how it fits’, so to speak, that students can become comfortable with new concepts and learn to wear them as part of their regular mental dress. Where instruction relies heavily on recitational methods, school knowledge is bound to remain somewhat like school uniform for many learners: something you put on when you have to go to school and sit in class, but which you discard as quickly as possible when you go home at the end of the day. Dialogic pedagogy implies a shift towards encouraging students to ‘retell in their own words’ the matter of the curriculum, and a turn away from recitation practices and reproduction questioning (Young, 1991), since it is premised on the recognition that the process of selectively assimilating others’ discourse is fundamental to the ideological becoming of the individual (Bakhtin, 1981 [1934–1935]). This distinction is explored and illustrated further in Chapter 9.

Many-voicedness: Polyphony Bakhtin introduces the concept of polyphony in his analysis of the novels of Dostoevsky (Bakhtin, 1984 [1929]). The term is a self-conscious musical metaphor, which Bakhtin defines in the following way: A plurality of independent and unmerged voices and consciousnesses, a genuine polyphony of fully valid voices is in fact the chief characteristic of Dostoevsky’s novels. (Bakhtin, 1984 [1929]: 6) In Bakhtin’s view, Dostoevsky makes the self-consciousness of his characters the topic and organising principle of the novel. This means that the authorial voice is dethroned from its position of privilege, and consequently all viewpoints in the novel are ‘dialogised’, i.e. relativised by being set side by side with one another, no single viewpoint being superior to any other. The world of these novels is ‘profoundly pluralistic’ (Bakhtin, 1984 [1929]: 26). While Bakhtin’s primary concern is with the theory of the novel as a literary form, much of what he has to say is applicable to the exchange of discourse between speaking subjects in the encounters of real life, and to our understanding of consciousness as a psychological phenomenon. The idea of polyphony clearly comes from the same stable as that of heteroglossia. However, with heteroglossia the focus is on linguistic communities as a whole and the shared language practices of different sub-groups within that community (different dialects and sociolects of the community of English speakers, for example). In the case of polyphony, attention is

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drawn to the unique voices of individual speakers, and how they interact with one another in social settings, crossing, intersecting, converging and dividing, sometimes perhaps combining in harmony for a longer or shorter interval of time, but never being wholly reducible one to another. If we extend Bakhtin’s musical analogy, we might say that the idea of heteroglossia corresponds to the existence of different musical traditions (or musical ‘languages’), such as the broad tradition of European classical music compared, say, with Indian classical music, and by extension with the fact that there are many different forms of music within a given national or cultural tradition, such as folk music, jazz, pop and classical forms. By contrast, the idea of polyphony corresponds to the fact that a specific piece of music is often performed by many musicians playing (or singing) together as an ensemble, and that often they will playing different instruments – instruments with different ‘voices’, singing different melodies – at the same time to produce a combined effect, such as a jazz band, an orchestra or a choir. Not to push the analogy too far, it is also a common practice in many forms of music for one instrument or voice to take a solo role while others provide a less prominent accompaniment in the background, and in jazz, for example, for different instrumentalists to take turns in performing this soloing role as the piece of music evolves. This aspect of the analogy is perhaps the most appropriate when we think about how talk in real life is carried on since, if many people are speaking simultaneously in what is supposed to be a shared encounter, then the result tends to be a tumult, in which multiple side conversations are carried on among pairs or small groups of interactants, but communication across the larger group as a whole breaks down; think of the experience of being in a meeting where people stop going through the chair and start talking among themselves. The same applies, of course, when a teacher loses control of a class and students pursue their own conversations or arguments regardless of the supposed aim of the lesson. It does not follow, however, that multiple discussions cannot be carried on at the same time in a way that contributes to a larger whole. Teachers will recognise the difference between the din of a class out of control, and the hubbub of a class where students are working together in groups or pairs on a defined educational activity. In such circumstances, there may well be a certain amount of talk that is not strictly about the topic or task in hand, but overall students remain engaged in the set topic and in pursuit of a given outcome, be that a practical experiment in the sciences or the interpretation of a literary text in the language arts. If we think about the concept of polyphony (or ‘many-voicedness’) in the context of language education and classroom discourse, then, it need not be taken as a recipe for promoting chaos in the classroom, but should rather be seen as a theoretical recognition of the reality that in any group learning situation, every learner will come to the situation with their own psychological perspective. This embraces both their cognitive development – the extent of their prior knowledge relevant to

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the subject – and their emotional involvement in the activity – the totality of their mind-set at a given time, in other words. In this sense, any act of education has the quality of polyphony, since by definition pedagogy is a form of interactivity, something that happens ‘between various consciousnesses, that is, their interaction and interdependence’ (Bakhtin, 1984 [1929]: 36). (For an illustration of this in the analysis of an extract of teacher–student dialogue, see Chapter 13, current volume). Mechanistic views of teaching which see it in terms of the straightforward transmission of accepted knowledge fail to come to grips with this dimension of educative activity, that it necessarily involves an interchange between two or more minded, thinking beings. This is why Mr Gradgrind’s demands of his schoolmaster, parodied by Dickens in Hard Times, are doomed to failure as a philosophy of education: Now what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts. … Stick to the Facts, Sir! (Dickens, 1989 [1854]: 1) Teaching which proceeds in this fashion objectivises the learner, turning them into a thing-like other to be acted upon, as if they were an inert lump of clay to be moulded into shape by the potter. A dialogic approach to pedagogy, by contrast, recognises that learners have minds of their own, and consequently that the teacher must be prepared to talk with (rather than at) her/his students in order to understand their thinking processes, the better to be able to adjust her/his teaching practice so as to lead the development of their consciousness in the desired direction. This kind of intervention may then set up in the mind of the learner what Bakhtin calls a ‘microdialogue’ (Bakhtin, 1984 [1929]: 74), in other words an inner conversation between different voices, one representing their pre-existing knowledge or understanding of the topic in hand, the other the fuller, more developed understanding represented by the voice of the teacher. It seems clear that, in most acts of learning, the learning subject must undergo a more or less extended period of inner doubt and uncertainty before they reach a new, clearer and more confident understanding of some skill, concept or value that goes beyond their previous level of knowledge or ability. The aim of dialogic pedagogy, then, is to present a model of external dialectic in the interaction between teacher and students that supports the development and appropriation of this relation between the voices of the already-known and the notyet-understood in the microdialogue of thought in the mind of the learner. In an important passage, Bakhtin spells out the distinction between the atmosphere of ‘monologic’ thought (as represented, for example, by Mr Gradgrind’s philosophy of education), and the dialogic conditions that we have been discussing:

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In an environment of philosophical monologism the genuine interaction of consciousnesses is impossible, and thus a genuine dialogue is impossible as well. In essence idealism knows only a single mode of cognitive interaction among consciousnesses: someone who knows and possesses the truth instructs someone who is ignorant of it and in error; that is, it is the interaction of a teacher and a pupil, which, it follows, can only be a pedagogical dialogue. (Bakhtin, 1984 [1929]: 81) The appeal to an analogy with the teacher–pupil relationship is revealing. I do not think we should take Bakhtin to imply that teaching should or must have this monologic quality. Rather, the image suggests that instruction in schools all too often conforms to this stereotype. The idea of ‘pedagogical dialogue’ in fact corresponds closely to the transmission-recitation model of teaching that we have noticed elsewhere still accounts for a great deal of observed classroom practice, according to empirical studies (Alexander, 2001; Galton et al., 1999). The dialogic approach, conversely, endows learners with the ‘fully competent ideological power to mean’ (Bakhtin, 1984 [1929]: 82), recognising that they bring their own ideas to the table when education takes place, and that these ideas are a non-zero term in the teaching-learning equation. Whereas monologic modes of teaching tend to stifle thought on the part of learners, treating them as recipients of knowledge to be dispensed by an authority ‘who knows and possesses the truth’, dialogic pedagogy seeks to enlist learners as active participants in the process of knowledge production. This distinction is further explored and illustrated in Chapter 9. This means, of course, that the content and sequencing of a lesson conducted in a dialogic fashion cannot be wholly determined in advance. The teacher may have a plan that sets out intended activities and concepts to be covered, but it will be necessary to adjust this as the encounter with a class of learners unfolds, in response to what the teacher learns about the current state of knowledge and understanding that obtains among the group. ‘The idea’, writes Bakhtin, ‘is a live event, played out at the point of dialogic meeting between two or several consciousnesses’ (Bakhtin, 1984 [1929]: 88). The same might be said of any successful pedagogic interaction; it is not something totally premeditated and predetermined, but is the necessarily unpredictable product of the joint activity of more than one consciousness, striving to arrive at an enhanced mutual understanding of the topic being addressed. Pedagogy is a ‘live event’ in much the same sense that the performance of a piece of music is ‘live’: teaching does not take place in the preparation room, any more than the life of a piece of music resides in the score; both must be brought to life in real-time performance between active human subjects, whose responses to one another shape the totality of their common experience in the moment. Successful teaching necessarily involves an element of improvisation.

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In contradistinction to the monologic conception of truth embodied in the practice of pedagogical dialogue, as noted above, Bakhtin defines a processual, enquiry-based and cooperative conception, which is more in keeping with a dialogic pedagogy: Truth is not born nor is it to be found inside the head of an individual person, it is born between people collectively searching for truth, in the process of their dialogic interaction. (Bakhtin, 1984 [1929]: 110) This leads him to a critique of the later Socratic dialogues in Plato’s work, which he argues degenerate into a form of question-and-answer training in which neophytes recite responses approved by the master, much like the practice of catechism for indoctrinating dogmatic religious beliefs in the young. This stands in contrast to the more open and exploratory character of the early Socratic dialogues, which illustrate a genuinely collective process of knowledge production. Again, we see that there is more to a dialogic vision of education than an exchange of words between teacher and learners: everything depends on the nature of the social relationship that is established between those who occupy these two subject-positions. It is quite possible to have a written text, or an episode of classroom discourse, which formally resembles a dialogue in the sense of being made up of a series of turns-at-talk taken by different speakers, and whose ostensible object is didactic, but which in reality constitutes a pseudo-dialogue, a monologue punctuated at fixed points by response-slots determined by the teacher. In the practices of teacher-led recitation and catechism, the course of the exchange is not open to modification by the learner; it rather embodies the subjection of the will of the learner to the authority of the teacher or examiner. A pedagogy of collective enquiry, however, may promote an ‘active dialogic approach to one’s own self’ (Bakhtin, 1984 [1929]: 120), a willingness to scrutinise and modify one’s previously held beliefs (on the part of the teacher as well as the learner), in the project of mutual self-fashioning that lies at the heart of all humanistic education projects. Bakhtin goes on to draw a distinction between direct discourse, which is ‘directed exclusively towards its referential object’, and various kinds of ‘double-voiced discourse’ which share a common trait: ‘discourse in them has a two-fold direction – it is directed both toward the referential object of speech, as in ordinary discourse, and toward another’s discourse, toward someone else’s speech’ (Bakhtin, 1984 [1929]: 185). This may help us to recognise different functions of speech which are activated in different conditions in the context of the classroom (or other educational settings). In principle at least, we usually think of the discourse of a subject discipline (such as science, history or mathematics) as a form of direct discourse in Bakhtin’s terminology, i.e. as a set of concepts and a form of argumentation that go together to constitute a valid mode of reasoning within that discipline, such as a geometrical theorem

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in mathematics, or an interpretation of a given episode in history. In this sense, the discourse of a subject discipline seems to be a specialised, bounded sub-language in its own right that stands apart from everyday speech and is ‘directed exclusively towards its referential object’, as Bakhtin puts it, which is the subject matter of the discipline itself, be that science, history or whatever. Within certain limits, the teacher’s pedagogic discourse may be imagined to function in that way, for example when s/he makes an exposition of a new topic, often at the start of a lesson or sequence of teaching sessions, e.g. to introduce the scientific concept of ‘energy’ in physics, or the idea of ‘revolution’ in history. However, this is only one side of the matter when disciplinary-specific discourse is deployed in the context of pedagogic activity. The object of a physics lesson is not to demonstrate the teacher’s mastery of the scientific concept of energy, for example, leaving the class of students none the wiser, but to enable the students themselves to take on board any necessary terminology and use it to ‘think like a physicist’, at least as far as their understanding of the topic of energy is concerned. Thus, in the context of deliberate tuition, even discourse that appears to be ‘directed exclusively towards its referential object’ is in fact ‘double-voiced’ in Bakhtin’s sense, since it is also ‘directed toward another’s discourse’, that is, towards developing the discursive capabilities of the learner. Given this understanding of the double-voiced character of the teacher’s speech, we can see that classroom discourse in dialogic pedagogy is characterised by a conscious sense of ‘addressivity’, to use another term of Bakhtin’s: it is not spoken as if to no-one in particular, or to an anonymous mass, but treats the collective of learners as ‘the subject of an address’ (Bakhtin, 1984 [1929]: 251). The skilled teacher must develop a sense of the particular class or group with whom they are working, and of the lesson as a concrete occasion, a unique meeting of voices between this tutor and this set of learners that is taking place right now, in the present moment. It can be difficult to retain this sense when one’s week is organised according to a busy timetable that identifies slots when particular lessons are scheduled, as in most high schools (e.g. Wednesday Period 3 – French Y8 Class B, etc.). It is perhaps this sense of routine that is one of the most difficult obstacles to overcome for educators who strive to infuse their practice with the liveliness and spontaneity of genuine dialogue. However, it may help to counter this if we remember that one of the most important lessons a teacher can pass on is the right to question. Certainly, the classroom atmosphere should not make students ashamed to admit that they do not understand, or to ask for further explanation and clarification. This is why pedagogy which relies heavily on a monologic mode of address, which ‘pretends to be the ultimate word’ (Bakhtin, 1984 [1929]: 292–293), where what the teacher says is right ‘because I say so’, runs the risk of being self-defeating. If we do not give students the opportunity to voice doubt and uncertainty, we have no way of knowing how

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successful our teaching has been, and miss the chance to offer a different explanation or illustration which might dispel any remaining confusion. Listening and responding to students’ concerns and questions may help them to get a better grasp of a specific concept in mathematics or art, say, but it also exemplifies an understanding of what it is to be human, and how to deal with the problems of interpersonal development that life presents, namely: ‘To be means to communicate dialogically’ (Bakhtin, 1984 [1929]: 252). In this section, we have seen that the concept of polyphony, although developed in the context of literary theory, is pregnant with suggestions for pedagogy. In the polyphonic classroom (or other community of learners), the teacher provides space for a plurality of unmerged ideological positions to interact in a collective process of enquiry. The emphasis is on the need for students to make their reasoning explicit in the course of discussion and debate, rather than on an expectation that everyone should arrive at a single approved solution at the outset; where the nature of the subject means that learners need to master specific algorithms and laws (e.g. in mathematics and physics), if a student makes a mistake in selecting or applying such a procedure, then this can be treated as an occasion for joint learning, in which fellow students can be a potential source of support and constructive criticism, as well as the teacher. The teacher in this context addresses the student as a voice of equal weight, at least in those phases of education which involve developing an understanding of some novel aspect of practice in mathematics, communication in a first or second language, or other area of the curriculum. The teacher may indeed know more about the subject matter than the students – one would hope that this is normally the case – and may therefore need to correct misunderstandings and mistakes, or to step in with some missing item of subject knowledge, such as the correct form of the past tense, a piece of unfamiliar vocabulary or an idiomatic expression in second language learning. But it does not follow that s/he must always rely on immediate binary evaluations (‘right/wrong’) in orienting to student contributions in discussion. This, the norm of the monologising classroom, treats the discourse of each student as an object, on which the teacher always has the final word. Under conditions of polyphony, however, teacher–student communication is seen as a work-in-progress; it is ‘unfinalised’, in Bakhtin’s terms, each thought being a rejoinder in an unfinalised dialogue (Bakhtin, 1984 [1929]: 32). To affect the developing consciousness of students means to talk with them, to enter into dialogue with them. There is, of course, a real legacy of cultural tradition and pressure of societal and political conditions which impinges on practice in the living situation of the classroom lesson or university seminar, and these pressures cannot simply be willed away. The pre-existing notion that the teacher’s role is to ‘transmit culture’, in which culture is reified and taken as a given, rather than a living tradition to be explored and interrogated, exercises a powerful

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ideological effect on conceptions of the purpose of the education system. This is undoubtedly reinforced by the apparatus of credentialism that occupies a strategic place in the institutions of schooling and tertiary education – the mass engine of social differentiation that is constituted by the system of individualised public examinations and testing. Nevertheless, it is important to point out that the teacher or tutor continues to have some discursive room for manoeuvre in how they construct the conditions for interaction in their own pedagogic practice. If we want to encourage children or adult learners to think for themselves, we must first be prepared to think with them, to grant the legitimacy of expressing their differing points of view en route to building a deeper collective understanding of the field of knowledge being investigated.

Dialogism and Education In this chapter, I have reviewed a selection of the key concepts involved in dialogism as a social theory of language, and have discussed the ramifications of these ideas for education in general and pedagogy in particular, with a particular focus on the sphere of language education. We saw how dialogism as a philosophy of language had its roots in Yakubinsky’s seminal paper on dialogic speech. In this, Yakubinksy argues that interlocutors who share a common outlook on the world can rely on this background understanding to communicate in a kind of shorthand discourse, in which many familiar points of reference can be taken for granted, whereas speakers whose perspectives diverge widely (or who do not yet know each other well) must spell out what they mean more fully in order to get their message across. He also distinguishes between various degrees of dialogicality in modes of speech, between the poles of absolute monologism, as in the case of religious ritual where the prescribed form of words cannot be varied, and unpremeditated conversation between social equals who are familiar with each other, where each partner has the right to introduce a new topic at almost any time and where the dynamic of interaction is a collective, emergent property. Yakubinsky was among the first to point out the centrality of speech prosody to verbal interaction, i.e. the flux of intonation, pace and volume that together make up ‘tone of voice’. This is a theoretical insight of major importance to dialogic pedagogy, which has only recently begun to be explored in empirical studies (Skidmore, 2008; Skidmore & Murakami, 2010). Yakubinsky also shows how monologic patterns of speaking are connected to relationships of social power and authority, something that is well illustrated in styles of pedagogy which rely heavily on teacher-led question-and-answer exchanges and consequently allow little space for the students’ voices to be heard. Finally, he lays stress on the creative semiotic potential of improvised dialogue or ‘automatic speech’ where, in ‘making it up as we go along’, we

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have the opportunity to discover new connections between ideas, and to try out ways to incorporate newly introduced conceptual material into our existing patterns of thinking and speaking. Next, I suggested that the most thorough exposition of the dialogic theory of language is that given by Voloshinov in Marxism and Language (Voloshinov, 1973 [1929]). Voloshinov sees individual consciousness as the product of social interaction mediated through speech, a position very similar to Vygotsky’s in ‘Thinking and speech’ (Vygotsky, 2004 [1934]; and see Daniels, Chapter 3, current volume). He stresses the fundamental importance of our everyday habits of talk and intercourse, over which there is always a process of ideological struggle, expressed for instance in ruling-class attempts to fix and regulate acceptable usage, and the continuous stream of creativity found among young people and oppressed groups to find new modes of expression which contest the hegemony of the standard language taught in schools. Voloshinov points out the historicity of language and of the spoken word in particular. Language is realised in the exchange of spoken utterances in dialogue, utterances which always voice some kind of evaluation of the topic under discussion. This accentual character of the utterance is conveyed through speech prosody, most notably through intonation. As far as pedagogy is concerned, his work enables us to see how the predominant interaction order in classroom settings, in which the teacher controls the discourse and students are expected to listen quietly and offer answers for evaluation when called on, exercises an ideological effect on learners, being an object lesson in the nature of social authority. By contrast, when the teacher enters into dialogue with the class, this reshapes the kind of consciousness being socially produced in education, providing an opportunity for both parties to explore the extent to which a common understanding of the topic is shared, and to try out ways to bridge the gap where misunderstandings or differences of perspective remain. I went on to discuss the significance of the concept of heteroglossia, a term introduced by Bakhtin to refer to the way in which different styles of speaking are used by different sub-groups within a given linguistic community, and thus act as markers of social identity. He critiques the idea of a standard language (such as standard English) as an ideological notion, an observation which led me to suggest that a wider variety of styles of usage should be recognised in the language education curriculum. In his definition of heteroglossia, Bakhtin foregrounds the connection between discourse style and power relations, and this once again underlines the way in which a traditional didactic teaching style reinforces the subordination of the student’s consciousness to the authority of the pedagogue. On the other hand, by forcing us to recognise that linguistic diversity is intrinsic to any speech community, the idea of heteroglossia can be a useful tool for understanding and valuing the variety of languages that we encounter in a multicultural society, for example on the campus of any university that has a significant

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proportion of international students. This condition of cultural pluralism brings potential educational benefits, since it is by engaging with perspectives other than our own that we are able to transcend the limitations of our taken-for-granted assumptions; dialogue with the unfamiliar broadens the mind. This also applies at the molecular level of teacher–student interaction. The aim of the teacher’s discourse in dialogic pedagogy is to support and guide learners in their struggle to comprehend previously alien conceptual material, with the ultimate goal of enabling them to appropriate new ideas to inform their own practical thinking. Classroom discussion thus occupies a transitional status, in the sense that it is designed to enable students to accomplish the shift from seeing new knowledge as authoritative, given, to treating it as internally persuasive, that is, something that they can work with to generate meaning in their own discursive activity. When successful, this contributes to the growth of the subject’s capacity to act to transform the social environment in which s/he participates, and in the process to change themselves. Finally, we have seen how Bakhtin coined the musical metaphor of polyphony and applied this to the theory of the novel, opening up in the process a number of perspectives on spoken interaction that are potent with significance for education. This concept refers to the plurality of voices and minds that are party to any social encounter, including such educational activities as a classroom lesson in a school, or a university seminar. In educational settings, it reminds us that the teacher needs to listen to her/his students as well as to talk to them, since it is only by so doing that s/he can know ‘what is going on in their heads’, what sense they are making of the tuition provided, and thus create an opportunity to intervene in order to correct any misunderstandings that have arisen, or to provide further clarification where their emergent understanding remains doubtful or unclear. By modelling a dialectic of enquiry in how they respond to learners’ questions, mistakes and expressions of partial comprehension, the teacher may be able to stimulate a microdialogue, an inner exchange in the mind of the student, which is conducted in a similarly constructive and persevering fashion, and reduce the risk of them becoming discouraged if they do not immediately grasp some new aspect of the target language or other object of study. We followed Bakhtin in drawing a contrast between pedagogical dialogue, on the one hand, and dialogic pedagogy on the other. Pedagogical dialogue is really a form of disguised monologue, the kind of pseudo-dialogue that takes place in recitation teaching, where the teacher continually asks test questions designed to elicit ‘correct’ answers from the students. Dialogic pedagogy, by contrast, involves an element of improvisation, a willingness to depart from the script; in recognising that learners are following their own thinking processes which cannot be confined within predetermined tramlines laid down in advance by the teacher (or those who draw up the curriculum or syllabus), it turns the lesson into an emergent encounter between the

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living, co-developing consciousnesses of the educator and the group of students. We saw that subject-specific discourse, when employed in an educational context, is not really direct discourse in Bakhtin’s sense, i.e. discourse that refers solely to its referential object (such as a scientific law in physics, or an aspect of the syntax of a second language). Where pedagogy is concerned, the language of a subject discipline is in fact double-voiced; that is, it is directed towards influencing the developing discourse of the learner, not simply towards executing an experiment successfully or describing the grammar of a language for its own sake. Finally, I suggested that in the polyphonic classroom, teacher and students orient towards their shared discourse as unfinalised. So long as a course, teaching programme or unit continues which brings them together in a sequence of lessons or sessions of tuition, the final word between them has not yet been spoken, and there remains an opportunity for students to raise questions, test out their grasp of a concept or skill, and explore with the teacher the connections between the domain of knowledge in hand and other areas of their experience, or other ‘school’ disciplines which they may be studying. There has been debate in the literature about whether dialogism can be seen as a complete, self-consistent theoretical perspective, or whether it is rather a collection of miscellaneous ideas that do not add up to an integrated whole (Brandist, 2002). It is beyond the scope of this chapter to resolve this issue once and for all, but I hope that I have shown the richness of the insights offered in this body of work. In my view, the tradition is built on an understanding of language as a practical social activity, something we do to communicate with others in order to coordinate collective action. This outlook is particularly important in the sphere of education, since pedagogy is by definition a form of interaction. I have argued that the praxis of dialogic pedagogy will be strengthened and deepened if it is informed by an understanding of some of the key concepts developed in this tradition, in particular: (1) the fundamentally dialogic nature of all speech, set against the degrees of dialogicality that characterise different modes of speaking and different social settings; (2) the ideological effect of the interaction order established in the classroom on the developing consciousness of students, an order which the teacher has some power to change, and which can vary between the monologic pattern of teacher-led recitation and a more discursive style of teacher–student dialogue which is open to modification by studentinitiated topics; (3) the transitional function of classroom discourse, whose purpose is to support learners in their struggle to comprehend the unfamiliar, transforming themselves and expanding their capacity for joint social action in the process; and

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(4) the ability of the dialogic teacher to model a dialectic of enquiry, in which the shared search for situated truth in the educational encounter embodies a method for exploring the world as unfinalised and open to development through organised human intervention. Considered as a theory of language as socio-verbal interaction, dialogism can be seen as an elaboration of Marx’s intriguing but undeveloped hypothesis in The German Ideology: Language is as old as consciousness, language is practical consciousness that exists also for other men [sic], and for that reason alone it really exists for me personally as well; language, like consciousness, only arises from the need, the necessity, of intercourse with other men. (Marx, 1970 [1932]: 51) In fact, the ideas that I have reviewed above, combined with Vygotsky’s psychology of the social origins of the human mind, suggest that we find Marx standing on his head here, and might need to turn him upside down to put him back on his feet. From a materialist perspective, it seems more plausible to suppose that language, i.e. dialogic speech, is prior to and a precondition for the development of consciousness. For the individual, we know that the child’s early experiences of social interaction with parents and other caregivers in the first two to three years of life are a vital influence on her/ his developing personality (Gilbert, 2010). This includes their exposure to the sounds and rhythms of their first language, even before they can understand any of the words spoken (Crystal, 1995). If a child is brought up in an environment where their exposure to social interaction is impoverished for some reason, then this can have a long-term adverse effect on their mental and emotional development in the future (Pennebaker, 1997). The phylogenetic origins of language are a more contested area, in which we lack direct evidence that would clinch the case. Nevertheless, anthropologists and scholars of human evolution generally agree that developing an increasingly sophisticated system of meaningful vocalisations would have conferred an evolutionary advantage for early humans, who lived in small bands of perhaps 30 in size for millennia of our prehistory (Stringer & Andrews, 2005). In conditions of material scarcity, with a sexual division of labour between women who took charge of childcare and gathering the roots, seeds and fruit that supplied the bulk of the group’s nutrition, and men who specialised in hunting and contributed the high calorific supplement of meat to the diet, it was a matter of survival for the group to be able to coordinate its actions effectively. Speech was the most effective tool for regulating joint activity, for example the high degree of cooperation required to carry out a successful hunt (Leont’ev, 1978). As soon as it became available for communicating about coordinated action in the present, however, it also opened up the

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possibility of planning future activities and debating the priority to be attached to them (their use-value to the group). Likewise, it became possible for elders, more experienced members of the social group, to pass on advice to the younger generation, such as where to look for water or which fruit is good to eat and which is poisonous. In other words, cultural education through symbolic means became possible, which speeds up the process of individual development, and enables the group as a whole to build up a repository of shared knowledge that can be added to and developed across the generations. It is this strategy that seems to have been particularly powerful in defining the course of development of the human species, and which led ultimately to the possibility of building large-scale societies with a complex division of labour, such as the first urban civilisations, and with that the beginning of recorded history in the first written documents, in the form of clay tablets with marks incised on the surface by wedges (Van De Mieroop, 2007). Dialogism, then, suggests that it makes more sense to speak of consciousness arising from speech activity than the other way round, although Marx was right to stress that the necessity of intercourse with other members of society lies at the root of both phenomena. As Vygotsky argued, consciousness is the inner dialogue we learn to conduct on the basis of our experience of spoken interaction with others (Vygotsky, 2004 [1934]), who we come to understand as we grow up have needs and desires – consciousnesses – that differ from our own (see also Daniels, Chapter 3, current volume). The insights of dialogic theory which I have reviewed above occupy an important place in developing educational praxis. In human societies, education depends for its accomplishment on language and particularly on spoken interaction between the educator and the learner. Dialogism shows that educators must adopt a dialogic approach to interaction with learners if they are to facilitate a process of deep psychological development that results in an enhanced capacity for social activity, rather than a superficial accretion of new vocabulary or ideas without integrating them into prior knowledge structures. Furthermore, by embodying the spirit of collective enquiry in their pedagogic practice, teachers can enable students to develop the ability to join with others in the work of conscious transformation of our social world. We must enter into dialogue with students if we are to change their minds or, rather, support them in changing their own minds.

References Alexander, R.J. (2001) Culture and Pedagogy: International Comparisons in Primary Education. Oxford: Blackwell. Bakhtin, M.M. (1984 [1929]) Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics (ed. and trans. C. Emerson; introduction by W.C. Booth). Manchester: Manchester University Press. Bakhtin, M.M. (1981 [1934–1935]) Discourse in the novel (trans. C. Emerson and M. Holquist). In M. Holquist (ed.) The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays by M.M. Bakhtin (pp. 269–422). Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.

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Barnes, D. (1992) From Communication to Curriculum (2nd edn). Harmondsworth: Penguin. Bourdieu, P. (1991) Language and Symbolic Power (trans. G. Raymond and M. Adamson). Cambridge: Polity Press. Brandist, C. (2002) The Bakhtin Circle: Philosophy, Culture and Politics. London: Pluto Press. Cazden, C.B. (2001) Classroom Discourse: The Language of Teaching and Learning (2nd edn). Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Couper-Kuhlen, E. and Selting, M. (eds) (1996) Prosody in Conversation: Interactional Studies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Crystal, D. (1995) The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. de Saussure, F. (1974) Course in General Linguistics. Glasgow: Fontana/Collins. Dickens, C. (1989 [1854]) Hard Times. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Edwards, D. and Mercer, N. (1987) Common Knowledge: The Development of Understanding in the Classroom. London: Methuen. Fairclough, N. (1989) Language and Power. London: Longman. Galton, M., Hargreaves, L., Comber, C., Wall, D. and Pell, T. (1999) Changes in patterns of teacher interaction in primary classrooms: 1976–96. British Educational Research Journal 25 (1), 23–37. Gilbert, P. (2010) The Compassionate Mind. London: Constable. Goffman, E. (1981) Forms of Talk. Oxford: Blackwell. Halliday, M.A.K. (1978) Language as Social Semiotic. London: Edward Arnold. Hodge, R. and Kress, G. (1988) Social Semiotics. Cambridge: Polity Press. Hutchby, I. and Wooffitt, R. (1998) Conversation Analysis: Principles, Practices and Applications. Cambridge: Polity Press. Leont’ev, A.N. (1978) Activity, Consciousness and Personality. Hillsdale, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Marx, K. (1970 [1932]) The German Ideology (ed. C.J. Arthur). London: Lawrence & Wishart. Mehan, H. (1979) Learning Lessons: Social Organisation in the Classroom. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Milroy, J. and Milroy, L. (1991) Authority in Language: Investigating Language Prescription and Standardisation (2nd edn). London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Pennebaker, J.W. (1997) Opening Up: The Healing Power of Expressing Emotions. New York: Guilford Press. Skidmore, D. (2008) Once more with feeling: Utterance and social structure. Text & Talk 28 (1), 79–96. Skidmore, D. and Murakami, K. (2010) How prosody marks shifts in footing in classroom discourse. International Journal of Educational Research 49 (2–3), 69–77. Stringer, C. and Andrews, P. (2005) The Complete World of Human Evolution. London: Thames & Hudson. Szczepek Reed, B. (2006) Prosodic Orientation in English Conversation. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Trudgill, P. (2000) Sociolinguistics: An Introduction to Language and Society (4th edn). Harmondsworth: Penguin. Van De Mieroop, M. (2007) A History of the Ancient Near East, ca. 3000–323 BC (2nd edn). Oxford: Blackwell. Vice, S. (1997) Introducing Bakhtin. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Voloshinov, V.N. (1973 [1929]) Marxism and the Philosophy of Language (trans. L. Matejka and I.R. Titunik). New York: Seminar Press. Vygotsky, L.S. (1978) Mind in Society: The Development of Higher Psychological Processes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Vygotsky, L.S. (2004 [1934]) Problems of general psychology: Thinking and speech. In R.W. Rieber and D.K. Robinson (eds) The Essential Vygotsky (pp. 269–422). New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers.

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Vygotsky, L.S. (2004) The Essential Vygotsky (ed. R.W. Rieber and D.K. Robinson; in collaboration with J. Bruner, M. Cole, J. Glick, C. Ratner and A. Stetsenko). New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers. Wennerstrom, A. (2001) The Music of Everyday Speech: Prosody and Discourse Analysis. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Yakubinsky, L.P. and Eskin, M. (1997 [1923]) On dialogic speech. Publications of the Modern Language Association 112 (2), 243–256. Young, R. (1991) Critical Theory and Classroom Talk. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.

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Vygotsky and Dialogic Pedagogy Harry Daniels

Vygotsky considered that the capacity to teach and to benefit from instruction is a fundamental attribute of human beings. ‘Vygotsky’s primary contribution was in developing a general approach that brought education, as a fundamental human activity, fully into a theory of psychological development. Human pedagogy, in all its forms, is the defining characteristic of his approach, the central concept in his system’ (Moll, 1990: 15). While he declared an interest in more broadly defined sociocultural development, he spent a major part of his time focusing on a somewhat constrained operational definition of the ‘social’ in his investigations of individual development in instructional settings (Wertsch, 1985a). Vygotsky’s (1978) ‘general genetic law of cultural development’ asserts the primacy of this account of the social in development: every function in the child’s cultural development appears twice: first, on the social level, and later, on the individual level; first between people (interpsychological), and then inside the child (intrapsychological). This applies equally to voluntary attention, to logical memory, and to the formation of concepts. All the higher functions originate as actual relations between human individuals. (Vygotsky, 1978: 57) This introduces the notion of some form of relationship between something which is defined as ‘social’ and something which is defined as ‘individual’. As I will outline below, my use of the term ‘mediation’ suggests that this is not necessarily a direct relationship from the social to the individual. However, there is an important conceptual move to be made between a dualistic conception of this relationship and the dialectical relationship which Cole implies below: The dual process of shaping and being shaped through culture implies that humans inhabit ‘intentional’ (constituted) worlds within which the traditional dichotomies of subject and object, person and environment, 48

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and so on cannot be analytically separated and temporally ordered into independent and dependent variables. (Cole, 1996: 103) Sameroff (1980) provided an important contribution to the debates on psychology and systems theory with the introduction of the concept of ‘dialectics’, within which development was seen as driven by internal contradictions. Earlier, Riegel (1976) and Wozniak (1975) had criticised traditional psychology with its emphasis on balance and equilibrium. It was Riegel who produced a manifesto for dialectical psychology which emphasised contradictions and their synchronisations in short- and longterm development both in the individual and in society (Riegel, 1976: 689). Surprisingly, this work is rarely cited in discussions of Vygotsky’s work. The details of their approach differ, while the key emphasis on dialectical processes remains very similar. As Van der Veer and Valsiner (1991) remind us, Vygotsky most definitely adopted a dialectical world view. This was the case for his theories as well as his approach to method and criticism. A present-day psychologist is most likely to adopt a non-dialectical ‘either-or’ perspective when determining the ‘class membership’ of one or other approach in psychology. Hence the frequent non-dialectical contrasts between ‘Piagetian’ and ‘Vygotskian’ approaches, or the widespread separation of psychologists into ‘social’ versus ‘cognitive’ categories which seem to occupy our minds in their meta-psychological activities … in direct contrast, for Vygotsky any two opposing directions of thought serve as opposites united with one another in the continuous whole – the discourse on ideas. This discourse is expected to lead us to a more adequate understanding of the human psyche, that is, to transcend the present state of theoretical knowledge, rather than force the existing variety of ideas into a strict classification of tendencies in the socially constructed scientific discipline of psychology. (Van der Veer & Valsiner, 1991: 392–393) This dialectical stance pervaded all aspects of his thinking, as is clear from the way in which he theorises the genetic influence on development. Development is not a simple function which can be wholly determined by adding X units of heredity to Y units of environment. It is a historical complex which, at every stage, reveals the past which is a part of it. … Development, according to a well-known definition, is precisely the struggle of opposites. This view alone can support truly dialectical research on the process of children’s development. (Vygotsky, 1993 [1928–1933]: 282–283)

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Dialectical or Dialogic In a critique of Wertsch and Kazak (2007), Wegerif (2007) argues that Vygotsky was a dialectical thinker rather than a dialogical thinker. His concern is that neither Vygotsky nor Wertsch can provide an account of creative thinking. He cites Bakhtin (1986) as part of his attempt to clarify the distinction: Take a dialogue and remove the voices (the partitioning of voices), remove the intonations (emotional and individualizing ones), carve out abstract concepts and judgments from living words and responses, cram everything into one abstract consciousness – and that’s how you get dialectics. (Bakhtin, 1986: 147) The core of his argument involves the questioning of the suggestion that dialogues in education can be adequately studied through a focus on mediation by tools. He calls for an extension of the Wertsch position in order to obtain a greater sophistication in the understanding of dialogic relations in education. In what amounts to a strong version of the process ontology argument, which, according to Sawyer (2002), suggests that processes are real and that entities, structures or patterns are ephemeral and do not really exist, Wegerif argues that uses of the term ‘dialogic’ shown below could have been developed without specific reference to dialectic methods: •

•

•

Dialogic as pertaining to dialogue suggests the promotion of dialogue as chains of questions in classrooms both through teacher–pupil dialogues (Alexander, 2004) and through establishing communities of inquiry (Wells, 1999). Dialogic as being about the open and poly-vocal properties of texts brings in the need for intertextuality in classrooms (Kozulin, 1996; Maybin, 1999) and the appropriation of social discourses as a goal in education (Hicks, 1999; Wertsch, 1998). Dialogic as an epistemologic framework suggests an account of education as the discursive construction of shared knowledge (Mercer, 2000). His predilection is with dialogic as an ontological principle: the most important thing to be learnt is learning itself and, to achieve this, teachers need to be even more teachable than their students …: dialogue is not primarily a means to the end of knowledge construction, but an end in itself, the most important end of education. In my view the ideal of ‘teaching’ learning to learn through promoting dialogue as an

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end in itself is the most distinctive and important contribution that a dialogic perspective brings to the debate about education. (Wegerif, 2007) This debate appears to me to witness the way in which this body of theory is open to a wide range of interpretations. Thus, when a particular philosophical perspective (e.g. a fraction of poststructuralist or postmodern theory) is brought to bear on a body of writing which does not share its epistemological and ontological assumptions, then critical attention is directed and deflected according to different priorities. The position I have adopted on this matter is that Vygotsky used a dialectical method in his research and posited dialectical processes of social formation – the implication being that a form of dialogic pedagogy is a requisite component of effective teaching.

Beyond the face to face Vygotsky’s (1978) accounts of mediation by tools or artefacts and of the social origins of higher mental functioning may be read solely in terms of a movement from exchange between people to the development of individual competence. This reading ignores the origins of artefacts themselves. They are the products of individual and collective endeavour. Like Ilyenkov after him, Vygotsky recognises that as much as culture creates individuals, culture itself remains a human creation. (Bakhurst & Sypnowich, 1995: 11) As Bakhurst, and Sypnowich imply, ways of thinking and feeling may be influenced and shaped by the availability of cultural artefacts which are themselves the products of mediated activity. This was a theory which took account of the meditational function of artefacts which were human products. It did so in the context of a theory in which the ‘social’ occupied a position of primacy (cf. Chapter 2, current volume): human learning presupposes a specific social nature and a process by which children grow into the intellectual life of those around them. (Vygotsky, 1978: 88) However, in his early writing, Vygotsky provides an emergent sociological position on pedagogy which hints at the way in which he understood this ‘intellectual life’. He argues that ‘pedagogics is never and was never politically indifferent, since, willingly or unwillingly, through its own work on the psyche, it has always adopted a particular social pattern, political line, in accordance with the dominant social class that has guided its interests’ (Vygotsky, 1997 [1921–1923]: 348). Vygotsky was suggesting a process of

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social formation in the development of educational ideas. For him, pedagogies arise and are shaped in particular social circumstances. He is also seen, by some commentators, as being concerned with much more than face-toface interactions between teacher and taught: Vygotsky attached the greatest importance to the content of educational curricula but placed the emphasis on the structural and instrumental aspects of that content. … In this connection it must be said that Vygotsky did not take these fruitful ideas far enough. In this approach it is quite possible to regard the school itself as a ‘message’, that is, a fundamental factor of education, because, as an institution and quite apart from the content of its teaching, it implies a certain structuring of time and space and is based on a system of social relations (between pupils and teacher, between the pupils themselves, between the school and it surroundings, and so on). (Ivic, 1989: 434) This statement calls for a radical extension in scope to the understanding of pedagogy that has been adopted in much classroom research (cf. Chapter 10, current volume). It would seem that a similar challenge has also been noted by others, i.e. … the impact of broader social and institutional structures on people’s psychological understanding of cultural tools. We argue that in order to understand social mediation it is necessary to take into account ways in which the practices of a community, such as school and the family, are structured by their institutional context. Cultural tools and the practices they are associated with, have their existence in communities, which in turn occupy positions in the broader social structure. These wider social structures impact on the interactions between the participants and the cultural tools. (Abreu & Elbers, 2005: 4) Taken together with Vygotsky’s development of units of analysis that conceptually integrate person and context (Minick, 1987), this understanding of pedagogy may be seen to reveal a concern to create a broadly based account of persons formed in and forming culture and society. It suggests that pedagogic provision may be thought of in terms of the arrangement of material things as well as persons. Russian thinking has developed in a culture which embodied a powerful anti-Cartesian element. This contrasts with the kind of intellectual environment which obtains in many settings in the West, where so much effort has been expended in conceptualising the mind as a ‘self-contained private realm, set over against the objective, “external” world of material things, and populated by subjective states revealed only to the “self” presiding over them’ (Bakhurst, 1995: 155–156). The argument is that culture and community are

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not merely independent factors which discriminate between settings. They are, as it were, the mediational medium with and through which ideas are developed. It is through tool use that individual/psychological and cultural/ historical processes become interwoven and co-create one another. This understanding lay at the very heart of Vygotsky’s thesis. It underpins Cole’s (1996) model of culture as that which weaves together. Vygotsky described psychological tools as devices for mastering mental processes. They were seen as artificial and of social rather than organic or of individual origin. In line with Werstch’s (2007) distinction between Vygotsky’s writing which seems to be located within the psychology of stimuli and stimulus means and that which seems to owe more to his roots in semiotics, literary theory, art and drama, the notion of the psychological tool moved from its initial somewhat instrumental form to an emphasis on the development of meaning. As Knox and Stevens note: Vygotsky was stating that humans master themselves from the ‘outside’ through symbolic, cultural systems. What needs to be stressed here is his position that it is not the tools or signs, in and of themselves, which are important for thought development but the meaning encoded in them. Theoretically, then, the type of symbolic system should not matter, as long as meaning is retained. All systems (Braille for the blind and for the deaf, dactylology or finger spelling, mimicry or a natural gesticulated sign language) are tools embedded in action and give rise to meaning as such. They allow a child to internalise language and develop those higher mental functions for which language serves as a basis. In actuality, qualitatively different mediational means may result in qualitatively different forms of higher mental functioning. (Knox & Stevens, 1993: 15) Wartofsky defined artefacts (including tools and language) as objectifications of human needs and intentions already invested with cognitive and affective content (Wartofsky, 1973: 204). He distinguishes between three hierarchical levels of the notion of artefacts. Primary artefacts are those such as needles, clubs or bowls, which are used directly in the making of things. Secondary artefacts are representations of primary artefacts and of modes of action using primary artefacts. They are therefore traditions or beliefs. Tertiary artefacts are imagined worlds (Wartofsky, 1973). Works of art are examples of these tertiary artefacts or imagined worlds. These three levels of artefact function in processes of cultural mediation. These processes may be viewed as pedagogic in the widest sense of the term. The view of mediation which is implied by Wartofsky’s definition of artefacts is compatible with that being developed by Wertsch (2007). Implicit mediation is: part of an already ongoing communicative stream that is brought into contact with other forms of action. Indeed, one of the properties that

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characterizes implicit mediation is that it involves signs, especially natural language, whose primary function is communication. In contrast to the case for explicit mediation, these signs are not purposefully introduced into human action and they do not initially emerge for the purpose of organizing it. Instead, they are part of a pre-existing, independent stream of communicative action that becomes integrated with other forms of goal-directed behavior. … implicit mediation typically involves signs in the form of natural language that have evolved in the service of communication and are then harnessed in other forms of activity. Because the integration of signs into remembering, thinking, and other forms of mental functioning occurs as part of the naturally occurring dialectic outlined by Shpet and Vygotsky, they do not readily become the object of consciousness or reflection. (Wertsch, 2007: 185) Prawat (1999) argues that Vygotsky’s later work offers a mediational account of meaning-making which is also social, embodied and transactional. This position is elaborated by Kozulin (1998) who discusses three possible generators of consciousness. • •

•

the historical nature of human experience: ‘human beings make a wide use of non-biological heredity transmitting knowledge, experiences and symbolic tools from generation to generation’. the social environment and experiences of others. Through drawing out the similarities between Mead and Vygotsky he emphasises that ‘an individual becomes aware of him- or herself only in and through interactions with others’ (cf. Chapter 2, current volume). the existence of mental images and schemas prior to actual action: ‘human experience is always present in two different planes – the plane of actual occurrences and the plane of their internal cognitive schematizations’. (Kozulin, 1998: 10).

Where Prawat speaks of social, embodied and transactional, Kozulin speaks of history, interaction and internal cognitive schematisations, a position which echoes some version of analytical dualism. There are tensions between the two positions: Kozulin’s emphasis on history is not made explicit in Prawat’s use of the term ‘social’; Prawat’s use of transaction has a more dialectical turn than ‘interaction’ within Kozulin’s work; and schematisations is much more specific than embodied. While differences of emphasis are clear, there remains an agreement about the existence of multiple levels of representational activity which occur in between and within persons. Bakhurst (e.g. 1995) has done much to clarify the contribution of the Russian philosopher, Ilyenkov, to our understanding of the framework within which so much of the Russian perspective on mediation may be read.

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The idea of meaning embodied or sedimented in objects as they are put into use in social worlds is central to the conceptual apparatus of theories of culturally mediated, historically developing, practical activity. He provides an account of the way in which humans inscribe significance and value into the very physical objects of their environment (Bakhurst, 1995: 173). A theory of mediation through artefacts infers that in the course of human activity meaning is sedimented, accumulated or deposited in things. These meanings are remembered both collectively and individually. Thus, as Cole (1996) reminds us, cultural artefacts are always material and ideal. Leander provides an illustration of their embedded nature: A broad definition of artifact as any mediational means … would not draw sharp distinctions between semiotic and material artifacts for various reasons. It is difficult not to find at least some material dimension in all mediational means; even sound waves are material. … Secondly, the materiality of artifacts is always deeply embedded in their ideational (cultural and historical) meanings. … Third, transformations between semiotic and material realizations of any artifact are in constant flux, as are the realizations of any artifact as internal (e.g. mental models, scenarios) or external (charts, diagrams, materials tools). (Leander, 2002: 202) Wertsch (1998) and Bruner (1990) both analyse narrative and historical texts as cultural tools. Wertsch (1998) emphasises that tools or artefacts such as ‘conventional’ stories or popular histories may not always ‘fit’ well with a particular personal narrative. As ever with a Vygotskian account there is no necessary recourse to determinism. Wertsch suggests that individuals may resist the way in which such texts ‘shape their actions, but they are often highly constrained in the forms that such resistance can take’ (Wertsch, 1998: 108). This emphasis on the individual who is active in shaping a response to being shaped by engagement with cultural artefacts is central to the Vygotskian argument. The relative emphasis on agency (whether individual or collective; Wertsch, 1998) and the affordances (Gibson, 1979) that social, cultural and historical factors offer form the stage on which the development of new and improved forms of thought is enacted. As is now well known, Vygotsky was involved in a variety of intellectual pursuits. These ranged from medicine and law to literary theory. Kozulin reminds his readers that Vygotsky was a member of the Russian intelligentsia for whom literature assumed a particular significance. A particular feature of the Russian intelligentsia was the importance they attached to literature, which they saw not only as the ultimate embodiment of culture but as the most concentrated form of life itself. Literary characters were routinely judged by the Russian intelligentsia as

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real social and psychological types, while political and historical debates were commonly conducted in the form of literature and about literature. (Kozulin, 1990: 22–23) He has subsequently expanded on this position in an essay on literature as a psychological tool in which he discusses the notion of human psychological life as ‘authoring’ alongside a consideration of the role of internalised literary modalities as mediators of human experience (Kozulin, 1998: 130). The understanding of artefacts carrying out different functions, being both material and ideal and circulating between inner and outer worlds in which meaning is developing, presents a complex, layered, dialectical view of human engagement with the world which carries with it a significant methodological challenge for research which aims to study processes of artefact-mediated formation of mind.

Vygotsky and Bakhtin The specific social nature of an activity may, arguably, be characterised or, indeed, realised, in the speech which is used, particularly in pedagogic practice. In a discussion of the way in which speech is theorised, Cazden (1993) dismissed ‘dialect’ and ‘register’ as inadequate for the task of providing a unit of analysis which could connect mind with social interaction. She turned to Bakhtin’s term ‘voice’: Voice is Bakhtin’s term for the ‘speaking consciousness’: the person acting – that is speaking or writing in a particular time and place to known or unknown others. Voice and its utterances always express a point of view, always enact particular values. They are also social in still a third meaning: taking account of the voices being addressed, whether in speech or writing. This dialogic quality of utterances Bakhtin calls ‘responsivity’ or ‘addressivity’. (Cazden, 1993: 198) Cazden suggested that while Vygotsky and Bakhtin had not necessarily met or heard of each other they shared a common intellectual milieu which may well have been the significant precursor in the development of compatible ideas. Wertsch et al. (1993) noted complementary features of their work. Bakhtin provides a situated sociocultural account of semiotic mediation. His emphasis on dialogue and what he termed ‘ventriloquism’ made way for an understanding of the processes by which the voice or voices of the other or others are appropriated by individuals. As with Wittgenstein’s notion of ‘language game’, so in Bakhtin’s notion of dialogue is the insistence that meaning is developed through the interplay and mutual transformation that results from dialogic exchange between two or more influences. Social

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languages are associated with particular forms of social practice. Social languages can be viewed as a connection between individual functioning and socio-institutional activity which is at one time cultural and historical. They are mediating artefacts. Clearly they must be analytically connected with the activity within which they arise. However this activity may not always be physically present. Vygotsky’s attempts at providing the theoretical account of the production of cultural artefacts within specific activities were somewhat underdeveloped. He did discuss the notion of the ‘internal social voice’. Vygotsky insisted that there is no necessary recourse to physical presence in accounts of support within the zone of proximal development (ZPD). Vygotsky discussed the ZPD in terms of assessment and instruction. Within both frames of reference he discussed the relationship between an individual learner and a supportive other or others even if that other was not physically present in the context in which learning was taking place. In many ways the concept of ZPD lies at the heart of Vygotsky’s social account of learning. It is therefore often the point of departure for many of the tensions and dilemmas in the development of the theory. It raises questions about the nature of the ‘social’ in the pedagogic relationship alongside questions concerning the nature of the relationship itself. With the following quotation he announced the possibility of virtual collaboration without the physical presence of the adult/teacher. when the school child solves a problem at home on the basis of a model that he has been shown in class, he continues to act in collaboration, although at the moment the teacher is not standing near him. From a psychological perspective, the solution of the second problem is similar to this solution of a problem at home. It is a solution accomplished with the teacher’s help. This help – this aspect of collaboration – is invisibly present. It is contained in what looks from the outside like the child’s independent solution of the problem. (Vygotsky, 1987 [1933–1934]: 216) Clearly, Vygotsky’s reference to virtual support raises some important issues. If support within the ZPD may come from the ‘voice’ of an absent tutor then surely there is a place for several voices within a particular ZPD. If this is the case then each voice or influence may not necessarily be in agreement. This faces us with a series of decisions or interpretations. Cheyne and Tarulli (1999) announce their intention to develop a broad cultural historical view of the ZPD by discussing issues of dialogue, others and what they refer to as the ‘third voice’. They compared and contrasted the positions adopted by Bakhtin and Vygotsky on dialogue and noted a crucial distinction: In what way would it enrich the event even if I merge with the other and instead of two there would now only be one? And what would I myself

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gain by the other’s merging with me? If he did, he would see and know no more than what I see and know myself; he would merely repeat in himself that want of any issue of itself that characterises my own life. Let him rather remain outside of me, for in that position he can see and know what I myself do not see and do not know from my own place, and he can essentially enrich the event of my own life. (Bakhtin, 1990: 87) Here we have a rejection of the notion of consensus. As Cheyne and Tarulli noted, ‘a dialogical mind does not itself constitute a common apperceptive mass, but rather a community of different and often conflicting voices that may not be resolved into one comprehensive self … it is in the struggle with difference and misunderstanding that dialogue and thought are productive and that productivity is not necessarily measured in consensus’ (Cheyne & Tarulli, 1999: 89; cf. Chapter 2, current volume). One of the most important differences to be found between Vygotsky and Bakhtin is then with respect to the ‘difference of the other’. For Bakhtin it is through and in difference and misunderstanding in dialogue that the contradictions that generate development are to be found. Vygotsky often seems to be concerned with a ZPD as a space where the learner is brought into the ‘knowing’ of the other. The emphasis on multiple voices engaged in the construction of a form of meaning which is not necessarily located within the individual characterises many current interpretations of Bakhtin’s influence on a Vygotskian account. If the Bakhtinian approach is to some extent a reasonable model of possible activity within the ZPD, we are faced with the prospect of the learner actively making decisions about actions/pathways to progress. At a particular time a learner makes decisions with the benefit (or otherwise) of the influence of others both present and absent. This position opens the way for a non-determinist account in which the learner finds a way forward through what may be contradictory influences. This does not deny the possibility of the single voice of influence. There may be times when a learner follows a single path through a ZPD as a diligent apprentice to an all-powerful ‘master’ (I know of no gender-free alternative). However, this is not a necessary concomitant of the ZPD model: • •

the learner’s own prior understanding may come into conflict with the support given; the learner may receive influence from several conflicting sources.

This speculation on the nature of support within the ZPD raises questions about broader social influences. Multiple and possibly conflicting discourses with different social, cultural and historical origins may be in play within the ZPD. This view of the ZPD as the nexus of social, cultural and historical influences takes us far beyond the image of the lone learner with

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the directive and determining tutor. It provides a much expanded view of the ‘social’ and the possibility of a dialectical conception of interaction within the ZPD. There is a shared understanding in the work of both Bakhtin and Vygotsky that meaning is dependent on the social and historical contexts in which it is made. Our thought itself-philosophical, scientific, and artistic-is born and shaped in the process of interaction and struggle with others’ thought, and this cannot but be reflected in the forms that verbally express our thought as well. … The utterance proves to be a very complex and multiplanar phenomenon if considered not in isolation and with respect to its author (the speaker) only, but as a link in the chain of speech communication and with respect to other, related utterances. (Bakhtin, 1986: 92–93) Werstch (1991) draws on Lotman (1990: 94) in suggesting that this function is fulfilled best when the codes of the speaker and the listener most completely coincide which, however, he makes clear is rare. In comparison, he returns to Bakhtin’s idea of intermediation and Lotman’s notion of the text as generative of new meaning – a ‘thinking device’ (Wertsch, 1991). Wertsch and Toma (1995) also provide a critique of the conduit model of communication and suggest that either one of the univocal and dialogic functions of texts may tend to become dominant in certain forms of interaction (Lotman, 1990, 1994). They draw attention to the way in which the dialogic function involves the generation of new meanings. In extracts from classroom discourse, Wertsch and Toma illustrate the role of the dialogic function by showing how pupils reformulate and reword the words and comments of others as they reject, incorporate or take further other utterances (cf. Chapter 13, current volume). They use the term ‘interanimate’ to refer to the way in which one voice can transform the voice of another in a dialogic encounter. For them, this ambiguity of meaning is never finalised and this unfinished character is what Alexandrov (2000) sees as a creative resource rather an irritant noise in the system, arguing that it should be seen as resource for communication and of collaboration. In Wertsch’s examination of the practice of reciprocal teaching he supports the notion that ‘reading involves active, dialogic engagement’ (Wertsch, 1998: 130). Like Bakhtin and Vygotsky, his work assumes that the addressee ‘may be temporally, spatially, and socially distant’ (Wertsch, 1991: 53). In his later work Wertsch examines agency from the point of view of the roles that constituents play as revealed through their linguistic expression. His idea of ‘discourse referentiality’ is helpful in pointing to methods for the investigation of communicative acts. This involves consideration of the ‘relationship between unique, situated utterances and the contexts in which they occur’ and ‘how utterances function to presuppose the context of speech in which they occur, on the one hand, or act in a “performative” capacity to create or

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entail the context, on the other’ (Wertsch, 1998: 95). Specifically, he addresses issues to do with the presence/accessibility of the writer/reader in the text and reference to characters where their presence is assumed in the text (Wertsch, 1998). This accords with Middleton and Brown’s (2005) understanding of sociocultural studies. Sociocultural studies of the formation of mind – derived from the work of Vygotsky and Bahktin – have explored the way in which historicity enters into the organisation of human action. Such work takes as central the assertion that human consciousness is organised within the appropriation, use and generation of culturally evolved resources. These include systems of symbolic representation and communication, artefacts and institutionalised practices for the generation and distribution of knowledge systems. (Middleton & Brown, 2005: 102) Wertsch considers voice and multivoicedness as important dimensions of the sociohistorical context for communication. He explores ideas about given and new information, about knowledge that is not held in common between speakers/writers, and about alterity, intersubjectivity and individual perspectives and how they help to explain how speakers understand or fail to understand each other (Wertsch, 1991, 1998). The general point to be made about intersubjectivity and alterity, then, is not that communication is best understood in terms of one or the other in isolation. Instead, virtually every text is viewed as involving both univocal, information-transmission characteristics, and hence intersubjectivity, as well as dialogic, thought-generating tendencies, and hence alterity. (Wertsch, 1998: 117) Wertsch transcribes several dialogues within teacher-child dyads in an attempt to reveal something of the process whereby the latter appropriates speech genres from the former. Wertsch’s (1991, 1998) research is extremely important, not only for the many concrete illustrations it provides, but for the way in which it extends the idea of semiotic mediation to include this notion of ‘voice’ (Farmer, 1995). It is important to note that this account of voice is a profoundly dialogical notion, in which it should be possible to understand the workings of relations of power and control as some voices predominate and others are marginalised and silenced. This is also a historical analysis in that it seeks to understand the evolution of consciousness through the struggles that are played out in dialogue. The importance of struggling with another’s discourse, its influence in the history of an individual’s coming to ideological consciousness, is enormous. One’s own discourse and one’s own voice, although born of

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another or dynamically stimulated by another, will sooner or later begin to liberate themselves from the authority of another’s discourse. This process is made more complex by the fact that a variety of alien voices enter into the struggle for influence within an individual’s consciousness (just as they struggle with one another in surrounding social reality). (Bakhtin, 1981: 348) The questions of legitimacy of ‘voice’ concerning how utterance may be recognised as legitimate and how that utterance signifies and shapes a social position in a field are not always addressed. Wertsch does consider the range of semiotic options open to a speaker and the reasons for choice of one over another, and draws on linguistic theories in his examination of how the use of deictic, common and context-informative referents are associated with levels of intersubjectivity (Wertsch, 1985a). One seldom mentioned feature of Vygotsky’s theory is that social speech, especially as it occurs within the ZPD, is rhetorical speech. It is not supplanted by the development of inner or written speech, nor does it vanish on its own once other speech forms develop. To state the obvious, social speech remains a constant and necessary staple of human existence. For that reason, voice, in a rhetorical sense, is realised only in its relationship to, and difference from, other voices that it must address and answer. The quality of voice, in some measure, always presupposes other voices (Farmer, 1995: 309).

Developmental Teaching All this points to the question: What is good teaching? Or, perhaps more accurately, what kind of teaching will lead development? As Vygotsky (1978: 90) remarked: Learning is not development; however, properly organized learning results in mental development and sets in motion a variety of developmental processes that would be impossible apart from learning. There is a danger that notions of dialogic pedagogy may be seen as referring to personal relations and that considerations of conceptual development and knowledge are irrelevant. This could not be further from the truth. Best (1988) traces the changes in the use of the term pedagogy from her perspective as Director of the French Institut National de Recherche Pedagogique. Her discussion starts with the late 19th century definition attributed to Henri Marion: ‘Pedagogy is … both the science and the art of education. But as we must choose one or the other – the (French) language being usually reluctant

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to allow the same word to denote both an art and its corresponding science – I would simply define pedagogy as the science of education. Why a science rather than and an art? Because … the substance of pedagogy lies much less in the processes that it brings into play than in the theoretical reasoning through which it discovers, evaluates and co-ordinates these processes.’ (Quoted in Best, 1988: 54) Crucially she raises the question as to whether ‘pedagogy’ conflicts with ‘knowledge’. She suggests an early trajectory for common usage of the term from the practical consequences of psychology to the doctrine of non-directive teaching (which she attributes to Carl Rogers), within which pedagogy was seen as ‘nothing more than intuition’. Didactics – the study of the relationship between pupils, teachers and the various branches of knowledge grouped into educational subjects – was introduced into French teacher training as a reaction to the diminution of the term pedagogy. In this way she argues that general pedagogy became the philosophy, sociology and social psychology of education and specialised pedagogy became didactics. Jarning (1997) suggests that ambiguities between its part-conceptualisation and organisation as a professional field of knowledge on the one hand and as a ‘pure’ discipline based knowledge field on the other, give rise to possibilities for confusion even within the Scandinavian context where the term is in common use. Given all this Gallic and Nordic confusion, it is hardly surprising that in England, where the very word ‘pedagogy’ sits unhappily in the mouth – (hard or soft ‘g’?), that Brian Simon (1985) should ask ‘Why no pedagogy in England?’. Simon, as Davies (1994) suggests, portrays an explicit relation between the social setting and educational practice: Pedagogy involves a vision (theory, set of beliefs) about society, human nature, knowledge and production, in relation to educational ends, with terms and rules inserted as to the practical and mundane means of their realisation. (Davies, 1994: 26) One example of the many formulations of the understanding of the dialectical relations between knowledge and concepts formed in everyday life and concepts that are made available in schooling is to be found in the work of Davydov (1988, 1990, 1995). He insisted that the tradition of teaching empirical knowledge should be changed to a focus on teaching theoretical knowledge. He developed a ‘developmental teaching’ programme that pursued this goal. Stetsenko and Arievitch (2002) provide an illustration of such theoretical knowledge: There are many features that describe a circle. Most obviously, a circle is simply a flat round area. In the classical scientific definition, however, a

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circle is a curved line on which every point is equally distant from one fixed point inside the curve. Yet another definition reflects the procedure by which a circle is produced: a circle is produced by two sticks with one fixed end, or by a pair of compasses. In the latter definition, the initial operation underlying the concept of a circle (and thus its genesis) is revealed, thereby making it clear why all the radii of a circle are and have to be equal namely, because it is actually generated by the same radius revolving around one fixed point (cf. Davydov, 1988). This latter kind of definition is effective because it describes the circle as a product of a specific operation discovered in sociocultural practices and thus represents its generic essential feature. (Stetsenko & Arievitch, 2002: 45) The connection between the spontaneous concepts that arise through empirical learning and the scientific concepts that develop through theoretical teaching is seen as the main dimension of the ZPD. The process of ‘ascending from the abstract to the concrete’ which formed the core of Davydov’s early work has been extended by Hedegaard into a conceptualisation of teaching and learning as a ‘double move’ between situated activity and subject matter concepts. When working within this approach, general laws are used by teachers to formulate instruction and children investigate the manifestations of these general laws in carefully chosen examples which embody core concepts. These core concepts constitute the ‘germ cell’ for subsequent learning. In practical activity, children grapple with central conceptual relations which underpin particular phenomena. In this way the teaching focuses directly on the scientific concepts that constitute the subject matter. Hedegaard (1998) suggests that ‘the teacher guides the learning activity both from the perspective of general concepts and from the perspective of engaging students in “situated” problems that are meaningful in relation to their developmental stage and life situations’ (Hedegaard, 1998: 120). Her account makes it clear that successful applications of this approach are possible, while indicating the enormous amount of work that will be required if such practices are to become both routine and effective. The importance of the interplay between the scientific concepts derived in theoretical learning and the spontaneous concepts formed in empirical learning is central to this account of development. If the two forms do not ‘connect’, then true concept development does not take place. Thus theoretically driven content-based teaching which is not designed to connect with learners’ everyday empirical learning will remain inert and developmentally ineffective. As Hedegaard and Chaiklin (1990) remind us, this body of work identifies the general developmental potential of particular forms of teaching as well as its specific microgenetic function in particular forms of action and interaction on a task. The assertion is that teaching should promote general

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mental development as well as the acquisition of special abilities and knowledge: Good teaching develops a capacity for relating to problems in a theoretical way, and to reflect on one’s thinking. Davydov develops an extensive analysis of theoretical knowledge grounded in a materialist-dialectical philosophy. This concept contrasts with the concept of knowledge and thinking used by the cognitive and Piagetian traditions because it emphasises that knowledge is constituted by the relations between the object of knowledge and other objects, rather than some essential properties or characteristics that define the object. (Hedegaard & Chaiklin, 1990: 153) Ivic (1989) also insists that Vygotsky’s emphasis was not on the transmission and acquisition of a body of information alone. Vygotsky was concerned with the provision through education of the tools, techniques and intellectual operations that would facilitate development. He was critical of many forms of education that seemed to remain content with the transmission of knowledge. Ivic argued that schools do not always teach systems of knowledge but in many cases overburden learners with isolated and meaningless facts (Ivic, 1989: 434).

Conclusion The Russian word obuchenie, frequently used by Vygotsky and his followers, is often translated as instruction. The cultural baggage of a transmission-based pedagogy is easily associated with obuchenie in its guise as instruction. Davydov’s (1995) translator suggests that teaching or teachinglearning is more appropriate as the translation of obuchenie, in that it refers to all the actions of the teacher in engendering cognitive development and growth. Sutton (1980) also notes that the word does not admit to a direct English translation. He argues that it means both teaching and learning, and refers to both sides of the two-way process, and is therefore well suited to a dialectical view of a phenomenon made up of mutually interpenetrating opposites. The issue at hand here is the suggestion that dialogic interaction between teacher and learners (as opposed to a knowledge-transmission approach to teaching) is necessary if ‘instruction’ is to give rise to cognitive development which is best characterised as a dialectical process. Depending on the history of their development and their social positioning in the discourses of the classroom, different learners may be in need of different forms of dialogic exchange if they are to make progress. Here lies the slippery dilemma for the teacher. It lies in the tension between some form of direction through dialogue and a recognition that some forms of direction from the teacher may

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lead to inappropriate understanding on the part of the learner. The teacher is constantly the learner who is trying to understand the consequences of the teaching they practise. This is hard enough and the challenge is compounded in the diversity of dialogic exchanges which typify a classroom. Resort to transmission-based pedagogies as a retreat from the demands of obuchenie is not the answer if democratic solutions to mass education are sought. It is well known that some learners come to school well prepared to manage ineffective instruction. They would benefit much more from dialogic engagement with their teachers’ understanding of the world and those who are not suitably prepared to manage inappropriate instruction would be given genuine opportunities to learn. At the heart of the Vygotskian understanding of obuchenie is a dialogic conception of pedagogy which encompasses not only a dialectical understanding of the social relations of schooling but also of conceptual development. Both aspects present educators with significant challenges.

References Abreu, G. and Elbers, E. (2005) The social mediation of learning in multiethnic schools: Introduction. European Journal of Psychology of Education 20 (1), 3–11. Alexander, R.J. (2004) Towards Dialogic Teaching: Rethinking Classroom Talk. Cambridge: Dialogos. Alexandrov, V.E. (2000) Biology, semiosis, and cultural difference in Lotman’s semiosphere. Comparative Literature 52, 399–423. Bakhtin, M.M. (1981) The Dialogic Imagination; Four Essays. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. Bakhtin, M.M. (1986) Speech Genres and Other Late Essays (trans. V.W. McGee; ed. C. Emerson and M. Holquist). Slavic Series No. 8. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. Bakhtin, M.M. (1990) Art and Answerability: Early Philosophical Essays (ed. M.M. Bakhtin, M. Holquist and V. Liapunov; trans. and notes V. Liapunov). Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. Bakhurst D. (1995) Lessons from Ilyenkov. Communication Review 1 (2), 155–178. Bakhurst, D. and Sypnowich, C. (1995) Introduction. The Social Self. Inquiries in Social Construction. London: Sage. Best, F. (1988) The metamorphoses of the term ‘pedagogy’. Prospects XVIII (2), 157 –166. Bruner, J.S. (1990) Acts of Meaning. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Cazden, C.B. (1993) Vygotsky, Hymes and Bakhtin: ‘From word to utterance and voice’. In E.A. Forman, N. Minick and C.A. Stone (eds) Contexts for Learning: Sociocultural Dynamics in Children’s Development. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Cheyne, J.A. and Tarulli, D. (1999) Dialogue, difference, and the ‘third voice’, in the zone of proximal development. Theory and Psychology 9, 5–28. Cole, M. (1996) Cultural Psychology: A Once and Future Discipline. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Davies, B. (1994) On the neglect of pedagogy in educational studies and its consequences. British Journal of In-Service Education 20 (1), 17–34. Davydov, V.V. (1988) Problems of developmental teaching: The experience of theoretical and experimental psychological research. Soviet Education xx (8), 3–87; (9), 3–56; (10), 2–42. Davydov, V.V. (1990) The content and unsolved problems of activity theory. Paper presented at the 2nd International Congress on Activity Theory, Lahti, Finland, 22 May.

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Davydov, V. (1995) The influence of L.S. Vygotsky on education theory, research and practice. Educational Researcher 24, 12–21. Farmer, F. (1995) Voice reprised: Three etudes for a dialogic understanding. Rhetoric Review 13 (2), 304–320. Gibson, J.J. (1979) The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin. Hedegaard, M. (1998) Situated learning and cognition: Theoretical learning of cognition. Mind Culture and Activity 5 (2), 114–126. Hedegaard, M. and Chaiklin, S. (1990) Review of Davydov, V.V. (1986). Quarterly Newsletter of the Laboratory of Comparative Human Cognition 12 (4), 153–154. Hicks, D. (1999) Self and other in Bakhtin’s early philosophical essays: Prelude to a theory of prose consciousness. Paper presented at the annual meeting of AERA, Montreal, Canada. Ivic, I. (1989) Profiles of educators: Lev S Vygotsky (1896–1934). Prospects XIX (3), 427–436. Jarning, H. (1997) The many meanings of social pedagogy: Pedagogy and social theory in Scandinavia. Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research 41 (3–4), 413–431. Knox, J.E. and Stevens, C. (1993) Vygotsky and Soviet Russian defectology. An introduction to Vygotsky, L.S. In The Collected Works of L.S. Vygotsky, Vol. 2. Problems of Abnormal Psychology and Learning Disabilities. New York: Plenum Press. Kozulin, A. (1990) Vygotsky’s Psychology: A Biography of Ideas. London: Harvester. Kozulin, A. (1996) A literary model for psychology. In D. Hicks (ed.) Discourse, Learning, and Schooling (pp. 145–164). New York: Cambridge University Press. Kozulin, A. (1998) Psychological Tools. A Sociocultural Approach to Education. London: Harvard University Press. Leander, K. (2002) Locating Latanya: The situated production of identity artifacts in classroom interaction. Research in the Teaching of English 37, 198–250. Lotman, Y.M. (1990) Universe of the Mind: A Semiotic Theory of Culture (trans. A. Shukman). Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Lotman, Y. (1994) Text within a text. Publications of the Modern Language Association 109, 377–384. Maybin, J. (1999) Framing and evaluation in 10–12 year-old school children’s use of appropriated speech, in relation to their induction into educational procedures and practices. TEXT 19 (4), 459–484. Mercer, N. (2000) Words and Minds: How We Use Language to Think Together. London: Routledge. Middleton, D. and Brown, S.D. (2005) The Social Psychology of Experience: Studies in Remembering and Forgetting. London: Sage. Minick, N. (1987) The development of Vygotsky’s thought: An introduction. In R.W. Rieber and A.S. Carton (eds) The Collected Works of L.S. Vygotsky, Vol. 1. New York: Plenum Press. Moll, L.C. (1990) Introduction. In L.C. Moll (ed.) Vygotsky and Education. Instructional Implications and Applications of Sociohistorical Psychology (pp. 1–30). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Prawat R.S. (1999) Cognitive theory at the crossroads: Head fitting, head splitting, or somewhere in between? Human Development 42 (2), 59–77. Riegel, K.F. (1976) The dialectics of human development. American Psychologist. October, 689–700. Sameroff, A.J. (1980) Development and the dialectic: The need for a systems approach. In W.A. Collins (ed.) The Concept of Development – Minnesota Symposia on Child Psychology (Vol. 15, pp. 83–103). Hillsdale, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Sawyer, R.K. (2001) Creating Conversations: Improvisation in Everyday Discourse. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press.

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Simon, B. (1985) Why no pedagogy in England? In Does Education matter? London: Lawrence & Wishart. Stetsenko, A. and Arievitch, I. (2002) Teaching, learning, and development: A postVygotskian perspective. In G. Wells and G. Claxton (eds) Learning for Life in the 21st Century (pp. 84–96). Oxford: Blackwell. Sutton, A. (1980) Backward children in the USSR: An unfamiliar approach to a familiar problem. In J. Brine, M. Perrie and A. Sutton (eds) Home, School and Leisure in the Soviet Union (pp. 160–191). London: George Allen & Unwin. Van der Veer, R. and Valsiner, J. (1991) Understanding Vygotsky: A Quest for Synthesis. Oxford: Blackwell. Vygotsky, L.S. (1978) Mind in Society: The Development of Higher Psychological Processes (ed. and trans. M. Cole, V. John-Steiner, S. Scribner and E. Souberman). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Vygotsky, L.S (1987 [1933–1934]) The Collected Works of L.S. Vygotsky, Vol. 1. Problems of General Psychology. New York: Plenum Press. Vygotsky, L.S. (1993 [1928–1933]) The Collected Works of L.S. Vygotsky, Vol 2. The Fundamentals of Defectology: Abnormal Psychology and Learning Disabilities. New York: Plenum Press. Vygotsky, L.S. (1997 [1921–1923]) Educational Psychology. Boca Raton, FL: Saint Lucie Press. Wartofsky, M. (1973) Models. Dordrecht: D. Reide. Wegerif, R. (2007) From dialectic to dialogic: A response to Wertsch and Kazak. In T. Koschmann (ed.) Theorizing Learning Practice (pp. 29–54). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Wells, G. (1999) Dialogic Inquiry: Toward a Sociocultural Practice and Theory of Education. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wertsch, J.V. (ed.) (1985a) Culture, Communication, and Cognition: Vygotskian Perspectives. New York: Cambridge University Press. Wertsch, J.V. (1985b) The semiotic mediation of mental life: L.S. Vygotsky and M.M. Bakhtin. In E. Mertz and R.J. Parmentier (eds) Semiotic Mediation: Sociocultural and Psychological Perspectives (pp. 223–256). New York: Academic Press. Wertsch, J.V. (1991) Voices of the Mind: A Sociocultural Approach to Mediated Action. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Wertsch, J.V. (1998) Mind as Action. New York: Oxford University Press. Wertsch, J.V. (2007) Mediation. In H. Daniels, M. Cole and J.V. Wertsch (eds) The Cambridge Companion to Vygotsky (pp. 178–192). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wertsch, J.V. and Kazak, S. (2007) Saying more than you know in instructional settings. In T. Koschmann (ed.) Theorizing Learning Practice. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Wertsch, J. and Toma, C. (1995) Discourse and learning in the classroom: A sociocultural approach. In L. Steffe and J. Gale (eds) Constructivism in Education (pp. 159–174). Hillsdale, NJ: LEA. Wertsch, J.V., Tulviste, P. and Hagstrom, F. (1993) A sociocultural approach to agency. In E.A. Forman, N. Minick and C.A. Stone (eds) Contexts for Learning: Sociocultural Dynamics in Children’s Development (pp. 336–356). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wozniak, R.H. (1975) A dialectic paradigm for psychological research: Implications drawn from the history of psychology in the Soviet Union. Human Development 18: 18–34.

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The Conceptions of ‘Dialogue’ Offered by Bohm and Buber: A Critical Review Michelle Brinn

Within current educational theory, social constructivist paradigms such as those outlined by Vygotsky (1962) and Bruner (1986) dominate. Consequently, interest in the nature of classroom interaction has grown, with research indicating that the quality of classroom dialogue is a crucial factor in children’s learning (Skidmore, 2006). A clear understanding of the theoretical perspectives surrounding ‘dialogue’ is an essential prerequisite to an analysis of dialogue in practice. This chapter critically reviews the dialogic theories of Bohm (1996) and Buber (1947). David Bohm (1917–1992) was an American theoretical physicist, known for his contribution to quantum theory and philosophy of mind. Martin Buber (1878–1965) was a philosopher, scholar and theologian. Both developed independent philosophies of dialogue outside the context of educational research and see it as a primary human concern. This chapter explores their work on dialogue and considers its relevance to current educational theory and practice. It also considers their significance for initiatives to increase the effectiveness of home–school communication within the nursery of a large international school in Bangkok.

Bohm’s On Dialogue (1996) In outlining his conception of dialogue, Bohm (1996) portrays a clear-cut agenda and rationale for his work. In his view, humanity’s ability to communicate effectively has broken down to the point where, if not rectified, social upheaval and manmade disaster on an unprecedented scale may result. Consequently, it has become essential to find an explanation and to seek a possible solution. It is this rationale that underpins Bohm’s whole hypothesis on dialogue. Bohm argues that humanity’s failure to engage in meaningful dialogue is due to an inability to move beyond one’s own worldview to understand 68

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and fully appreciate that of others. Such inability, notes Bohm, is rooted in the very process through which we develop our views on the world – a process which converts culturally and historically created opinions or ‘assumptions’ (Bohm, 1996: 8) into emotionally and psychologically powerful ‘truths’. For Bohm, individual and cultural norms are simply habits of thought created by our own minds as a result of our particular social and historical experience (a concept based on the work of Krishnamurti (1975). However, because our minds lack a sense of ‘proprioception’ (Bohm, 1996: 27), that is, an awareness of its own organising processes, we do not recognise them as such. For Bohm, it is precisely because we cannot recognise the sociohistorical basis of our norms and values that we find it so difficult to engage in dialogue with those whose values and norms differ from our own, noting that ‘it is as if you yourself are under attack when your opinion is challenged’ (Bohm, 1996: 10). The power of thought to mask the manner in which it organises reality is not restricted to our cultural and societal views, but also pervades our very sense of self, our very notion ‘of what sort of person we are supposed to be’ (Bohm, 1996: 12). This often leads us to misunderstand our own motivations and reactions – intellectual, physical and emotional. Thus, becoming aware of the true nature of our thought processes is essential if we are to become self-aware, responsible individuals capable of a deep level of communication and dialogue. For Bohm such awareness can be gained through exposure to contradictory viewpoints and ideas within the context of a ‘dialogue group’ (Bohm, 1996: 5). Within any social interaction, contradiction and difference of opinion will abound. However, in commonplace interaction such differences do not usually expose the cultural assumptions underlying our views. Instead they often lead to the conflict and breakdown of communication that Bohm wants to avoid. Bohm recognises this and notes that a conscious attempt to engage in a mutual exploration of conflicting ‘opinion’ is essential; hence the necessity for a ‘dialogue group’ (Bohm, 1996: 5). For Bohm, a dialogue group should ideally be a ‘microcosm of society’ (Bohm, 1996: 18) and have no particular aim beyond dialogue itself. He notes: In the dialogue group we are not going to decide what to do about anything. … We must have an empty space where we are not obliged to do anything, nor come to any conclusions, nor to say anything or not say anything. (Bohm, 1996: 19) Bohm notes that this is very unusual and may be difficult to conceptualise. Nonetheless, he insists that having any extraneous purpose, beyond dialogue, may impede any true sharing of ideas and values. Within any group, Bohm argues, differences of opinion will inevitably arise. However, the fact that the group exists solely to engage in dialogue should motivate members

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to work through any potential conflict and thus gain a deeper understanding of themselves and others. To aid the group, the practice of ‘suspension’ is outlined by Bohm (1996: 22). Within this process one does not attempt to suppress or deny the power of one’s emotional or intellectual reaction. Instead the reaction is ‘suspended’ so it can be analysed in depth. Potential reasons for the intensity of the reaction can then be explored. Such scrutiny may reveal both the origin of the viewpoint and the conceptual procedure underlying its formation. For Bohm such a revelation could change the very character of one’s thought processes, allowing one to recognise the validity of the views of others. He notes, ‘If you see other people’s thought, it becomes your own thought, and you treat it as your own thought’ (Bohm, 1996: 45). Furthermore, the resulting effects should ripple out into wider society, creating a positive effect on communication and dialogue beyond the boundaries of the group itself. Although Bohm’s view could be perceived as idealistic, certain aspects of his hypothesis may be of import to education. However, before exploring these, it may be essential to raise some points regarding his theory as a whole. First, as noted by Blackburn (2005), there is an inherent danger that any theory that claims the truths held by others are based on assumption may itself be party to similar illusions. In other words, following Bohm’s own argument, it may not be possible to accept that Bohm’s understanding is any less illusory than anyone else’s. Nonetheless, this need not be a problem for Bohm, as long as his ‘assumptions’ promote a better understanding of cultural difference and encourage effective dialogue. However, if a lack of ‘proprioception’ (Bohm, 1996: 27) usually hinders communication, it seems unrealistic to suggest that engaging in dialogue without ‘aim’ will overcome this inability. Moreover, one assumes that participation in a dialogue group is a conscious choice based on a wish to explore one’s beliefs, suggesting that conceptual understanding is obtainable by other means. Finally, if all thought is completely intertwined with our physical and emotional reactions, any form of ‘suspension’ may be impossible (although it is a form of therapy advocated by such analysts as Forward, 2002) and may itself be accompanied by a range of distorted emotions and physical reactions, beyond true comprehension. Furthermore, it could be argued that Bohm’s hypothesis may also result in a decrease in dialogue. Blackburn (2005) warns against cultural relativism wherein all truths, being culturally created, are seen to be of equal value – even those advocating the opposite. Consequently, the distribution of power within a dialogue group cannot be ignored, since only participants with equal power, or those who perceive themselves to be equal, may feel sufficiently confident to participate fully. In addition, rather than developing the empathetic and creative communication that Bohm envisages, effective dialogue could result in cultural nihilism. After all, if all ‘truths’ are illusory, it may be of equal value to believe in nothing at all.

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The philosophical nature of the criticism above means that clear answers are beyond the scope of this discussion. Moreover, despite these criticisms, aspects of Bohm’s work are reflected in much contemporary educational theory, including many of the social constructivist paradigms currently in favour. That we are active participants in the construction of our social reality, a reality that is culturally and historically framed, underpins the work of Vygotsky (Daniels, 2001; Kozulin, 1998; Van Der Veer & Valsiner, 1993, 1994; Vygotsky, 1962) among others. For Vygotsky, all internal thought is created first on an interpersonal level within our social interactions and only later becomes part of our intrapersonal domain. These interactions are themselves culturally and historically specific and thus, for Vygotsky, our thought must also be a cultural and historical creation. Furthermore, parallels could be drawn between the emphasis both Bohm and Vygotsky place on the benefit of fully understanding the mental processes used by humanity to interpret and organise reality. For Vygotsky, interaction within the sociohistorical environment has led humankind to develop culturally specific, material and psychological tools; the latter are defined by Kozulin (1998: 1) as ‘symbolic artefacts – signs, symbols, texts, formulae, graphic-symbolic devices’. The former (material) tools affect our material interaction with the environment and the latter affect both our interaction with the environment and the growth of our psychological functions. Discussing this concept, Kozulin (1998: 4) writes, ‘Such “natural” psychological functions such as perception, memory and attention become transformed under the influence of psychological tools, generating new cultural forms of psychological functions’. For Vygotsky, language is a prime example of a psychological tool that affects the organisation of our external world and our inner psychological development. Bohm’s conception of dialogue could likewise be considered an activity mediated by the psychological tool of language. The significance of such psychological tools and the mental processes that constitute thinking and learning form the basis of a number of educational initiatives. For example, Katz advocates nurturing appropriate ‘dispositions’ for learning within young children and suggests that teaching children ‘how they understand’ (Katz, 1977: 61) could benefit both teachers and children. This seems to concur with Bohm’s concept of dialogue, in which communication is conceived as a flow of meanings, rather than leading to a quick evaluation or judgement by the authority figure (e.g. teacher). Kozulin (1998) passionately outlines the poverty of engaging in a ‘retrospective’ content-based education, arguing that ‘students should be capable of approaching problems that do not yet exist at the moment of his or her learning’ (Kozulin, 1998: 151), thus becoming ‘authors’, as it were, rather than reproducers of knowledge. For Kozulin, this necessitates an ability to understand and manipulate the thought processes and psychological tools through which knowledge is created. Furthermore, the importance policy makers now place on the psychological

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‘tools’ underlying learning can be clearly seen in the specific inclusion of ‘thinking skills’ within the British National Curriculum (QCA, 2008) and the development of the International Baccalaureate Leaner Profile (IBO, 2006), which emphasises the qualities that underlie a competent learner. Of additional import to education is Bohm’s hypothesis that the social process of thought construction creates implicit knowledge which, in turn, provides a framework for future interactions within the world. This hypothesis is reflected in the ideas of such diverse authors as Donaldson (1978), Bernstein (1977) and Bourdieu (1986), who all note the ‘hidden’ barriers to educational success for children lacking the appropriate framework. For these authors the ‘assumptions’ that ensure success in education reflect the worldview of a particular class of society and thus alienate children from different classes. However, as these assumptions are implicit rather than explicit, other factors such as IQ can be held responsible. Hence, without appropriate examination of this implicit framework, a cycle of educational failure can be established. Additionally, Bohm’s insistence on the power of thought to abstract from reality in order to ‘create’ this framework complements the work of Wells (1986), who outlines man’s need for ‘storying’ as an essential aspect of his understanding of reality. Wells states, ‘Constructing stories in the mind – or storying, as it has been called – is one of the most fundamental means of making meaning; as such it is an activity that pervades all learning’ (Wells, 1986: 194). For Wells (citing Rosen, 1984), even scientific theories can be interpreted as ‘micro narratives’ chosen according to which make the ‘best sense of the available evidence’ (Wells, 1986: 205). However, echoing Bernstein and Bourdieu, Wells (2007) notes that there is a clear disparity of access to any cultural artefact, including ‘storying’ and dialogue, which may have empowering or disempowering consequences for individuals – a factor not explicitly considered by Bohm. However, perhaps most crucial for education is Bohm’s insistence that effective dialogue is based on respect and a true desire to understand the viewpoint of another – even if that viewpoint is utterly alien to one’s own. If one agrees that children are co-constructors in their own understanding (Wells, 1986), then only dialogue of the kind indicated by Bohm could possibly be effective in teaching and learning. It is such dialogue that must underlie interaction within both Vygotsky’s (1962) zone of proximal development (ZPD) and Bruner’s notion of ‘scaffolding’ (Wood et al., 1976). This will be discussed in more depth in relation to Buber’s work, whose ideas on dialogue, although different from Bohm’s, can be seen to have certain parallels.

Buber’s Between Man and Man (1947) Unlike Bohm, Buber does not outline a specific rationale for his work. However, it is apparent that a similar concern with the inability of

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humankind to engage in meaningful dialogue and the subsequent impact of this for both individuals and humankind as a whole underpins his thinking. This is clearly reflected in the title he chooses for this particular work, Between Man and Man (1947). For Buber the dialogue that exists ‘between’ man and man (Buber, 1947: 117) is the ‘essential’ (Buber, 1947: 47) relationship in life. It is the only way in which humanity can engage fully with life and, in Buber’s words, come to know God. As a theologian, the notion of man’s relation to God is crucial to Buber’s writing. However, it becomes clear that his notion of God could be likened to what others may define as true knowledge (the logos in Blackburn’s (2005) words) or even the process of man’s ‘becoming’ (Bahktin, 1981: 341). Furthermore this ‘between’ relates not only to the relationship between wo/man and wo/man (or wo/man and God) but also to that between wo/man and ‘things’ (Buber, 1947: 42). Buber states ‘We do not find meaning lying in things, nor do we put it into things, but between us and things it can happen’ (Buber, 1947: 42). Thus, the ‘between’, either between man and man, man and God, or man and things, is where humankind comes to understand the world. Hence, Buber’s work does not and should not be dismissed as irrelevant for those unsympathetic to theological conceptions of God. For Buber, human dialogue, ‘although it has its distinctive life in the sign, that is in sound and gesture’ (Buber, 1947: 5), can also exist in a silent ‘communion’ (Buber, 1947: 7) with another human. Such communion transcends the realm of the ‘sign’ and allows participants to see the other as he truly is – a concept also reflected in the work of Krishnamurti (1975). As with Bohm, Buber recognises that one’s viewpoint may act as an obstacle to communication. However, for Buber, the transcendence afforded by such ‘communion’ overcomes this obstacle. He writes of participants engaged in communion: Neither needs to give up his point of view; only, in that unexpectedly they do something and unexpectedly something happens to them which is called a covenant, they enter a realm where the law of the point of view no longer holds … they let themselves run free of it for an immortal moment. (Buber, 1947: 7) For some this may be a difficult concept to accept, as it is hard to perceive or measure, but this need not lead one to dismiss his argument in its entirety. Moreover, for Buber such a ‘covenant’ is not easy to achieve, although neither is ‘genuine dialogue’ (Buber, 1947: 22) through the use of language. Both necessitate that one must fully recognise the legitimacy of the ‘other’ (Buber, 1947: 22) and must fully ‘attend’ (Buber, 1947: 25) or ‘turn toward’ (Buber, 1947: 25) that other. Buber argues that humanity finds such a ‘turning toward another’ difficult, but does not recognise this inability, instead

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becoming adept at disguising this failure. As a result, three different kinds of dialogue have come to exist: There is genuine dialogue – no matter spoken or silent – where each of the participants really has in mind the other or others in their present and particular being and turns to them with the intention of establishing a living mutual relation between himself and them. There is technical dialogue, which is prompted solely by a need for objective understanding. And there is monologue disguised as dialogue, in which two or more men meeting in space, speak each with himself in strangely tortuous and circuitous ways and yet imagine they have escaped the torment of being thrown back on their own resources. (Buber, 1947: 22) For Buber, most communication fits into this latter category, although for those involved it may appear as if they are engaged in true dialogue. Buber outlines two essential aspects which underlie the ability to ‘turn towards’ another. First, one must recognise the legitimacy and totality of oneself; one must become a ‘Single One’ (Buber, 1947: 47). Subsequently one must recognise this nature in another. In Buber’s words, one must turn an ‘I–it’ relationship (the basis of both technical dialogue and monologue disguised as dialogue) into an ‘I–Thou’ relationship (Buber, 1947: 28). Furthermore, one must ‘turn towards’ and ‘attend’ to the other as a whole person and not simply attend to their thoughts. However, as with Bohm, Buber postulates that the nature of thought itself may act as a barrier to recognising one’s true ‘self’ and hinder the development of genuine dialogue. In Buber’s view, thought builds up pictures through momentary experiences. Furthermore, each of these moments is new and unseen; they ‘stand in the stream of “happening but once”’ (Buber, 1947: 14). For Buber, our responsibility is to interpret these novel moments, without access to a ‘dictionary’ (Buber, 1947: 14), as it were. ‘Only then, true to the moment, do we experience a life that is other than a sum of moments … A newly-created concrete reality has been laid in our arms; we answer for it’ (Buber, 1947: 20). Yet to ‘answer’ in such a way requires hard work and recognition of the weight of this responsibility. Humanity, Buber notes, often shies away from this weight, preferring instead to cling to security and familiarity within our thinking, what Bohm (1996) and Krishnamurti (1975) would refer to as ‘habits of thought’. For Buber, this results in a blind obedience rather than a questioning and responsible dialogue. Furthermore, such devotion to dogmatic thought and familiar patterns of behaviour stand in the way of our ability to become a ‘Single One’ and thus prevent us from recognising that nature in another. In other words it prevents us from perceiving the ‘it’ as a ‘Thou’. For many, Buber’s reliance on unquantifiable and to a certain extent indefinable conceptual categories may act as a barrier to exploring his ideas

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further, as could a lack of clarity regarding exactly how one becomes a ‘Single One’. In addition, the idea put forth by Buber (and Krishnamurti, 1975) that the ‘totality’ of experience may be apprehended and recognised for what it truly is, could be criticised using the same arguments levelled at Bohm’s concept of suspension. Specifically, if ‘thought’ acts as a barrier to comprehending such ‘totality’ (through its ‘momentary’ nature), how can it be possible to suddenly step outside of this barrier and leave it behind, simply because one chooses to try? Nonetheless, as with Bohm, it could be argued that aspects of Buber’s views are clearly reflected in paradigms currently in favour within the social sciences and subsequently have relevance for educational theory. Furthermore, Buber’s insistence on our personal responsibility to put down the ‘dictionary’ and engage in a questioning and responsible dialogue with all aspects of our existence should, one could argue, be commended. It is this aspect of Buber’s theory and his insistence on the importance of the ‘between’ that seems to be reflected in the Vygotskian concept of mediation (Daniels, 2001; Kozulin, 1998; Van Der Veer & Valsiner, 1993, 1994; Vygotsky, 1962). Daniels (2001: 1) notes that the concept of mediation lies ‘at the heart of many attempts to develop our understanding of the possibilities for intervention in processes of human learning and development’. It is a concept intrinsically linked to the notion of psychological tools discussed earlier. For Vygotsky, humankind does not interact directly with the environment or fellow humanity but in the ‘between’ through the use of psychological tools (artefacts or signs). Kozulin (1998: 4) notes: ‘Psychological tools thus transform the unmediated interaction of the human being with the world into mediated interaction.’ As already noted, psychological tools emerge within the individual as a result of social interaction within a specific sociohistorical context. Daniels (2001: 1) notes, however, that this is not deterministic, as ‘in the course of their own development human beings also actively shape the very forces that are active in shaping them’; they do not, however, choose the ‘settings’ within which they act (Daniels, 2001: 13). Thus, argues Daniels (2001: 13), mind ‘emerges in the joint mediated activity of people’. One could argue that the concept of mediation enhances Buber’s hypothesis by providing an analysis of what may occur in the ‘between’. At the same time, Buber’s view that each and every moment is new and unique could be seen to echo the historical cycle of creation and recreation that underlies mediation. For Buber, however, it is not the uniqueness of each moment that is of highest import, but that humanity responds to this uniqueness, without reliance on ‘habits of thought’, a perspective that would be applauded by those who favour a view of learning as ‘authoring’ rather than reproduction, such as Kozulin (1998) and Wells (1986). For educational practitioners, the consequences of these views are enormous. If one agrees that knowledge is actively co-constructed through the

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effective development and manipulation of psychological tools, then the quality of the dialogue that occurs between individuals is crucial. Skidmore (Chapter 6, current volume), reviewing the work of Nystrand (1997), Wells (1999) and Alexander (2004), argues: ‘There is a well articulated case for valuing the character of classroom discourse as one of the most important influences on students’ experiences of learning in schools.’ Crucially for Buber, the primary responsibility for the success of classroom dialogue rests on the teacher. He notes: ‘The educator stands at both ends of the common situation, the pupil at one end’ (Buber, 1947: 119). Thus, although Bohm’s and Buber’s contribution to educational theory have a similar emphasis on the importance of dialogue, one could argue that Buber’s definitions give practitioners a clearer framework with which to analyse their dialogue in practice and may be central to the success of such strategies as Vygotsky’s (1962) ZPD and Bruner’s notion of ‘scaffolding’ (Wood et al., 1976). This may be especially true when, despite much educational rhetoric to the contrary, much classroom practice could be classified as ‘technical dialogue’ or ‘monologue disguised as dialogue’ rather than ‘genuine dialogue’ (Fisher, 2002). Furthermore, Buber’s inclusion of the non-verbal component of dialogue enhances our potential for fully understanding the act of communication and complements the work of authors such as Bourdieu (1986) and Reay (2000, cited in Skidmore, 2006) in their examination of the barriers to educational success. However, as already noted, conceptual ambiguity regarding how one becomes a ‘Single One’ capable of genuine dialogue may lead to problems in fully translating Buber ’s ideas into practice. Nonetheless, difficulty categorising the more ‘spiritual’ aspects of his theory need not negate his entire message. Furthermore, it may be that we simply do not yet have the necessary conceptual framework or research methodologies to examine Buber ’s concepts in depth. Certainly, studies based on the more empirical aspects of dialogue, such as the form of questioning employed by teachers (such as Wells, 1999, cited in Skidmore, 2006) have done much to further our understanding of classroom dialogue. Moreover, research into ‘prosody’ (Roth, 2005; Skidmore, Chapter 10, current volume) has discovered that participants’ perceptions of the quality of dialogue may depend upon almost indiscernible physiological reactions such as changes to voice tone and pitch – discoveries that may go some way towards illuminating Buber ’s views. Finally, one can recognise echoes of Buber ’s perspective within current educational policy. For example, the emphasis on ‘holistic’ education – as outlined in Every Child Matters (DfES, 2004) and advocated by such diverse authors as Maslow (1998), Skidmore (Chapter 2, current volume), Bruce (2005), Fisher (2002) and Gerhardt (2004), can be said to reflect the view that one must attend to the ‘whole’ person, rather than simply their thoughts. Thus, despite his metaphysical leanings, Buber ’s work has much to offer educationalists.

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Conclusions Reviewing the work of Bohm and Buber, each makes a valuable contribution to educational theory and practice. Furthermore, their ideas may have particular relevance for children in international education. One could argue that the cultural environment young children experience today is incredibly diverse. The rise of the global communication network gives children access to a far wider range of differing cultural ‘assumptions’ (Bohm, 1996: 8) than ever before in the history of humankind. Thus, even for children living in a static geographical environment, the ‘habits of thought’ (Bohm, 1996: 8) to which they are exposed have become multifarious. For children who live in the fluid environment of international schooling, that multiplicity may be on an unprecedented scale. Such intense diversity may impact upon the nature and quality of dialogue and prevent cohesion within one’s internal ‘habits of thought’. Wells (1986: 294) sees dialogue as being the ‘difficult and complicated process’ of joint meaning making. One could postulate that successful ‘meaning making’ must require a certain amount of common understanding. If one likens this conception to Vygotsky’s (1962) ZPD, there must be a certain ‘range’ of difference wherein mutual understanding is possible. Outside this range, the potential for collaborative ‘meaning making’ may be lost. For many children within international schooling, finding a common ‘language’ simply in terms of vocabulary can be very hard. Many ‘Third Culture Kids’ (Pollock & Van Reken, 2001) operate within an environment of three to four different languages, interacting with a number of different ‘players’, none of whom holds a common language. Often, even the first language of the mother and father is different. Thus, when one adds the potentially different languages of the nanny, teacher, maid, driver, etc., all of whom may have regular contact with the child, one can understand the difficulty of finding a common vocabulary with which to initiate dialogue. Furthermore, the cultural ‘assumptions’ and ‘habits of thought’ (Bohm, 1996: 8) held by participants may vary tremendously and never intersect, the child being the only participant with regular contact with all the players involved. Such a lack of commonality between ‘social languages’ (Bahktin, 1986: 356) may hinder dialogue, with potentially devastating results. This may be especially so for very young children in the initial stages of grasping the ‘psychological tool’ (Vygotsky, 1962) that is language: the stage, according to Wells (1986), wherein the very purpose of language is revealed to the child through the process of meaning making. If one agrees with Vygotsky (1962) that language and thought are tightly interwoven, then any complication within the process of language development must have a corresponding impact on a child’s conceptual development. Using Bronfenbrenner’s (1979) ecosystemic circles to illustrate, one could rebut this argument, stating that every individual is at the centre of a nested

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system of ever-widening circles, the members of which may have different ideologies and may never interact directly. However, the proposal here is that the sheer volume and degree of difference between the various ‘social languages’ encountered by international schoolchildren may act as a barrier to effective dialogue. For Bohm and Buber, one’s emotional and psychological self is firmly intertwined with the cultural identity shared within social interaction. Thus, without a pool of ‘commonality’ from which to create effective dialogue, one may lose the ability to create a coherent sense of self. Subsequently, this may inhibit the development of Buber’s ‘genuine dialogue’, since to become a ‘Single One’ capable of such dialogue, one first has to recognise the validity of oneself. Conversely, it could be argued that extreme diversity may reveal the true nature of thought and result in the ‘responsible’ thinking advocated by both Bohm and Buber. However, one could question whether any ‘assumptions’ that are only partially understood can form the basis of any illumination; even Bohm notes that conscious engagement with one’s assumptions is necessary prior to understanding their true nature. To take a simple example, children’s literature and film routinely engages in a deliberate parody of their own history. One could postulate that, without first being exposed to the tales that underlie such satire, their ideological impact is lost. Of course, Bohm would state that, as none of us truly understand the social languages within which we operate, this is the norm. Furthermore, the collaborative nature of language, outlined by Wells (1986), would prevent any ‘absolute’ understanding, as meaning is continuously negotiated and renegotiated – innovative and creative interpretations perhaps being the result of cultural ‘misreading’ (Yamazumi, 2006: 99). However, as noted above, it may be the degree of misunderstanding rather than its nature that could cause problems for ‘Third Culture Kids’ (Pollock & Van Reken, 2001). Bahktin (1986) notes that extreme disassociation of a language from its living context has a detrimental effect. One could argue that for many children in international schooling the diverse nature of their environment may lead to extreme disassociation within many, if not all, the discourses within which they operate. Reflection upon these issues led two colleagues and me to consider ways in which we could lessen the disparity between certain home and school discourses, the quality of the relationship between these discourses being recognised as fundamental to the success of children’s learning (Athey, 1990). It had previously been noted that there were a number of crucial differences between home and school expectations regarding children’s independence (especially in the areas of eating and dressing), which were having a detrimental impact on the ability of many Foundation Stage children to settle in school. A decision was made to host a series of workshops for parents, followed by another series for nannies, focusing on these areas of concern. It was hoped that through discussion, school expectations would become

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clear to all concerned and the disparity between these discourses would be lessened. On the surface the workshops appeared to be very successful; both the parental and the nanny workshops were very well attended and feedback was extremely positive. However, contrary to our hopes when setting them up, no real difference of opinion in the areas of concern was openly expressed, so there was limited opportunity for genuine dialogue to take place. Using the work of Bohm (1996), one might argue that the workshops were doomed to fail from the onset. Although organised to maximise discussion, they were deeply entrenched in the culturally based ‘assumptions’ (Bohm, 1996: 8) of only one section of the participants, those of the organisers, and as a result could never promote active dialogue. From the onset we had assumed a cultural hegemony and although we wanted to engage in a productive dialogue we had not sufficiently analysed the cultural ‘assumptions’ underlying our initial motivation. Originally it was hoped that, by developing discussion and sharing information, we could close a perceived gap between certain home and school expectations. However, the cultural basis of the discrepancies we had noted lay unexplored. Furthermore, without a sufficient exploration of the place of these behaviours within a cultural and ideological framework, we had no idea whether or not these behaviours were seen by participants as fostering the very same values that we saw them as preventing. To take a specific example, one behaviour we saw as a problem was the habit of many nannies to follow their charge around and feed them ‘on the hoof’, as it were, placing small mouthfuls of food into the child’s mouth while the child was walking around or playing. From the perspective of teachers who were trying to encourage the very same children to sit down at the table and feed themselves while at the school, the discrepancy between home and school expectations was huge. Our solution was to ensure that during the nanny workshops emphasis was placed on imparting the school expectation of sitting down and feeding oneself. Some may argue that we were justified in attempting to lessen the gap between these expectations, if only to avoid confusion for the child. However, the truth is that, without first exploring the place of this behaviour in the value system of bringing up small children in Thailand, we had no hope of engaging in the genuine dialogue that would have been needed for either side to understand the other’s perspective. Buber (1947) would argue that incorporating discussion into workshops is no guarantee of dialogue. In fact one could argue that none of our workshops was based on ‘genuine dialogue’, being at best ‘technical dialogue’ or at worst ‘monologue disguised as dialogue’ (Buber, 1947: 22). Without an adequate analysis of the ‘assumptions’ (Bohm, 1996: 8) underlying our intentions we had not fully recognised ‘ourselves’ and without such understanding of ourselves could never hope to ‘turn towards’ the ‘other’ (Buber, 1947: 47).

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In recognising this fact, my colleagues and I are now left with a number of choices. We can continue to present our views in the hope that having clearer expectations may encourage parents to prepare their children for a differing discourse. Alternatively, we can attempt to engage in a ‘genuine dialogue’ with both parents and nannies. As Bohm notes, however, to engage in the latter would necessitate that all parties involved explore their assumptions, leading to their possible rejection and the creation of a completely innovative discourse, the nature of which cannot be predicted at the outset. Contemplation of this prospect, however, highlights a potential stumbling block in Bohm’s aspirations for his theory. Supporters of activity theory, such as Engestrom (2001) and Daniels (2001), would argue that Bohm’s (1996) ‘cultural assumptions’ are not confined to thought and language but also become embedded within the ‘tools and artefacts’ (Engestrom, 1999, cited in Daniels, 2001: 90) including the rules and traditions, used within ‘activity systems’ (Engestrom, 2001: 133) such as schools, to recreate their underlying norms and values. Thus, in order to achieve enduring change in any assumption one must also promote change within those tools and artefacts that reproduce those assumptions. However, these traditions are often more resistant to change than individual ideas as, expanding on Bohm’s theory, they too often take on the appearance of unchangeable truths, unless their contingent nature is fully understood and made open to analysis. Thus the promotion of effective dialogue within institutions such as schools may necessitate the addition of a theoretical framework beyond the scope of Bohm or Buber. In conclusion, it can be argued that the different, but complementary, views of Bohm and Buber may have much to offer educationalists. Furthermore, one can recognise a resonance between their ideas and many social constructivist paradigms at use within current educational theory and policy. However, in order to realise the theoretical aspirations outlined by each author (whether they be freedom from ‘habits of thought’ or the development of ‘genuine dialogue’) it may be necessary to find an additional theoretical framework to fully integrate the individual agency and dialogue of Bohm and Buber into the social environment, especially if we wish effective dialogue to instigate enduring social change.

References Alexander, R.J. (2004) Towards Dialogic Teaching: Rethinking Classroom Talk. Cambridge: Dialogos. Athey, C. (1990) Extending Thought In Young Children. A Parent–Teacher Partnership. London: Paul Chapman. Bakhtin, M.M. (1981) The Dialogic Imagination; Four Essays. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. Bakhtin, M.M. (1986) Speech Genres and Other Late Essays (trans. V.W. McGee; ed. C. Emerson and M. Holquist). Slavic Series No. 8. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.

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Bernstein, B. (1977) Class Codes and Control. Vol 3, Towards A Theory of Educational Transmissions (2nd revised edn). London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Blackburn, S. (2005) Truth: A Guide For The Perplexed. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Bohm, D. (1996) On Dialogue. London: Routledge. Bourdieu, P. (1986) The forms of capital. In J.G. Richardson (ed.) Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education (pp. 241–258). New York: Greenwood. Bronfenbrenner, U. (1979) The Ecology of Human Development: Experiments by Nature and Design. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Bruce, T. (2005) Early Childhood Education (3rd edn). Oxford: Hodder Arnold. Bruner, J.S. (1986) Actual Minds, Possible Worlds. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Buber, M. (1947) Between Man and Man. London: Routledge. Daniels, H. (2001) Vygotsky and Pedagogy. London: Routledge Falmer. DfES (2004) Every Child Matters: Change for Children. Nottingham: Department for Education and Skills (DfES) Publications. Donaldson, M. (1978) Children’s Minds. Glasgow: Fontana/Collins. Engestrom, Y. (2001) Expansive learning at work: Toward an activity theoretical reconceptualisation. Journal of Education and Work 14 (1), 133–156. Fisher, J. (2002) Starting from the Child (2nd edn). Milton Keynes: Open University Press. Forward, S. (2002) Toxic Parents (2nd revised edn). New York: Bantam Books. Gerhardt, S. (2004) Why Love Matters. Hove: Brunner-Routledge. IBO (2006) I.B. Learner Profile. Cardiff: International Baccalaureate Organisation. Katz, L.G. (1977) Talks With Teachers. Washington, DC: National Association For the Education of Young Children. Kozulin, A. (1998) Psychological Tools: A Sociocultural Approach to Education. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Krishnamurti, J. (1975) Beginnings of Learning. London: Arkana. Maslow, A. (1998) Toward a Psychology of Being. Chichester: John Wiley. Nystrand, M., with Gamoran, A., Kachur, R. and Prendergast, C. (1997) Opening Dialogue: Understanding the Dynamics of Language and Learning in the English Classroom. New York: Teachers College Press. Pollock, D. and Van Reken, R. (2001) Third Culture Kids: The Experience of Growing Up Among Worlds. Boston, MA: Nicholas Brierly. QCA (2008) A Framework of Personal, Learning and Thinking Skills. London: Qualifications and Curriculum Authority. Reay, D. (2000) A useful extension of Bourdieu’s conceptual framework?: Emotional capital as a way of understanding mothers’ involvement in their children’s education? Sociological Review 48 (4), 568–585. Richardson, J.G. (1986) (ed.) Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education. New York: Greenwood. Roth, W.-M. (2005) Becoming like the other. In W.-M. Roth and K. Tobin (eds) Teaching Together, Learning Together (pp. 27–51). New York: Peter Lang. Skidmore, D. (2006) Pedagogy and dialogue. Cambridge Journal of Education 36 (4), 503–514. Skidmore, D. (2008) Once more with feeling: Utterance and social structure. Text & Talk 28 (1), 79–96. Van Der Veer, R. and Valsiner J. (1993) Understanding Vygotsky: A Quest For Synthesis. Oxford: Blackwell. Van Der Veer, R. and Valsiner, J. (1994) The Vygotsky Reader. Oxford: Blackwell. Vygotsky, L. (1962) Thought and Language. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Wells, G. (1986) The Meaning Makers: Children Learning Language and Using Language To Learn. London: Hodder & Stoughton.

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Wells, G. (1999) Dialogic Inquiry: Towards a Sociocultural Practice and Theory of Education. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wells, G. (2007) Semiotic mediation, dialogue and the construction of knowledge. Human Development, 50 (5), 244–274. Wood, D., Bruner, J.S. and Ross, G. (1976) The role of tutoring in problem solving. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry 17, 89–100. Yamazumi, K. (2006) The active role of misreading and deviation in the formation of character. CHAT Technical Reports 1, 99–107.

5

Classroom Discourse: A Survey of Research David Skidmore

The Essential Teaching Exchange In Towards an Analysis of Discourse: The English Used by Teachers and Pupils, Sinclair and Coulthard (1975) present a system for analysing classroom discourse. This coding framework consists of five hierarchically ordered rank items. In descending order of scope, these are: the lesson; the transaction; the exchange; the move; and the act. Each of these items is further subdivided into a set of subcategories, as illustrated in Table 5.1. Of the 22 classes of act, some of the most familiar include: the elicitation, or teacher’s question, where the teacher asks a known-answer question to which students are invited to supply the correct response; the cue, where the teacher invites students to signal their willingness to respond, often through an established routine of non-verbal communication peculiar to the classroom context (e.g. ‘Hands up’); and, on the students’ side, the bid, where they compete to be selected to give the answer the teacher is looking for (e.g. by calling out ‘Miss!’ or ‘Sir!’). This is the work which describes the structure of the ‘essential teaching exchange’, the initiation-response-feedback sequence, or IRF exchange for short. This begins with a teacher’s question, such as ‘What is the capital of Australia?’, to which a student is selected to give the answer (e.g. ‘Canberra’), which is followed by an evaluative comment by the teacher giving feedback on what the student has just said (e.g. ‘Canberra, that’s right’, or perhaps ‘John says it’s Sydney – is that right?’). This is an important contribution to our understanding of classroom discourse, identifying a persistent and omnipresent feature of the way in which spoken language is used in lessons, and allowing us to recognise a type of interaction with which we are all familiar but had perhaps hitherto been unaware of. By drawing attention to the typical teaching exchange, the study also allowed later researchers to ask what alternative kinds of interaction might be possible in the classroom. 83

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Table 5.1 A system for analysing classroom discourse Item

Types

Lesson Transaction Exchange Move Act

(Unspecified) Informing, directing, eliciting Boundary, teaching Opening, answering, follow-up, framing, focusing Marker, starter, elicitation, check, directive, informative, prompt, clue, cue, bid, nomination, acknowledge, reply, react, comment, accept, evaluate, silent stress, meta-statement, conclusion, loop, aside

The authors illustrate their system of analysis by means of two texts, i.e. transcribed and coded extracts from lessons which they recorded for the study. In their concluding chapter, they briefly describe how the analytical framework was developed and modified by investigation of contrasting speech situations, such as doctor–patient interviews, media discussions (e.g. radio interviews) and committee discussions. They are most confident of the robustness of the analytical categories which appear at the lower end of the rank scale, i.e. exchanges, moves and acts, which are relatively easy to anchor in empirically identifiable features of speech. The boundaries of the higher order category of transaction are harder to pinpoint, and they are unable in this study to specify the interactional structure of the lesson as a whole. The authors’ concerns in this study are primarily linguistic, not pedagogical. The analytical system is a means of describing the structure of one common variety of classroom discourse, but provides no means of evaluating the quality of learning achieved through that discourse. Furthermore, the teaching situations were contrived to produce this kind of discourse, involving one teacher leading a lesson with a small group of pupils (although the second text presented is naturalistic, i.e. it is transcribed from a recording of a ‘real’ teaching episode, not one specially devised for the project). As the authors concede, the analytical framework is therefore suited to the analysis of teacher-led, whole class teaching episodes, but not to the kinds of talk that are found in other contexts in schools, such as pupil discussion in small groups. Subsequent research has shown that a great deal of classroom discourse conforms to Sinclair and Coulthard’s model of the essential teaching exchange, but has also indicated that it is possible to create other structures of participation in the classroom which support different patterns of interaction. The authors draw an important distinction between form and function. For example, an instruction to someone to do something may be conveyed by syntactic form (the use of the imperative, e.g. ‘Write this down in your exercise books’); however, at the level of discourse, a directive can also be

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realised by an interrogative (e.g. ‘Will you write this down in your exercise books?’). Their investigation of classroom discourse draws attention to the way in which structural linguistics has traditionally dealt with form at the expense of function, often on the basis of artefactual sentences invented by the linguist to illustrate their intuitions of the grammar used by a ‘competent’ speaker. They note the way in which the teacher typically controls classroom discourse as much through the function of their utterances (e.g. elicitations, nominations and evaluations) as through the conventional categories of syntactic form. All dialogue contains a jockeying for position, even when the relative status of the participants is clearly contrasted, as in the case of classroom discourse. It is possible that the model presented in this study underestimates the extent to which there is a contest to define what counts as a legitimate contribution to ongoing episodes of discussion (such as pupil questions and initiations), even where the prevailing norm of discourse is teacher dominated. As Sinclair and Coulthard point out, discourse is a different kind of phenomenon from syntax, being much more fluid in the way it is elaborated by participants. This is not to deny that pupils must learn the ‘rules’ for participating in classroom discourse, and that these are different from those of other contexts, such as talk in the family or informal conversation with friends. But these rules are open to modification and negotiation by participants in the flux of interaction, in a way that the more finite forms of syntax are less amenable to. Sometimes, for example, the teacher may opt to ignore an infraction of the normal classroom rules (e.g. an interruption by a student), if this contributes to the shared learning experience being conducted. Nevertheless, the systematic framework for analysing teacher-led classroom discourse in this study remains an indispensable starting point for understanding how teachers and students learn to perform a lesson as a genre of social interaction, particularly in the large set of speech acts that the authors describe as the basic elements of their analytical system.

Exploratory Talk in Small Groups In From Communication to Curriculum (Barnes, 1992) – a work originally published in 1975 – Barnes puts forward a series of key concepts and dichotomies which have proved fruitful in investigating classroom discourse and its connection with student learning. He draws distinctions between: exploratory talk and final draft talk; school knowledge and action knowledge; transmission and interpretation models of teaching and learning; and deficiency and interaction explanations of educational failure. He points out the importance of the hypothetical mode of speech in learning situations, and argues that the social order of the classroom is enacted in the dominant pattern of communication between teacher and students.

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Barnes was among the first to draw attention to the crucial role of ‘exploratory talk’ (also called ‘thinking aloud’) in enabling learners to come to grips with new concepts or knowledge. He points out that our speech in these circumstances ‘is usually marked by frequent hesitations, rephrasings, false starts and changes of direction’ (Barnes, 1992: 28). He distinguishes between the manifest curriculum of schooling, visible in the division of the timetable into subject lessons and in the subject syllabus, and the hidden curriculum, which produces social learning in the form of tacit expectations which are absorbed as part of the everyday experience of ‘doing school’ (such as the layout of furniture in the classroom, and the way in which interaction between teacher and students is normally conducted). Barnes places great emphasis on the enacted and interactive nature of the curriculum, stressing that it should not be seen solely in terms of the teacher’s formal objectives, since children bring different prior knowledge to the learning encounter (also referred to as their everyday or ‘action knowledge’). Citing Vygotsky’s concept of inner speech, he argues that from this perspective, learning should be seen as psychologically transformational rather than merely additive. He also suggests that this process of ‘recoding’ representations of reality can take place not only under the guidance of an adult tutor, but also in discussion with peers, and makes a case for greater use of small group discussion in classroom lessons – a form of organisation which places control over learning strategies in the hands of students. Importantly, he recognises that ‘the communication pattern of any classroom is the outcome of a history of mutual interpretation by teacher and pupils’ (Barnes, 1992: 33, my emphasis). For Barnes, language in the classroom can be viewed under two distinct aspects, on the one hand as a communication system, and on the other as a means of learning; however, these two aspects are inextricably connected, since the way in which classroom discourse is organised shapes the mode of participation in learning which it is possible for students to engage in. Barnes goes on to analyse recordings of discussions by students engaged in small group activities in different subject lessons, in the absence of the teacher. There was variation between the groups and from task to task in how successful they were at conducting ‘open’ discussion. In one case where a higher and lower attaining student were collaborating on a science task, the questions of the lower attaining student contributed to the quality of the learning, requiring the higher achieving student to be more explicit in his explanations; by re-presenting knowledge for another, he deepens his own understanding at the same time. In another case, a group of girls consistently sought consensus and avoided challenging each other, and were less successful in creating an ‘open’ dialogue. Barnes concludes that the quality of social interaction affects the quality of learning. The groups evinced different approaches to the tasks which embodied different strategies for learning: an open approach, on the one hand, where students used more hypothetical and

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exploratory kinds of talk; or a closed approach, on the other hand, where groups sought not to disrupt the consensus, where the talk was of a more ritual nature. For Barnes, it is the hypothetical mode of discussion which supports collaborative problem solving through exploratory dialogue. Significantly, when the teacher joins in, Barnes observes that sometimes their questions can provide a framework to take children’s thinking forward, but their intervention can also inhibit exploratory talk by producing the rehearsal of test-type answers, because students interpret the demands of the situation differently. Barnes is concerned to distinguish between school knowledge, as taught through subject lessons in the formal curriculum, and action knowledge, which refers to students’ assimilation of knowledge for their own purposes. He sees both speech and writing as means of reshaping knowledge, and suggests that students gain from talking about what they know that is relevant before they engage in a group activity. This may help them develop an emotional commitment to the task, which they must be willing to risk if they are to learn from the activity in other than a superficial fashion. He discusses the link between exploratory talk and individual thought, quoting Moffett: ‘The internal conversation we call thinking recapitulates previous utterances as amended and expatiated upon’ (Moffett, 1968, original emphasis). This suggests a specific rationale for the use of small group discussion in the absence of the teacher, for if the teacher acts as the sole audience for students’ speech and writing, it may make them less likely to organise their thinking as they would do for an uninformed audience, as the teacher will be seen as the authoritative expert. Over-reliance on teacher-led activity may thus tend to inhibit the kind of active reshaping of knowledge by students which can be stimulated by peer-group discussion. A key distinction Barnes makes is that between exploratory speech and final draft speech. In exploratory speech, the student is engaged in a sharing of the self; the teacher replies in kind and assists in the development of the student’s understanding, encouraging the use of a hypothetical mode of thinking. By contrast, final draft speech is about presenting the self in a dramaturgical manner akin to that described by Goffman (1959); the teacher’s replies assess the student’s contribution and embody a judgemental role, the tone of the interaction encouraging an expository mode of knowledge display, rather than the tentativeness characteristic of exploratory talk. Barnes argues that the teacher who insists on students using the correct academic terms from the outset if they are to join in discussion is ‘asking them to arrive without having travelled’. The teacher’s implicit view of knowledge and of their own role, he suggests, affects the social order enacted through classroom discourse, and consequently the experience of the activity of learning which is open to students; from this point of view, ‘over-control of knowledge by teachers’ in the classroom hinders learning in the long run by creating dependency in the learner.

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A related distinction Barnes makes is that between the transmission and interpretation views of teaching and learning. He hypothesises a relationship between the teacher’s view of knowledge, the role in which they cast themselves and their students in the classroom communication system, and the kind of learning encouraged thereby. According to Barnes, a transmission view of teaching may be functional for some teachers because it reinforces their social control over students; it gives them power to sponsor some and not others for admission to the ‘mystery’ of their discipline. Correspondingly, teachers and commentators on education are drawn to different explanations for educational failure: the deficiency explanation, which attributes failure to characteristics internal to the student; and the interactionist explanation, which attributes failure to a mismatch between the provision made and the learning needs of the student. In this connection, Barnes notes the unfortunate effect of Bernstein’s theory of restricted and elaborated speech codes, pointing out that ‘whatever [his] intentions, his theory has frequently been taken to offer a deficiency explanation of educational failure’ (Barnes, 1992: 161). For Barnes, the social order which underlies the question-and-answer pattern of classroom communication is open to criticism, since from one perspective ‘the social order is the pattern of communication’. He acknowledges that the pressures which support the predominance of transmission teaching lie outside the classroom, for example in the stratified nature of a class society; however, knowledge is power, and the arbitrary control of classroom knowledge by the teacher can paralyse the students’ nascent sense of purpose in education. Encouraging exploratory talk in small group work can help to create an alternative local interaction order which taps into that sense of purpose and allows a breathing space to prepare for the more formal requirements of public discussion, as the demand to present their initial thinking to an audience that does not already ‘know the answer’ can act as a stimulus to students to organise their thoughts. This is a classic book which puts forward the case for altering the predominant patterns of classroom interaction to make a much greater place in lessons for exploratory talk in small groups, not always under the direct supervision of the teacher, as a means of enabling pupils to participate actively in the shaping of knowledge. Barnes does not pretend that discussion was equally successful in promoting learning in all the groups he studied; indeed, he focuses equally on examples where the talk becomes ritualistic or where a drive to consensus prevents students from challenging one another’s thinking. He speculates that factors such as the familiarity of the task area and how well students get on socially govern these differences in outcome, which only serve to underline the importance of teachers taking care in setting up group membership and defining the nature of the task or activity when using group work in the classroom. Barnes’s emphasis on allowing students to get on with collaborative work in the absence of the teacher was valuable as a corrective to the prevalence of the transmission style of

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teaching whose weaknesses he so accurately pinpoints. However, later studies suggest that he may have underestimated the value of the teacher being on hand to play a leadership role in guiding the group learning process at times of difficulty and modelling problem-solving strategies which the students can then appropriate for their own independent use, for example by intervening and redirecting the group’s efforts on occasions when their discussion gets ‘stuck’.

The Lesson as a Speech Event In Learning Lessons, Hugh Mehan (1979) reports the findings of a study of social organisation in the classroom. He introduces the following key concepts, each of which I will explain further below: the topic-related set; boundary markers; elicitations (comprising choice, product, process and metaprocess types); the turn-allocation apparatus; improvisational strategies; and the notion of seams in classroom discourse. He identifies the nature of the lesson as a type of speech event. Mehan describes his research strategy as a constitutive ethnography. The aim of this approach is to describe the interactional work of participants that assembles the structure of events such as lessons. He critiques quantification schemes used to study classroom interaction, such as Flanders’ interaction analysis categories, on the grounds that these obscure the contingent nature of interaction. He also expresses reservations about conventional field studies based on observation recorded in field notes, since it is difficult to determine the typicality of observations made in this way. In his study, he instead uses videotape recordings and transcripts as data sources. He points out that speech data gathered in this way are retrievable and can be subjected to repeated scrutiny. In his study, he aims for a comprehensive analysis of data, i.e. nearly all interactions should be accounted for by the generative, inductive rules described in the analysis. The study is based on an examination of nine lessons recorded over a one-year period in a US elementary school in a poor Mexican-American neighbourhood in San Diego. Mehan describes the structure of classroom lessons in terms of a hierarchical organisation of elements, which can be represented by the diagram in Figure 5.1. A lesson is built up from an opening phase, an instructional phase and a closing phase. The instructional phase consists of a series of elicitation

Lesson > Phase > Topic-related Set > Sequence > Act

Figure 5.1 The hierarchical organisation of lessons

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sequences; where this sequence is extended over several turns (e.g. until a student gives a correct response, where the first student responses received are incorrect), then this comprises a topic-related set. Each sequence is assembled from a series of speech acts (e.g. an initiation act, a response act and an evaluation act). The sequential organisation of the lesson is the flow, the putting-together of these components in the proper order by the participants in the speech event (the teacher and students). Mehan identifies a number of boundary markers that set off one phase of the lesson from another and which also delineate the beginning and end of a topic-related set. These markers may be: proxemic, for example when the teacher and students move to new positions in the room; kinesic, for example a shift in the teacher’s posture; or vocal, including phrases such as ‘Now’, and ‘OK’, which when used by the teacher frequently signal the beginning of a topic-related set, or ‘That’s right’, often used to mark the end of such a set. In fact, a boundary between lesson phases is often signalled by a combination of all three types of marker used at the same time. He also distinguishes between four different kinds of elicitation sequence: the choice, product, process and metaprocess sequences. The choice sequence is designed to elicit a yes/no response from the student, or to invite them to select the correct item from a list provided by the teacher. The product sequence calls for a straightforward factual response (e.g. ‘Tell me what the capital of Australia is’). The process sequence solicits respondents’ opinions or interpretations, and is thus open to a wider variety of possible responses. The metaprocess sequence is the most cognitively challenging, since it invites students to formulate the grounds of their reasoning, for example in questions such as ‘How did you know/decide/work that out?’). In the most common form of interactional sequence, the IRE sequence, Mehan points out that what the teacher’s evaluation act in fact evaluates is not simply the student’s response act, but the satisfactory completion of the first adjacency pair (the IR sequence). The third move is reflexively tied to the preceding interactional dyad. When the student does not immediately give the response elicited by the teacher’s initiation, there follows an extended sequence of interaction. The teacher may prompt the student, repeat his/her elicitation act or simplify the elicitation. Thus the topic-related set consists of a basic sequence followed by one or more conditional sequences. The structuring of classroom lessons is achieved, according to Mehan, by means of a basic turn-allocation apparatus in conjunction with improvisational strategies. The basic turn-allocation apparatus consists of: individual nomination, where the teacher selects an individual student by name as the next speaker; invitations to bid, where the teacher asks a question and expects students to raise their hands, then wait to be picked to supply the answer; and invitations to reply, where the teacher’s question, addressed to the whole class but without naming or bidding, typically tails off with a rise in pitch, and often elicits a choral response from the students in unison.

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Improvisational strategies are deployed when this normal machinery of interaction breaks down. Mehan identifies improvisational strategies such as: the work of doing nothing, where violations of the normal interaction order go unsanctioned; getting through, for example when the teacher allows speaking out of turn when faced with silence or a lack of response from the class; opening the floor to a student speaker without invoking the basic turn-allocation procedure; and accepting the unexpected, for example recognising when it is appropriate to laugh off a disruption to the normal lesson routine. For Mehan, the basic apparatus and accompanying improvisational strategies are mechanisms for producing social order; together they accounted for 98% of the interaction sequences in the corpus of data gathered for the study. The findings of the study showed that students need to learn to produce responses which are both academically correct and interactionally appropriate in order to achieve competent membership of the classroom community; the combination of the two is what defines competence in the classroom, neither being sufficient on its own. Students have rights to initiate an exchange in classroom discourse, even where teacher initiation predominates. They have to learn how to get the floor, hold the floor once they have it, and introduce news (for example, an anecdote from personal experience which has a bearing on the topic of discussion initiated by the teacher). Students also have to learn to recognise the right juncture at which to volunteer a contribution, the ‘seams’ in classroom discourse when student initiation is acceptable – at the close of an interaction sequence, typically after an IRE sequence or the end of a topic-related set. Mehan argues that the normative rules governing classroom interaction are tacit and generative. Students in his study learnt the interactional structure of classroom discourse as the year progressed, as demonstrated by the increase in successful student initiations over the year in which the study took place. Reflecting on the apparent ‘obviousness’ of the study’s results, Mehan suggests that the purpose of ethnographic research is not to present unexpected findings but to reveal what participants already know, but may not be able to articulate. Compared with everyday conversation, in which speaker self-selection is the rule, turn taking in the classroom is nearly always governed by the ‘current speaker selects next speaker’ rule. The lesson is a specific type of speech event; cf. Bakhtin’s concept of a speech genre, and Halliday’s notion of classroom discourse as a distinct register of language usage (Bakhtin, 1986; Halliday, 1978). From the point of view of research methodology, Mehan stresses the value of a participatory approach involving a dialogue between teachers and researchers, such as the use of joint ‘viewing sessions’ of video-recordings, which may reveal important junctures in discussion that might have been missed by the researcher on their own. He concludes by rejecting assimilationist and cultural deprivation views of the relationship between the language of school and the language of the home,

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and advocates instead a pluralistic reconstruction of schooling, summed up as the need to ‘change the classroom to accommodate the child, including a plurality of speech styles and ways of acting’ (Mehan, 1979: 197).

Transformational Solutions to the Dilemma of Academic Language Cazden puts forward a schema for the discourse structure of traditional lessons following the model established by Mehan (Mehan, 1979) based on the rank scale of units: lesson > phase > topic-related set (TRS) > instructional sequence > initiation-reply-evaluation exchange (IRE). The classroom communication economy, she argues, consists of sequential or syntagmatic combinations of units at the same level and of selectional or paradigmatic decisions which mark boundaries between higher level units. She notes the similarity between the structure of classroom discourse and parent-child book-reading sessions, especially the frequent occurrence of IRE exchanges in these contexts. Thus practice in shared reading with an adult in the home can be expected to prepare children for participation in the discourse of the classroom. She goes on to mount a useful discussion of structure and improvisation in teaching, pointing out that skilled teachers improvise in the midst of performance within a known structure, in a manner analogous with jazz musicians. This leads her to discuss recitation, the familiar practice of multiple teacher-led IRE exchanges. According to Cazden, this kind of discourse structure may be well-adapted to areas of the curriculum where knowledge is factual and algorithmic, but the danger of its prevalence is that the curriculum as a whole is reduced to the status of axiomatic, repeatable knowledge, especially for working-class students, who tend to experience more than their fair share of this type of teaching, according to the evidence of research studies. For Cazden, the point is whether the chosen discourse structure is suited to the pedagogical purpose in hand: recitation, for instance, is not suited to developing a deeper understanding of important social concepts such as ‘fairness’. The experienced teacher, she remarks, is a ‘native speaker’ of the classroom culture, but students are not (especially when they are beginning their schooling). Students must develop communicative competence in the culture of the classroom if they are to succeed in schooling; they must learn to perform utterances within a pre-established generic structure, and usually have to pick this up without explicit teaching of the ‘rules of the game’, just as we learn our first language without explicitly being taught its grammar and vocabulary. Cazden discusses the possibility of variant forms of lesson structure, noting that, while IRE-type recitation is the default form of classroom discourse, examples have also been reported where talk approximates more to genuine discussion. This is marked by differences in a number of structural

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features of the discourse, including: speaking rights, where there is greater tolerance of student self-selection, rather than constant teacher nomination of the next student contributor; the teacher’s role, especially a slower pace of questioning, which makes use of increased wait-time; and speech style, where there is more use of exploratory talk rather than final draft talk, in Barnes’s (1992) terms. Cazden also draws attention to the significance of the classroom layout, pointing out that arranging seats in a circle rather than the traditional rows can help to promote discussion, since this arrangement allows students to look at each other rather than having their gaze directed always at the teacher, as is typical of IRE-recitation sequences even when another student is talking. At the same time, Cazden argues that it is important for teachers to be aware of cultural differences in norms of interaction which can affect classroom conduct. She illustrates this by referring to the work of Shirley Brice Heath in Appalachia (Heath, 1983) and to research on the tradition of communal storytelling in Polynesian culture, which gave rise in school to patterns of classroom interaction where students’ contributions overlapped each other (in contrast to the normal ‘one at a time’ rule of whole class discussion). For Cazden, the teacher has an important responsibility to enter into communion with these cultural differences, rather than retaining a nostalgia towards their own origins by assuming that their own established norms of everyday interaction are natural and therefore not open to modification through negotiation. Cazden synthesises evidence from many studies, particularly of beginning reading instruction, which show that the nature of teachers’ interventions with students in low-attainment reading groups is very different from their interventions with high-attainment reading groups. In the case of low-attainment groups: students receive more teacher correction; interruptions following errors are immediate; teachers emphasise decoding and pronunciation, and correspondingly pay less attention to comprehension and meaning; and there is less teacher uptake of students’ contributions. Cazden concludes that students who most need it are denied the opportunity to learn habits of self-correction in reading, and attention to the meaning of the text as a whole. She interprets this as reflecting a contradiction between holistic and molecular views of student learning, and a similar contradiction in ideas about where responsibility lies for monitoring progress, between views that emphasise self-correction and those that emphasise teacher-correction. Cazden also distinguishes between preactive and interactive influences on teachers’ ideas and classroom practice. So-called ‘teacher-proof’ reading materials may in fact depress teachers’ expectations of poor readers and inadvertently lead to a recitational approach in the classroom. Furthermore, Cazden argues, the differential treatment of lowattainment reading groups, which results in more interruptions, more off-task activity and more ‘managerial’ interventions by the teacher, may be in fact be functional for the teacher in certain circumstances, for example because it precludes the possibility of calling on students to read who are not able to do

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so. By contrast, in responsive teaching, teacher and student discourse is reciprocally influencing, and teacher interventions are open to interactive influences, producing a more dynamic mode of interaction as a result of ‘in-flight’ decisions on the teacher’s part. With regard to reading lessons, Cazden suggests that they could be improved by greater use of silent reading by students, followed by the use of questions which examine comprehension of the text. In summary, classroom discourse forms a system in which changing one element has a cascade effect. Cazden argues that classroom discourse can be seen as a scaffold for student learning. In general, successful scaffolding can be thought of as a process in which responsibility for task completion passes progressively from the teacher to the student through an intermediate phase of joint, guided practice. During this intermediate phase, it is important that the teacher’s contribution to the student’s emerging understanding should be semantically contingent. For example, a teacher’s evaluation move can retroactively recontextualise a student’s incomplete utterance as a partially successful attempt at a problem. It thus assists the student in reconceptualising the task in hand and potentially contributes to an expansion of their consciousness, a process sometimes described in the Vygotskyan tradition as internalisation, although in this regard Cazden cites Leont’ev (1981): ‘The process of internalisation is not transferral of all external activity to a pre-existing internal “plane of consciousness”; it is the process in which this internal plane is formed.’ Like Barnes before her, Cazden emphasises the potential of discourse between student peers in small groups as a forum for collective learning. In this kind of setting, talk can enable students to enact complementary roles in the course of group activity, to their mutual benefit. Research shows, for example, that students who are good collaborators can learn to accomplish a task together before any one of them is capable of tackling it individually. Peer-group interaction can also help to develop a sense of relationship with an audience or imagined readership; thus, writing conferences in which students critique each other’s draft work can provide an external model on the basis of which the later process of silent editing can develop. For Cazden, there is in any case an intrinsic value to encouraging peer interactions in the classroom as part of an education for participating in a pluralistic society: It makes no sense, and it seems almost dishonest to ‘mainstream’ children across some dimensions of diversity and ‘integrate’ them across others unless the social organisations of classrooms promote the habits of speaking and listening from which positive interpersonal relationships across those differences can grow. (Cazden, 2001: 133–134) The general case in favour of increased peer interaction in the classroom, however, needs to be seen in the context of evidence that group working can

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lead to differential experiences for students according to gender and social class distinctions, for example in the amount of spontaneous helping they receive (boys tending to receive more attention than girls). Cazden stresses the importance of the teacher modelling equal status behaviour. There are also class differences in interactional styles which are pertinent to this issue: middle-class girls, for instance, tend to use backchannelling moves (comments like ‘Mmm’ or ‘Yes’) to seize the floor, whereas working-class girls use such markers to develop meaning collaboratively. For Cazden, student response groups may be especially important in supporting the writing development of working-class students, as they help to bridge the two worlds of the classroom: the teacher’s official agenda and the unofficial peer culture. In this connection, she draws attention to the significance of ‘illegal’ behaviour and violations of the discourse rules of the classroom, which are not always punished, sometimes being ignored by the teacher. Some of this illegal behaviour can help learning, as when students engage in secret or whispered communications asking one another what they are supposed to be doing. This supports Lemke’s (1990) observation that classes ‘which have a lively and interesting dialogue usually have quite a bit of side conversation as well’. Cazden draws a distinction between register and style which is helpful in understanding how classroom discourse operates. The sociolinguistic concept of register is used to identify aspects of language use which are characteristic of certain situational contexts; it may, for example, be associated with forms of talk that take place in particular occupational contexts. Teacher talk can be thought of as a register in this sense. It is often used to control the flow of discourse, a function which is also found in conversation. Classroom discourse, however, is highly asymmetrical in this respect: it is usually only the teacher who engages in these control functions. Register, then, is concerned with commonalities between speakers in similar situational contexts; style is concerned with variability within a register. Thus all teachers use the teacher-talk register, but they will have different styles from one another, and the same teacher may use different styles in different teaching situations. Cazden points out that we can also speak of a student-talk register, which refers not to the way students naturally talk, but to the way teachers often want them to talk in lessons. It is evident, for example, in the criticality of the timing for the acceptability of student utterances in lessons. Teachers exercise control over classroom discourse by recognising only certain timings of turns as appropriate. It may also be present in the demand sometimes made by teachers for students to use standard syntax and to avoid non-standard dialect forms. The audience for student talk, as Cazden notes, includes not only the official auditor (usually the teacher) but also many ‘overhearers’ (the other students in the class). This poses a dilemma for students, who may be torn between the teacher’s demand for correctness, and the non-standard dialect normally used in peer-group communication.

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Some students resolve the dilemma by giving the ‘correct’ answer in a nonstandard form, a strategy Cazden describes as a ‘transformational solution’. What Cazden terms the ‘academic language’ of the classroom carries a double significance, both conceptual and sociocultural: from the teacher’s point of view, they may simply be requiring students to use the language of physics, or history, or art; but from the student’s point of view it is experienced first and foremost as the kind of language my physics teacher uses (or history teacher, or art teacher, etc.). Cazden’s argument at this point amounts to a plea for the tolerance of greater variation in student speech in the classroom, learning being supported by the heteroglossia of increased speech diversity rather than by the monologism inherent in the rigid enforcement of linguistic standardisation. This is a major work in the tradition of classroom discourse research. It reviews and synthesises a wide body of research drawn from disparate fields such as ethnography and early literacy development, as well as research directly concerned with classroom talk. Many examples of transcribed extracts of authentic classroom discourse are presented and used to illustrate theoretical points in the argument. The linguistic analysis is technically sophisticated and includes prosodic features such as pauses. Cazden commands an impressive knowledge of formal linguistic terminology, yet never loses sight of the fact that, in educational research, discourse features must be interpreted with respect to their significance for questions of learning and pedagogy. In addition to the structural features of classroom discourse highlighted by her analysis, Cazden draws attention to the importance of spontaneous improvisation in the performance of lessons, a feature of skilled teaching much neglected in recent times. From this point of view, classroom discourse can be understood as a speech genre, in Bakhtin’s terms; developing a mastery of the genre’s form through repeated practice is a condition of successful improvisation within it (Bakhtin, 1986).

References Bakhtin, M.M. (1986) Speech Genres and Other Late Essays (trans. V.W. McGee; ed. C. Emerson and M. Holquist). Slavic Series No. 8. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. Barnes, D. (1992) From Communication to Curriculum (2nd edn). Harmondsworth: Penguin. Cazden, C.B. (2001) Classroom Discourse: The Language of Teaching and Learning (2nd edn). Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Goffman, E. (1959) The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Halliday, M.A.K. (1978) Language as Social Semiotic. London: Edward Arnold. Heath, S.B. (1983) Ways with Words: Language, Life, and Work in Communities and Classrooms. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lemke, J.L. (1990) Talking Science: Language, Learning and Values. Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Leont’ev, A.N. (1981) The problem of activity in psychology. In J.V. Wertsch (ed.) The Concept of Activity in Soviet Psychology (pp. 144–188). Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe.

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Mehan, H. (1979) Learning Lessons: Social Organisation in the Classroom. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Moffett, J. (1968) Teaching the Universe of Discourse. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Sinclair, J.M. and Coulthard, R.M. (1975) Towards an Analysis of Discourse: The English Used by Teachers and Pupils. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

6

Pedagogy and Dialogue David Skidmore

Shaping the Agenda of Classroom Discourse Drawing mainly on the theoretical ideas of Bakhtin on the dialogic nature of language, a number of authors have stressed the educative potential of teacher–student interaction which enables students to play an active part in shaping the agenda of classroom discourse. Examples include: dialogic instruction, characterised by the teacher’s uptake of student ideas, authentic questions and the opportunity for students to modify the topic (Nystrand, 1997); dialogic enquiry, which stresses the potential of collaborative group work and peer assistance to promote mutually responsive learning in the zone of proximal development (Wells, 1999); dialogical pedagogy, in which students are invited to retell stories in their own words, using paraphrase, speculation and counter-fictional utterances (Skidmore, 2000); and dialogic teaching, which is collective, reciprocal, supportive, cumulative and purposeful (Alexander, 2004). These proposals share a common concern with the ritualistic nature of the predominant patterns of teacher–student interaction exposed by empirical observation studies, and an emphasis on the importance of maximising active student participation in classroom talk as a means of enhancing intersubjective understanding. In this chapter I will critically review the existing proposals in this field, exploring a number of questions which remain to be resolved, with a view to identifying lines of enquiry which future research could profitably pursue.

Dialogic Instruction In Opening Dialogue, Nystrand (1997) draws on the Bakhtinian contrast between monologic and dialogic discourse, together with Gutierrez’s concept of instructional scripts (Gutierrez, 1994), to develop the notion of dialogic instruction. In monologic recitation, classroom talk is closely controlled by the teacher, with the aim of transmitting knowledge which students are required to remember. Dialogically organised instruction, on the other hand, 98

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is based on a different kind of relationship between teacher and students, in which students are asked to think, not simply to remember. For Nystrand, the study of classroom discourse is important because different modes of interaction position students differently as learners: Specific modes or genres of discourse engender particular epistemic roles for the conversants, and these roles, in turn, engender, constrain, and empower their thinking. The bottom line for instruction is that the quality of student learning is closely linked to the quality of classroom talk. (Nystrand, 1997: 29) Opening Dialogue reports the findings of a large-scale study of the effects of patterns of classroom discourse on student learning in 400 English lessons in 25 US high schools. The major source of evidence was structured classroom observation in which teacher questions were coded on a series of dimensions. The research team also tape-recorded lessons and used this evidence to explore unexpected findings from the coded observations in more detail. They also interviewed participating teachers, and tested student learning outcomes by a written examination, scored against a number of criteria. Their results support the hypothesis that dialogically organised instruction is superior to monologically organised instruction in promoting student learning. Recitational patterns of talk were found to be overwhelmingly prevalent, and to have a negative effect on learning; they were particularly strongly concentrated in lower track classes. Important aspects of the alternative, dialogic approach to instruction highlighted by the study were: the teacher’s use of authentic questions (where what counts as an acceptable answer is not prespecified); uptake, where the teacher incorporates students’ responses into subsequent questions; and the extent to which the teacher allows a student response to modify the topic of discourse, a strategy which Nystrand terms ‘high-level evaluation’. He identifies a number of specific classroom methods which may help to promote the development of dialogic forms of understanding, including the use of learning journals, position papers drawn up and presented by students to the class, and peer response conferences (where students meet in small groups to review one another’s work). Nystrand makes a particular contribution to our understanding in his discussion of the relationship between patterns of classroom discourse and the nature of the pedagogic contract established between a teacher and his/ her students. As I have explained, the findings of his study do document that particular styles of interaction have an effect on student learning, for better or worse; however, he goes on to argue that understanding this relationship cannot be mechanically reduced to measuring the relative proportion of authentic versus ‘display’ questions over the course of a lesson, for example. He quotes transcripts of extracts from lessons by two teachers with

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contrasting styles to illustrate that the inappropriate use of authentic questions can be counterproductive – and that the skilful use of a lecturing style can on occasion be effective. For example, if the teacher asks many authentic questions which are unrelated to the topic of the lesson, then this is unlikely to help develop students’ understanding fruitfully, whereas a concise, clear exposition by the teacher may be the most efficient way of explaining the nature and purpose of a task before the class moves on to a new activity. Dialogic instruction will be supported by an increased use of authentic, topic-relevant questions on the part of the teacher, but more fundamental is the quality of the interaction which surrounds those questions. What matters most is not simply the frequency of particular exchange-structures in classroom discourse, but how far students are treated as active epistemic agents, i.e. participants in the production of their own knowledge. Nystrand’s work marks the first sustained attempt to explore the significance of the Bakhtinian theory of dialogism for our understanding of the language of classroom instruction. His study demonstrates that choices made by the teacher can influence the conditions for learning established in the classroom, and in particular that the teacher does exert a measure of control on the structure and organisation of classroom discourse. He goes on to show that the preferred mode of interaction adopted by the teacher carries consequences for the epistemology of the classroom: broadly, the teacher can orient towards controlling what knowledge is produced, or towards structuring the activities through which students produce knowledge. The study is impressive in scope and makes a strong case for the superior effectiveness of dialogically organised instruction: students taught in this way tend to do better in written tests than those taught using a monologic, recitational approach. A possible drawback of the methodology used in the study is that the central plank of evidence is a record of the coding of classroom interaction made by observers in real time. Although simultaneous tape-recordings were made of the lessons observed, these are treated as supplementary evidence rather than the chief source on which the findings are built. Consequently, with the exception of a small number of short transcribed extracts, the original discourse which was spoken cannot be reconstructed; rather, we have a global summary of the tendencies in the data (e.g. the preponderance of test questions from teachers and the infrequency with which authentic questions are used). However, as Nystrand’s own findings indicate, in understanding how the structuring of classroom discourse operates, the devil lies in the detail. For example, he notes how the research team’s initial coding of the data threw up some unexpected results, such as the fact that the use of group work appeared to have a negative effect on student learning. When the research team inspected the data more closely, including checking their coding against the recordings they made, it emerged that activities which had been coded as group work were often, in practice, individual work by

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students who were merely seated in groups. A re-analysis of the data showed that group work was effective when the activity required genuine collaboration, and when the teacher specified the goals clearly, but gave groups autonomy in carrying out the task. While Nystrand makes a convincing case for this general interpretation, putting the flesh on the bones of a theory of dialogic instruction will require closer attention to the detailed analysis of transcripts of the discourse actually spoken by participants in classroom exchanges, since it is at this level of granularity that we can see talk at work in shaping the learning process that students experience. A further question which his study raises, and which future research in this area needs to explore, is why recitational approaches to teaching continue to be so prevalent, given their apparent ineffectiveness in engaging student interest or in securing improved outcomes in attainment. Since it seems unlikely that the majority of teachers would choose to rely on a pedagogic style calculated to depress student learning in the absence of strong constraining factors, we need to investigate the structural conditions which reproduce monologic patterns of instruction on a social scale.

Dialogic Enquiry In Dialogic Inquiry, Wells (1999) draws on the twin sources of Leont’ev’s activity theory and Halliday’s systemic functional linguistics to formulate the concept of dialogic enquiry, in which knowledge is co-constructed by teacher and students as they engage in joint activities. Bringing together insights from the two theoretical traditions, he offers the following definition of discourse: the collaborative behaviour of two or more participants as they use the meaning potential of a shared language to mediate the establishment and achievement of their goals in social action. (Wells, 1999: 174) He illustrates what the practice of dialogic enquiry might look like by a detailed examination of transcripts of classroom discourse, chiefly discussions between the teacher and small groups of students, recorded in Canadian primary school classrooms. Discussing the relationship between discourse and the development of knowledge in schools, he posits the idea that classes of students can form ‘communities of inquiry’, in which the dialogic nature of discourse is exploited to enable knowledge to be co-constructed. Through discussion, ideas can be refined and clarified, in a process which Bereiter (1994) calls ‘progressive discourse’, in which contributions refer to and build upon what has gone before (by agreeing, disagreeing, adding, qualifying, etc.), thus enabling an advance in the collective understanding of the topic in question. From this point of view, schooling can be seen as a ‘semiotic apprenticeship’

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(Wells, 1999: 137), in which students gradually appropriate the technical register of, for example, science, by trying out new concepts and vocabulary in the course of discussion. Wells puts forward a model of an enquiryoriented curriculum, in which a class theme is selected by the teacher, such as ‘energy’ within the science curriculum (although the choice of theme may also be constrained by external mandates such as government policy prescriptions). Within this broad theme, in Wells’s model groups of students have considerable latitude to choose their own specific topics and methods of enquiry, in negotiation with the teacher. The relationship thus constructed between teacher and students is dialogic, but is ‘not a dialogue between equals’ (Wells, 1999: 242): in the advance planning of classroom activity, the teacher retains leadership responsibility for selecting themes and associated activities, but once student investigation is under way, the teacher adopts a more responsive and consultative role, in which his/her interventions are contingent upon student progress. One particular contribution that Wells makes in this book is his re-evaluation of the initiation-response-feedback (IRF) sequence, a characteristic structure of classroom discourse that previous research has often criticised (Wells, 1999: 167ff.). In an analysis of a series of episodes from a science investigation, he argues that this exchange structure can be put to different uses. As much previous research has documented, the follow-up (F) move is often used to provide an immediate evaluation of the student’s response (e.g. ‘Correct!’), producing a pattern of teacher-led recitation which tends to reinforce the teacher’s authority as the transmitter of received wisdom and severely restricts the possibilities open to students to contribute thoughtfully to classroom talk. However, Wells shows that the teacher’s follow-up move can also be used to clarify, exemplify, expand, explain or justify a student’s response, or to request the student to do any of these things. When this kind of exchange is found in classroom discourse, therefore, it may indeed result in a quiz which requires students to do little more than display their recall of knowledge got by rote; however, it can also be used by the teacher to help students plan ahead for a task they are about to carry out, or to review and generalise lessons learnt from tasks they have already performed. Wells’s point is that, within limits, teachers have the discretion to choose between alternative modes of interaction which affect the climate of learning in the classroom, for example by adopting a style of speaking which minimises or maximises the social distance between participants. Wells’s account of the concept of dialogic enquiry is both theoretically sophisticated and informed by the evidence of possible forms of pedagogic practice gathered under naturalistic classroom conditions. His work undoubtedly helps to advance thinking beyond the sterile dichotomy between ‘traditional’ and ‘progressive’ concepts of education which has bedevilled much of the debate in this area. His model of an enquiry-oriented curriculum provides a welcome alternative to the rigidity of the centrally prescribed,

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content-based model which has dominated government policy making in the UK since the 1988 Education Act. While his nuanced analysis of examples of classroom discourse sets the standard for work in this field, we might ask how far the concept of enquiry presented here is appropriate to other areas of the curriculum which do not share the same epistemic base as the natural sciences (e.g. the language arts and humanities subjects). A key characteristic of Bereiter’s notion of progressive discourse, as Wells notes, is that it is concerned with ‘expanding the body of collectively valid propositions’ (Wells, 1999: 112). However, if we consider the case of creative writing in first language teaching, for example, then this seems to share the exploratory character of enquiry-based activities in the sciences, but not to be geared towards producing a set of verifiable hypotheses as its outcome. I would argue that we need to expand the concept of enquiry to include areas of learning like these, in which student development is better seen in terms of increased confidence in handling a repertoire of expressive genres. The texts students produce in creative writing can certainly be treated as ‘improvable objects’ in the same fashion as, say, the report of a science investigation, but there are other kinds of understanding which education aims to develop besides the scientific, such as the affective understanding of social experience. Discussion and revision of student work in this context may be progressive in the sense of achieving an enhanced collective understanding of the topic being explored, even though this knowledge may not be expressible in terms of ‘valid propositions’.

Dialogic Teaching In Culture and Pedagogy, Alexander (2001) presents and interprets evidence from a large-scale comparative study of primary education in five countries (India, Russia, France, England and the United States). The project sought to explore how national cultural traditions influenced the processes and practices of teaching at the classroom level. The culmination of the book lies in a discussion of 17 transcripts of extracts of lessons from different schools in the various countries. On the basis of this analysis, Alexander sets forth a typology of classroom discourse, distinguished along the dimensions of: classroom organisation (whole class, group, individual); pedagogic mode (direct instruction, discussion, monitoring); pedagogic function (rote learning, instruction, scaffolding, assessment, information sharing, problem solving, scaffolding, supervision); and discourse form (interrogatory, expository, evaluative, dialogic). The study corroborates the findings of a body of previous research which suggested that interrogatory whole class direct instruction is ‘probably the dominant teaching method internationally’ (Alexander, 2001: 516). However, there are moments in the data where the talk takes a different form and the teacher treats the students as fellow discussants,

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striking a ‘less unequal’ relationship between them for the time being. In a formulation indebted to the theoretical work of Bruner, Alexander proposes the following definition of ‘scaffolded dialogue’: Scaffolded dialogue [is] achieving common understanding through structured and sequenced questioning, and through ‘joint activity and shared conceptions,’ which guide, prompt, reduce choices and expedite ‘handover’ of concepts and principles. (Alexander, 2001: 527) Citing Bakhtin, he draws a distinction between dialogue and conversation, arguing that dialogue possesses a greater degree of structure, and is differentiated from conversation by the purposeful use of questioning in the pursuit of enquiry. Despite the ubiquity of transmission styles of teaching demonstrated by the study, he argues that macro-sociological theory tends to underestimate the potential autonomy of teachers to reshape classroom discourse along dialogic lines. For Alexander, such dialogic discourse is the main method for fostering a ‘pedagogy of mutuality’, which treats students not as empty vessels to be filled with received wisdom by the teacher, but as competent thinkers in their own right. The concept of scaffolded dialogue adumbrated in Culture and Pedagogy is developed in a later booklet which elaborates a model of ‘dialogic teaching’ (Alexander, 2004). Alexander describes the principles of this approach as teaching which is: collective, reciprocal, supportive, cumulative and purposeful (Alexander, 2001: 29). He goes on to specify a lengthy list of indicators which can be used to identify dialogic teaching in the classroom (Alexander, 2001: 31–34). The first 14 of these refer to contextual conditions rather than to characteristics of the discourse per se (e.g. lesson transitions are managed economically). The remaining 47 indicators relate to more concrete properties of classroom interaction, and are grouped under seven headings: teacher– pupil interaction; pupil–pupil interaction; teacher–pupil monitoring; teacher questioning; pupil responses to questioning; teacher feedback on responses; and the functions served by pupil talk. For example, Alexander suggests that dialogic teaching is indicated by teacher–pupil interaction in which turns are managed by shared routines rather than through competitive bidding. In the final section of the booklet, he summarises the interim findings from development projects aimed at promoting the use of a dialogic style of teaching in two Local Education Authorities in England. The findings indicate that shifts in the prevailing styles of interaction had taken place in some classrooms, and there was evidence of improvements in oracy among students. In particular, where these shifts had taken place, the classroom climate had become more inclusive, as the changed dynamics of teacher–student interaction furnished greater opportunities for less able students to participate competently in lesson activities. Against these positive outcomes, the projects also demonstrated the ‘staying power’ of recitation as the default mode of

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pedagogy, as there were many classrooms where little or no change in the conduct of discourse had taken place. One of the most significant insights to emerge from Alexander’s work is that the kind of communicative competence that students are required to display in the classroom is culturally specific, since different norms of interaction are valued in different countries. For example, his analysis shows that in Russia and France it is more common for one student to participate on behalf of the class in a conceptually complete cycle of exchanges with the teacher, whereas in England and the United States whole class discussion tends to be managed by students bidding competitively for each turn, with the teacher rotating turns by nominating the next speaker, each successive response slot typically being allocated to a different student. For Alexander, these differences in the management of classroom discourse are linked with different cultural traditions in the philosophy of pedagogy: a central European tradition of collectivist pedagogy, on the one hand, which encourages a convergence of learning outcomes whereby the whole class moves forward together; and, on the other hand, an Anglo-American tradition which treats the class as an aggregate of individuals, and fosters a divergence of learning outcomes within the group. These observations lead him to make a welcome critique of the concept of ‘interactive whole class teaching’, which was heavily promoted in government policy in the UK in the 1990s, for its failure to distinguish between the cognitive pace of teaching and the pace of interaction exchange. Quick-fire questioning around the class may appear to lend pace to a lesson, but since it typically elicits a sequence of short, undeveloped responses from students, it may do little to extend their thinking. Alexander commends instead the development of discourse strategies aimed at encouraging students to ‘think aloud’ and develop their ideas at greater length, for example by the teacher pitching a question at a particular, named individual (managing turn taking by nomination without competitive bidding), and the use of follow-up questions directed at the same student (extending the teacher–student exchange on a given topic rather than rotating successive turns around the class). He emphasises that speech should not be seen as an inferior, less developed form of language use than writing, but that the development of oracy is an important goal of education in its own right, and that increased competence in oracy accompanies and contributes to the development of competence in literacy rather than being in competition with it. The trans-national scope of Alexander’s study enables him to compare the norms which govern teaching in different countries. This comparative approach is helpful in defamiliarising the taken-for-granted rules and rituals of classroom life in the national contexts which classroom discourse research has most often examined (England and the United States). This draws attention to the fact that teacher-led, whole class discussion can be managed in ways which depart from the characteristic ‘recitation script’ which

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studies have found to be prevalent in these countries. By analysing several examples of classroom discourse from different schools within the same country, he also warns us against the risk of stereotyping national pedagogical traditions by portraying them as monolithic – he finds considerable variation at work in US primary school practice, for instance. Finally, he locates extracts of discourse within summaries of the whole lesson from which they are taken, reminding us of the importance of sequential context for understanding the educational import of a particular exchange. Granted the international significance of the study, however, it might be argued that the feasibility of some of the recommended discourse strategies is affected by features of school organisation which lie beyond the control of the individual teacher. For example, in the primary schools in which his research was based, the teacher normally remains with the same class for all or most of their lessons over the course of a school day (and year). However, in secondary schools one teacher is typically responsible for teaching many different classes, and during the day classes move from teacher to teacher for lessons of a determinate, relatively short length defined by the school timetable; it would not be unusual for a teacher of English in a UK secondary school to see 250 students over the course of a week. This means that the task of pitching a question to an individual student places considerably greater demands on the teacher under the normal conditions of secondary schooling than in primary schools, suggesting that we should not underestimate the powerful constraints placed on possible forms of practice by the structural conditions of schooling.

The Affective Conditions for Learning A number of themes emerge from the foregoing survey of the research literature on the relationship between dialogue and pedagogy. First, there is a well-articulated case for valuing the character of classroom discourse as one of the most important influences on students’ experience of learning in schools. There would indeed be little point in debating the merits of different pedagogic styles, methods and modes of classroom organisation if this were not so. Drawing on the insights of the sociocultural tradition of learning theory (Vygotsky, Leont’ev, Bruner) and the dialogic conception of language use associated with the Bakhtin Circle, a number of major independent investigations have drawn attention to the manner in which different patterns of classroom talk afford different structures of opportunity for students to participate in the construction of knowledge within the curriculum. The studies reviewed here have also produced evidence to support the view that more dialogic modes of interaction, in which students play an active part in shaping the verbal agenda of classroom discussion, can help them to secure improved attainments in outcome, when compared with the results

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of teacher-dominated transmission approaches. Furthermore, there are indications that a shift to a more dialogic mode of engagement with learners may have a redistributive effect, i.e. improving the quality of teacher–student dialogue has the potential to bring about a general rise in achievement, but at the same time to narrow the gap between those with lower and higher levels of prior attainment. This is in keeping with an understanding of inclusion which sees the combined development of all as the condition of the full development of each (Skidmore, 2004). Against the glimpses of positive possibilities revealed by this research programme, however, we need to set the overwhelming evidence of the prevalence and durability of teacher-led recitation as the groove into which classroom pedagogy so easily settles by default. Future enquiry in this area needs to explore more systematically the reasons behind this resilience. I have suggested that one explanation may be the structural conditions of contemporary schooling, particularly large class sizes and the conveyor belt model of the curriculum which prevails in secondary schools. If this is so, then it suggests that a more favourable teacher–student ratio is an indispensable precondition for any meaningful personalisation of education (Leadbeater, 2004). These organisational factors may be exacerbated by the current political use of educational assessment to foster competition between schools. If school performance is judged by the proportion of pass grades attained in competitive written tests, then it is not surprising if this drives pedagogy ever more narrowly in the direction of drilling for the tests. The structural conditions of schooling, combined with the prevailing methods of assessment, exercise a powerful constraining effect on the preferred mode of classroom discourse, or to put it more simply: large classes + normative testing → transmission teaching We have seen that some differences of emphasis and terminology exist between the various proposals regarding the relationship between dialogue and pedagogy. It is not my intention to draw forced distinctions between the formulations of different authors, since all are united on the basic point that improving the quality of classroom dialogue can make a major contribution to enhancing student learning. Nevertheless, having noted above some reservations about the concepts of dialogic instruction, dialogic enquiry and dialogic teaching as they are presently articulated, I would argue that the formulation ‘dialogical pedagogy’ has the advantage of being more comprehensive in scope than these alternatives, in keeping with Brian Simon’s definition of pedagogy as ‘a serious concern with the theory and practice of teaching’ (Simon, 1985). One omission which appears in the research in this field to date is a relative lack of attention to the affective conditions for learning. Perhaps understandably, given the political emphasis on raising academic results, there has been

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much concern to show that dialogic approaches in the classroom lead to gains in attainment on written measures of performance in literacy or other areas of the academic curriculum. However, Bakhtinian theory would suggest that it is a mistake to suppose that the academic and social outcomes of schooling can be treated as separate from one another; the conceptual content and the emotional colouring of classroom discourse cannot be dissociated, for ‘in actuality, we never say or hear words, we say and hear what is true or false, good or bad, important or unimportant, pleasant or unpleasant, and so on’ (Voloshinov, 1986). Support for this position comes from a variety of theoretical traditions. Vygotsky, for example, argues that it is deleterious for psychological theory to separate intellect and affect; the two are inseparably intertwined: ‘There exists a dynamic meaningful system that constitutes a unity of affective and intellectual processes’ (Vygotsky, 1987; and cf. Chapter 3, current volume). From the perspective of cognitive neuroscience, Damasio argues that there is a need to reinstate emotion as an integral part of the apparatus of human reasoning (Damasio, 1994). The flat mental landscape of knowing without feeling is ill-suited to real-world decision making; rather, what we need is a partnership of the heart and the head for successful living. From the discipline of the philosophy of mind, de Sousa argues that emotions play an indispensable role in determining the quality of life, occupy a central place in moral education and protect us from an excessively slavish devotion to narrow conceptions of rationality (de Sousa, 2003). In the sociology of education, Reay has developed the concept of emotional capital to show how mothers’ emotional involvement in their children’s schooling can communicate both positive and negative feelings which are consequential for the children’s orientation towards academic achievement and prospects for later educational success, in ways which are complexly mediated by the family’s social class position (Reay, 2000). In the context of a study of teachers’ experience of educational change, Hargreaves has argued that teaching is an emotional practice, and that successful teaching involves an emotional understanding of the learner’s position, concluding that the emotions must be seen as central rather than peripheral to the purposes of education (Hargreaves, 1998). It is not a question, therefore, of whether or not the way in which teachers conduct classroom discourse should seek to encourage students to respond emotionally to the conceptual content of the lesson; they will do this anyway. We have no choice but to evoke emotion as an aspect of learning, for feeling is incorporated within knowing. The question is rather whether our habitual modes of interaction with students are directed towards channelling their emotions within the comfortable and narrow bounds defined by transmission approaches to pedagogy, or whether we are willing to explore a wider repertoire of possible emotional responses when stimulating and guiding others’ learning. Over-reliance on recall and display questions in teaching furnishes a school uniform for the mind, confining students’

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emotional involvement to an impoverished set of available affective positions, such as the rivalry fostered by competing for the teacher’s attention, the disappointment (or relief) of being ignored, or the shame of being put in the spotlight and giving the wrong answer. The prevalence of this kind of teacher-led recitation, which has been demonstrated by a series of independent studies (Applebee et al., 2003; Mroz et al., 2000; Skidmore et al., 2003), encodes a ‘Weakest Link’ view of knowledge, reducing education to a gameshow in which the prize for a successful display of the required answer is continued teacher approval – but it is a game which many students are bound to lose. A dialogical pedagogy, on the other hand, signals the co-presence of the teacher as a concerned other, available to guide and coach the learner, as a member of a community of learners, through the emotional rollercoaster ride of self-development, from the mixture of curiosity and apprehension we often experience when approaching the not-yet-known for the first time, through the solidarity of mutual encouragement which can help overcome the confusion and uncertainty involved in practising a new type of knowledge-activity for the first time, to the thrill of shared discovery and personal growth felt at the moment of breakthrough when one confidently masters a new way of doing things. By modelling the exploratory nature of dialogue in our discursive interactions (Barnes, 1976), we can help students draw on a wider range of emotional resources in their learning, and harness these to the project of becoming increasingly self-directed in their development. A shift in pedagogical practice along these lines might help to rehumanise an education system rendered radically hostile to emotional wellbeing by the drillingand-testing didactics generated by the marketisation of schooling. There is scope, then, for future research to examine more closely how the dynamics of teacher–student dialogue govern the emotional climate of classroom life, for instance by attending to the relatively narrow range of expressive intonation deemed to be acceptable in classroom discussion when compared with conversation in the playground (or staffroom). Adapting Voloshinov, we might say that we do not learn only how to do arithmetic more or less accurately, we learn that maths is fun or boring, useful or irrelevant, etc., and similarly for other areas of the curriculum. A dialogical approach to pedagogy indicates the need for students to be given the opportunity to appropriate academic concepts and turn them to their own communicative purposes, in pursuit of desired social goals; there is no cognition without affect.

References Alexander, R.J. (2001) Culture and Pedagogy: International Comparisons in Primary Education. Oxford: Blackwell. Alexander, R.J. (2004) Towards Dialogic Teaching: Rethinking Classroom Talk. Cambridge: Dialogos.

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Applebee, A.N., Langer, J.A., Nystrand, M. and Gamoran, A. (2003) Discussion-based approaches to developing understanding: Classroom instruction and student performance in middle and high school English. American Educational Research Journal 40 (3), 685–730. Barnes, D. (1976) From Communication to Curriculum. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Bereiter, C. (1994) Implications of postmodernism for science, or, Science as progressive discourse. Educational Psychologist 29, 3–13. Damasio, A.R. (1994) Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain. New York: Quill. de Sousa, R. (2003) Emotion. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. See http://plato.stanford. edu/archives/spr2003/entries/emotion/ (accessed 14 September 2005). Gutierrez, K.D. (1994) How talk, context, and script shape contexts for learning: A crosscase comparison of journal sharing. Linguistics and Education 5, 335–365. Hargreaves, A. (1998) The emotional practice of teaching. Teaching and Teacher Education 14 (8), 835–854. Leadbeater, C. (2004) Personalisation Through Participation: A New Script for Public Services. London: Demos. Mroz, M., Smith, F. and Hardman, F. (2000) The discourse of the literacy hour. Cambridge Journal of Education 30 (3), 379–390. Nystrand, M., with Gamoran, A., Kachur, R. and Prendergast, C. (1997) Opening Dialogue: Understanding the Dynamics of Language and Learning in the English Classroom. New York: Teachers College Press. Reay, D. (2000) A useful extension of Bourdieu’s conceptual framework?: Emotional capital as a way of understanding mothers’ involvement in their children’s education? Sociological Review 48 (4), 568–585. Simon, B. (1985) Does Education Matter? London: Lawrence & Wishart. Skidmore, D. (2000) From pedagogical dialogue to dialogical pedagogy. Language and Education 14 (4), 283–296. Skidmore, D. (2004) Inclusion: The Dynamic of School Development. Milton Keynes: Open University Press. Skidmore, D., Perez-Parent, M. and Arnfield, S. (2003) Teacher–pupil dialogue in the guided reading session. Reading: Literacy and Language 37 (2), 47–53. Voloshinov, V.N. (1986) Marxism and the Philosophy of Language (trans. L. Matejka and I.R. Titunik). New York: Seminar Press. Vygotsky, L.S. (1987) The Collected Works of L.S. Vygotsky, Vol. 1. Problems of General Psychology. New York: Plenum Press. Wells, G. (1999) Dialogic Inquiry: Towards a Sociocultural Practice and Theory of Education. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

7

The Small Group Writing Conference as a Dialogic Model of Feedback Julie Margaret Esiyok

Introduction Recent educational research suggests that one of the ways to improve students’ engagement in writing is by improving the way feedback is given (Hattie & Timperley, 2007). Currently, most feedback about student writing takes the form of written comments on pieces of work and yet it is widely accepted that written feedback is largely ineffective (Hyland, 2000; Lee & Schallert, 2008; Muncie, 2000; Sipple, 2007). Even if feedback is not ignored, it has been found that pupils rarely change or improve their writing in light of the feedback given (Lee & Schallert, 2008). In Jonsson’s (2013) review of the literature concerning students’ use of feedback, five major feedback challenges are outlined. First, authoritative feedback is not productive as students tend to follow the teachers’ advice strictly and do not learn how to evaluate their own writing. Secondly, while specific, detailed and individualised feedback may be preferred by students, this may not help them make long-term improvements. Thirdly, students often lack strategies for the productive use of feedback. Fourthly, students need to be given time to understand and use the feedback, but in reality such time is not allocated during lessons and/or for homework. Lastly, students may not understand their feedback because of illegible handwriting or difficult terminology. Jonsson suggests: in order to aid students in using feedback more productively, the transmission model of feedback, where the teacher passes on information to the student, needs to be replaced with a more active and dialogic model of feedback. (Jonsson, 2013: 72) This dialogic model of feedback would be an ‘interactive exchange in which interpretations are shared, meanings negotiated and expectations clarified’ (Carless et al., 2011: 397). 111

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In my own classroom, I have implemented various strategies for feedback including criteria grids, detailed written comments in different coloured pens for different facets of writing, getting students to write a comment after written feedback to show that they had read it, and so on. None of these, often time-consuming procedures, seemed effective as students rarely used the feedback I gave to make improving revisions to their writing. My frustration with the feedback implementation led me to explore other models of feedback. The use of small group writing conferences offered a more ‘active and dialogic’ model of feedback and brought about some changes to the students’ learning about revising their writing. This chapter documents my implementation of the writing conferences and the analysis of one conference and subsequent changes to the way students worked on the revision process. The improved revisions made by students suggest that, for them, learning to make some substantive revisions to their drafts happens when a dialogic interaction between the students and teacher takes place. Empirical research as to how groups talk during writing response or how group talk influences revision tasks were scant (e.g. Goldstein & Congrad, 1990; Hewett, 2000). This study aims to address this gap by combining an analysis of how the students talk during their small group writing conference, with followup to see how the students revised their draft writing according to the feedback they received during the conference. I posed the following questions to guide me with the literature review, analysis and discussion. Do small group writing conferences offer a dialogic model of feedback? How do the participants of a small group writing conference talk? Does their talk subsequently impact on the revision of their draft writing? If so, how?

Dialogic Classroom Talk Researchers and teachers on writing have used the term ‘dialogic’ in a number of different ways. Lefstein and Snell (2011) have drawn these ideas together into five dimensions, which they have called structural, epistemic, interpersonal, substantive and political. The first four dimensions – the structural, the epistemic, the interpersonal, the substantive – are used to organise the review of research in this section. The structural dimension suggests that equitable interactional structures with more evenly distributed discursive rights and responsibilities are a key feature of dialogic talk. Unfortunately, research has found that this is often impossible to achieve in most teacher/student classroom talk because of the inherent power relationships involved. It is the teacher who invariably controls the discourse, deciding who can speak, when they can speak, about what they can speak and for how long they can speak for. Over 40 years ago Sinclair and Coulthard (1975) described the most common pattern of classroom talk using the terms: initiation-response-evaluation (IRE). This consisted of: the teacher

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initiating an interaction, usually with a question; the student responding in some way; and the teacher completing it by evaluating the student’s response. Despite much research suggesting other forms of classroom talk are more effective for student learning, this pattern of talk remains deeply entrenched in Western classroom culture and yet, surprisingly, it remains unheard of for many teachers, even those qualified in recent decades (Mercer & Dawes, 2007). It persists not only in whole class discussions but also in writing conferences, as shown by Denyer and Florio-Ruane’s (1995) analysis of the talk which occurred in a writing conference between a trainee teacher and a Year 3 student. They found that the teacher asked 74 questions in less than 15 minutes and the talk very closely resembled the typical IRE turn exchange. Most teachers would need to consciously work at moderating their controlling pattern of talk during a conference if it were to become ‘dialogic’. Numerous studies have suggested that writing conferences between peers can be very effective and may even be more effective than those held only with teachers. Boscolo and Ascorti (2004) found that students who received peer feedback had fewer information gaps and problems with clarity than those who received only teacher feedback. Similarly, Hedgcock and Lefkowitz (1992) found that the final drafts of essays receiving only peer feedback resulted in higher overall scores than those receiving only teacher feedback. Paulus (1999) found that oral peer feedback resulted in more complex changes to content, organisation and vocabulary in contrast to basic changes on the grammatical level from written teacher feedback. The small group writing conference analysed in this study, which includes both a teacher and peers, benefited from receiving feedback from both groups. The epistemic dimension is concerned with recognising and attempting to take into account a range of students’, and others’, ideas instead of focusing on just one meaning (Scott et al., 2006). This is because it is through the sharing of different perspectives that participants are helped to make new connections, which may be transformed into new understanding and new meaning. This type of dialogic talk requires teachers to ask genuine open questions, i.e. the types of questions where they do not already know the answer. Often these will take the form of soliciting opinions rather than factual knowledge, as it has been found that these types of questions are good for provoking student thought, for initiating discussion and for producing longer responses (Wong, 1991). In a dialogic writing conference, the teacher and any other feedback givers would need to act as equal dialogue partners rather than as authorities (Dysthe et al., 2011). They will need to be able to collaborate, making it clear that their feedback is merely their point of view and is open to dispute (Applebee, 1984). There should be an absence of imperatives and obligating modalities such as should, must and ought in the talk they share (Hyatt, 2005), and the presence of words such as because, if, I think, why, which, what

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and you, which would suggest that they are thinking together and encouraging the inclusion of each other’s perspectives (Wegerif et al., 2004). It has been suggested that peer groups are particularly good for productive dialogic collaboration because they offer a fluid horizontal expertise structure (Ede & Lunsford, 1990), and because they understand each other’s misunderstandings and can explain concepts in familiar terms with the right level of scaffolding (Webb & Mastergeorge, 2003). The interpersonal dimension is concerned with relationships. Dialogic talk requires trusting partnerships where participants are able to share their ideas freely without fear of embarrassment over wrong answers (Alexander, 2004a). Lefstein and Snell (2011) suggest that interpersonal concerns are central to Mercer’s (2000) descriptions of group talk, as each type of talk reflects a different type of relationship between the participants. Cumulative talk reflects unity as participants accept each other’s contributions without questioning them, adding to what has been said in a cumulative way; disputational talk reflects disharmony and discord as participants are critical, competitive and unwilling to acknowledge other’s contributions; and exploratory talk reflects trust as participants are able to challenge and counterchallenge each other’s contributions in a supportive way so that ideas are developed and knowledge is constructed. Exploratory talk is viewed as the preferred, and dialogic, model of talk, but some argue that conflict is essential for dialogic talk; in a study of ninth graders, Dale (1993) found that students collaborated best when there was conflict but only as long as the conflict did not become supercritical. Lastly, the substantive dimension centres around Alexander’s (2004a, 2004b) view that the most critical element of the term ‘dialogic’ is the way teachers and students build carefully on what is said, chaining ideas into coherent lines of thinking and enquiry (Alexander, 2004a, 2004b). It is this dimension that many view as holding the potential to transform classroom talk, increase pupil engagement and lift literacy standards. It is seen as a powerful idea, which demands change. Mercer (2000) argues that rules for group talk are necessary if you wish to develop the right climate for exploratory talk to occur. These rules, often developed by the students together with the teacher, usually include such things as: listen to everyone’s ideas; make sure everyone has a turn; don’t interrupt; and only one person should speak at a time. This kind of approach fits well with the view that it is essential to get every student participating, because the more they participate, the more effective the learning is (Stacey & Gooding, 1998). However, for quiet students who use silence for active listening and internal reflection, this forced inclusion can be seen as upsetting and manipulative and would not be a good way to build trusting relationships (Reda, 2009). Furthermore, rules may actually constrain creative activity as participants feel unable to throw in ideas sparked off by what the speaker is saying and by the time they have waited for the speaker to finish, they may well have

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forgotten what they were going to say. Alternatively, they may stop listening to the person speaking as they try to focus on remembering what it is that they want to say when it comes to their turn. It has also been argued that by allocating group members particular roles such as timekeeper or chairperson or by focusing too much on using dialogic features of talk, talk becomes constrained by participants who are ‘participating in a contrived collaborative division of labor’ rather than natural talk (Christianakis, 2010: 452). It has been found that parallel and overlapping speech is very beneficial to group talk. In an analysis of study talk between university students, Sawyer and Berson (2004) found the purpose of overlapping talk to be a signal of joint focus on the task and group consensus towards the goal. This kind of noisy, messy talk gets things done as students jointly construct utterances where their thoughts and ideas have been blended together into a single voice (Vassa et al., 2008). They have created a shared space where the ‘group takes priority over the individuals’ (Coates, 1996: 133). This shared space should involve talk about topics which are important to all participants. As such, a dialogic writing conference would be most effective when the writing topic is one that all participants have some background knowledge about and can personally relate to and share an interest in (Wong, 1991).

Dialogic writing conference Drawing together what the literature tells us about active and dialogic talk, it is possible to produce a summary description of what an active and dialogic small group writing conference might look and sound like: it would be busy and lively with participants freely exchanging ideas; the amount of talk from each participant would be more evenly distributed than that which is found in the typical IRE pattern of classroom talk; everyone would contribute ideas, constructing meaning jointly; relationships would be trusting; the teacher would act as a dialogue partner, not an authority; participants would build on each other’s ideas and chain them into coherent lines of thinking; and students would have greater control over, and voice in, the feedback process. This summary will be used, in conjunction with a range of data extracted from the transcribed talk, to guide the analysis of the writing conference in this study. It is recognised that some parts of the writing conference will be likely to resemble this ideal more closely than others, because in any extended segment of talk there is likely to be some fluctuation in structure as participants express their perspectives in a natural way; their talk should not be constrained by the need to conform to a tightly regulated ‘ideal’ pattern of talk. Furthermore, the dialogue structure of a writing conference is new to the participants involved in this study and so instability around this ‘ideal’ should be expected.

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Revising written drafts Significant gains in writing skills are possible in a short period of time when students engage in the revision of their writing (Hillocks, 1982). It is through revision that writers may be able to expand their ideas and more fully discover what they are trying to say (Odell, 1980; Sommers, 1980). Teaching students to ‘read like writers’ and ‘write like readers’ is effective in improving students’ literacy skills (Reutzel & Smith, 2004: 81). However, although revision is often seen as key to improving the quality of writing, most students find it difficult (Humphris, 2010); they rarely revise their first drafts and, when they do, they only make small, insignificant surface-level changes (Plumb et al., 1994). Reasons why effective revision of writing rarely happens are manifold. Teachers are often unwilling to give time to the revision process because of other curriculum demands (Gilbert & Graham, 2010). Students are often unable to identify errors in their own writing (Plumb et al., 1994), and do not know how to correct the errors they find (Hull, 1987; Stallard, 1974). Furthermore, students find it difficult to evaluate their writing from the readers’ perspective (Fitzgerald, 1987). By using small writing conferences, the teacher provides students with the time and opportunity to think about their draft writing in critical reflection, sharing perspectives and learning about how readers make sense of their writing. Time is a crucial factor. Good conferences last anywhere from five to 20 minutes, according to the study by Martin and Mottet (2011). By using a combination of peer-group and teacher/peer-group conferences it is possible to allow 20 minutes for focused talk on one draft per group. This does mean that every student will not receive personalised feedback on their own writing every time, but feedback givers appear to benefit more from the process (Cho & MacArthur, 2011; Crinon & Marin, 2010). Analysis of the revisions made by the students in this study investigates whether, following the conference, some feedback receivers and feedback givers are able to make revisions that go beyond surface-level changes to spelling and punctuation. The study addresses the question of how the writing conference talk influences the way they revise draft writing.

Silence in the classroom Whether silence in the classroom is regarded positively or negatively depends largely on the teacher. Should students discuss issues and answer questions, or should they be silent so that they can get on with their work? If a teacher requires silence, then silence is viewed positively; if the teacher wants discussion, silence is generally regarded negatively. The subject of silence in the classroom tends to focus on the types of silence which are undirected by the teacher. In most cases, the main concern seems to be with how to get quiet students talking (Schultz, 2009). This reflects contemporary

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pedagogy, which regards ‘student voice’ as empowering and dialogue as the key to learning (Reda, 2010). Certainly much learning appears to stem from idea and perception sharing, and often it is others’ contributions which stimulate more and better thinking; dialogue is seen as a learning symbiosis (Petress, 2001). The quiet student is less likely to apply, extend or transfer what is learned and deprives her/himself and his/her classmates from the benefit of joint constructed knowledge, insights and thinking. However, the meaning of any silence is inherently ambiguous and subject to misinterpretation and misevaluation. While some teachers may regard the silent student as a student who doesn’t understand and, as such, as evidence of their failed teaching, Schultz (2009) suggests that silence is a form of participation; students are using the silence to transform their thinking by integrating others’ perspectives with their own. As such, listening, introspection and speculation are critical forms of class participation that must be both acknowledged and taught in the dialogic classroom, for it is silence, along with dialogue, that fosters learning (Reda, 2010). We should redefine the notion of activity as ‘doing’ or ‘talking’ so that it also encompasses the ‘silent thinking’ as activity. We thus can move away from the assumption that vocal interaction with one’s peers equates to participation and silence to non-participation (Ollin, 2008).

Methodology Setting and participants A naturalistic paradigm formed the basis for this study with a single case study design (Yin, 2003), following the opportunity sampling strategy. The study took place in my own classroom, located in the primary section of an international school in Europe. Seven girls and five boys participated in the study and they were either seven or eight years old. The students were all non-nationals of the country in which the school is located, originating from a variety of countries. Only one student spoke only English; one had two home languages other than English; and the rest had one home language other than English. Two of these students attended intermediate ESL lessons during French lessons. Out of this group, three students participated in the conference that this chapter is focused on. This group was made up of: the feedback receiver, Alison; and the feedback givers, Susan, Cem and the teacher. All of the students were fluent writers and all had one home language other than English. The group under study is neither ‘typical’ in terms of mother tongue nor ability. Many of the students perform above the expected level in the optional SAT tests at the end of the year and most have always attended schools with English as the medium of instruction. Having worked both in the UK and internationally, I would say that the pupils’ level of English is comparable to that of a Year 3 class in the UK.

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The writing conferences were part of the lesson in which the students’ studies were engaged in one particular writing task – a poem describing and comparing two historical mosques visited during a recent field trip. This enabled the students to share their various interpretations, allowing them to compare their different perspectives (Orsolini & Pontecorvo, 1992). The writing conference occurred towards the end of the recording period. By that time the students had all taken part in a whole class writing conference where aspects of feedback giving were discussed and they had all already been involved in a group writing conference with the teacher as a participant. All writing conferences that took place during a three-week period were recorded. No attempt was made to manipulate the conferences in any way. At the start of the small group writing conferences, the written draft of one student was read out loud. The students were instructed to begin by giving positive feedback. Then, working through the writing, the students provided feedback, while the feedback receiver was expected to make notes on their written draft. Following the conference, all students were expected to revise their own draft writing using what they had learnt and discussed during the conference. The students were given simple voice recorders, which were familiar to the students and easy to stop and start, to record the talk during the conferences.

Method of analysis The main focus of the analysis was to examine dialogicality by identifying features pertaining to the four dimensions of dialogic outlined in the literature review, where they were present in the conference, both in general terms and also as experienced through the talk of each participant. The specific features of talk include: (1) turns and words spoken to indicate participant control or engagement with the process (Rajala et al., 2012); (2) length of turns indicating differences in learning gains as exploratory forms of talk (Mercer, 2000; Rajala et al., 2012); (3) frequency and types of question; (4) the use of because as an indicator of participants justifying their ideas; (5) the use of adverbs (e.g. very, sort of, a bit, quite, really) to evaluate an aspect of the draft writing and indicating critical reflection (Farr & Riordan, 2012); (6) the use of adjectives to evaluate (e.g. good, better, interesting) and verbs (e.g. like, love), which signify support for the learning community; (7) the use of yes, yea, sure, okay to indicate engaged listenership and support; (8) modal verbs (e.g. might, maybe, could) when used to give ownership and choice to the group;

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(9) modal verbs of imperatives indicating obligation (e.g. should, must); (10) no as an indicator of conflict or authority; use of I think or I’m thinking as an indicator of different perspectives and cognitive processes; (11) the use of the pronoun ‘we’ as an indicator of group cohesiveness. In understanding the dialogic nature of exploratory talk (Rajala et al., 2012) for the development of new ideas, I also looked at how often participants refined and extended ideas, by using a simple numbering code for each occurrence: (1) new idea introduced; (2) refine ideas previously introduced; (3) extend ideas previously introduced; (4) elaborate on ideas previously introduced. This helped to identify how and when the refining and extending of ideas took place. In terms of evaluating the quality of revisions students made to their written drafts, each revision was coded into categories adapted from the system used by Moore and MacArthur (2012): (1) type: word, phrase, line, punctuation, spelling; (2) operation: add, delete, substitute, reorder (within a line), restructure (across a verse); (3) purpose (information): give new information, clarify, elaborate; (4) other purpose: organise, emphasise, delete, change tone, no purpose; (5) poetic element added, e.g. simile, metaphor, repetition for effect, assonance, alliteration; (6) quality: successful, unsuccessful or no change. Then, the number of successful and unsuccessful revisions was totalled up with the number of revisions.

Analysis The conference as a whole The results of the frequency count, with the conference transcripts, were examined in order to determine whether the writing conference offered a dialogic model of feedback (for details, see Appendix 7.1). In terms of the structural dimension, the amount of talk from each participant is not evenly distributed: Alison took 20% of turns and spoke 11% of the total words; Cem took 18% of turns and spoke 14% of the total words; Susan took 30% of turns and spoke 24% of the total words; and the teacher took 32% of turns and spoke 51% of the total words (Figure 7.1). While the teacher and Susan had a similar number of turns, the teacher still spoke most of the time. However, if we look at the breakdown of length of utterances we find that the teacher takes extended turns far more frequently than the other participants; 63% of turns over 10 words in length were spoken by the teacher (Figure 7.2). As the most experienced participant, the teacher has taken on the role of group leader to guide the group through the conference; she frames thinking by asking questions (Excerpt 7.1 below, turns 130 and 138), she garners

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Susan 30%

% of words spoken Cem 14%

Teacher 32%

Susan 24%

Alison 20%

Teacher 51%

Alison 11%

Figure 7.1 Frequency count % of turns 3 words or less

Cem 20%

% of turns 10 words or more

Teacher 10%

Cem 15% Susan 17%

Alison 25% Susan 45%

Teacher 63%

Alison 5%

Figure 7.2 Length of utterances

different perspectives (turn 142) and she makes suggestions (turn 151). She also reads and rereads lines of the poem as changes are made. A more experienced participant helps navigate the discussion when new patterns of talk are being developed in a classroom. In terms of the epistemic dimension, the teacher asks many genuine open questions, soliciting opinions rather than factual knowledge (turns 128, 136, 138, 142).

Excerpt 7.1 128 129 130 131 132 133

[Teacher: Susan: Teacher: Alison: Teacher: Susan:

the decorated greenery? there’s no decorated how was it decorated? I don’t know (laughs) oh (laughs) the decorated greenery

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134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150

[Cem: [Susan: Teacher: Susan: Teacher: Alison: [Susan: [Alison: Teacher: [Alison: [Susan: Cem: [Teacher: [Susan: Cem: Alison: Cem:

151 152

Teacher: [Cem:

121

how can grass be decorated? I think that’s just decorated um what do we think about that? decorated greenery how could the courtyard be described? (2) um (4) peaceful peaceful restful What do you think Cem? because it’s I think it’s very (.) I’m thinking of (.) trying to find I think (.) I think it was really peaceful merging merging? It wasn’t merging! yea but the other courtyard was full of (?) the one we went to but it was peaceful wasn’t it still yea

In this excerpt, Alison’s admission of not knowing the answer (turn 131) opens up possibilities for dialogue. The shared laughter contributes to maintaining the interpersonal dimension of the group as a relaxed and trusting learning relationship. The teacher acts as a dialogue partner rather than as an authority adding her ideas to the mix, ‘but it was peaceful wasn’t it still’ (turn 151). None of the participants uses imperatives or obligating modalities. Susan, Cem and the teacher use a formulation of ‘I think …’ to hold the space for thinking. Although the teacher asks most questions, all participants ask some. For instance, Cem asks ‘how can grass be decorated?’ (turn 134) and Alison questions Cem’s suggestion, ‘merging?’ (turn 149) followed by Alison’s challenge, ‘It wasn’t merging!’ (turn 149), which is taken up by Cem for a more expanded description of the courtyard. The conference is full of short utterances and overlapping turns as the students and the teacher frequently interrupt one another, as well as an equal distribution of turns. In this conference, it is in the joint formulation of the description, the way in which the many short utterances blend together almost seamlessly into a single voice (Vassa et al., 2008) which supports the dialogic model of talk. Excerpt 7.2 illustrates the substantive dimension as participants build on each other’s ideas and chain them into coherent lines of thinking.

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Excerpt 7.2 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93

Susan: Teacher: Cem: Alison: Cem: Teacher: Susan: Cem: Susan: Teacher: Cem:

94 95 96 97 98

Susan: Teacher: Cem: Susan: Teacher:

99 100 101 102 103 104 105

Susan: Cem: Teacher: [Cem: [Teacher: [Susan: [Teacher:

106 107

[Susan: Cem:

I don’t really get what’s a sun tile was there a tile on the roof? yea yea it was like this sun it looked like a sun was it a tile though? sunny tile yea sunny tile wasn’t it just a painting? it looked like it looked like just a plain tile and then they painted over it yea but it doesn’t really look like a sun and if you I think it did look like a sun yea it did maybe it does but if you say sun tile I just think it wasn’t a tile (.) I think it was painted on the ceiling yea I think it was just um just a plain tile how would you get a (.) plain tile get a bendy tile though yea to fit in the top of the dome that’s why I think it was just painted yea it was just painted maybe (.) I don’t know

In this excerpt, Cem eventually begins to question his original conviction that there was a tile in the dome of the mosque. Others’ comments (turns 86 and 89) help him to clarify his understanding and he goes on to give a much fuller explanation of his perspective (turn 93). He continues to assert that there was a tile in the roof and it is only after the teacher explains her perspective (turns 103 and 105) that he begins to question his belief and indicates that he is unsure about what he has heard (turn 107). By looking at the conference as a whole, there are ample examples that illustrate dialogicality of feedback giving and receiving. While the teacher talks more than the students and controls the direction of the conference, the rest of the dimensions of dialogic talk appear to be present. It leads to revision in which the students apply their new understanding and improve

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their writing with more than surface-level revisions to their written drafts. To this end, in the following I analysed the ways in which each student made revisions to their written drafts, addressing how the conference talk has influenced them during the revision process.

The teacher as a feedback giver The teacher plays a central role in the conference, taking the most turns and speaking the most words. She also asks the most questions (73%). However, while she leads the conference, this is a very different kind of talk from the typical IRE pattern of exchange. She begins by reading the draft poem in order to reinforce the importance of frequently rereading the writing to monitor the comprehensibility of the draft and the revisions being made (Williams & Pilonieta, 2012). She also creates pace and direction to ensure the task is completed within the allotted 20 minutes. The vast majority of the 67 questions she asks solicit opinion (e.g. What do you think of that? Is that better? What do you think Cem? Couldn’t we? Don’t you think? Couldn’t we just leave it like that?). Furthermore, when a student responds, she rarely follows up with an evaluation. In Excerpt 7.3 it is the students who string ideas together to jointly construct new meaning and the teacher only intervenes to redirect their attention to Alison’s and Susan’s idea about the word ‘stunning’, when it seems it has been lost:

Excerpt 7.3 25

Teacher:

26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38

Alison: Susan: Alison: Susan: Alison: Susan: Cem: Susan: Cem: Susan: Alison: Susan: Teacher:

39 40 41

Susan: Alison: Cem:

how do we like that now then? stunning music flowing through my ears (2) stunning (3) I don’t know stunning music flowing through my ears (2) hum (2) hum (1) um (3) it’s um (1) stunning (1) um (.) oh may (1) maybe not stunning maybe she could use the word like music flowing through my ears maybe she could use the word like (4) I think maybe music flowing through my ears? I think (.) um music flowing through my ears (1) not have stunning (.) could there be a different word in place of that? yea maybe another one because (1) yea it’s not really stunn—ing (1)

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Alison: Susan: Cem: Alison: Teacher:

no maybe one that starts with s it doesn’t like keep you still (.) when they pray let me see (1) mysterious? mysterious music

During the conference the teacher shows herself to be a dialogue partner rather than an authority by sharing her own thoughts and also admitting to not knowing. She uses expressions of possibility to indicate that her ideas are just another perspective. Furthermore, the students treat her as a partner and are happy to comment on and reject her ideas (e.g. Excerpt 7.4 below). The teacher uses the word ‘we’ 37 times during the conference as a strategy to develop group cohesiveness – it focuses the group on the collaborative nature of the task and makes it clear that they have joint responsibility for improving Alison’s draft writing. The teacher also ends the conference with the comment ‘Well done everyone good teamwork’ (turn 419). As a feedback giver in the conference, the teacher talks the most and takes the longest turns, but the turns are distributed more evenly than a typical IRE sequence. It also reveals that she manages to stay silent some of the time: 17 times throughout the conference there are silent periods which last three seconds or more, with the longest being 11 seconds. She leads the conference because writing conferences were still fairly new to the class. In terms of the feedback she gives, she is offering another perspective as she uses, ‘I think’ and ‘because’ to model thinking together. The justification of ideas is crucial to knowledge building and transformational learning and the teacher focuses on modelling this better as she only employs this strategy eight times throughout the conference.

Alison as a feedback receiver Alison’s role in the conference is as the feedback receiver. She takes 20% of turns but speaks only 11% of the total words. She takes little control over the direction the conference takes, mainly because the teacher has assumed the role. However, after the teacher, she does ask the most questions (17%), which would seem to indicate some degree of control. These questions are sometimes to request specific information and sometimes to solicit opinion. The asking of precise questions is an effective strategy for feedback receivers as it shows that they are persisting in seeking specific help, which they can use to revise their draft (Webb & Mastergeorge, 2003). While Alison only takes 80 turns these are spread evenly throughout the conference. There are five occasions when she is silent for 10 turns or more. The first silence takes place when the rest of the group is saying what they like about her poem; a further three occurrences are when she is finding it difficult to make brief notes on her draft and it takes her some time to rejoin

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the conference; and the final occurrence is when the group is talking about a line which the teacher had already identified as her favourite one in the poem. She tends not to justify her ideas using ‘because’, which she does only twice. However, she is the first one to suggest, quite correctly, that stunning isn’t really a good way to describe music and her new idea, ‘mysterious?’ (turn 45), actually makes it into the revised writing. Although Alison makes significant improving revisions to her draft writing, she only contributes 11% of the total words and she doesn’t appear to be fully participating in the chaining of ideas to construct new meaning.

Cem as a feedback giver Cem’s role in the conference is as a feedback giver. He takes 18% of the turns but only speaks 14% of the total words. Interestingly though, his contributions are for the most part slightly longer than that of the other two student participants; he has the least number of turns consisting of three words or less. He participates well in terms of sharing and developing ideas as he introduces new ideas. He also elaborates on and justifies ideas. His feedback demonstrates good attention to detail, e.g. he is keen to clarify why the word stunning is not appropriate, ‘It’s not really stunn—ing (1) it doesn’t like keep you still (.) when they pray’ (turns 41, 44). He demonstrates critical reflection as he comments on lines and ideas (turn 61). Although Cem does not speak many of the total words, he does appear to be an active and thoughtful contributor. His few, yet pertinent contributions play an important part in the ‘interthinking’ of the group (Mercer, 2000). However, there are times during the conference when he does not contribute for a number of turns; on 15 occasions he does not speak for at least eight turns. The teacher clearly notices what she believes is his apparent lack of engagement, for twice during the conference she attempts to draw him back in. Although Cem makes significant improving revisions to his draft writing and he makes some interesting contributions to the discussion, he only says 14% of the total words and he also engages in several periods of silence. As such, can he be described as truly engaged in a dialogic exchange or is he acting unethically by sometimes withholding his perspectives?

Susan as a feedback giver Susan’s role in the conference is also as a feedback giver. After the teacher, she took the next largest role, having almost as many turns as the teacher (30%) and speaking the next largest number of words 24%. However, 45% of her turns consisted of three words or less and so an area for Susan to develop would be producing more extended responses. She plays an active role in giving feedback, identifying features for revision. She also offers new ideas, e.g. when the teacher asks, ‘How could the courtyard

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be described?’ she suggests, ‘Peaceful’ (Excerpt 7.1, turn 140). She also refines and extends ideas. She shows the most critical reflection by using adverbs like ‘really’ and by saying what she thinks 18 times. This is almost as many times as the teacher and far more times than both Cem (two times) and Alison (one time). She also uses the verb ‘think’ 18 times, which is almost as many times as the teacher and she justifies her ideas using ‘because’ more frequently than any of the other students (six times). She clearly takes on an active feedbackgiving role and appears fully engaged in the process. Her confidence allows her to reject the teacher’s suggestion as shown in Excerpt 7.4 below. Here the teacher suggests that the line Alison had remembered from a previous class’s poem could be left as it is, but Susan, who clearly feels copying is wrong, goes on to reject the teacher’s suggestion and finds a compromise by keeping the line but removing part of it.

Excerpt 7.4 230 231 232 233 234 235

Susan: Alison: Teacher: Susan: Teacher: Susan:

she copied it from Adriana (2) what else could I write? couldn’t we just leave it like that? could we? yea I don’t know (.) could we? yea no no no without imposing yea (.) yea (.)

Susan is also the most supportive member of the group by far. She listens attentively to others’ ideas and she uses ‘yea’, ‘yes’ or ‘okay’ more than double the number of times of any other participant. She is also the one who most frequently helps Alison to make notes and to correct spellings. Overall, Susan in this conference is the most active. She participates fully and offers numerous ideas. However, she goes on to make only minimal revisions to her draft writing. One cannot establish a clear link between the student being dialogic during the conference and their making revisions to their writing. To explore this further, I proceed with analysing the revisions made to the students’ draft writing.

Analysing the revisions made to the students’ draft writing In order to establish just how active and dialogic the conference was for each student participant, it was necessary to analyse the revisions they made to their draft poems. If the students were able to transform what they had talked about during the conference into successful revisions to their writing then this might be some indication as to what extent their conference experience was dialogic; had it helped them to develop new understanding and create new meaning?

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Following the conference, Alison made 21 significant improving revisions to her draft writing. Alison herself suggests that stunning should be changed to a different word (Excerpt 7.3 above) and eventually comes up with the mysterious music revision that she used. Elsewhere, the teacher suggests that the phrase flowing through my ears should be changed and Cem suggests echoing around the mosque, which the group accept. Near the end of the conference the teacher suggests deleting the mosque and Alison deletes it in her revised copy. So all conference participants, in a dialogic way, jointly constructed the first line revision. A second revision – deleting tile and changing roof to ceiling – originated from the teacher’s suggestion but the line was discussed in some detail by the whole group and Susan made the final decision to replace roof with ceiling. In the third line, a revision concerning deleting the word decorated came from Susan again because she said the greenery wasn’t decorated (Excerpt 7.1). Cem suggests that the phrase with flowers on the ground should be deleted because there were no flowers in the courtyard. Susan suggests describing the courtyard as peaceful and the teacher suggests using green to contrast with Rustem Pasha Mosque, which had a stone courtyard. The participants, with the notable exception of Alison, the poem writer, jointly constructed the revised line. The whole of the next line is deleted at the suggestion of Susan and supported by Cem because they point out there were only a few tiles in this particular mosque. In the next line the is substituted for four, suggested by the teacher to contrast with Rustem Pasha Mosque which has only one minaret. In total Alison makes 21 successful revisions to her draft poem. Eight of these originate from Susan, six from Alison herself (two are spellings), four from the teacher and three from Cem. Although Alison speaks just 11.2% of the words and 51.2% of these are in utterances of three words or less, she manages to exert some control over the changes that make it into her revised draft. Susan had the greatest input into the revisions made but everyone contributed some of the revisions. This writing conference was most certainly collaborative and, as a feedback model for Alison, it was both active and dialogic. Not only did she make suggestions for revisions during the conference, but she also made adequate notes on her draft and persisted in seeking help by asking specific questions to make sure she was clear about what revisions she would make. She also went on to make spelling changes and she added a line independently as she revised. This suggests a writer with real confidence who was able to transform what had been discussed during the conference into real action when revising her writing. Following the conference, Cem has made 16 successful changes, three unsuccessful changes and two changes that had no effect on quality. The analysis of the revisions Cem makes to his poem reveals the significance of the silence he engaged in during the conference. When the sections of talk which preceded his silence are analysed and linked to the revisions he makes to his draft writing, it becomes apparent that, rather than treating his silence as being a sign of disengagement from the conference, he was engaged in the

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conference silently – listening attentively. For example, at the end of the conference Cem is silent for the last 13 turns. The preceding talk involves a discussion about using a comma in place of a word. Following this, Cem does not contribute for the rest of the conference, even though the idea of using a comma is further discussed by the other participants. However, he does go on to make two similar comma revisions to his draft poem. On another occasion, a silent period lasting 27 turns occurs after this exchange: Susan: it’s kind of like a sentence (turn 198); Cem: yea because it’s a bit long (1) (turn 199); Susan: cos it doesn’t really sound like a poem (3) it doesn’t I think it doesn’t really sound like a poem (2) (turn 200). Cem goes on to make several revisions to his poem which are designed to make it sound more poetic; for example, he removes the word The from the start of four lines. Another silence of 19 turns occurs after an idea-chaining section of talk, which eventually challenges his conviction that there was a painted flower tile in the dome of the mosque (see Excerpt 7.2). Although we cannot be certain that cognitive processing is occurring during these silent periods, a positive link between the silences as active listening and the revisions definitely seems plausible. Cem certainly appears to have taken on board ideas from the conference and applied the concept of poetic tone to his own writing, for example by rearranging word order and substituting words in order to make them more accurate or powerful. The revisions Cem makes to his draft following the writing conference show that he acted on the feedback and made changes accordingly. Following the conference, Susan made minimal revisions to her poem – just four successful changes and one unsuccessful change. Furthermore, her changes are simple surface-level changes – one involving correcting a spelling, one where she adds a full stop and two where she changes a word for a comma. The revisions Susan makes to her draft following the writing conference are certainly disappointing. She makes just four minor surface-level revisions. While her draft poem contains some good ideas and is already reasonably wellstructured, there is still room for improvement. Although Susan was the most verbally engaged during the group writing conference, making the most suggestions which ended up in Alison’s revised writing, taking a similar number of turns as the teacher and speaking 24% of the total words, the quality of her revision does not reflect the engaged contribution to the writing conference.

Summary In this chapter, I have reported the small-scale case study of writing conferences in a primary school English class and illustrated how the writing conference offered dialogic learning opportunities where the students and the teacher give feedback about the poem written and discuss how to go about improving it. The study found that small group writing conferences were helpful to some students in revising their writing. It also found that

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when the teacher was not speaking and assigning speaking turns, the students engaged themselves more in exploratory talk and jointly developed the solutions to the revision of the writing. The teacher’s role in the conferences was noteworthy. She acted as a dialogue partner, making it clear that her suggestions were not imposed on the students. The students had greater control and voice in the process and the amount of talk they engaged in, although not equal, was greater than that found in a typical IRE sequence of talk. Furthermore, the revisions made by two of the participants were superior to what they would have normally made using written feedback. By carrying out individual analysis of each participant’s talk during the conference it became clear that each participant’s role was quite different. The teacher was the leader and discussion facilitator. Susan was the most active participant in terms of offering feedback and in making suggestions for revisions to Alison’s draft writing. Alison multitasked as she contributed her perspective, made notes on her draft poem and directed the conference when needed to ensure she had a clear understanding of how she would revise her writing. Cem combined his role as feedback giver with that of a successful learner as he was able to transform the feedback given about Alison’s poem into something he could use himself to revise his own writing. Teachers’ refraining from speaking at times is as valuable as their talk during group work as it allows the participants to generate new understanding. This is an essential feature of a dialogic classroom where the teacher listens to the student’s contribution and shares it with the class. Equally, the time when the students do not talk can be considered an important time for learning in which they listen to others and reflect on the dialogic interaction and feedback suggestions. This study does not claim that small group writing conferences are a panacea or a simple step-by-step approach to improving student writing but it does show that young students are able to remain on task, to collaborate and share ideas and to make better than normal, improving revisions to their written drafts. Like all new initiatives, group writing conferences take motivation, enthusiasm and time to develop and maintain; however, the benefits to student writing, speaking skills and group work surely mean that writing conferences should be taking place in all classrooms – realistically probably not for every piece of writing but certainly for some. This study employed a small-scale single case study design of a single writing conference. It is set in a particular time and place and its findings are clearly not generalisable to all small group writing conferences. These findings may at least stimulate discussion and perhaps the undertaking of similar work elsewhere. Finally, the study highlighted the importance of allowing silence in the writing conferences. The researcher’s tendency to focus on only what is spoken in the analysis was not sufficient. The study reported that the talkative student participants make fewer revisions to their drafts and the quieter student participants make more successful revisions. What counts as

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dialogic in classroom talk needs to be rethought. As practical advice, teachers need to take account of this by encouraging some periods of silence for reflecting and digesting the feedback given in writing conferences.

References Alexander, R.J. (2004a) Towards Dialogic Teaching: Rethinking Classroom Talk. Cambridge: Dialogos. Alexander, R.J. (2004b) Talking to learn. Times Education Supplement, 30 January, pp. 12–13. See http://www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storycode=389939 (accessed 1 July 2004). Applebee, A.N. (1984) Contexts for Learning to Write. Studies of Secondary School Instruction. Norwood, NJ: Ablex Publishing. Bennett, N. and Dunne, E. (1992) Managing Classroom Groups. Hemel Hempstead: Simon & Schuster Education. Boscolo, P. and Ascorti, K. (2004) Effects of collaborative revision on children’s ability to write understandable narrative texts. In L. Allal, L. Chanquoy and P. Largy (eds) Revision: Cognitive and Instructional Processes (pp. 157–170). Boston, MA: Kluwer. Carless, D., Salter, D., Yang, M. and Lam, J. (2011) Developing sustainable feedback practices. Studies in Higher Education 36 (4), 395–407. Cho, K. and MacArthur, C. (2011) Learning by reviewing. Journal of Educational Psychology 103 (1), 73–84. doi: 10.1037/a0021950 Christianakis, M. (2010) ‘I don’t need your help!’ Peer status, race, and gender during peer writing interactions. Journal of Literacy Research 42, 418. Coates, J. (1996) Women Talk. Oxford: Blackwell. Crinon, J. and Marin, B. (2010) The role of peer feedback in learning to write explanatory texts: Why the tutors learn the most. Language Awareness 19 (2), 111–128. Dale, H. (1993) Conflict and engagement: Collaborative writing in one ninth-grade classroom. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Atlanta, GA, 11–16 April. Denyer, J. and Florio-Ruane, S. (1995) Mixed messages and missed opportunities: Moments of transformation in writing conferences and teacher education Teaching and Teacher Education 11 (6), 539–551. Dysthe, O., Lillejord, S., Vines, A. and Wasson, B. (2011) Productive e-feedback in higher education – some critical issues. In S. Ludvigsen, A. Lund, I. Rasmussen and R. Säljö (eds) Learning Across Sites: New Tools, Infrastructures and Practices (pp. 243–258). Oxford: Pergamon Press. Ede, L. and Lunsford, A. (1990) Single Texts/Plural Authors. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press. Farr, F. and Riordan, E. (2012) Students’ engagement in reflective tasks: An investigation of interactive and non-interactive discourse corpora. Classroom Discourse 3 (2), 129–146. Fitzgerald, J. (1987) Research on revision in writing. Review of Educational Research 57, 481–506. Gilbert, J. and Graham, S. (2010) Teaching writing to elementary students in grades 4–6: A national survey. Elementary School Journal 110, 494–517. Goldstein, L.M. and Conrad, S.M. (1990) Student input and negotiation of meaning in ESL writing conferences. TESOL Quarterly 24 (3), 443–460. Hattie, J.A. and Timperley, H. (2007) The power of feedback. Review of Educational Research 77, 81–112. Hedgcock, J. and Lefkowitz, N. (1992) Collaborative oral/aural revision in foreign language writing instruction. Journal of Second Language Writing 1, 255–276. Hewett, B.L. (2000) Characteristics of interactive oral and computer-mediated peer group talk and its influence on revision. Computers and Composition 17, 265–288.

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Hillocks, G. (1982) The interaction of instruction, teacher comment, and revision in teaching the composing process. Research in the Teaching of English 16, 261–278. Hull, G. (1987) The editing process in writing: A performance study of more skilled and less skilled college writers. Research in the Teaching of English 21, 8–29. Humphris, R. (2010) Developing students as writers through collaboration. Changing English: Studies in Culture and Education 17 (2), 201–214. Hyatt, D.F. (2005) ‘Yes, a very good point!’: A critical genre analysis of a corpus of feedback commentaries on Master of Education assignments. Teaching in Higher Education 10 (3), 339–353. Hyland, F. (2000) ESL writers and feedback: Giving more autonomy to students. Language Teaching Research 4, 33–54. Jonsson, A. (2013) Facilitating productive use of feedback in higher education. Active Learning in Higher Education 14 (1), 63–76. Lee, G. and Schallert, D. (2008) Meeting in the margins: Effects of the teacher–student relationship on revision processes of EFL college students taking a composition course. Journal of Second Language Writing 17, 165–182. Lefstein, A. and Snell, J. (2011) Classroom discourse: The promise and complexity of dialogic practice. In S. Ellis, E. McCartney and J. Bourne (eds) Linguistics and Primary School Teaching. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Martin, L. and Mottet, T.P. (2011) The effect of instructor nonverbal immediacy behaviors and feedback sensitivity on hispanic students’ affective learning outcomes in ninth-grade writing conferences. Communication Education 60 (1), 1–19. doi: 10.1080/03634523.2010.496868 Mercer, N. (2000) Words and Minds: How We Use Language to Think Together. London: Routledge. Mercer, N. and Dawes, L. (2007) Speaking and listening at Key Stage 2. In T. Cremin and H. Dombey (eds) Handbook of Primary English in Initial Teacher Education. London: NATE/ UKLA. Moore, N.S. and MacArthur, C.A. (2012) The effects of being a reader and of observing readers on fifth-grade students’ argumentative writing and revising. Springer Science + Business Media B.V. Read Writ 25, 1449–1478. Muncie, J. (2000) Using written teacher feedback in EFL composition classes. ELT Journal 54 (1), 47–53. Odell, L. (1980) Business writing: Observations and implications for teaching composition. Theory Into Practice 19 (3), 225–232. Ollin, R. (2008) Silent pedagogy and rethinking classroom practice: Structuring teaching through silence rather than talk. Cambridge Journal of Education 38 (2), 265–280. Orsolini, M. and Pontecorvo, C. (1992) Children’s talk in classroom discussions. Cognition and Instruction 9 (2), 113–136. Paulus, T.M. (1999) The effect of peer and teacher feedback on student writing. Journal of Second Language Writing 8 (3), 265–289. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S10603743(99)80117-9 Petress, K. (2001) The ethics of student classroom silence. Journal of Instructional Psychology 28 (2). See http://www.freepatentsonline.com/article/Journal-InstructionalPsychology/76696357.html. Plumb, C., Butterfield, D.J.H. and Dunlosky, J. (1994) Testing the processing-deficit and knowledge-deficit hypotheses. Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal 6, 347–360. Rajala, A., Hilppö, J. and Lipponen, L. (2012) The emergence of inclusive exploratory talk in primary students’ peer interaction. International Journal of Educational Research 53, 55–67. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijer.2011.12.011 Reda, M. (2009) Between Speaking and Silence: A Study of Quiet Students. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.

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Reda, M. (2010) What’s the problem with quiet students? Anyone? Anyone? Chronicle of Higher Education 57 (3), A68. See http://chronicle.com/article/Whats-the-ProblemWith-Quiet/124258/. Reutzel, D.R. and Smith, J.A. (2004) Accelerating struggling readers’ progress: A comparative analysis of expert opinion and current research recommendations. Reading and Writing Quarterly 20 (1), 63–89. Sawyer, R.K. and Berson, S. (2004) Study group discourse: How external representations affect collaborative conversation. Linguistics and Education 15, 387–412. Schultz, K. (2009) Rethinking Classroom Participation: Listening to Silent Voices. New York: Teachers College Press. Scott, P.H., Mortimer, E.F. and Aguiar, O.G. (2006) The tension between authoritative and dialogic discourse: A fundamental characteristic of meaning making interactions in high school science lessons. Science Education 90 (4), 605–631. Sinclair, J. and Coulthard, M. (1975) Towards an Analysis of Discourse: The English Used by Teachers and Pupils. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sipple, S. (2007) Ideas in practice: Developmental writers’ attitudes toward audio and written feedback. Journal of Developmental Education 30 (3), 22–31. Sommers, N. (1980) Revision strategies of student writers and experienced adult writers. College Composition and Communication 31 (4), 378–388. Stacey, K. and Gooding, A. (1998) Communication and learning in small-group discussions. In H. Steinbring, M. Bartolini Bussi and A. Sierpinska (eds) Language and Communication in the Mathematics Classroom (pp. 191–206). Reston, VA: National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. Stallard, C.K. (1974) An analysis of the behavior of good student writers. Research in the Teaching of English 8, 206–218. Vassa, E., Littleton, K., Miell, D. and Jones, A. (2008) The discourse of collaborative creative writing: Peer collaboration as a context for mutual inspiration. Thinking Skills and Creativity 3,192–202. Webb, N. and Mastergeorge, A. (2003) Promoting effective helping behavior in peerdirected groups. International Journal of Educational Research 39, 73–97. Wegerif, R., Littleton, K., Dawes, L., Mercer, N. and Rowe, D. (2004) Widening access to educational opportunities through teaching children how to reason together. Westminster Studies in Education 27 (2). Williams, C. and Pilonieta, P. (2012) Using interactive writing instruction with kindergarten and first-grade English language learners. Early Childhood Education 40, 145–150. Wong, E.D. (1991) Beyond the question/nonquestion alternative in classroom discussion. Journal of Educational Psychology 83 (1), 159–162. Yin, R. (2003) Case Study Research: Design and Methods. Applied Social Research Methods, Vol. 5. London: Sage.

Frequency 80 20% 310 11% 41 25% 35 20% 4 5% 16 17% 2 10% 0 0% 0 0% 22 19%

Language feature (1) Turns to indicate participant control or engagement with the process (Rajala et al., 2012)

(8) Adverbs (e.g. very, sort of, a bit, quite, really) to evaluate draft writing and to indicate critical reflection (Farr & Riordan, 2012) (9) Adjectives (e.g. good, better, interesting) and verbs (e.g. like, love) to show positive evaluation and to indicate supportive relationships

(10) yes or yea and adjectives (e.g. sure, okay) to show engaged listening and to indicate supportive relationships

(7) because to indicate participants justifying ideas

(6) Questions

(5) Number of turns 10 or more words long

(4) Number of turns between four and nine words long

(2) Words spoken to indicate participant control or engagement with the process (Rajala et al., 2012) (3) Number of turns three words or less

Alison

Indicators of ‘active and dialogic’

17 15%

6 21%

75 18% 370 14% 33 20% 30 17% 12 15% 5 6% 4 20% 6 26%

Cem

52 44%

124 30% 660 24% 72 45% 49 28% 13 17% 4 4% 6 30% 13 57% 7 25%

Susan

Appendix 7.1 Frequency of Active and Dialogic Indicators and Idea Development

(Continued)

26 22%

129 32% 1418 51% 16 10% 63 35% 50 63% 67 73% 8 40% 4 17% 15 54%

Teacher

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Frequency 2 4 1 1

Idea development

(1) New idea introduced (2) Refine ideas previously introduced (3) Extend ideas previously introduced (4) Elaborate on ideas previously introduced

(15) we to indicate group cohesiveness

(14) I think or I’m thinking to indicate different perspectives and cognitive processes

(13) no to indicate authority or conflict

(12) Imperatives and words indicating obligation e.g. should, must

1 20% 10 19% 1 2% 1 2%

6 14 2 6

1 20% 5 10% 2 5% 7 15%

Frequency 2 14 4% 25%

(11) Words indicating possibility (e.g. might, maybe, could) and giving choice and ownership to the group

Language feature

Cem

Alison

Indicators of ‘active and dialogic’

8 11 5 5

3 60% 13 25% 18 44% 5 10%

14 25%

Susan

8 21 9 5

0 0% 24 46% 20 49% 35 73%

26 46%

Teacher

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8

Giving Learners a Voice: A Study of the Dialogic ‘Quality’ of Three Episodes of Teacher– Learner Talk-in-interaction in a Language Classroom Jean Baptiste Kremer

Introduction Classroom discourse or ‘talk that takes place in the course of educational activities’ (Mercer & Littleton, 2007: 1) has been identified as a rich source of teaching and learning by a growing body of recent socioculturally oriented research (see Boyd & Markarian, 2011; cf. Skidmore, Chapter 6, current volume). The underlying assumption is that there is a correlation between effective classroom talk and language learning affordances that can be exploited jointly by teacher and learner. Yet a number of gaps in this field of educational research need to be further addressed, for example the question of how language learning can be made more visible on a moment-by-moment basis, particularly in relation to different levels of learner proficiency. Arguably, more studies ought to be conducted to ascertain how selective and tactful dialogic interaction needs to be, primarily to leave no student behind, but also to engage students in deeper learning. Multilingual classrooms in countries such as Luxembourg could provide an interesting testing ground, which in return could produce data on how to facilitate proficiency in English more effectively, especially given that the higher the sociolinguistic competence a learner can demonstrate, the fuller the participation in multicultural and professional life (s)he can achieve. The aim of the present study is to investigate the dialogic ‘quality’ of three dyadic student teacher–student exchanges selected over a 45-minute period of an English language lesson. The choice of episodes is dictated by three research questions: (a) whether initial teacher talk ‘sets the tone’ for the rest of the 135

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lesson; (b) to what degree ‘the tone’ is sustained or changes during the lesson; and (c) to what extent learner participation in the task activity is promoted. The first section of the chapter will focus on a discussion of aspects of language learning relevant to this study in the light of Vygostkyan socialcultural theories and the work of Bakhtin (1986; cf. Chapter 2, current volume). A brief section each on context and methodology with a focus on conversation analysis (CA) will be followed by a thorough analysis of the three transcripts of dialogic exchanges. In the final section, appropriate conclusions will be drawn and a set of recommendations formulated with regard to teacher education.

Theoretical Framework Recent research within the field of second language development has brought to light the importance of the social, interactional dimensions for language learning and development (Kramsch & Whiteside, 2007; van Compernolle & Williams, 2013). Highly relevant to this is the dialogic process unfolding within the given teacher–student-task or potentially student– student-task participation framework that gives adolescent learners their voice in the classroom setting. In the same vein, the sociocultural heterogeneity inherent in many a classroom can be particularly learning enriching for the formation of ideas and critical thinking skills in moments of interaction. Solid educational and political support for this argument comes from the recommendations outlined in the CEFR (Council of Europe, 2001), which stresses the value and importance of the learner’s intercultural competence as an essential prerequisite to communicating in today’s global world. Consequently, a matter of cardinal importance for educational practice is the implementation of the concept of situatedness on the one hand, and dialogic interaction on the other, with language functioning as the cultural tool per se enabling learning and thus participation in the English speaker Community of Practice (cf. Chapter 12, current volume). In his analysis of discourse, Bakhtin (1986) creates a dialogical framework that relies on ‘polyphony’ and assumes that everything ‘addresses’ us, meaning we are committed and respond to it. Indeed, central to Bakhtin’s theory are the notions of addressivity as well as reciprocity (cf. Chapter 2, current volume). Bakhtin himself defines the former as ‘the quality of turning to someone else’ (Bakhtin, 1986: 99). This idea of paying attention to and tuning in to outside voices also resonates with Clark and Holquist (1984: 217), who label addressivity as ‘the awareness of the otherness of language in general and of given dialogic partners in particular’. Thus, ‘a capacity to respond to “otherness”, to signal reciprocity (not necessarily harmonious or tolerant), in relation to a speaker or text is what makes an utterance dialogic — hence meaningful’ (Haworth, 1999: 99–100).

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A further fundamental concept that buttresses Bakhtin’s theoretical insights is that of heteroglossia – ‘the particularity and plurality of everyday verbal interaction and the specificity of experience’ (Haworth, 1999: 99; cf. Chapter 2, current volume). In fact, distributed speech and thinking are at the core of dialogicality, which means that a speaker’s utterances do not appear in isolation but are ‘a link in a very complexly organised chain of other utterances’ (Bakhtin, 1986: 69). In a dialogic classroom, therefore, the voices of the teacher and students collaboratively work towards a ‘principled understanding’ or ‘common knowledge’. These phrases coined by Edwards and Mercer (1987) denote the idea whereby ‘a student essentially understands the “how” of certain procedures and processes and the “why” of certain conclusions’ (Sharpe, 2008: 133). However, this interaction does not necessarily imply a convergence zone of opinion in which unanimous consensus among its participants prevails. On the contrary, reciprocity holds the potential for ‘disharmony’. Student voices may beg to differ as a result of a multicultural classroom configuration, or because of the adolescent’s independent, dissenting nature, which contributes to the process of negotiation and construction of meaning. As for the shift in participation patterns in dyadic interaction tasks, this may in practice take the shape of speaker as ‘animator’, ‘author’ or ‘principal’ on the one hand, and hearer, bystander or overhearer on the other (Goffman, 1981; cf. Chapter 11, current volume). In brief, these particular ‘forms of involvement’ (Goodwin, 1999) can be recognised by structural changes in footing (Goffman, 1981), or ‘changes of alignment’ between participants in the way they ‘manage the production or reception of an utterance’ (Goffman, 1981: 128). Thus, what really matters in a lesson is the opportunities for participation which the teacher’s discourse affords, be it through shifts of footing dependent on the production format of individual, pair or group work, or through teacher–cohort interaction (Hellermann, 2008). Finally, Alexander encapsulates dialogic teaching by defining it as an approach to teaching which is grounded in principles of collectivity, reciprocity, support, cumulation and purposefulness (Alexander, 2006). With a clear emphasis on the link between talk and autonomous thinking, Alexander echoes Nystrand’s perspicacious definition of learning, ‘the extent to which [teaching] requires students to think, not just to report someone else’s thinking’ (Nystrand, 1997: 72). And that is why it is so important for teachers to give learners a voice in the language classroom, allowing for a shared communicative space or intermental development zone where ‘a teacher and a learner can stay attuned to each other’s changing states of knowledge and understanding over the course of an educational activity’ (Mercer & Littleton, 2007: 21). The very intricacy of the interaction-in-progress might, however, become too overwhelming for the less experienced practitioner to cope with, provoking the danger of classroom talk developing into monologic recitation at best and incoherent shared discourse devoid of purposefulness at worst. By the same token, the unpredictable nature of exploratory talk-in-progression

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might lead to insecurity in the (novice) teacher who might find him/herself unable to rely on a scripted type of talk, and might thus fail to respond to, understand or even value the ideas, arguments and judgements put forward by the participants. In sum, adopting a dialogic stance constitutes a daunting challenge that needs to be addressed, purposefully and tactfully. Nevertheless, the controversy and enthusiasm a complex or disputational talk on a topic selected for discussion frequently engenders represents a valuable resource in fostering learners’ language, critical thinking and retention skills. The more equipped the teacher is for such a possible scenario with an extensive repertoire of talk strategies, the more effectively (s)he can guide his/her learners in their ‘growing knowing’ (Wells, 2006), rather than in their mere accumulation of declarative knowledge.

Context The data for this study were collected at a secondary school in Luxembourg. The three excerpts of teacher–learner talk-in-interaction were part of a 45-minute English language lesson recorded with the help of a video-camera with a built-in microphone, located at the back of the classroom. As head of the local teacher education programme I observed the lesson and provided relevant feedback during a post-lesson supervisory meeting with the student teacher concerned. The class in which the lesson was taught consisted of 26 students with a 50:50 gender ratio. The average age was 16, and learners were in their fourth year of English as a foreign language. By mutual agreement, the lesson was filmed two months into the school year to ensure that the student teacher and her class had established a history of shared lesson experience, and had become accustomed to one another’s interaction styles and behaviour.

Methodology This study relies on basic methods of CA (see Appendix) to inform sociocultural understandings of language learning. There are justifiable grounds to adopt this approach, as educational research has demonstrated the complementarity of CA and sociocultural theories (van Compernolle, 2010). Yet there remain certain reservations related to CA’s capacity to take into account extralinguistic contexts of classroom talk such as relevant affective factors, vocalics or paralanguage through which messages are believed to be conveyed. Rymes (2009), for one, argues that video-cameras and microphones cannot possibly capture the richness and complexity of social and cultural context. The ethical issues related to the recording of the lesson in the class were also fully addressed by both the student teacher and the researcher. Pseudonyms have been used to protect the identity of the student teacher

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and students. To reproduce the naturalness of speech as accurately as possible, I have attempted to render the sequentiality of classroom talk and the precise timing of participants’ verbal moves and utterances, including nonverbal gestures, in the best possible manner.

Analysis and Discussion of Data Anne’s main aim in this lesson was to give her students a voice by inviting them to share the findings of the homework set in the previous lesson. The task involved identifying the defining characteristics of articles from The Times and The Sun. The topic of both articles was the Greek bailout crisis in the Eurozone. The headline of The Times article read, ‘Eurozone chiefs lose patience with Greece after referendum puts bailout at risk’, while The Sun’s colourful headline proclaimed ‘Greece loses its marbles’. To facilitate students’ note taking, a Powerpoint template had been divided into six different categories: language, content, style, values and attitude, photographs, and headlines (Figure 8.1).

Figure 8.1 Powerpoint template

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The first excerpt of teacher–learner talk-in-interaction is based on the underlying assumption that the teacher’s dialogic stance ‘sets the tone’ for what follows. It is characterised by a teacher-led, whole class discussion in keeping with the IRE/F pattern (Sinclair & Coulthard, 1975). Within this pattern, the teacher’s role is similar to what Vygotsky (1997) referred to as the ‘rickshaw puller’ role, where the teacher is literally drawing the class in the direction set beforehand. In this particular case, Anne nominates a student and raises a question (initiation), expecting the student to offer a readymade list of appropriate words (response); then comes the evaluation/ feedback stage where she either gives her stamp of approval by repeating the word or declines it and offers the question to the whole class again. Finally, adding her comments on a learner’s contribution marks a boundary whereby a new round of questioning may begin. In the first segment (lines 1–16) of Excerpt 8.1, the typical IRE/F pattern is interspersed by the teacher’s instructions to her ‘secretary’, a learner who is operating the Powerpoint show from the teacher’s front desk.

Excerpt 8.1 (begins at time stamp 6:24 and ends at 8:40) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23

Teacher:

Lena: Teacher:

Student: Teacher:

Patrick:

(Teacher reading out answer from a student’s exercise book at the front of the classroom) Beleaguered. Yeah.(.) The beleaguered Eurozone. (Teacher nodding head walking towards student at front desk who is operating power point show by writing answer on slide for whole class display, teacher turning to student) Put it into (.) brackets (.)behind (Inaudible) capital […] (waiting for student to write phrase on slide) Beleaguered (.) Who can spell? (facing the class again) Lena. B.e.l.e.a.g.u.(.)r.e.d. Yeah. Eurozone.(.) What does “beleaguered” mean? (silence from the class) Very close to a German word (.) (teacher pointing her head at a student in back of class) Yes? “Belagert” (Teacher nodding her head, instructing the student operating the Powerpoint). What other language aspects did you find for The Times? (.) Perhaps complex vocabulary? Did it use any (.) any metaphors? (.) or puns? (.) Do you only have complex language then? (.) complex vocabulary? Or anything else? Patrick? (Teacher looking at student raising his hand) They did use word plays.

Giv ing Lear ners a Voice

24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39

Teacher: Student X: Teacher: Student X: Teacher: Student X: Teacher: Student X: Student Y: Student X: Teacher: Student X: Teacher:

141

They did use word plays, yeah. Good word plays. Good word plays? Because the others are bad. How are these ones good and the other ones bad? Can you give us an example of a good [wordplay? We have for (.) for The Times we have Merkozy (.) [and then [Yes, they coined a new word. And then for The Sun we have (.) there it is smaller (.) they’re more (.) More crazy. They’re more crazy. Yes. I think the others have got more(.) style. (nodding her head) Okay!

Considering the teacher’s first turn (lines 1–9), it is noticeable that Anne is only too happy to get started with a correct response to the first question about relevant examples of language use in The Times. After experiencing initial classroom management problems and consequently receiving no immediate response from her students, she ‘simply reads out’ from one of their exercise books, and emphatically uses ‘Yeah’ to underline her relief at having established a minimal participation framework: ‘Beleaguered’ (line 2). However, the contribution is grounded through an acceptance phase by the teacher quoting the student’s words, which then authorises the participants to proceed in their talk. Before expanding the participation framework, Anne chooses first to reassure her ‘secretary’ through her use of body language (nodding in line 3) and proxemics (her closeness to him in line 4). The secretary’s role is pivotal in the mediation process as both the teacher and his peers rely on his spelling and note taking. Anne has promoted one of her students to be her assistant and given him ‘a special voice’, which comes with great responsibility on the one hand, but can also expose him to peer criticism for misspelling, for example, on the other. Yet, unlike his peers, he is not only cast in the role of overhearer and note taker in the dialogic progression, he is also granted the status of the recipient of talk, as can be seen in Excerpt 8.3. To ascertain that he is on target, Anne patiently gives him lengthy instructions as to how to fill in the first Powerpoint slide (lines 5–8). Her next initiation move is triggered by her response to the secretary’s hesitation in spelling the key word ‘beleaguered’. She spontaneously offers the word back to the whole class, and readily counters their silence by nominating Lena as first recipient of speech. Interestingly, it is her utterance (the correct spelling of

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‘beleaguered’) that effectively contributes to the settling down of the class. In a sense, it could also be considered as a boundary that signals the transition from teacher–secretary interaction to teacher–cohort interaction (Hellermann, 2008). In the following turn (line 11), Anne demonstrates her awareness of the multilingual classroom reality, her ability to set up appropriate scaffolding ‘at the point of need’ (Sharpe, 2008), combined with her concern to facilitate ‘semiotic uptake’ (Wertsch & Stone, 1985). What she performs in this turn, by insisting on learners making use of a German language hook (line 12) to help with the phrase ‘beleaguered’, is an exemplification of the concept of ‘contingent scaffolding’ (Van Lier, 1996). Instead of opting for a transmissive role of ‘filling the vessels’, she assigns responsibility to the learners to seek clarification of the new lexical item, albeit through guided participation. Approval for this more dialogically oriented approach comes promptly from a student in line 15 (‘Belagert’), whose contribution is in turn validated by Anne’s nodding. In sum, Anne’s talk is purposeful as it seeks to gradually create an ‘intersubjective space’ (Mercer, 2007) that is cumulatively constructed through a process of ‘negotiated scaffold’ and reciprocity. As will be demonstrated in the second segment of Excerpt 8.1, her dialogic strategies to afford opportunities for participation and learning seem to be bearing fruit. Anne’s objective in this segment (lines 17–39) is made clear at the turn taking in line 17 designed to generate forward momentum in her plenary discussion. As ‘speaker’ she reiterates her goal of eliciting further examples typical of language use in The Times. However, what marks a subtle transformation from the previous IRE/F mode of exchange is that the ensuing interplay tends to be more dialogically driven and spontaneous, with a minimal recitation script available to the animator of the discussion. Broadly in tune with Alexander’s beliefs of dialogism, the teacher’s multiple questions provided as cues in lines 17–22 provoke a wave of answers and further questioning on word plays. Due to this cumulative effect in lines 23–38, the participants build on their own knowledge and share each other’s ideas so as to produce coherent talk and thinking, a condition for learning. Most noticeably, the classroom discourse takes on a dimension which is characterised by a visible turnaround in the learners’ trajectory of participation in the task, also understood as a shift in footing (Goffman, 1981). More precisely, as shown by their contributions, three students place themselves strategically along the continuum of increasing participation, alternating hearer and speaker and thus making their voice heard in the classroom. Concrete evidence of enlarging the participatory framework comes in the shape of Anne’s ‘pivot move’ (Sharpe, 2008) eliciting explanation and justification from the students, which is signalled by the prosodic feature of rising intonation (‘Good word plays?’) and the subsequent question (‘Can you give us an example of a good word play?’) in turns 26 and 28,

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respectively. For the first time Anne acts contingently to student responses through ‘increasing the prospectiveness in the feedback move’ (Wells, 1995). This in turn places the recipients of talk under pressure to elaborate these responses (turns 30, 33–34, 35, 36, 38). Although minimalist in terms of language use, the contributions as such confirm to the teacher her learners’ engagement with and understanding of the task in the opening stages of the lesson. This dialogic spell is a welcoming reassurance to all the participants involved in the process of establishing a framework for analysing the difference of language employed in the broadsheet and tabloid press. To support this claim, it is worth underlining that, quantitatively, teacher talk in the second segment of Excerpt 8.1 reduces considerably compared to the previous segment. This shift of participation opens up the floor to the learners. The fact that the latter appreciate their new production status is underpinned by the two successive turns in lines 33–36: student X’s determined attempt to hold the floor despite hesitation (lines 33–34) finds instant support from student Y, who volunteers ‘more crazy’ (line 35). In this case it is the student, independently from the teacher, who on a micro level erects contingent scaffolding or guided participation to assist his peer in his search for the appropriate word to fit the context. Bakhtin’s concepts of addressivity and reciprocity are at play here, whereby multiple voices contribute to the co-construction of meaning and by implication to a humorous change of perspective. Rather than passively accepting the teacher’s authoritative voice, students X and Y are briefly exploiting the intersubjective forum created by the teacher. This allows them to produce and explore language and advance their understanding of the varied journalistic techniques displayed in the two newspapers. The outcome is subtly summed up by student X’s utterance in turn 38 (‘I think the others have got more style’). Finally, this micro chain of heteroglossic speech is closed by the teacher validating through verbal and non-verbal communication (turns 37, 39) the collaborative effort of her students. Her role has been recast into a bystander and attentive listener, who adds a positive assessment of newly generated meaning. In brief, the first episode has demonstrated that the pattern underlying initial teacher talk can be identified as the IRE/F sequence and that, once Anne and her learners feel more settled, she is ready to adopt a more dialogic stance allowing for more participation and co-construction of new understanding. Arguably, the IRE/F exchange is instrumental in helping her ‘test the waters’, i.e. students’ prior knowledge of the topic and homework preparation. Conversely, genuine opportunity for learning is created by an increase of the intersubjective space, purposefully enlarged to allow learners to make their voices heard. Two learners subsequently respond by demonstrating ‘higher order’ discourse skills in turns 33 and 38. Whether this ‘opening up tone’ in the dialogue is maintained for the subsequent phase of the lesson will be validated by a detailed analysis of a second episode.

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Excerpt 8.2 (begins at time stamp 28:46 and ends at 29:46) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22

Teacher: Secretary: Teacher: Secretary: Teacher: Secretary: Teacher: Patrick: Teacher: Patrick: Teacher:

Patrick: Student Z:

Teacher:

Does The Sun take a particular side? (.) Do you think it’s biased? or is it objective as well? No, it’s subjective. (turning to secretary) It is subjective. What is it biased? (.) What is it biased by? (hand gestures) Ahh. Err. Workers. What?(.) Workers? (pointing head at secretary) The same as (inaudible). Okay […] (turning back to class) Versus Greece. Against Greece? Yes. (turning to secretary) So (.) biased (.) What makes you think it’s biased against (.) Greece only? (hand gesture) (.) Patrick, why is it only Greece or is there an underlying subject that might be biased (hand gesture) (.) (inaudible) They are generally trying to provoke but they aren’t taking any special side (.) they are […] on just (.) every subject they report about (.) they’re trying to provoke. They’re trying to provoke (.) yes, but …

Excerpt 8.2 picks up on the previous teacher-led, whole class plenary discussion; this time, the discourse focus turns to the question of whether the article on Greece in The Sun is biased or not. The main characteristic of this one-minute episode is that the IRE/F pattern still informs the classroom talk with Anne ‘pulling the rickshaw’ in the pre-set direction. Compared to Excerpt 8.1, however, instruction-giving has been reduced to a minimum. Indeed, it is much less of a distractive factor for the teacher who can now focus more on her students’ responses and contributions. Another noticeable factor is that the secretary has even become the recipient of talk in turns 3, 6 and 8, autonomously participating in the conversation. This refocusing on the essentials of talk has increased the overall fluency of the face-to-face interaction for the benefit of language production and, by extension, language acquisition. And lastly, the typology of questions has shifted to some degree in favour of more referential questions, which naturally has opened up the floor for personal and critical voices, in turns 3 and 18, for example, making the participation framework more open ended and exploratory as a closer analysis will reveal.

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In the first teacher turn the open question ‘Do you think it’s biased?’ sets the tone for a more dialogic approach, enabling learners to express their personal opinion on the subject matter. One possible explanation of this marked shift in the teacher’s stance could be Anne’s increased level of confidence at this point in the lesson. Although the turn taking between Anne and her secretary in lines 3–6 is marked by relative spontaneity and fluency, the fact that this rapid verbal exchange ends with an apparent non sequitur (‘Workers’) and a mumble (lines 6, 8) takes Anne aback, which is evident through her body language and prosody (lines 7, 9). Anne’s efforts to recycle the key lexical item ‘biased’ at the start of this episode lead to the secretary’s misunderstanding and show that more explanation of the term by the teacher would have helped. This being said, the misconstruction mainly originates from the secretary’s response being related to the political bias of The Sun, whereas the teacher’s pre-written script had only anticipated an answer related to the article’s anti-Greek stance. What this exchange reveals then is the teacher’s need to identify the misconception on the learner’s part and perhaps initiate self-repair. Instead of this line and to minimise loss of time at this stage, Anne takes a microdecision to open the floor to everyone in the classroom, a move she nonverbally announces by turning her body back to face the class (line 9). The aim of this strategy, also known as undirected elicitation (Schwab, 2011), is to sustain the flow of the dialogue-in-progression. That it proves successful here is made clear by the rapid succession of first Patrick’s brief response (line 10), which is then linguistically repaired by the teacher (line 11), followed by Patrick’s acceptance (line 12). Furthermore, turn 13 must be considered in the light of the teacher’s concern to maintain the dynamic flux of classroom interaction. Anne pulls together the discussion thread and, by means of cued elicitation supported by expressive hand gesture, encourages the expansion of the idea of ‘bias’ in The Sun article. After a minimal check of the secretary’s spelling of the word ‘biased’ (line 13), she re-nominates Patrick (line 15), expecting him to have given further thought to the subject meanwhile. With respect to the participation framework, this voice-giving move is justified since it was Patrick, as author and animator of the verbal exchange, who had initiated the present line of thinking in line 10. Noteworthy also is Anne’s scaffolding, in particular her use of ‘or’ (line 15), which offers Patrick a choice as to potential responses to the teacher’s question. Unfortunately, this opening strategy proves ineffective, as the interlocutor is either too overwhelmed or unprepared, as his incoherence in line 17 reveals. However, the turn by student Z (lines 18–20) validates the previous observation that the participants’ level of confidence in mid-lesson is substantial enough to constructively engage in expressing their opinion openly in public. To put it differently, the teacher’s dialogic stance not only affords student Z the opportunity to take risks but also empowers him to hold the

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floor for a considerable length of time and convince his audience of his arguments concerning The Sun’s bias or lack of it. Indeed, the persuasive quality of his utterance is displayed by discourse markers, accentuation, self-repair and repetition, all of which are used with such firm conviction that the teacher directly acknowledges student Z’s contribution by echoing his wording (line 21). To summarise then, far from relying on a limited participatory framework of talk, Anne demonstrates in Excerpt 8.2 that by enlarging the intersubjective space, in particular by opening up her questions, she has encouraged participants to voice their personal opinion. From a perspective of Community of Practice or situated learning theory, language use linked with cognitive development is facilitated by socio-interactive, participatory practices within a classroom community. As seen in turn 18, it is informed by a shift in the students’ trajectory of participation in the task activity. With regard to Anne’s tentative dialogic stance at the inception of the lesson, it has evolved, gained in strength and helped construct learner participation. Further evidence of this positive development comes to light in the following analysis of the third and final episode (Excerpt 8.3), situated towards the end of the lesson.

Excerpt 8.3 (begins at time stamp 39:47 and ends at 41:55) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

Teacher:

Secretary:

Teacher: Secretary: Teacher: Secretary: Teacher:

Inema: Teacher:

Secretary:

And how does that compare to the headline in The Sun article? (.)(looking round at class waiting for answer, then turning to student operating Powerpoint at main desk) They give all the information included (.) in the article (.) Erm, I think there are more information in the […] if you read the headline, [Yeah then you don’t need to read the (.) article In which article? In which? In The Sun, because they just (.) go round [ (teacher interrupting student’s speech) I’m not sure that I agree there (turning to class). Can someone read the headline from the article from The Sun? (.) (silence) Inema? “Greece Loses Its Marbles”. Yes, “Greece loses Its Marbles”, does that (.) tell you a lot about (.) what you expect from the article? (waiting for answer, raising hands) Not really.(turning to student at main desk) You said that (.) the small headlines [

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21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38

Teacher: Secretary: Teacher:

Georges: Teacher: Georges: Teacher:

Secretary: Teacher:

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The smaller headlines above the paragraph (hand gesture) […] under the big ones. You know the headlines (hand gesture)(.) the big ones you mean, okay, yes, there are (.) sort of big headlines with big paragraphs in The Sun, but the main big headline (hand gesture)(.) What does it do? (.) Annalena? What does it do? (.) What is the effect? (.) (silence) Vic? (.) Georges? It catches your attention.[ Yes! You want to read on. Mmmh! And that is for The Sun (.) The Sun, yes. (giving instructions to the student at main desk)(.) And how does it do that? (facing the class again) How does it capture your attention? Big flashy titles. Yeah, Good! (hand gesture) Flashy titles!

In general, this excerpt corroborates the view that the participation framework has been enlarged and sustained to accommodate students’ critical voices in the ongoing dyadic task interaction. What in the initial episode had been a tentative approach to establishing and exploring ‘an intermental development zone’ (Mercer, 2007), has evolved in the course of the lesson towards a more deliberate strategy to promote learners’ autonomous thinking. Several indicators in this final excerpt point to this dialogic development. First, there is a segment of talk (lines 1–24) disclosing a zone of divergent opinion, which illustrates the point made earlier that a dialogic classroom does not necessarily imply universal consensus and harmony among its participants. For the first time in the lesson Anne feels actually challenged to justify her opinion and win over her audience by resorting to persuasive verbal and non-verbal communication. As a result of or because of this pressure, Anne appears to be more emotionally involved in the current topic of discussion centred on newspaper headlines and their effect on the reader. Compared with Excerpts 8.1 and 8.2, there is an increased degree of dialogicality observable in the plurality of verbal interaction, i.e. in the distributed speech and thinking. In fact, the first part of the episode, albeit based on a misunderstanding, holds the potential for a debate, which in practice enables learners to contribute to their ‘growing knowing’ (Wells, 2006). A closer analysis reveals that with her opening question Anne aims to engage students in comparing the headlines in the two newspapers. She hands over the floor to the class, first without officially addressing any participant in particular, and then, after a silence, turning to her secretary as the

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addressed recipient (lines 1–3). It is precisely the choice of this evaluation question (‘how does that compare to’, line 1) that sets the dialogic ‘tone’ of the passage. Indeed, it underpins the teacher’s goal to promote deeper learning, or intramental activity, through situated, participatory contexts or intermental activity. The turn taking (lines 4–6), which the secretary uses to posit a possible interpretation of The Sun’s headline, serves to prove this claim. Anne’s brief turns (7, 9) can be understood as discursive prompts here to support the production format, and for the speaker/author to maintain the fluency and hold the floor. However, Anne, unfortunately, cuts short the secretary’s voice in turn 12, thereby leaving him no time and space to develop and clarify his argument appropriately. The following segment (lines 13–26) makes it clear that the reason for this abrupt move (line 12), is based on a simple misunderstanding concerning the size and layout of the headlines on Greece in The Sun. Whereas the teacher focused specifically on the main headline (‘Greece Loses Its Marbles’), the secretary interpreted the ensemble of headlines on the page, which naturally justifies his response that there is no need to read the actual article (line 8). By contrast, Anne keeps to her pre-prepared script, counter-arguing that the main headline in The Sun does not reveal anything about the content of the article. At this point, evidence of her emotional commitment and her argumentative tone is provided by repetition of the main headline (line 16). Prosodic features like the accentual emphasis of ‘someone’ in line 13 or the frequency of pauses suggesting hesitation, but perhaps more visibly by the excessive use of hand gestures (lines 18, 22, 24, 27), underline this. The latter might also be an indicator of Anne’s need to buttress the credibility of her argument, while self-answering her own question in line 18 (‘Not really’), or might be related to her need to press on with the task. In short, this segment highlights a typical feature of dialogic pedagogy, namely its inherently unpredictable nature, which often requires changes of alignment between participants insofar as they manage the reception of an utterance (Goffman, 1981). To a novice teacher like Anne, it shows the need to be well equipped with a repertoire of talk strategies to respond to learners’ views and arguments and to guide them in their trajectory of participation so that their voices are heard and validated. This is true especially in a disputational talk context, in which the teacher needs to rely on a creative and flexible mindset to turn situations as discussed above into learning affordances, in this case by allowing the secretary to clarify his thinking. That the secretary is willing to stand his ground in the discussion and, furthermore, to win back the floor in turns 20 and 23 in order to express his view on the headlines, stands him in good stead. Such a display of independent thinking on behalf of a participant can only contribute to the dialogic ‘quality’ of talk-in-interaction and facilitate a progression without the teacher imposing her opinions and proving superiority and power. In Anne’s case, the misunderstanding is overcome

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linguistically by her use of the discourse marker ‘but’ and the adjective ‘main’ (line 26), as well as non-verbally by her hand gesture (line 27). These boundary markers signal an attempt to realign the discussion in accordance with her intended focus – in other words, she invites her students to reflect on the principal headline and its effect on the reader. The final segment (lines 26–38) confirms Anne’s strong emotional involvement in the unfolding discussion. In fact, addressing three students in rapid succession (lines 27–29) can be understood as an indicator of her eagerness to galvanise her students into action as the lesson is drawing to a close. Georges’ contribution (line 30) is swiftly grounded by Anne (line 31) whose acknowledgement act in turn encourages Georges to hold the floor and elaborate his utterance (line 32). This turn taking reveals that the dialogic mode of exchange has somehow been restored, that there is progression again, and that Anne is navigating in calmer waters. Giving instructions to the secretary to note down Georges’ contribution can also be considered as a public act of validation and motivation to the speaker (lines 33–34). By facing the class (line 35) Anne offers the floor back to the class with a reformulated question on how the headline captures the reader’s attention (lines 35–36). The finale of this excerpt bears the stamp of the secretary: his determination to move from ‘legitimate peripheral’ participation in the Community of Practice to fuller participation is all the more remarkable in light of the former critical incident. Indeed, his valuable contribution (‘Big flashy titles’, line 37) is received gratefully by Anne, as underlined by her body language, prosody and echoing the speaker’s utterance (line 38). In a sense, the excerpt closes on a high note, with participants having successfully accomplished the mini task – the teacher through guiding, eliciting, facilitating, realigning and re-voicing, and the learners through lending their voices to the joint construction of meaning. Although active participation and language output appears limited in the course of the three episodes analysed, it would be incorrect to assume that actual learning and critical thinking has occurred only among the speakers involved actively. Recent research has demonstrated the existence of two legitimate types of interactants in a classroom community: the primary interlocutors who actively speak; and the secondary ones who through forms of active reception also partake of the primary interaction and mediation (van Compernolle & Williams, 2013). These forms of secondary or vicarious interaction include private or self-directed speech (Ohta, 2001), embodied actions (Mortensen, 2009) and writing (Ohta, 2001). Thus, the simultaneous note taking and discussion implemented by Anne right from the start may be justified as a way of facilitating the secondary interactants’ active engagement in the task and promoting learning and cognitive development among all students. The designation of one student as a secretary seems to have provided him with a stepping stone to becoming an active participant in the

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lesson, also because of Anne’s physical proximity to him and her frequent instructions and encouragements in his direction.

Conclusions and Recommendations That Anne is increasingly successful in establishing a more dialogic framework during the course of the lesson has been evidenced by the previous analysis. The more credit to her and her students as the task, which involved an understanding of puns and idioms, proved quite challenging at times. Clearly at the outset, initial teacher talk does not ‘set the dialogical tone’ for the rest of the lesson. Anne is too preoccupied with instruction giving and vocabulary/idiom clarifying to allow more exploratory talk to develop. As a result of her tight orchestration, the level of dialogicality thus remains quite low in Excerpt 8.1. The tone takes a turn during Excerpt 8.2 when learner motivation to actively participate in the teacher-conducted discussion becomes more visible and a gradual transfer of roles begins to take shape. While Anne is still in the driving seat, making sure of keeping her class on target, some students readily contribute their personal voice to accomplishing the task in hand. Towards the end of the lesson, teacher talk develops into a passionate voice against voice, stichomythic form of verbal exchange in Excerpt 8.3. All in all, the three episodes demonstrate that Anne’s choice of an eclectic pattern of exchange, ranging from a traditional IRE/F mode to a more exploratory dialogue, is instrumental in jointly constructing new knowledge on the use of language in and attitudes displayed by the British press. The study has revealed that creating a multi-voice classroom is a problematic undertaking. In Anne’s case, a teacher-led tuning-in phase answers the purpose of priming the instruments. However, (self-) confidence among participants needs to be strengthened before dialogic progression can be made. The latter proves highly demanding for both teacher and learner: they need to actively listen to one another and, like actors on a Shakespearean stage, pick up the cues, adjusting and largely improvising their speech. This is the level of talk that requires a more creative mindset, the teacher being more than the craftsman who, technically speaking, knows how to set up a task and ask the right questions. Rather, the teacher must be committed to embracing the role of a performer who shares the stage with fellow actors and simultaneously challenges them to bring out the best in their performance. To put it differently, once learners are given a voice, the classroom turns into a platform where ‘they participate actively in the ongoing interaction, shape or even change the course of it and always perform in front of the others, teachers and fellow students alike’ (Schwab, 2011: 15). In terms of teacher education, this means that improvisational as well as technical skills should be clearly identified and practised in order to enhance dialogic pedagogy. In the same vein as the CEFR (Council of Europe, 2001),

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a grid of descriptors of good practice could be set up to constitute a reference for participants to optimise classroom discourse. I concur with Walsh (2002), who stipulates greater teacher awareness of the link between pedagogic purpose and language use in the classroom. To conclude, the benefit of learning another language is after all not ‘how to curse’, as Caliban in The Tempest angrily remonstrates with his teacher Miranda (‘The red plague rid you for learning me your language’, Act I, Scene 2, lines 366–367). A high priority for teachers must be to promote their learners’ sociolinguistic and intercultural competence so that they are capable of meeting the continuous challenges of globalisation and cultural diversity – all in all, a much nobler aim, which can be achieved if teachers give learners a voice in the language classroom.

References Alexander, R.J. (2006) Towards Dialogic Teaching: Rethinking Classroom Talk. Cambridge: Dialogos. Bakhtin, M.M. (1986) Speech Genres and Other Late Essays (trans. V.W. McGee; ed. C. Emerson and M. Holquist). Slavic Series No. 8. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. Boyd, M.P. and Markarian, W.C. (2011) Dialogic teaching: Talk in service of a dialogic stance. Language and Education 25 (6), 515–534. Clark, K. and Holquist, M. (1984) Mikhail Bakhtin. Cambridge, MA: Belknap of Harvard University Press. Council of Europe (2001) Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Learning, Teaching, Assessment. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Edwards, D. and Mercer, N. (1987) Common Knowledge: The Development of Understanding in the Classroom. London: Routledge. Goffman, E. (1981) Forms of Talk. Oxford: Blackwell. Goodwin, M.H. (1999) Participation. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 9, 177–180. Haworth, A. (1999) Bakhtin in the classroom: What constitutes a dialogic text? Some lessons from small group interaction. Language and Education 13 (2), 99–117. Hellermann, J. (2008) Social Actions for Classroom Language Learning. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Kramsch, C. and Whiteside, A. (2007) Three fundamental concepts in second language acquisition and their relevance in multilingual contexts. Modern Language Journal 91, 907–922. Mercer, N. (2007) Sociocultural discourse analysis: Analysing classroom talk as a social mode of thinking. Journal of Applied Linguistics and Professional Practice 1, 137–168. Mercer, N. and Littleton, K. (2007) Dialogue and the Development of Children’s Thinking. London: Routledge. Mortensen, K. (2009) Establishing recipiency in pre-beginning position in the second language classroom. Discourse Processes 46, 491–515. Nystrand, M., with Gamoran, A., Kachur, R. and Prendergast, C. (1997) Opening Dialogue: Understanding the Dynamics of Language and Learning in the English Classroom. New York: Teachers College Press. Ohta, A. (2001) Second Language Acquisition Processes in the Classroom: Learning Japanese. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Rymes, B. (2009) Classroom Discourse Analysis. A Tool for Critical Reflection. Cresskill, New Jersey: Hampton Press.

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Schwab, G. (2011) From dialogue to multilogue: A different view on participation in the English foreign-language classroom. Classroom Discourse 2 (1), 3–19. Sharpe, T. (2008) How can teacher talk support learning? Linguistics and Education 19, 132–148. Sinclair, J.M. and Coulthard, R.M. (1975) Towards an Analysis of Discourse: The English Used by Teachers and Pupils. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Skidmore, D. (2006) Pedagogy and dialogue. Cambridge Journal of Education 36 (4), 503–514. van Compernolle, R.A. (2010) Incidental microgenetic development in second-language teacher–learner talk-in-interaction. Classroom Discourse 1 (1), 66–81. van Compernolle, R.A. and Williams, L. (2013) Group dynamics in the language classroom: Embodied participation as active reception in the collective zone of proximal development. Classroom Discourse 4 (1), 42–62. Van Lier, L. (1996) Interaction in the Language Curriculum: Awareness, Autonomy and Authenticity. New York: Addison Wesley Longman. Vygotsky, L.S. (1997) Educational Psychology. Boca Raton, FL: St Lucie Press. Walsh, S. (2002) Construction or obstruction: Teacher talk and learner involvement in the EFL classroom. Language Teaching Research 6 (1), 3–23. Wells, G. (1995) Reevaluating the IRF sequence: A proposal for the articulation of theories of activity and discourse for the analysis of teaching and learning in the classroom. Linguistics and Education 5, 1–37. Wells, G. (2006) Monologic and dialogic discourses as mediators of education. Research in the Teaching of English 41 (2), 168–175. Wertsch, J.V. and Stone, A. (1985) The concept of internalization in Vygotsky’s account of the genesis of higher mental functions. In J.V. Wertsch (ed.) Culture, Communication, Cognition (pp. 162–179). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

9

Authoritative Versus Internally Persuasive Discourse David Skidmore

In this chapter I will analyse two examples of classroom discourse which belong to the genre of ‘talk about texts’. Both are excerpts from discussions between a small group of primary school students and their teacher on the topic of short texts of narrative fiction which they have just read together; the discussions are therefore examples of a form of comprehension activity familiar to many classrooms. On the basis of some observable contrasts between the two excerpts, I will raise some theoretical questions about what forms of verbal interaction between students and teacher might best contribute to the development of the students’ independent powers to engage in literacy practices. My concern is not with literacy conceived narrowly in terms of cognitive skills such as decoding or word recognition, nor with oracy per se, i.e. general competence in speaking and listening. It is rather with the role of spoken discourse in enhancing students’ ability to produce meaning from their engagement with written text, in line with the broader understanding of literacy as a sociocultural practice found in recent educational research in this field (Cairney, 1995). An increasing recognition of the close relationship between talk and literacy is found, for example, in the work of Olson, who has argued that the acquisition of literacy should be understood as the ability to participate in institutionalised literate activities (Olson & Torrance, 1991). This leads him to stress the importance for competence in literacy of acquiring an oral metalanguage which makes written text available as an object of reflection; he proposes the term ‘orality’ to distinguish this facility from the more general concept of oracy. There is an affinity between this term and the concept of ‘literate thinking’ proposed by Wells to refer to ‘all those uses of language in which its symbolic potential is deliberately exploited as a tool for thinking’ (Wells, 1989: 253). While for Wells the written mode is not a necessary correlate of literate thinking in all circumstances, collaborative talk about texts is nevertheless an indispensable part of the child’s induction into the literate behaviour of their culture (Wells & Chang-Wells, 1992). 153

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In addition to the broad conception of literacy associated with the sociocultural tradition of research, in my discussion of the transcripts I will also make use of theoretical concepts drawn from the work of the Bakhtin Circle, which I believe may help to illuminate certain qualities of classroom talk from a fresh angle. Dialogism, the umbrella term often used to describe Bakhtinian theory (Brandist, 1997; Holquist, 1990; and cf. Chapter 2, current volume), departs in a number of crucial respects from the assumptions of the dominant approach to language in the West during the 20th century, the discipline of structural linguistics established by the work of Ferdinand de Saussure (1974). Saussure drew a dichotomy between langue, the unified, normative system of language, and parole, the chaotic diversity of speech events, and argued that linguistics should focus on the former. Against this, Bakhtin argued that the idea of language as a closed, self-consistent system is an ideological construct, something always posited, never given; the reality is that, at any historical moment, the totality that we call a language is made up of many different, mutually contradictory languages, refracting the different socio-ideological positions of various social groups (occupations, generations, classes, etc.). Bakhtin introduced the term heteroglossia (and the associated adjective, heteroglot) to describe this condition of internal stratification and differentiation, which he sees as a fundamental, intrinsic property, part of the ontology of language (Bakhtin, 1981: 262–263). A related but contrasting term in Bakhtinian thought is monologism. Strictly speaking, true monologue is a nonpossibility for Bakhtin, but he uses the concept of the monological utterance to identify the tendency in discourse to portray the speaker’s position as the ‘last word’ to be said on the matter, the attempt in practice to effect a closure upon dialogue. Significantly for our present purpose, Bakhtin uses the example of teacher–pupil discourse to illustrate the concept, although I think we should take him to mean that teacher–student talk all too often assumes a monological form, rather than to suggest that it must be or ought to be so: In an environment of … monologism the genuine interaction of consciousnesses is impossible, and thus a genuine dialogue is impossible as well. In essence idealism knows only a single mode of cognitive interaction among consciousnesses: someone who knows and possesses the truth instructs someone who is ignorant of it and in error; that is, it is the interaction of a teacher and a pupil, which, it follows, can only be a pedagogical dialogue. (Bakhtin, 1984: 81, emphasis added) A further distinction which Bakhtin makes which is relevant to the present chapter is that between internally persuasive discourse and authoritative discourse (Bakhtin, 1981: 342 ff.), which can be seen as the expression in actual language use of the pervasive forces of heteroglossia and monologism. Authoritative discourse refers to those forms of language use which present themselves as unchallengeable orthodoxy, formulating a position which is not

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open to debate (for example, religious dogma); it ‘demands our unconditional allegiance’ (Bakhtin, 1981: 343). The semantic structure of internally persuasive discourse, by contrast, is open; it acknowledges the primacy of dialogue, the impossibility of any word ever being final, and for this reason it is ‘able to reveal ever newer ways to mean’ (Bakhtin, 1981: 346, original emphasis). Previous explorations of the significance of Bakhtinian ideas in the context of literacy education include the studies of Nystrand et al. (1997) and Lyle (1998). Interpreting the findings of a two-year study of patterns of classroom discourse in some 400 eighth- and ninth-grade English lessons in 25 US schools, Nystrand found that the prevalent discursive norm was monological, as indicated for example by: a high proportion of teacher-initiated testlike questions; minimal elaboration of students’ responses by the teacher; and students’ attempts to introduce new subtopics being discouraged or ignored by the teacher. By contrast, a different pattern of interaction, which Nystrand calls dialogically organised instruction, was found in a small proportion of classrooms, characterised by the following features: the use of authentic questions, where the answer is not prespecified; uptake, the incorporation of previous answers into subsequent questions; and high-level evaluation, i.e. the extent to which the teacher allows student responses to modify the topic of discourse. In a study of collaborative talk among children attending a Welsh primary school, Lyle (1998) argues that narrative understanding should be seen as a primary meaning-making tool, a central aspect of children’s intellectual development which can be supported by ‘dialogic engagement’ between teacher and students. For Lyle, a dialogic conception of teaching and learning offers an emancipatory alternative to the traditional power relationships of the classroom which tend to reproduce a pedagogy based on the transmission of pre-packaged knowledge. I will endeavour to make clear in what follows those points where there is a correspondence (or contrast) between my findings and the conclusions of these authors. I will also make use in my analysis of the concept of instructional scripts as formulated by Gutierrez (1994), which is consistent with the framework of dialogism, although not cognate with it. On the basis of a three-year ethnographic study of literacy education in nine classrooms, Gutierrez identified three different instructional scripts, viz. recitation, responsive and responsivecollaborative scripts. Features of the recitation script include: a strict IRE discourse pattern (IRE standing for the teacher-led discursive sequence of initiation-response-evaluation, which research has identified as a prototypical pattern of classroom talk between teachers and students: Cazden, 1988; Edwards & Westgate, 1994); teacher selection of student speakers; and teacher initiation of test-like questions to which there is generally only one correct answer. With the responsive script standing between the other two terms as a mixed form, the responsive-collaborative script exhibits contrasting characteristics such as: ‘chaining’ of student responses, whereby student utterances may follow and build on preceding student utterances;

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self-selection by student speakers; and initiation by teacher and students of questions for which there are no specific correct answers.

The Source of the Transcripts The excerpts presented below were gathered by two students following a Masters course led by the author as part of a coursework assignment for a module which included a focus on classroom discourse. Students following the module were asked to record and analyse a sequence of discourse involving interaction between a teacher and school students; the assignment guidelines suggested that a small group discussion activity would be a suitable example. The choice of topic or curriculum area was left to the students; in the event, both of these students chose to record discussions which took place during guided reading sessions within the ‘literacy hour’. (As part of its National Literacy Strategy, the New Labour government introduced a daily literacy hour in primary schools in England from September 1998. The hour was divided into four periods of fixed duration, during which specified forms of organisation and activity were to be used. For 20 minutes of the hour, the teacher might take an ability group for guided reading, while the rest of the class worked independently. It is from discussions during this period that the excerpts below are taken.) As part of the course, students had read and discussed a number of pieces of published educational research which presented and discussed transcripts of classroom discourse (e.g. Cazden, 1988; Edwards & Mercer, 1987; Edwards & Westgate, 1994; Mercer, 1992, 1994). In taught sessions I also introduced and attempted to explicate some of the theoretical concepts which have been developed in this tradition of research, and which were mentioned above (e.g. the IRE sequence, authentic versus test-like questions, instructional scripts). The students who recorded the sequences presented below kindly gave their permission for me to make use of these excerpts in this chapter, and also read and commented on a draft version of the chapter. I have tried to make clear in what follows those points where they disagreed with or wished to qualify my interpretations. Pseudonyms have been used to disguise the identity of the school students. In transcribing the excerpts for this chapter, I have used the conventions set forth in the Appendix (cf. Silverman, 1997). I have also numbered speakers’ turns for ease of reference.

Talk About Texts in the Classroom Sequence 1: True or false? Sequence 1 is taken from a literacy session involving five Year 5 students in a multicultural primary school in south-east England. There was one girl in the group, Fiona, who was identified as having general learning difficulties;

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the four boys each had statements for specific learning difficulties. (One of the boys was silent during the sequence transcribed below.) The group met daily with the female teacher in charge of the school’s resource for specific learning difficulties during the second half of the literacy hour. Before this discussion, the students had taken turns to read a story called ‘Rocky’s Fox’ (Krailing, 1998); they were then asked to consider a series of statements about the story and determine whether they were (i) true, (ii) false, or (iii) there was not enough evidence to decide. They were familiar with this type of task, although the text was new to them. As we join the discussion, they were considering the statement ‘He [i.e. Rocky, the main character] heard a dog barking’. In understanding the sequence it will help the reader to know that, in the story, Rocky hears a barking noise which he knows is not made by a dog; later, a neighbour tells him that it was a fox. One student (Kevin) had already argued that the statement was false, but Fiona disagreed, saying: ‘It’s true ‘cause he did hear a dog barking.’ The teacher re-read the relevant section of the story with Fiona, then continued:

Excerpt 9.1 1

Teacher:

2 3 4

Fiona: Teacher: Students:

5

Teacher:

6 7

Fiona: Teacher:

8

Fiona:

9

Alex:

10

Teacher:

Right. So is it true or false? (Docky) knew the sound (.) erm (.) ‘He heard a dog barking.’ Did he hear in the first picture on the first page did he hear that barking (.) to be a dog? Yes. It wasn’t a dog (.) Fiona. [Fox. [False = = It was false because it was a fox barking. How does he know it was a fox barking? ‘Cause he described it to Mr Keeping later on and Mr Keeping said ha that’s a fox bark. Fox (.) foxes bark like that. Do you understand? Not really do you? Erm. (Fiona shakes her head). Why do you think that it’s a dog barking? You tell me one piece of information from that story to tell you that it’s a dog. Because erm foxes don’t bark and dogs does (.) do. Foxes [do. [OK look at page six Fiona.

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11 12 13

Alex: Teacher: Teacher and Fiona:

14 15 16

Teacher: Fiona: Teacher:

17 18

Fiona: Teacher:

19

Teacher and Fiona:

20 21 22

Teacher: Alex: Teacher:

23 24 25 26 27 28

Fiona: Teacher: Fiona: Teacher: Fiona: Teacher:

29 30 31 32

Kevin: Teacher: Fiona: Richard:

33 34 35

Teacher: Fiona: Teacher:

Foxes bark like that. Page six? OK. Read it with me. ‘The next day Rocky saw Mr Keeping. He told him about the noise.’ What noise Fiona? What noise? The noise what the fox was making. The noise that the fox was making. Which noise was the fox making? A dog (.) noise. (Fiona laughs.) He was barking. The fox was barking yeah? So the noise that he heard in the night. So he told him about the noise. Carry on (.) reading (.) page six. ‘That’ = = ‘will be a fox said Mr Keeping. Foxes bark like that.’ So. It’s true = = So the noise he heard on that first page was a bark. He thought it might have been a dog. It wasn’t. But it wasn’t a dog. What was it? He knew it wasn’t a dog. What was it? It was a fox. It was a fox. And the statement says on your sheet ‘He heard a dog barking.’ Did he hear a dog barking? No. So is it true or false? [False. [It was false. Do you understand? ° Yes. ° OK next sentence.

Fiona’s initial view here was indeed mistaken within the terms of reference of the activity, so the teacher was quite right not to pass over her comment but to try and make her think again. She sought to guide Fiona’s thinking by directing her attention to the relevant part of the story, rereading the passage with her, and asking questions designed to test her understanding of the crucial points (turns 10–13 ff.). This strategy could be

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interpreted as an attempt to ‘scaffold’ the student’s learning by reducing the degrees of freedom for the learner and accentuating critical features of the task (Mercer, 1992, 1994; Wood & Wood, 1996; Wood et al., 1976). In spite of the rational motivation behind the teacher’s intervention, however, I would question whether some features of the exchange might not have proved counterproductive with regard to the aim of enhancing the students’ literate thinking. First, in this excerpt, the teacher took half of the speaking turns; nearly half of her turns were convergent or ‘test’ questions, i.e. questions which had a prespecified answer already known to the teacher (turns 1, 14, 16, 24, 26, 28, 30), and which typically elicited from the student a yes/no answer, or the recitation of a word or phrase from the text; the pattern of the dialogue thus approximated to a sequence of IRE exchanges. Although the surface form of one question appeared to invite Fiona to explain her reasoning (turn 7), the added imperative conveyed the teacher’s incredulity, suggesting that the utterance was functionally equivalent to a negation (Hodge & Kress, 1993); it pre-emptively contradicted any response which the student might make, and seems tantamount to saying, ‘You can’t tell me one bit of information from that story …’. Finally, the teacher overrode two contributions from another student (turns 9, 11) which might have helped to clear up Fiona’s misunderstanding. Alex offered to correct the gap in Fiona’s general knowledge which lay at the root of her mistake, but the teacher chose to ignore his interventions in favour of directing Fiona to retrieve information once again from the text. This is symptomatic of an interaction marked by highly asymmetrical speaking rights; in contrast to everyday conversation between peers, for example, here the teacher exercised near-total control over turn taking, allocating turns to students and disallowing student selfnomination. While we cannot know how the discussion would have progressed if she had incorporated Alex’s intervention, ignoring him seems to close off an opportunity for using the students’ combined knowledge as a resource to develop their collective thinking, in favour of reinforcing the teacher’s position as the sole ‘arbiter of valid knowledge’ (Edwards & Mercer, 1987). The tone and rhythm of the dialogue in this excerpt, then, largely conformed to the properties of the ‘recitation script’ which typifies much classroom interaction, according to Gutierrez (1994): the IRE pattern predominates; the teacher selects student speakers; there is little or no acknowledgement of student self-selection; student responses tend to be short and the teacher does not encourage the elaboration of responses; and the teacher uses many ‘test’ questions, where the implied role of the student is to contribute a predetermined ‘right’ answer in response. One situationally specific factor which may have contributed to this outcome was the nature of the published support materials that the teacher was using. As was mentioned above, these materials constructed a heavily constrained form of comprehension activity: for each statement about the story that the students were asked to discuss, only three possible answers were available (true/false/not enough evidence), and in

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each case only one of these was deemed ‘correct’. Publishers may claim, and teachers be led to believe, that this kind of material is particularly suited to students who experience difficulties with reading, on the grounds that it offers a ‘structured’ approach to the teaching of comprehension skills. My interpretation of this episode, however, suggests that such ‘teacher-proof’ materials carry a risk of lodging classroom talk into its default groove of recitation, to the detriment of students’ autonomous ability to engage in literate thinking. This analysis is consistent with the conclusions of Nystrand’s (1997) study, which found that a test-centred approach to comprehension work was particularly prevalent among lower track classes, and that such ‘monologically-organised’ forms of instruction were ineffective in promoting cognitive change. It is clear that the teacher induced Fiona to change her mind through this discussion, and brought her to assent to a correct answer in the comprehension exercise – but at what cost? The episode seems to enact a model of comprehension as the ability to reproduce a canonical interpretation of the text, a common but restrictive feature of the speech genre of classroom discussion of literature according to Marshall et al. (1995). In Bakhtinian terms, the outcome can be viewed as an instance of ‘pedagogical dialogue’: the teacher’s utterances tend towards the monologism characteristic of authoritative discourse, in which ‘someone who knows and possesses the truth instructs someone who is ignorant of it and in error’. Allowing for the constraints imposed by the support materials in this case, we might nevertheless ask whether alternative responses by the teacher at specific points could have lent a more productive turn to the dialogue. Would Fiona’s learning have been better assisted, for example, if at turn 3 the teacher had requested her to elaborate on the reasoning behind her (mistaken) thinking, instead of making a straightforward contradiction? What if Fiona’s statement ‘foxes don’t bark’ (turn 8) had been treated as an opportunity to open the floor to other students, rather than directing the group’s attention immediately back to the text? These instances can be seen as critical turning points in the discourse, where the teacher’s utterances influenced the shape and tone of the subsequent interaction, in this case pushing it in the familiar direction of teacher-dominated recitation, but where alternative choices were available which might have challenged the students to engage in a higher level of literate thinking. Responding to my analysis of this excerpt, the student who recorded the episode argued that my criticism of the teacher’s decision to require Fiona to re-read portions of the story (turns 13, 19) was misconceived, since it failed to take sufficient account of the teacher’s instructional goals. A primary purpose of this activity, she argued, was to encourage the students to develop the skill of retrieving specific information from the text. From this point of view, the strategy of returning to the text and testing the student’s literal understanding of the narrative material was precisely what was needed. She

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also drew my attention to a different episode that occurred later in the same teaching sequence, and which is not represented in the transcribed excerpt. During an exchange between the teacher and students on a subsequent comprehension question, the students individually voiced arguments to support each of the alternative possible answers, some arguing that the statement was true, others that it was false, and another that there was not enough evidence to decide. As the student who recorded the excerpt concedes, the discourse in this later episode remained rather teacher dominated, but the teacher did acknowledge the validity of the students’ differing views; rather than trying to force them to select one ‘correct’ answer, she praised their independent reasoning, and on this occasion invited them to record individually whichever answer they thought was right – an approach which clearly recognised the possibility of different interpretations of the text, in contrast with my reading of the episode above. In general, she felt that any attempt to compare this excerpt with the following sequence ought to recognise that there are ‘horses for courses’, i.e. that teachers may pursue different, equally valid goals during comprehension-related work, and that close reading of the text to demonstrate literal understanding is an important skill for students to practise.

Sequence 2: Who is most to blame? Sequence 2 is taken from a discussion among five students in a vertically grouped Year 5/6 class in a multicultural urban primary school in south-east England. The group comprised two girls and three boys. For three of the group English was an additional language; two of the students were on the school’s register of special educational needs at the time of the recording, one having a statement of special educational needs. The teacher, who was also the group’s class teacher, was male. The group were discussing their views on the characters in a story called ‘Blue Riding Hood’ (Hunt, 1995), which they had just read together. This is a modern parody of the familiar fairy tale, rewritten to subvert the stereotypical characters and events of the original story. The notes that accompanied the story suggested that none of the characters behaved very well, but some might be seen as better than others; the students were asked to discuss the story and try to put the characters in order, from least to most blameworthy. As we join the discussion, the group had just been talking about the character of the wolf in the story; the teacher now moved them on to consider others.

Excerpt 9.2 1

Teacher:

2

Ian:

Okay we have other characters. Who should we discuss next? Erm (.) the woodcutter.

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3 4 5

Teacher: Ian: Suma:

6

Ian:

7 8

Kulvinder: Penda:

9

Suma:

10

Kulvinder:

11

Teacher:

12 13

Kulvinder: Colin:

14

Ian:

15

Suma:

16 17

Penda: Teacher:

18 19

Ian: Penda:

20 21 22 23 24

Kulvinder: Penda: Colin: Ian: Penda:

Where does he come on the scale? Near the end. Because when she was wandering around in the forest and he met her and the he told her that he’s going to show her grandmother how to behave (.) and he had an axe and (.) the the (.) he took the skin off the wolf and he killed grandma. No they didn’t know there was bears in the forest and erm there they thought she would just get lost in the woods. But the woodcutter bashed granny’s door down. I don’t think he was well behaved (.) because he should have come and talked to her not smash her house down. Yeah but granny still behaved in the same way even when the woodcutter was in her house. Granny (.) was mean and she was just horrible she just tells her to get out of the house. […] (There is a hiatus in the transcript at this point because the audiotape had to be changed while the group continued to talk.) Okay should we now try to put the characters in some sort of order? Woodcutter (.) granny Blue Red Riding Hood and the wolf. I had the wolf then the woodcutter then Blue Riding Hood then granny. I had Blue Riding Hood the wolf the woodcutter then granny. The woodcutter the Red Riding Hood the wolf then granny granny. The wolf the woodcutter Blue Riding Hood then granny. It is very difficult isn’t it? I would say the wolf although we agreed his behaviour was far from perfect. Then I would say (.) you need to think about what happened. Granny threw Blue Riding Hood out of the House yeah? Erm now that was quite deliberate = = A witch. Yeah she started everything it was all her fault (.) if she hadn’t thrown Red I mean Blue Riding Hood none of this would have happened. But Blue Red Riding Hood killed the wolf. ° Oh yeah. ° None of them were really nice. No. But whose fault was it?

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25 26 27 28

Suma: Colin: Penda: Kulvinder:

29 30 31 32 33

Colin: Ian: Colin: Ian: Teacher:

163

I think granny’s. But she didn’t kill any one. No but it was her fault really wasn’t it? She wasn’t very nice (.) well I didn’t like (.) she deserved to be eaten. She wasn’t killed on purpose was she? The woodcutter killed her. No she was eaten by bears. I mean it was his fault he erm chucked her out. Well we have run out of time. I think you have done very well. I thought it was hard to sort them out but you together all of you have done that really well. I don’t think there is a right or wrong answer if there was we wouldn’t have had much to talk about.

It could be argued that the students in this sequence would have benefited from being asked to elaborate or unpack some of their more elliptical comments (e.g. turn 5). It also seems a pity that the teacher felt obliged to terminate the discussion before the students had a chance to compare their views on all the characters systematically; as it stands, the discussion had only touched on their views about one of the central characters in the story (Blue Riding Hood). Nevertheless, there are several marked contrasts between the discourse in this excerpt and that in Excerpt 9.1, which raise significant questions with regard to efforts to enhance students’ abilities to engage in ‘literate thinking’. First, in this excerpt, the turns were much more evenly distributed between speakers. Significantly, the teacher took less than onesixth of the turns; all of the students made a number of contributions, and these were spread throughout the sequence. Equally important is the quality of the resulting dynamic between the speakers: the sequence departs almost completely from the teacher-led, IRE pattern so frequently found in studies of classroom discourse. In this case, the teacher’s initial questions (1, 3) were authentic, i.e. they functioned as genuine invitations to the students to explain their views; turn 1 in fact ceded control over the sequence of topics to the students. More remarkably in the context of teacher–student talk, the bulk of the discussion was taken up by a series of student–student exchanges (turns 4–10, 18–32), uninterrupted by the teacher. These exchanges exemplified two important characteristics of the ‘responsive-collaborative’ script described by Gutierrez (1994). In the first place, there was minimal teacher selection of students; students self-selected, or selected other students, while the teacher framed and facilitated the activity, but generally adopted a ‘light touch’ approach to intervention. Secondly, there was ‘chaining’ of student utterances, in which each utterance built on preceding contributions, qualifying, questioning or contradicting what previous speakers said. Whereas in

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much classroom discourse, the right to ask questions is a privilege reserved to the teacher (Cazden, 1988), in this discussion it was normal for students to address questions to each other (turns 24, 27, 29). Students explained the reasons for their views about the story, collectively exploring its polysemic potential; in so doing, they were necessarily involved in glossing the text, reinterpreting the significance of events in the narrative in an act of retelling which goes beyond the words on the page; cf. the use of a modal proposition by one student in turn 8 (‘he should have come and talked to her’), or the hypothetical statement in turn 13 (‘if she hadn’t thrown … Blue Riding Hood none of this would have happened’), both of which appealed to alternative storyworlds which did not happen in the actual narrative under consideration. In such exchanges, the students challenged and countered each other’s thinking; at one point this process seemed to lead to a re-evaluation of one element of the story by one of the students (turn 21). I would suggest that the educational significance of these features of the talk is that they constitute a joint exercise in problem solving which has the potential to act as a model for the development of the students’ autonomous literacy practices: by pooling their thinking and making it public, they were also encouraged to make it more explicit, and to open it up to modification through considering other points of view, with the result that they attained a richer understanding of the story collectively than they would be likely to have achieved individually. The collective process of knowledge generation accomplished through the external, social dialectic of discussion and debate was then available to be appropriated by the students and take their independent powers of comprehension on to a new, higher level of development. A significant contextual difference between Excerpts 9.1 and 9.2 was the nature of the comprehension task which the students were asked to carry out under the guidance of the teacher. In the second excerpt, the students were asked to discuss which character in the story was most to blame, a question to which various answers were possible, none of which was uniquely ‘correct’. It was therefore inherent in the nature of the task that they were required to think about the narrative, to evaluate it and actively to construe its significance, rather than merely recall the sequence of events. This recalls another aspect of the distinction drawn by Bakhtin between authoritative discourse and internally persuasive discourse: When verbal disciplines are taught in school, two basic modes are recognised for the appropriation and transmission – simultaneously – of another’s words (a text, a rule, a model): ‘reciting by heart’ and ‘retelling in one’s own words’. (Bakhtin, 1981: 341) Here the students were invited to retell the story in their own words rather than merely recite it by heart. I would argue that the more internally persuasive form of classroom discourse generated as a result is better suited than an

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authoritative, recitational mode to the goal of enhancing students’ autonomous abilities to engage in literate thinking. Commenting on an earlier draft of this chapter, the student who recorded this excerpt pointed out that the discussion was terminated at the point shown here because the guidance on the literacy hour obliged him to operate within a limited timescale (the time for group activity during the literacy hour was restricted to 20 minutes). He also reported that he had conducted similar exercises on a weekly basis outside the framework of the literacy hour, with the specific aim of developing the students’ discussion skills and their willingness to become independent of the teacher. Finally, he provided extra contextual information about the teacher’s non-verbal behaviour during the sequence. For instance, to keep the discussion moving, the teacher maintained eye contact with the students and used non-verbal prompts, such as raising a hand to prevent interruptions and then nodding when it was appropriate for a student to make additional comments. He also ‘glared’ at students who had not spoken for some time to encourage them to make a contribution. He felt that knowledge of these strategies, which are not marked in the transcript, was important for an understanding of how the group was managed.

From Pedagogical Dialogue to Dialogic Pedagogy The conditions under which the two sequences of classroom discourse presented in this chapter were produced were sufficiently similar to render a comparison between them of interest from an educational point of view. The size of the groups and the age of the students were similar. Since both groups were taking part in focused comprehension discussions on the topic of texts that they had just read, during guided reading sessions within the tightly prescribed parameters of the Literacy Hour, we can also say that the genre of activity in which they were engaged was broadly comparable. No-one, I think, would expect the resulting discussions to be identical in form; however, my analysis drew attention to a number of systematic, pervasive contrasts between the sequences which are, so to speak, built into the structural dynamics of interaction between the participants in these episodes. I argued that Excerpt 9.1 conforms in many respects to the norms of the recitation script described by Gutierrez (1994) (such as the predominance of the IRE pattern, teacher allocation of turns and the use of test questions). Drawing on the dialogic theory of language developed by the Bakhtin Circle, I suggested that this outcome can be viewed as an instance of ‘pedagogical dialogue’, in which someone who knows the truth instructs someone who is in error, and which is characterised by a tendency towards the use of authoritative discourse on the part of the teacher, i.e. utterances which enjoin the students to recite from the text or to assent to the position expressed by the

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teacher, rather than inviting the students to explain their own points of view. In contrast, my reading of Excerpt 9.2 suggested that this exchange exhibits the properties of the responsive-collaborative script identified by Gutierrez, e.g. chaining of student utterances, self-selection of speaking turns by students, and the use of authentic questions by teacher and students. I interpreted this outcome as an example of Bakhtin’s concept of internally persuasive discourse, in which students are invited to retell the story in their own words and voice their own evaluative orientations; this form of dialogue has a semantically open structure, tending not towards convergence on a single agreed standpoint, but towards a recursive, self-generating process of continuous redefinition, qualification and modification of intersubjectively accomplished understanding. One question raised by my analysis is the appropriateness of comprehension exercises based on a forced-choice task structure where the text in question is of a quasi-literary kind. In both sequences, the teacher and students were discussing texts belonging to the genre of short narrative fiction. However, in Excerpt 9.1 their responses were constrained by the requirement to respond to propositional statements about the text, and to assign them to one of a fixed range of categories (true/false/not enough evidence). There are other genres of written text where this kind of standardised testing of literal understanding might be an appropriate model of reading comprehension, for example a set of instructions on how to perform a scientific experiment, or a recipe for cooking a meal. However, it seems far from an authentic model of the kinds of process in which experienced readers engage when reading and evaluating literary texts, such as fictional narratives; indeed, it is difficult to think of any situation outside the classroom where readers would need to respond to this kind of text in such a fashion. I would suggest that the critical understanding and appreciation of literary texts is a cultural practice which can, and should, be deliberately taught in schools, but that crucially it needs to be seen as a non-algorithmic form of knowledge. If we reduce students’ experience of this branch of literacy to the recitation of ‘facts’ about a story, then we are not presenting them with a simplified version of the task to be mastered; we are misrepresenting the nature of that task. This does not imply that teachers should not attempt to structure their students’ encounters with literary texts, but rather that there are other, more open-ended kinds of question or activity (such as the example in Excerpt 9.2) that can be used to focus their discussion or writing, and that provide students with an opportunity to participate actively in shaping their own understanding of and orientation towards the text. For this reason, I would suggest that they are better suited to inducting students into the literacy practices that they need to develop if they are to become autonomous agents in the culture of which they are members. This conclusion is compatible with the findings of Nystrand (1997) and Lyle (1998), which also made use of Bakhtinian theory in the context of researching literacy education, although I believe that this

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chapter has made a more explicit connection than these previous studies between observable patterns of teacher–student dialogue and the concepts of authoritative and internally persuasive discourse. One could also take this argument further and suggest that, where the aim is to enhance students’ ability to engage in ‘literate thinking’ (Wells & Chang-Wells, 1992), then the process is the product. From this point of view, instead of relying on scores attained in standardised tests, it would be appropriate to base the assessment of students’ literacy development, at least in part, on an examination of the communicative competence they display in structured group discussions about texts that they have read. Classroom discourse does not, of course, occur in a vacuum, but within a climate formed by the broader ideologies at work in society, and the local conditions of the school as an institution; through this climate, teachers and students are enculturated into certain expectations about what it might mean to ‘do’ teaching and learning in this particular classroom, in this particular school. Previous research into literacy education has shown that, while more dialogic forms of instruction can be accomplished, teachercentred recitation persists as a depressingly prevalent norm (Cairney, 1995; Marshall et al., 1995; Nystrand, 1997). The social history of classroom talk, which has prioritised authoritative discourse on the part of the teacher, combined with the mechanistic view of teaching enshrined in much government education policy, creates its own inertia, and it requires a conscious effort on the part of teachers to overcome this. Notwithstanding these pressures, it would be a mistake to think of teacher–student interaction as the deterministic outcome of larger social forces over which the participants have no control. My analysis rather suggested that the discursive micro-economy of the classroom has its own relative autonomy; while recitation may be its ‘default’ script, alternative, more participatory modes of organisation are available. At certain pivotal moments during teacher–student dialogue, the lead offered by the teacher can have real and educationally significant consequences for the course of the subsequent talk: it may tend to retrace the familiar certitudes of authoritative, teacher-controlled discourse; or it may invite students to engage in the riskier, more taxing, but more fulfilling enterprise of formulating and being answerable for their own thinking. It is reasonable to suppose that encouraging teachers to collect and analyse examples of talk from their own classrooms could be a useful starting point for professional development (Westgate & Hughes, 1997), which might sensitise them to these alternatives, and enable practitioners consciously to create the conditions under which students can actively participate in a cooperative process of enquiry, which are also the conditions likely to support the probing, exploratory qualities of internally persuasive discourse. However, if such a shift is to affect the general culture of education, rather than to eke out a tenuous existence in isolated classrooms scattered throughout an unreformed system of schooling, then action on a larger scale than that of the

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individual teacher is required. In the face of increasing state prescription of curriculum and pedagogy, it must be doubted whether a general shift from ‘pedagogical dialogue’ to dialogic pedagogy can be accomplished without collective action on the part of the teaching force aimed at regaining a measure of professional autonomy and securing greater control over the exercise of their own labour power.

References Bakhtin, M.M. (1981) Discourse in the novel. In M. Holquist (ed.) The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays by M.M. Bakhtin (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press). Bakhtin, M.M. (1984 [1929]) Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics (ed. and trans. C. Emerson; introduction by W.C. Booth). Manchester: Manchester University Press. Brandist, C. (1997) The Bakhtin Circle. In J. Fieser and B. Dowden (eds) The Internet Encyclopedia of philosophy. See http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/b/bakhtin.htm (accessed 27 July 1999). Cairney, T.H. (1995) Pathways to Literacy. London: Cassell. Cazden, C.B. (1988) Classroom Discourse: The Language of Teaching and Learning. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. de Saussure, F. (1974) Course in General Linguistics. Glasgow: Fontana/Collins. Edwards, A.D. and Westgate, D.P.G. (1994) Investigating Classroom Talk (2nd edn). Lewes: Falmer. Edwards, D. and Mercer, N. (1987) Common Knowledge: The Development of Understanding in the Classroom. London: Methuen. Gutierrez, K.D. (1994) How talk, context, and script shape contexts for learning: A crosscase comparison of journal sharing. Linguistics and Education 5, 335–365. Hodge, R. and Kress, G. (1993) Language as Ideology (2nd edn). London: Routledge. Holquist, M. (1990) Dialogism: Bakhtin and his World. London: Routledge. Hunt, G. (1995) Reading: Key Stage Two, Scottish levels C–E. Leamington Spa: Scholastic. Krailing, T. (1998) Rocky’s Fox. Walton-on-Thames: Nelson. Lyle, S. (1998) Collaborative talk and making meaning in primary classrooms. Unpublished PhD thesis, Reading University. Marshall, J.D., Smagorinsky, P. and Smith, M.W. (1995) The language of interpretation: Patterns of discourse in discussions of literature. NCTE Research Report No. 27. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English. Mercer, N. (1992) Culture, context and the construction of knowledge in the classroom. In P. Light and G. Butterworth (eds) Context and Cognition. Hemel Hempstead: Harvester-Wheatsheaf. Mercer, N. (1994) Neo-Vygotskian theory and classroom education. In B. Stierer and J. Maybin (eds) Language, Literacy and Learning in Education. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters/Open University. Nystrand, M., with Gamoran, A., Kachur, R. and Prendergast, C. (1997) Opening Dialogue: Understanding the Dynamics of Language and Learning in the English Classroom. New York: Teachers College Press. Olson, D.R. and Torrance, N. (eds) (1991) Literacy and Orality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Silverman, D. (ed.) (1997) Qualitative Research: Theory, Method and Practice. London: Sage. Wells, G. (1989) Language in the classroom: Literacy and collaborative talk. Language and Education 3 (4), 251–273. Wells, G. and Chang-Wells, G.L. (1992) Constructing Knowledge Together: Classrooms as Centers of Inquiry and Literacy. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

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Westgate, D. and Hughes, M. (1997) Identifying ‘quality’ in classroom talk: An enduring research task. Language and Education 11 (2), 125–139. Wood, D. and Wood, H. (1996) Vygotsky, tutoring and learning. Oxford Review of Education 22 (1), 5–16. Wood, D., Bruner, J.S. and Ross, G. (1976) The role of tutoring in problem solving. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry 17, 89–100.

10 Once More With Feeling: Utterance and Social Structure David Skidmore

For much of the 20th century, thinking about signification, the production of meaning in language, was strongly influenced by the structuralist tradition, deriving from the semiotic theories of thinkers such as Peirce and Saussure (Buchler, 1955; de Saussure, 1974). Structuralist theory tends to view signification as the product of contrasts between the formal properties of signifiers, which can be modelled in terms of binary oppositions, e.g. ± voiced for the contrast between the sounds /d/ and /t/ in English. Signifiers are then arrayed in sequences according to rules governing permitted structural combinations (the language’s syntax) to generate sentences with a determinate semantic content (Deacon, 1997). Others, however, have criticised the structuralist approach for ignoring the way in which language use is bound up with action in a social setting, arguing that to model it as a logical system for the exchange of neutral information misses out the fact that, in any episode of verbal interaction, some people’s voices carry more weight than others’; that to understand language, in other words, we need to recognise how it is connected with questions of power, authority and inequality from which it cannot be divorced (Fairclough, 1989, 1992; Hodge & Kress, 1988, 1993; Milroy & Milroy, 1991). However, relatively little attention has been paid to the role of the dynamic aspects of speech communication, to intonation, pace and accentual stress, to prosody in short as a constitutive feature of the utterance (Bolinger, 1986, 1989). In this chapter, I will review three chief theoretical sources which help to amplify our understanding of language as a material activity practised by people as social beings. I go on to explore the significance for the relationship between language and society of the gestalt properties of speaking (such as intonation), which cannot be adequately modelled in terms of binary contrasts or encapsulated in a matrix of formal distinctive features. Instead, intonation needs to be seen in terms of a continuous flow with a dynamic, shifting contour, so that the ‘same’ sequence of words can be pronounced in 170

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different ways depending on the speaker’s emotional state, and will produce different communicative effects – differences of meaning – depending on whether it is spoken affirmatively, ironically, questioningly, etc. I close by suggesting that thinking of language as a system of signs is only half the picture, since every concrete use of a sign-sequence is inflected in one way or another by its speaker to achieve a certain rhetorical effect. We should think instead of speaking as a communicative activity in which the structural and dynamic aspects of language are functionally integrated in the act of articulating an utterance. This is compatible with the approach adopted by Mäkitalo and Säljö (2002) to the problematic of the relationship between talk and context, when they argue that the analyst needs to take account of relatively stable social practices in interpreting the situated accomplishment of discourse in institutional settings. Moreover, the utterances we produce belong to a certain genre, a characteristic way of combining sense and inflection which conveys enthusiastic agreement, offended contradiction, doubtful querying or whatever. We develop our command of a repertoire of speech genres from our experience of social interaction, and exploit this creatively in response to the communicative demands of the immediate situation, so that everyday speech has both a routine, predictable side and an improvised, spontaneous quality at the same time. I illustrate this position through the analysis of a sample transcript of naturalistic dialogue taken from the context of teacher–student discussion in the classroom.

The Profit of Distinction Bourdieu develops the concept of symbolic capital in the context of a critique of structural linguistics which, he argues, contemplates language as if it were a natural object, thereby ignoring the social heterogeneity inherent in language use (Bourdieu, 1991). As perceiving subjects, people are disposed to make distinctions between different ways of saying; the different discourses which circulate on the linguistic market are stylistically marked, and not every way of speaking is of equal social worth. This leads him to an analysis of the institution of legitimate authority which is vested in the user of authoritative discourse. The social value accorded to legitimate usage, according to Bourdieu, arises from the correspondence between the hierarchy of linguistic styles and the stratified social order. One cannot open one’s mouth without revealing a great deal about where one stands in the social structure, and so language use functions as a marker of social position. Speakers do not simply invent their own style of expression out of nothing, like a magician pulling a rabbit out of a hat; we appropriate and adapt existing ways of speaking and manufacture our individual voices out of the socially marked modes of expression to which we are exposed, in an act of creative fusion. Everyone is endowed with the capacity to speak, but this

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does not guarantee that our utterances will be judged acceptable. The capacity to produce acceptable utterances, what Bourdieu calls legitimate competence, functions as symbolic capital, which produces a ‘profit of distinction’ on the occasion of each social exchange. This symbolic capital is unequally distributed in society, an inequality which is reproduced by its transmission between generations, through institutions of socialisation such as the family and the school. Correctness, on the one hand, and distinctive deviation, on the other, are the insignia of legitimate competence, the markers of the social value of the speaker’s utterance. The challenge for the speaker in putting their symbolic capital to work on the linguistic market is to display that fully incorporated knowledge of the canons of standard use which allows them to achieve fluency of expression, that degree of virtuosity which has left behind anxiety about technique – the art that hides art, so to speak. The constant striving for distinction, for a ‘stylish’ deviation from vulgar use, produces a condition of unceasing motion on the linguistic marketplace, in which what counts as acceptable is always at stake, and competition between the socially available modes of discourse leads to a continuous process of revalorisation, in which what was once de rigueur becomes old hat, and what was once infra dig becomes à la mode. ‘For,’ as Eliot (1974) put it in Little Gidding, … last year’s words belong to last year’s language And next year’s words await another voice. In general, every utterance is to a certain degree euphemised, since in the very act of speaking we must already anticipate the probable acceptability of our utterance on the given linguistic market. This ‘labor of politeness’, as Bourdieu calls it, is the source of the self-corrections and self-censorship that govern public discourse, and an evaluation of the likely success of our speech performances is built into the individual’s characteristic mode of expression, producing the air of self-assurance or insecurity which their delivery projects. This is not only a matter of the words used, but perhaps even more of the body language, posture and direction of gaze which express the sense of one’s own social worth, the ‘hexis’ or (literal) standing in the world which one possesses. It is in this sense that Bourdieu can claim that ‘the whole social structure is present in each interaction’ (Bourdieu, 1991), not that each speaker is instantaneously conscious of every aspect of the society of which they are a member, but that our molecular, day-to-day dealings with one another presuppose, and serve to reproduce, the stratified system of social relations, rather in the manner that the pressure of a volume of gas is the effect of collisions between the innumerable tiny particles that make it up. The social structure makes the exchange of utterances possible and, by engaging in the mundane activity of social intercourse with one another, we reproduce the social order (Erickson, 2004).

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The Polyphonic Utterance The theoretical perspective on language as social semiotic developed by Halliday emphasises the importance of seeing language as a resource for making meaning, a potential which is realised in the exchange of discourse between people (Halliday, 1978). A key concept in the theory is that of register. Halliday draws attention to how language use varies according to situation type, and distinguishes three factors which influence this variation, namely: field (the institutional setting or type of social action); tenor (the role relationships between participants); and mode (the channel through which symbolic communication is organised). A concrete illustration of this framework might be the way in which classroom discourse, the exchange of meanings which takes place between a teacher and a group of students during a lesson in a school, can be understood as a specific, culturally defined register of language use (Cazden, 2001). There is a definite institutional setting, the school, which differs from other familiar settings in which talk is produced, such as the family or the workplace, and which circumscribes the kind of discourse that is appropriate. Furthermore, a particular type of social action is being carried out, namely formal instruction, which again differs from the incidental learning that occurs during regular childcare activities in the home, or in children’s play. As every child must also learn when they start school, the tenor of the classroom stands in marked contrast to that of the family, i.e. there are expectations built into the setting about the relationship between the teacher and the student which differ from those that hold between the parent and the child, not least in terms of the amount of individual attention the student can expect from the teacher compared to what the child may be used to at home (Skidmore, 2004). Finally, language use in the classroom frequently revolves around the written word as the central channel of symbolic communication to a much greater extent than is typical in the home, or in many other everyday settings, e.g. in the teacher’s use of the blackboard, the reading of printed text in textbooks or worksheets, and in the writing produced by students in exercise books or on computers which is later marked (written on) by the teacher. Looked at in this way, we can see how the field, tenor and mode of classroom discourse combine to form an identifiable register of language use which both enables and constrains the kinds of meaning which it is possible to express in this situational context, and which diverge from the semiotic practices found in other types of situation. It is important to remark that the different domains of functional meaning described by Halliday typically operate in parallel as discourse is produced, e.g. the teacher’s question, ‘What is the capital of Australia?’ invokes a simultaneous nexus of ideational, interpersonal and textual meanings which represent the opening gambit in a semiotic exchange characteristic of this kind of discourse, but which would be out of place in many other

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settings. This illustrates what Halliday calls the polyphonic nature of the utterance, when he likens speech to a musical composition in which different semantic melodies are overlayered and interwoven with one another; at any given point, different orders of meaning are being organised simultaneously (see also Chapter 2, current volume). It is not that we attend now to the ideational meaning of what is being said, now to its interpersonal or textual dimensions, but that the utterance is a complex, polyvalent whole, in which the different semantic melodies are functionally integrated to form a unified speech composition. Such utterance-compositions are not, however, invented afresh, out of nothing each time we speak, but represent a putting-together of elements derived from our previous experience of social interaction, a selection made from the totality of potential meanings available in order to accomplish a particular communicative purpose in the given situation. Spontaneous talk, in other words, has a generic structure; it is improvised around a theme, in the way that a jazz solo relies upon a background chord sequence which harmonises the player’s extemporised melodic innovations (cf. Chapter 2, current volume).

Ideologeme: The Inflected Sign Medvedev was a member of the Bakhtin Circle active in the USSR in the 1920s and early 1930s (Brandist, 2002; Medvedev, 1978 [1928]). His starting point is to affirm that all ideological products are material in nature and form a part of the practical reality in which human beings live and work; they are things made, the product of creative human activity. Medvedev proposes the concept of the ideologeme to denote this emphasis on the materiality of ideological signs which are exchanged as tokens of meaning between people enmeshed in a set of social relationships with one another. In discussing the relationship between the art-work and the social reality into which it enters, Medvedev formulates the concept of the ‘poetic assignment’ of the work of art, the creative extension of the existing ideological horizon which the artist undertakes to bring about. We might adapt this concept and speak of the ‘discursive assignment’ of the utterance, that is to say its nature as an ideological construct and the labour process of semiosis which goes into its making as a contribution to the process of dialogic exchange. Each utterance carries an ideological freight and has a load to bear in the (re)production of social reality. The mental labour that goes into producing the utterance endows it with a potential social value, but this value is only realised in the process of the exchange of utterances, the joint production of discourse-text which is living speech. An utterance, then, is the product of creative ideological work, an instance of the putting to use of shared semiotic resources. Medvedev’s view of the materiality of the sign leads him also to stress the importance of

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studying sound, and in particular expressive intonation, as an integral component of the way in which nuances of meaning are conveyed in speech – what Medvedev calls ‘the word’s meaningful sound’ (Medvedev, 1978 [1928]). The everyday utterance is a rhetorical construction, built out of the expressive resources of the genres of everyday speech, and every concrete utterance possesses a specific intonational contour, which is indissociable from the meaning-effect which it aims to achieve in the context in which it is spoken. There is a functional relationship between the prosody of speech and the audience to whom a remark is addressed, which contributes to its success in accomplishing a given social act: think, for instance, of the way in which the ‘same’ one-word apology (‘Sorry!’) will carry different nuances, and is likely to be received differently, depending on the tone of voice with which it is spoken and on the vertical social distance that separates the speaker and the recipient. One can imagine this being spoken in ways which are interpreted as sincere, humble, half-hearted, sarcastic, etc.; and one can also envisage the different effects which are likely to ensue if a sarcastic inflection (for instance) is used by a social subordinate to their superior, and vice versa (a child to a parent, for example, and the other way round). Medvedev christens this phenomenon ‘speech tact’, the aptness of the utterance or likelihood of its producing the intended effect on the situation, the degree to which it succeeds in influencing the course of the dialogue in the direction desired by the speaker. This emphasis on the intrinsic importance of evaluative intonation in speech communication leads Medvedev to an important development of the theory of mind as inner dialogue, familiar from the work of Vygotsky (1979, 1987) and (using different terminology) Mead (1934). Consciousness can be thought of as a kind of activity in which we learn to engage, the social practice of ‘being-conscious’, through our appropriation of the speech genres to which we are exposed in our early upbringing and socialisation within the family. We learn how to be conscious by joining in with ways of acting that we see others performing around us, and gradually taking them over and mastering them for our own ends, just as we learn how to dress ourselves and feed ourselves, or ride a bicycle. But this consciousness-producing activity is not the mechanical concatenation of logical symbols to form arbitrary strings of sense, mere ratiocination; it is cast in generic forms, impregnated with ideological accents, just as the living speech around us continuously conveys others’ attitudes towards the world and towards us. It articulates an evaluative stance towards the reality we apprehend which is an integral part of our sense of self. ‘For,’ as Medvedev puts it: we do not think in words and sentences, and the stream of inner speech which flows within us is not a string of words and sentences. We think and conceptualize in utterances, complexes complete in themselves. (Medvedev, 1978 [1928])

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We put our feelings into words at the same time as we put our thoughts into words, the one not being possible without the other, and the potential of our consciousness-activity, the scope for thoughtful being available to us, will be richer or poorer according to the repertoire of expressive speech genres to which we are exposed in our ideological environment.

Further and Further Apart: Rehearsed Improvisation In this section, I present and discuss a transcript of naturalistic dialogue. In my analysis, I pay particular attention to aspects of the talk which illustrate theoretical points highlighted in the preceding review of the literature, such as the symbolic profit accruing to distinctive deviation, the relationship between register and genre, and the joint extension of the ideological purview achieved through exploratory discussion. Specifically, I show how prosodic features of speech, such as intonation and stress, are used by speakers as a shared semiotic resource to communicate meaning across turns between different participants in dialogue, a feature known as prosodic orientation (Szczepek Reed, 2006). The transcript is an extract from a whole class discussion led by the teacher in an English lesson in a secondary school in southern England. The class is a Year 10 group (14–15 years old) of about 30 students, mixed boys and girls, with a wide spread of attainment in the class. The teacher, who is male, is an experienced senior member of staff, who agreed to video-record the lesson and make the recording available for research. The lesson took place in January 2006, which means that the class and teacher were used to one another’s interactional styles, having had many lessons together prior to this one. In this lesson, the class is discussing the poem Mother, any distance greater than a single span (Armitage, 1993), as part of their preparation for the General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) examination in English which they were to take at the end of the next school year. The students have already read the poem and engaged in discussion in pairs about the text, guided by questions on a worksheet supplied by the teacher. The teacher then moves into a whole class discussion. In his exposition at the start of this phase, he asks the students to think about what the poem means, and also the way language is organised in the text. The interaction in this sequence lasts 50 seconds, starting just over 11 minutes into the episode of whole class discussion, which is 25 minutes long in total. It therefore occurs about halfway through this phase of the lesson, and represents about 3% of the discourse in the episode in terms of duration. It consists of five teacher turns and four student turns as discriminated in the transcript. Transcription conventions are explained in the Appendix.

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Excerpt 10.1 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39

Teacher:

Megan:

Teacher: Megan: Teacher:

Megan:

Teacher:

Megan: Teacher:

[…] (.hhh) can you see how (0.8) the picture is eme::rging. (.) doesn’t come out straightaway (0.2) (.hhh) we have to keep picking away at it Megan did you want to say [something (there)] [o- erm] I was [going to say that everyone]= [(.hhh) ((coughs))] =[was s-] [‘scuse me] a sec- jus’ a se(.hhh) ((coughs)) ((pats chest)) ((clears throat)) (0.7) sorry (.) [go on] [er (.)] ↑I was gonna to say that everyone was like saying that the mother’s er (.) getting close to the so:n but I don’t agree with that because it’s like they’re (0.3) th- (.) they’re gettin’ ↓fu:rther and ↓fu:rther a↑pa::rt ‘n’ he’s al↑one in his ↑house (0.5) yeh th- (.) they ↑a::re they’re getting ↓fu::rther and ↓fu::rther a↑pa:rt aren’t °↓they°= =ye::h= =now it’s ↑something to ↓do: with the rela:tionship withwith his ↑mother (0.8) erm (0.2) ↑can we ge- er can we just- >sort of-< shift the fo:cus on to what that rela:tionship with his >mother is< and what it ↑te:lls us a↓bou::t the relationship (0.5) er °>with his mothernice combi ↑ na ↓ tion < ↑ snea ↓ ky (.) > °particularly° sort of < is slang but he does come across as sneaky (0.2) (.hhh) e::r David can you read me your three [please] [I put] clever dominant °and subtle° (.) nice domin ↑ ant and sub ↓ tle ↑good con ↓ trast (.) e::::r (.)Sue your ↑three subtle (.) emotionless and re ↑ lent ↓ less (.) >yeh good I’m glad you got the emotion in (.) < ↑ that’s ↓nice (.) a:::nd ↑Paul °what did you choose° I had er precise systematic and ↓strange > what was it< precise systematic and (.) there ↑I:z ↓something (.) > about him that is a bit o:dd isn’t thwe can’t totally tell the sort of character he is < and we’re a bit like the other characters (.) at the beginning °that° we’re not totally sure and it will be interesting to see how he develops cos there’s things that we find out (.) about the sort of character that he is (.) RIGHT (.)

NB: All names are pseudonyms.

Analysis of prosody Considered as a piece of classroom discourse, this constitutes an episode of plenary discussion led by the teacher, a single transaction demarcated by boundary markers (such as ‘Right …’) which signal the opening and closing

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of a topically related set (Mehan, 1979; Sinclair & Coulthard, 1975). The teacher is in a questioning role; the role of the students is to read out their individual written answers (three-word lists). The sequence of speaker turns broadly fits the IRF pattern which research shows is common in this situation (Cazden, 2001; Mehan, 1979; Sinclair & Coulthard, 1975). The teacher nominates a student and elicits a response from them (initiation); the student offers their list of adjectives (response); and the teacher accepts the response by repeating one or more of the words, then comments on their contribution (feedback). However, our examination of the speech prosody suggests that changes in ‘footing’ can be detected within this episode of discourse, i.e. shifts in stance towards the work that is being accomplished by participants in the talk-in-progress (Goffman, 1981; Hellermann, 2005a). These can be described as: (1) teacher-led IRF discussion with minimal expansion; (2) a passage of ‘thinking aloud’ in which the teacher engages in exploratory talk; and (3) the termination of the discussion episode and a shift to instruction giving by the teacher.

IRF discussion In the first segment of the excerpt (lines 1–14), the talk conforms closely to the pattern of plenary IRF discussion described by many studies of classroom discourse (Mehan, 1979; Wells, 1999). The teacher’s prosody indicates acknowledgement of student answers with minimal elaboration, before moving the discussion on by selecting the next speaker (Teacher with Tom, David and Sue). In her feedback turns, the teacher selectively revoices the students’ contributions by repeating one or more of the adjectives they offer (with Tom ‘sneaky’, line 4; with David ‘dominant and subtle’, line 9; with Sue ‘emotion[less]’, line 12). Quoting a student’s words in this way is a familiar method by which teachers validate the response as acceptable in teacherled plenary talk, described as an acknowledgement act in early research on classroom discourse (Sinclair & Coulthard, 1975). In the present example, the teacher also adds a positive assessment of their ideas with short meta-discursive comments that signal her attitude of approval towards the individual contribution (‘nice combination’, line 3; ‘good contrast’, line 9; ‘I’m glad you …’, line 12). although brief, these remarks help to make her praise more specific than would be achieved by a simple ‘good’ or ‘well done’; they constitute expansions of the teacher’s turn beyond a straightforward evaluation move into feedback, and signal that she is actively listening and responding to the students’ discourse (Wells, 1999). Our transcription of the prosodic features of her speech, however, shows that she increases the pace of her interjections when providing feedback comments (e.g. lines 3, 4, 12). It is also noticeable that, after signalling her approbation, she pauses (e.g. line 5, after ‘sneaky’,

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line 9, after ‘contrast’), then audibly hesitates with lengthening of vowel sounds (lines 10, 14) before nominating the next student speaker. This repeated pattern of faster ‘commentary’ speech (which responds to the preceding student turn) followed by a drawn-out ‘nomination’ utterance (which selects the next student speaker) imparts a characteristic ebb and flow to the teacher–student exchanges in this sequence. Taken together, the prosodic design of her turns-at-talk in this passage briskly closes down the subtopic introduced in the immediately preceding student turn and decisively passes the floor to the following participant. The teacher’s discourse here works to elicit a number of responses from different members of the class in a short period of time, while at the same time signalling that each student’s turn is terminated after they have read out their three words, and that the teacher is not going to develop their contribution beyond a brief act of positive acknowledgement. After the teacher has given her feedback, the teacher will make no further comment on the student’s response, and none is invited from the student. As noted previously, Goffman argued that differences in footing could be described in terms of variations in the production format and participation framework of an utterance. The production format is defined by distinguishing between: the animator (the individual producing the utterance); the author (the person who has selected the choice of words); and the principal (the person who is committed to the position expressed by the utterance). In this passage, the teacher several times repeats words volunteered by the students. At these points, while she remains the animator of the utterance as the person speaking, she momentarily incorporates wording that is authored by the students; there is a difference between the animator and the author of these remarks. In her feedback turns, we can also detect a difference between the position to which the students’ quoted words commit them (‘sneaky’, ‘dominant and subtle’ – comments on the character of Inspector Goole in the play), and the position to which the teacher’s phrases of approval commit her (‘nice combination’, ‘good contrast’, ‘I’m glad you …’ – comments on the discourse produced by the students). There is an interplay or dialogue between different implied principals within the teacher’s turns. Goffman’s theory here helps us to understand how the teacher exercises power through her control of classroom discourse in the IRF sequence. It is the teacher who has the authority to shift the footing of the interaction-inprogress by altering the production format of her speech, in part through the prosodic design of her utterances. By comparison, the students’ contributions remain locked into simplest case of production format, in which animator, author and principal coincide. They have less scope than the teacher to shape the nature of the interactional work being undertaken in the evolving social encounter of the lesson. The participation framework of an utterance is determined by the status of the recipients of talk, which may include the addressed and unaddressed

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official recipients, eavesdroppers, overhearers and bystanders. In her initiation moves in this passage, the teacher nominates specific students to take the next turn-at-talk (‘Tom/David/Sue … your three [words]’), clearly identifying the named individual as the official recipient of these utterances; at the moment of speaker selection, the rest of the class is for the time being cast in the role of overhearers, who are expected to attend to the exchangein-progress but not to participate in it. We would argue, however, that there is a change in the participation status of the listeners in the topic expansions developed by the teacher in her feedback moves. Although these remarks are officially addressed to the student who has just spoken, their function is to highlight and reinforce specific aspects of their contributions that the teacher regards as educationally significant. For this reason, the rest of the class are cast as unaddressed recipients of the teacher’s utterances; they must not only attend to her speech, but understand and take note of the teaching point that she is making. This is most apparent in her handling of Tom’s response (lines 4–5: ‘“sneaky” … is slang, but he does come across as sneaky’), which accepts the substance of his comment, while expressing a reservation about his choice of words. There is a change, then, in the participation status accorded to the rest of the class in the teacher’s speech, from that of overhearers in her initiation move to unaddressed recipients in her feedback move, a shift which is marked by the prosodic packaging of her turns. From this analysis, we can see that there are subtle shifts in footing in the teacher’s discourse during this passage, detectable through variations in the production format and participation framework of her utterances, which correspond with textual and prosodic features of her speech to which we have drawn attention, including changes in intonation, pace and volume that are characteristic of initiation moves on the one hand, and feedback moves on the other. If teachers develop a greater awareness of how the ‘music of speech’ helps to demarcate changes in footing of this kind, they may be able to use their tone of voice in a more deliberate fashion to help students navigate through the fluctuating waters of class discussion.

Thinking aloud In the following exchange (lines 14–24), the talk, although still led by the teacher, departs from the standard IRF pattern established during the preceding interactions. The segment begins with a differently worded initiation by the teacher (‘what did you choose?’, line 14, instead of ‘can you read me your three words please?’ and variations on this formula in the preceding teacher turns). The teacher’s speech is also noticeably quieter in this utterance compared to her previous handovers. This combination lends a tone of genuine enquiry to her elicitation, whereas the preceding examples are really directives (functionally equivalent to ‘Read your three words’) that are pragmatically presented as questions. In her feedback move after Paul’s contribution (lines 16–24), the prosody of the teacher’s response signals that she is going

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to elaborate further on this subtopic; it is treated differently from the previous student turns. It begins with a comprehension check (‘What was it?’, line 16, spoken quickly). In line 16 she also repeats Paul’s whole three-word list, in contrast to previous turns where she seized on a particular item for repetition and highlighting. She pauses before the final item in the list (‘strange’), and places a marked emphasis on the word, elongating the vowel and slowing the pace of her speech. To our ears, this indicates the adoption of a more tentative stance towards Paul’s preceding turn, giving the teacher time to think about how to formulate her response; it projects that she is going to do further work on this contribution. In line 17, the rising-falling intonation and accentual emphasis on ‘is something’ have a quality of affirmation which open the way to further elaboration of her comment. In lines 18–24, having accepted an idea volunteered by the student, the teacher proceeds to develop and build on this theme. This begins with a marked increase in the pace of her speech (lines 18–19), a floor-holding strategy indicating that she wishes to continue her turn beyond the immediate acknowledgement of the student’s response. In her elaboration, in which the teacher expands and comments on what Paul has just said, there are several ‘hedges’ – qualifying comments that soften the force of a declarative statement (‘a bit’, ‘[not] totally’, ‘sort of’). Each of these items in fact is used twice in lines 18–24, as the teacher reformulates her emergent thinking about the topic as her turn is in progress. There is also a change in ‘addressivity’ in this passage (Bakhtin, 1986) in the teacher’s use of the inclusive first person plural (‘we’) in contrast to the first person singular (‘me’/’I’) that she uses in her earlier turns. This explicitly marks her discourse as a collaborative production at this point, suggesting that she and the class are ‘thinking together’ and that the argument she is making embodies an enhanced collective understanding, an achievement that they have made together rather than a preformulated piece of knowledge that she possessed in advance. The production format of this turn differs in its developmental structure from that of the preceding teacher feedback moves. At the beginning of her turn, the teacher again quotes the words spoken by the student in his preceding reply. As noted above, this time the teacher repeats all three adjectives as a phrase, without adding an initial evaluative remark as she had done in the previous cases (cf. ‘nice combination’, line 3; ‘nice’, line 9; and ‘good’, line 12). Repeating the whole phrase and suspending the teacher’s evaluation in this way has the effect of underscoring Paul’s words as a noteworthy contribution, whose significance the teacher is about to expand on. It foregrounds the student authorship of this point to a greater extent than in the previous exchanges and casts the teacher in the role of an admiring animator who is struck by the appositeness of her interlocutor’s remark, placing them for the moment in a relationship closer to that of co-conversationalists of equal status than to the traditional hierarchical relationship of teacher-questioner and student-respondent. In the succeeding topic expansion (‘there is

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something …’, lines 17 ff.), there is a further modification of the production format of the teacher’s utterance. At this point, the teacher endorses the view of Inspector Goole’s character set out in Paul’s choice of words and goes on to amplify and justify this position in discourse which represents her as speaking on behalf of the whole class (‘we can’t totally tell … we’re a bit like the other characters …’, lines 19–20). Here, then, the teacher becomes the principal of the utterance, rhetorically committing herself to the point of view first advanced by Paul. Moreover, her use of the first person plural embraces the rest of the class, creating a combined voice that unites her and the student body as joint thinkers sharing a common perspective on this issue. While the teacher is the animator and author of this passage of discourse, its phrasing suggests that they are all principals together, committed to a collective position. This analysis also indicates that the participation status of the students during this part of the exchange differs from that implied by the preceding turns. They all become the official recipients of the teacher’s speech during this passage, which is addressed to the class as a whole, not just to Paul. In a sense, as we have seen, the teacher’s wording goes further and implies that she is acting as a medium who is merely giving voice to their unspoken thoughts at this point. She is externalising a dialogue between herself and the class, in which for the moment she enacts the role of respondent to her own question, as a means of extending and deepening the shared reading of the text that they are engaged in constructing together. We can see, then, that Goffman’s theory of footing works well to account for the changes of alignment between the teacher and the class that take place in this excerpt. In opting to cast her speech in different production formats during the episode, she alters the participation status accorded to the students, now individually and now collectively. Here, a segment of improvised elaboration in response to a student’s contribution is embedded within a more tightly scripted episode of plenary IRF discussion. Goffman’s framework also helps to elucidate the institutional nature of classroom discourse as compared with everyday conversation. It is the teacher who has the social authority to establish, and change, the participation status of the students in the encounter, not the other way round. By contrast, in familiar conversation between peers, interlocutors may have greater power to negotiate a shared footing as the encounter progresses, to respond to the production format of the other’s talk by accepting, rejecting or modifying the participation status which it grants them at a given moment. The features we have described in this passage can be seen as indicators of ‘exploratory speech’ (Barnes, 1992), which is characterised by a sharing of the self on the part of teacher and students, where the teacher replies in kind to an idea offered by the student, the goal is to achieve enhanced mutual understanding of the topic in hand, and the mode of interaction is hypothetical and enquiring. Barnes contrasts this with ‘final draft speech’, which is characterised by presenting the self in a dramaturgical fashion, where the

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teacher’s primary role is to assess student contributions, the goal of the activity is to reach a judgement of the value of student offerings, and the mode of interaction is expository (Barnes, 1992: 113). In the present instance, we can see an example of ‘teacher uptake’ (Nystrand, 1997), in which the teacher dwells for a moment on an idea introduced by the student and develops its significance, putting it on the table for later discussion, while at the same time signalling through the tentative quality of her prosody that this is ‘first draft’ speech, not the final word on the matter. We might see this as modelling the qualities of ‘thinking aloud’ for the class, showing that it is acceptable to speak in this way in discussion work in English lessons, and demonstrating ways of achieving this reflective tone of voice which are then available for students to appropriate and make use of on future occasions. It is possible that this marks a moment of heightened intersubjective understanding between the teacher and her class, although we would need to examine subsequent examples of student talk, perhaps from later lessons on the same text, to be sure of this. As it stands, we can say that her talk at this point embodies the unfinalised nature of dialogue, in Bakhtin’s (1984) terms.

Instruction giving The final segment of the excerpt (line 25) marks a shift to a different kind of alignment again between teacher and class. ‘RIGHT’ (line 25, spoken loudly and followed by a micropause) is a boundary marker that signals a transition to another transaction within the lesson, here the setting of the homework task. The prosody of the teacher’s speech in the succeeding utterance alters noticeably from that used in her previous turns. In particular, the pace of her speech is slower, and there is a high density of prominent syllables, marked by increased loudness and a perceptible placing of stress on parts of the words spoken (in the phrase ‘finally your homework’, line 25). These characteristics highlight the talk as especially ‘relevant’, where the speaker emphasises that something is being said that listeners should pay particularly close attention to (Hellermann, 2005a). In the context of teacher talk in the classroom, it is clear that no student responses are expected at this point; their role is to listen and take note, as the teacher gives instructions to guide a future writing task designed to follow up on the oral work in which they have just been engaged. The footing of this talk is more straightforward to describe than the previous exchanges. Here the teacher resumes full control over the classroom discourse. She speaks in the first person as animator, author and principal of her speech, being wholly responsible for producing the utterance, selecting the words in which it is articulated, and putting forward the position expressed. There is a marked shift in the participation status defined for the students. They remain the officially addressed recipients of the teacher’s talk, but the mode of address changes radically from the dialogic intersubjectivity established by the preceding passage of ‘thinking aloud’. This

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utterance is an imperative, a directive issued by the teacher to the class about an activity she requires them to carry out; it is ‘your homework’, not ‘ours’. We would also argue that in this kind of instruction, the teacher simultaneously addresses each of the students as an individual, rather than treating them as a collective as she did in her previous utterance. Her talk sets up a task that each of them is expected to perform on their own, rather than advancing a shared understanding of the text that they have reached together. The teacher also explicitly marks her power to define the sequence of events in the lesson (this utterance is being made ‘finally’, i.e. discussion is now closed and she is bringing the lesson to an end). In Bakhtinian terms, this can be described as a shift from the semantically open character of ‘internally persuasive discourse’ to the commanding tone of ‘authoritative discourse’ (Bakhtin, 1981), a shift that is clearly marked by the noticeable alteration in the prosody of the teacher’s speech which we described above.

Discussion As a follow-up to the preliminary prosodic analysis that we carried out on the extract of discourse we have presented, we also arranged a feedback session with the teachers in the school where the lesson was recorded. This was in part to seek validation from the participants (Reason & Rowan, 1981). We returned to the school a month after the first visit for one hour at the end of the school day, when we met the English teacher who taught the lesson and the head of the English department to share our analysis and invite their views. They both commented that our analysis was helpful in raising their awareness of how teachers talk during whole class discussion. The class teacher found that watching a video-clip and listening to her voice, although sometimes an uncomfortable experience, made her pay attention to otherwise taken for granted (or overlooked) prosodic features; volume, pitch and speed of speech, she agreed, are important to understanding classroom talk. Both teachers pointed out that there are functional and structural limitations which affect how dialogic the teacher can be in her interactions with the class: for example, when little time remains before the end of the lesson, the teacher cannot afford to be too exploratory in the conduct of plenary discussion, and the discourse therefore necessarily becomes more teacher controlled. Furthermore, the teachers suggested a link (which we had not perceived) between prosody and the confidence level of students; for example, the rising-falling intonation used by Sue in line 11 indicates that she is uncertain about her contribution and is seeking affirmation from the teacher. The teachers also emphasised that prosody manifests differently depending on the structure of the setting and group dynamics, and is affected for instance by the formality or informality of the discussion as a part of the lesson structure, and by class size. For us, this feedback session was also

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helpful as it provided a way of achieving confidence in our analysis. For instance, responding to our analysis of Paul’s prosody, the English teacher reflected on the video-clip and recalled the moment when she received Paul’s answer (line 16). She confirmed our analysis of her talk at that moment by stating that she was caught off guard by an answer that she did not anticipate. The teachers valued our analysis of this as an example of exploratory talk, modelling the practice of thinking aloud, and felt that the detailed examination of prosody was helpful as a tool for developing reflective practice.

Conclusions: The Implications of Prosodic Analysis for Our Understanding of Classroom Discourse We have shown that, within an episode of teacher-led plenary discourse consisting of linked IRF sequences, the prosody of speech may be used to signal boundaries between different kinds of pedagogic activity. Specifically, through the use of CA notation, we highlighted three major shifts in footing (Goffman, 1981) within the transcribed sequence, namely: (i) teacher-led IRF discussion, marked prosodically by a fast interaction pace and the echoing of student answers with minimal uptake; (ii) a passage of ‘thinking aloud’ by the teacher, in which she pauses for thought and reflects on an unexpected contribution by a student, marked prosodically by variations in the pace of speech (slow pace with vowel lengthening, followed by quickened tempo), and by the use of hedges and the first person plural mode of address; and (iii) a shift to authoritative discourse, in which the teacher gives instructions to the class, marked prosodically by an increase in volume and the frequent use of heavily stressed syllables. These shifts in footing are significant for the type of educational work being carried out and are rendered visible through marking variations in intonation, volume and pace in a way which would not be fully apparent with a methodology that represented the wording of discourse without marking its prosody. We therefore suggest that fine-grained analysis of the prosody of teacher–student dialogue of the sort we have pursued in this chapter has the potential to reveal aspects of the dynamic flux of classroom interaction which previous research in this area has left untouched and which are of pedagogic import. It is important to stress that we are not suggesting that one type of footing or prosody is better than another in classroom discourse; it is a matter of fitness for purpose. Indeed, we admire the way in which the teacher manages the transitions from one pedagogic footing to another so smoothly.

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Research on classroom discourse, however, indicates that it continues to be dominated by teacher talk in the form of statement making or the asking of display questions to which the teacher already knows the correct answer; speculation and dialogue with students about ideas are rare (Galton et al., 1999). However, if teachers are able to model the tentative, enquiring tone of exploratory talk during plenary discussion, as in the transcript analysed in this chapter, they may in turn encourage more thoughtful and considered contributions from students. There is evidence in other episodes in the present lesson that the class responded in just this way to teaching of this kind – a responsiveness achieved in no small measure through the teacher’s sensitive command of prosody or ‘tone of voice’. Some important questions remain to be resolved by future enquiry in this field. First, our study has focused principally on the teacher’s use of prosody to signal shifts in footing in the context of whole class discussion. Further research is needed to determine whether prosodic features modelled by the teacher (such as the passage of ‘thinking aloud’ talk identified in our analysis) are naturally taken up by students in their own talk in other contexts, or whether further mediation is required beyond the modelling of a speech genre by the teacher to ensure its appropriation by students. Secondly, empirical studies are needed to describe and account for the ways in which speech prosody functions in different contexts for talk which are regularly found in classrooms, for example in small group settings. Again, previous research has studied the way in which different kinds of discourse and modes of interaction can occur when students work together in small groups (Mercer, 1995), but we would predict that students also need to adapt their prosody significantly to engage in successful collaborative group work, not least because the pace and intonation of speech are very important cues for holding the floor and projecting the end of a turn-at-talk in informal, unrehearsed speech settings (Sacks et al., 1974). Finally, prosodic orientation – ‘the conversational activity of displaying awareness of another speaker’s prosody in the prosodic design of one’s own next turn’ (Szczepek Reed, 2006: 33–34) – is known to be an important means in other contexts by which speakers gauge how far they have reached a shared understanding of the topic in hand, and is often used to signal the kind of emotional commitment that speakers feel towards the interaction-in-progress (how interested, excited, bored or confused they feel in the course of the unfolding social interaction). The extent of understanding shared by teacher and students, and the interest and enthusiasm they feel towards the topic of the lesson, are surely germane to the success of classroom pedagogy. ‘For who,’ as Sir Philip Sidney asked in the 1580s, ‘will be taught, if he be not moved with desire to be taught?’ (Shepherd, 2002: 94). Notwithstanding the limitations of the present study, our analysis of the prosody of teacher–student dialogue leads us to be confident that research using this methodology has the potential to generate further insights into

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previously unexplored aspects of classroom discourse which affect how students experience their own involvement in the learning process. Greater sensitivity to the workings of prosody in this context may suggest ways in which teachers can use the ‘music of speech’ to improve the practice of classroom discussion, help to develop students’ powers of spoken communication, and enhance our understanding of pedagogy as an improvisational activity (Sawyer, 2001), in which success depends on extempore reciprocal adjustments made by both teacher and learners to the performance of the other party.

References Alexander, R.J. (2004) Towards Dialogic Teaching: Rethinking Classroom Talk. Cambridge: Dialogos. Applebee, A.N., Langer, J.A., Nystrand, M. and Gamoran, A. (2003) Discussion-based approaches to developing understanding: Classroom instruction and student performance in middle and high school English. American Educational Research Journal 40 (3), 685–730. Bakhtin, M.M. (1981) Discourse in the novel. In M. Holquist (ed.); C. Emerson and M. Holquist (trans.). The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays by M.M. Bakhtin. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. Bakhtin, M.M. (1984 [1929]) Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics. In (ed. and trans. C. Emerson; introduction by W.C. Booth). Manchester: Manchester University Press. Bakhtin, M.M. (1986) Speech Genres and Other Late Essays (ed. C. Emerson and M. Holquist; trans. V.W. McGee). Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. Barnes, D. (1992) From Communication to Curriculum (2nd edn). Harmondsworth: Penguin. Cazden, C.B. (2001) Classroom Discourse: The Language of Teaching and Learning (2nd edn). Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Couper-Kuhlen, E. and Selting, M. (1996) Towards an interactional perspective on prosody and a prosodic perspective on interaction. In E. Couper-Kuhlen and M. Selting (eds) Prosody in Conversation: Interactional Studies (pp. 11–56). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Edwards, A.D. and Westgate, D.P.G. (1994) Investigating Classroom Talk (2nd edn). Lewes: Falmer. Erickson, F. (2004) Talk and Social Theory: Ecologies of Speaking and Listening in Everyday Life. Cambridge: Polity Press. ESRC (2005) Research Ethics Framework. Swindon: Economic and Social Research Council. Fassnacht, C. and Woods, D. (2007) Transana: Qualitative Analysis Software for Video and Audio Data, Version 2.20 (computer program). Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin-Madison Center for Education Research. Galton, M., Hargreaves, L., Comber, C., Wall, D. and Pell, T. (1999) Changes in patterns of teacher interaction in primary classrooms: 1976–96. British Educational Research Journal 25 (1), 23–37. Goffman, E. (1981) Forms of Talk. Oxford: Blackwell. Gutierrez, K.D. (1994) How talk, context, and script shape contexts for learning: A crosscase comparison of journal sharing. Linguistics and Education 5, 335–365. Hellermann, J. (2003) The interactive work of prosody in the IRF exchange: Teacher repetition in feedback moves. Language in Society 32, 79–104. Hellermann, J. (2005a) The sequential and prosodic co-construction of a ‘quiz game’ activity in classroom talk. Journal of Pragmatics 37 (6), 919–944.

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Hellermann, J. (2005b) Syntactic and prosodic practices for cohesion in series of threepart sequences in classroom talk. Research on Language and Social Interaction 38 (1), 105–130. Maxwell Atkinson, J. and Heritage, J. (eds) (1984) Structures of Social Action: Studies in Conversation Analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mehan, H. (1979) Learning Lessons: Social Organisation in the Classroom. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Mercer, N. (1995) The Guided Construction of Classroom Knowledge. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Mroz, M., Smith, F. and Hardman, F. (2000) The discourse of the literacy hour. Cambridge Journal of Education 30 (3), 379–390. Nystrand, M., with Gamoran, A., Kachur, R. and Prendergast, C. (1997) Opening Dialogue: Understanding the Dynamics of Language and Learning in the English Classroom. New York: Teachers College Press. Psathas, G. (1995) Conversation Analysis: The Study of Talk-in-Interaction. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Reason, P. and Rowan, J. (1981) Human Inquiry: A Sourcebook of New Paradigm Research. Chichester: John Wiley. Roth, W.-M. (2005) Becoming like the other. In W.-M. Roth and K. Tobin (eds) Teaching Together, Learning Together (pp. 27–51). New York: Peter Lang. Sacks, H., Schegloff, E.A. and Jefferson, G. (1974) A simplest systematics for the organisation of turn-taking for conversation. Language 50 (4), 696–735. Sawyer, R.K. (2001) Creating Conversations: Improvisation in Everyday Discourse. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press. Shepherd, G. (ed.) (2002) An Apology for Poetry, or The Defence of Poesy, by Sir Philip Sidney, revised and expanded by R.W. Maslen (3rd edn). Manchester: Manchester University Press. Sinclair, J.M. and Brazil, D. (1982) Teacher Talk. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sinclair, J.M. and Coulthard, R.M. (1975) Towards an Analysis of Discourse: The English Used by Teachers and Pupils. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Skidmore, D. (2000) From pedagogical dialogue to dialogical pedagogy. Language and Education 14 (4), 283–296. Skidmore, D. (2006) Pedagogy and dialogue. Cambridge Journal of Education 36 (4), 503–514. Skidmore, D. (2008) Once more with feeling: Utterance and social structure. Text & Talk 28 (1), 79–96. Skidmore, D., Perez-Parent, M. and Arnfield, S. (2003) Teacher–pupil dialogue in the guided reading session. Reading: Literacy and Language 37 (2), 47–53. Strauss, A. and Corbin, J. (1990) Basics of Qualitative Research: Grounded Theory Procedures and Techniques. Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Szczepek Reed, B. (2006) Prosodic Orientation in English Conversation. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. ten Have, P. (1998) Doing Conversation Analysis: A Practical Guide. London: Sage. Wells, G. (1999) Dialogic Inquiry: Towards a Sociocultural Practice and Theory of Education. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wennerstrom, A. (2001) The Music of Everyday Speech: Prosody and Discourse Analysis. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Young, R. (1991) Critical Theory and Classroom Talk. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.

12 Prosodic Chopping: A Pedagogic Tool to Signal Shifts in Academic Task Structure Xin Zhao, David Skidmore and Kyoko Murakami

Introduction Different modes of classroom interaction may have different impacts on students’ learning. As Nystrand (1997: 29) states, ‘specific modes of discourse engender particular epistemic roles for the conversations, and these roles, in turn engender, constrain, and empower their thinking’. A review of research into classroom discourse suggests that teacher-led ‘whole class teaching’ is a universal feature of primary classrooms around the world (Alexander, 2001; Gumperz, 1996; Harvey et al., 2012). Wells (1993) through his research also finds that the three-part IRE (teacher’s initiation, student’s response, and teacher’s evaluation) exchange accounts for 70% of whole classroom instruction in secondary classrooms (Lemke, 1989; Sinclair & Coulthard, 1975). Research shows that IRE sequences are the dominant teacher–student interaction in secondary EFL classrooms in China (Guo, 2008; Hu, 2007; Miao, 2007; Waring, 2009). This traditional triadic dialogue of IRE, despite being frequently adopted by teachers worldwide (Alexander, 2001), receives criticism for leading to transmission-style teaching, monologic interaction or ‘authoritative discourse’, which limit students’ critical thinking (Applebee et al., 2003; Drew & Heritage, 1992; Nystrand, 1997; Waring, 2009). However, in contrast with these negative views of the IRE sequence, others have found that, where the teacher’s feedback move goes beyond mere evaluation, it can help teachers to extend students’ responses and make connections with other parts of the students’ total experience (Hellermann, 2003; Ogden, 2006; Wells, 1993, 1999). 203

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Informed by Skidmore and Murakami’s study of teacher–student dialogue using conventions from the conversation analysis (CA) framework (Chapter 11, current volume), this study focuses on the micro-level prosodic analysis of the triadic interaction in English as a foreign language (EFL) teaching and learning. It examines the collaborative use of prosody by the teacher and students in IRE (teacher’s initiation, student’s response, teacher’s evaluation) sequences of classroom interaction. Coming from a sociocultural perspective, the study places the use of language in classroom interaction at the core of the research study and considers the EFL classroom as a Community of Practice (Lave & Wenger, 1991). Through the collaborative use of prosody in classroom talk in learning activities, the teacher and students form a classroom Academic Task and Social Participation structure. This study thus aims to provide a detailed analysis of triadic dialogue, focusing on the prosodic features across turn takings, and to unfold its pedagogic value in EFL teaching and learning.

Prosody in Classroom Interaction Teaching and learning is a dialogical process, and the quality of social interaction directly influences the learning process (Bakhtin, 1981; Ingram & Elliott, 2014; Mercer, 1995; Wells, 1999). Mercer (2007: 140) argues that ‘if one is interested in how talk can be used to enable joint intellectual activity, one must be concerned with the ways that shared knowledge is both invoked and created in dialogue’. Kovalainen and Kumpulainen (2007) argue that the momentby-moment classroom interaction signals what counts as learning, participating and communicating in the classroom. Therefore, research that aims at providing a critical examination and possible refinement of the nature of classroom participation needs to make visible elements in classroom interaction that mediate classroom members’ opportunities to engage in joint dialogue. Conversational prosody is an essential part of our social interaction. Cutler et al. (1997: 178) state that ‘the acoustic realization of a word or a phrase greatly influences the concept it conveys into discourse structure’. According to Hutchby and Wooffitt (1998: 1), ‘speaker and listener do not only attempt to exchange information or convey messages to each other, but are mutually orienting to and collaborating with each other in order to achieve orderly and meaningful communication’. Similarly, Szczepek Reed (2006) argues that participants of a speech activity can orient to each other’s prosodic information and negotiate turn taking in a conversation, a process she terms ‘prosodic orientation’. Szczepek Reed provides a definition of prosody, stating that in most phonological traditions: prosody is understood to comprise the suprasegmental elements of speech pitch, which is realized in the form of intonation and pitch

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register; loudness, which is realized in the form of stress on single syllables and loudness over longer stretches of talk; time, which is realized in the form of duration, tempo, speech rate, rhythm and pause. (Szczepek Reed, 2006: 3) Research on prosody has pointed out its interactive feature in various social organisations (Couper-Kuhlen, 1996, 2001; Hellermann, 2003; Wells & Macfarlane, 1998). Erickson (1982) points out the importance for participants in an interactional event to be able to signal to one another the sequentially functional slots in interaction. Skidmore and Murakami (Chapter 11, current volume) conducted research on teacher–student dialogue in a secondary English classroom. They point out that prosody has its pedagogical value and may be used to signal shifts in footing between different kinds of classroom activities. Skidmore (Chapter 10, current volume) argues that the prosody of speech is not an optional extra, but an integral part of how we perform acts of meaning, through which people exchange social values. He thus calls for research to consider speaking as a ‘communicative activity in which structure and dynamic aspects of language are functionally integrated in the act of articulating an utterance’. Nöth et al. (2002) consider speech prosody as an integral part of speech communication and call for research to treat the utterance as a complex whole where the structural and dynamic elements of speech are functionally combined.

Classroom Community of Practice and Academic Task and Participation Structure Olitsky (2007: 33) argues that students’ incentive for acquiring new knowledge and skills not only derives from intrinsic interest in the topic, or examination-oriented learning systems, but also from ‘the desire to contribute as valued members of the community’. Lave and Wenger (1991) suggest that learning is situated in the interaction among members in a Community of Practice. Brouwer and Wagner (2007: 33) state that ‘learning is situated; learning is social; and knowledge is located in Communities of Practice’ and that ‘learning not only takes place in the social world but also constitutes that world’. Participation is a socially constructed phenomenon which is essential to members’ learning development (Wilson & Wharton, 2006). Informed by Community of Practice theory, many researchers suggest an approach to consider classrooms as Communities of Practice and investigate learners’ development through their participation in classroom tasks (Gumperz, 1996; Hellermann, 2008; Kovalainen & Kumpulainen, 2007; Margutti, 2011; Mondada & Doehler, 2004; Noor et al., 2010; Wilson & Wharton, 2006). This research considers the recorded EFL classroom as a classroom Community of Practice. The teacher and students, with a shared interest in the English language and a shared aim of developing spoken

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English skills, form a classroom Community of Practice. Language is not only the outcome of practice in the classroom Community of Practice but also functions as an interactive device during members’ participation in joint activities. Erickson’s (1982) concept of Academic Task and Social Participation Structure considers participation as the key in classroom teaching and learning. According to Erickson, successful participation in the lesson involves knowledge of the subject matter and its logical organisation as well as knowledge of the discourse and its social organisation. Erickson considers academic and social aspects of the task structure of lessons as the learning environment. Teacher and students in classrooms are considered to co-construct two sets of knowledge, knowledge of the academic task structure (ATS) and knowledge of the social participation structure (SPS). According to Erickson (1982), the ATS can be thought of as a patterned set of constraints provided by the logic of sequencing in the subject-matter content of the lesson, whereas the SPS can be thought of as a patterned set of constraints on the allocation of interactional rights and obligations of various members of the interacting group. According to Erickson, the SPS governs the interaction and can be seen as a configuration of all participation roles in an interactional event. He states the importance of speech prosody as a coordination signal in assisting participants to organise the ATS and SPS of a classroom. Data analysis of this research supports his argument and provides further evidence through a detailed prosodic analysis of the classroom talk. Informed by Erickson’s theory, the current research focuses on students’ participation in the teacher’s instructional activities and investigates the way the teacher and students collaboratively use prosodic features in organising their participation roles and co-constructing ATS and SPS in the classroom Community of Practice.

Scaffolding Wood et al. (1976: 90) first conceptualised the term ‘scaffolding’ as a form of adult assistance that ‘enables a child or novice to solve a problem, carry out a task or achieve a goal which would be beyond his or her unassisted efforts’. Mercer (1995) pointed out that one crucial quality of scaffolding is that the guidance and support need to be increased or withdrawn in response to the development of the learner’s competence. Similarly, Stone (1998) described the titration feature of scaffolding, arguing that experts should adjust the amount of help they provide and withdraw the help gradually during the learner’s development process. Other studies have also shown the importance of ‘titrating’ scaffolding during learners’ process of development (Elbers et al., 2013; Van de Pol & Elbers, 2013; Wells, 1999). Cazden (2001) distinguishes two types of scaffolding: ‘front-loaded scaffolding’ and

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‘immediate scaffolding’. Front-loaded scaffolding refers to scaffolds which are built in advance with an aim to prepare learners for future complicated tasks, whereas immediate scaffolding refers to scaffolds which are immediately contingent to learners’ action, such as providing immediate correction on students’ grammar and vocabulary. Rojas-Drummond et al. (2013: 11) use the term ‘dialogic scaffolding’ to refer to scaffolding processes that are ‘enacted through the dialogic interactions among teachers and learners’.

Methodology In the light of the foregoing review of existing research and theory in the field, the present chapter presents and discusses the findings of a study designed to investigate the function of prosody in the co-construction of classroom talk by the teacher and students. Specifically, the study addressed the following questions through the analysis of empirical evidence gathered under naturalistic classroom conditions: (1) How do students and the teacher collaboratively use prosody to organise their participation roles in learning activities and co-establish classroom participation structure? (2) Can prosodic analysis of classroom interaction provide empirical evidence in unfolding the pedagogic significance of classroom interaction, e.g. IRE/F sequences and scaffolding activities? The study adopts a qualitative case study of a secondary EFL classroom. The case study school is a secondary foreign language school in a provincial capital city in China. Research data are from an EFL classroom, where the conversation was mainly conducted in English. The teacher participating in this study had more than 15 years of experience in teaching EFL. The students participating in the study were in the age group 16–17, studying the social science curriculum (subjects: Mandarin, English, mathematics and politics, history and geography). Audio-video recordings were collected as research data through unstructured classroom observation. Data collection took a period of two months. To ensure validity and reliability, a pilot study was conducted to test the sound. The pilot study showed constructive results and further guided the data collection. Data selected for further analysis are at the end of the data collection period since the behaviour of the class should be more natural at this stage than it would be in the initial recordings. Transcribing conventions developed from conversation analysis (CA) were used to note down the prosodic information of the classroom talk (see Appendix). The use of conventions from the CA framework can enable researchers to gain insight into the micro-processes of classroom interaction in order to understand language learning as it happens as part of a classroom

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Community of Practice (Ingram & Elliott, 2014). It offers researchers a magnification tool to study classroom talk with prosodic notation to reveal the classroom talk in detail (Skidmore & Murakami, Chapter 13, current volume). Message unit analysis proposed by Kovalainen and Kumpulainen (2007) was adopted to guide the micro-level and multi-level analysis of classroom talk. According to Kovalainen and Kumpulainen (2005, 2007), message units represent the minimal units of conversational meaning and are defined on the basis of prosodic cues made available by speakers during their ongoing interactions. They examine the classroom talk through three types of lens: the communicative functions (e.g. orchestration of classroom interaction, nonverbal communication, evaluation, etc.); the modes of interaction sequence (e.g. solo teacher/student initiated sequence, teacher/student-initiated bilateral sequence, teacher/student-initiated multilateral sequence); and the discourse moves (e.g. teacher/student initiations, teacher/student responses, teacher/student follow-ups). The analysis of the current study focuses on prosodic features such as volume, pause, emphasis and intonation as criteria for analysing the transcripts, and categorises the speech data according to the prosodic features observed. The criteria can assist researchers in answering the research questions which are grounded in the body of empirical evidence formed by the transcribed data. They also allow readers to see and check how the research conclusions of the study have been reached.

Data Analysis Table 12.1 shows an IRE interaction at the beginning of a recorded lesson, between the teacher and three students: Yali, Weiwei and Lily (pseudonyms). Before the interaction, the teacher has just briefly talked about the background information of the text article used for the lesson. In the IRE interaction, the teacher introduces one speed-reading skill (skimming) to students. The interaction takes place before a reading activity, where students are asked to find the main idea of the text article by using their newly learnt speedreading skills. This episode shows the talk between the teacher and three students in an IRE sequence chain. The teacher shifts his role between an instructor, a question initiator, an evaluator and an orchestrator of the ATS.

Sequence 1: Solo teacher-initiated sequence (turns 1–6) The first sequence occurs at the beginning of the above IRE chain (turns 1–6). It is a solo teacher-initiated sequence without students’ participation. The teacher’s role is mainly as an instructor. He is introducing a new speedreading skill (skimming) to students. One interesting phenomenon is the teacher’s use of pauses to accompany the key word or phrase in his utterances (in turns 1, 2, 3, 5, 6). However, as can be seen from the sequence, the

((Writing ‘Skimming’ and ‘scanning’ on the blackboard then facing students)) First of all (.) talking about skimming (.) we often use this skill (.) to get a general idea (.) of a reading passage Now my question is ↑(.)

HOW (.) get the main idea (.)

4

8

7

6

5

skimming a::nd scanning↓

3

((Teacher facing the whole class )) ((Hand stroke accompanies the following pauses))

2

Teacher

1

Transcription

Before you read (.) let me introduce some (.) very important (.) basic (.) reading skills (.)

Speaker

Turn

Pauses; prosodic chopping Pauses; prosodic chopping Rising intonation Pauses; prosodic chopping

Open an interactional ground for multiple students

Draw attention

Aid comprehension

Add emphasis to information Aid comprehension

Add emphasis to information

Signals addressivity to the whole class

Non-verbal; pauses; prosodic chopping

Pauses; prosodic chopping Prolonged utterance Non-verbal

Communicative functions

Prosodic analysis

Table 12.1 IRE sequences between a teacher and three students

Question initiator

Instructor

Participation roles

(Continued)

Teacher-initiated multilateral sequence

Solo teacherinitiated sequence

Participation structure

Prosodic Chopping 209

Any other way↑ (.) any other way↑

Title Yes↓ Read the title (.) Good↓ good (.) Any other way↑

Yali Teacher

Lily

16

17 18 19

20

°Read° the questions after the article

yes↑ Good↓ That’s one way (.)

15

[In the passage right↑]

Yes↓ Read the first or s-the last sentence (.) of each paragraph (.)

Teacher

13

of the reading passage (.) in the shortest time (.) How do you usually (.) get the main idea of a text (.) as quickly as possible Look at the (.) fir::st sentence in the [°in the°]

14

Weiwei

11 12

10

9

Quiet speech

Quiet speech; overlapping utterance Overlapping utterance Falling intonation

Pauses; prosodic chopping Pauses; prosodic chopping

Turn-initiation

Immediate scaffolding Self-repair; provide evaluation and feedback Provide evaluation and feedback Ask for more answers

Signals trouble

Aid comprehension

Communicative functions

Question initiator Respondent Evaluator Question initiator Respondent

Evaluator

Evaluator

Respondent

Participation roles

Participation structure

Turn

Prosodic analysis

Table 12.1 (Continued)

Transcription

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Speaker

210

Falling intonation

Slow speech rate; pauses Rising intonation with short remarks ‘right’ Falling intonation

You can also focus your attention (.) pictures (.) or charts (.) if some right↑

Now↓ (.) um (.)

Read the text (.) as quick as possible (.) and get the main idea OK↑

28

29

30

31

25 26

Ok↑ Now↓ Listen to me (.)

Abrupt cut-off sound in word repetition

27

Oh↓ Usually some questions (.) Right↑ are followed by the (.) um (.) the reading passages you-you can also can get (.) the- some main information (.)

about the text fr- according to the (.) questions given (.) That’s a smart way ↓ Good ↓ Any other way↑(.) Any other way↓

Teacher

24

23

21 22

Elliptic signal; draw attention and signal a new sequence/topic

Provide evaluation Ask for more answers Elliptic signal; draw attention and signal a new sequence/topic Add emphasis to information follows Comprehension check

Sustain a turn

Task initiator

Whole class instructor

Question initiator Whole class instructor

Evaluator

Solo teacherinitiated sequence

Prosodic Chopping 211

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teacher is not having trouble producing his utterances but uses pauses as a tool to place emphasis on the important information. Roth (2001) found pauses are often adopted by lecturers in their speech to check whether students are following what they have been taught. Uhmann (1992) used the term ‘relevant talk’ to describe the empathetic attribute of slow speech rate used in conversations. Hellermann (2005) also found that a slow pace of talk in teacher’s elicitation can signal the teacher’s confidence in holding the floor without being disturbed by students. Analysis of the research data in this study shows that pauses happen during a teacher’s whole class instruction when the teacher introduces new information or gives instructions to the whole class. We introduce the term ‘prosodic chopping’ in this study to describe this strategic use of pauses, which was found to be of pedagogical value in the EFL classroom. Prosodic chopping is found in the teacher’s instruction accompanied by non-verbal gesture (hand strokes) from the teacher (Figure 12.1). When the teacher uses pauses he shows up-and-down hand movements. McNeill (1992) describes this kind of rhythmic upand-down movement as beats, which function to give minor emphasis to the speech. However, beats normally refer to small movements such as finger beats. Therefore ‘hand strokes’ will be used to illustrate the hand gesture from the teacher to distinguish it from finger beats. The non-verbal communication, hand strokes, from the teacher further illustrates that the use of pauses by the teacher is strategic and is to break down the long utterance and add emphasis to the key information. This example shows how prosodic chopping can be used as a pedagogic tool to add emphasis to the key information during whole class instruction. By breaking the information into smaller chunks, prosodic chopping also serves as a checking tool to aid students’ comprehension. The SPS of the

Figure 12.1 A picture of the teacher’s hand stroke accompanying prosodic chopping

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Figure 12.2 The social participation structure of the teacher’s whole class instruction

classroom during a solo teacher-initiated sequence without students’ participation can be illustrated by the model shown in Figure 12.2. Students in the classroom have similar participation roles. They listen to the teacher’s instruction on the topic and rules at the start of the group activities. Due to the large classroom size, when the teacher gives instructions to students, he cannot interact with every student to verbally check their understanding of the topic or the rules. Prosodic chopping thus plays an important role in assisting the teacher in adding emphasis to the key information and to check students’ comprehension.

Sequence 2: Teacher-initiated multilateral sequence (turns 7–26) The second sequence is a teacher-initiated multilateral sequence with three students: Weiwei, Yali and Lily (turns 7–26). Prosodic chopping in the teacher’s speech from turn 7 to turn 11 shows that the teacher’s addressivity is to the whole class instead of one named individual student. Evidence can be found that three students in turns 12, 17 and 20 volunteer to participate instead of waiting for the teacher’s nomination. Weiwei shows quiet speech in turn 12 when she answers the teacher’s question. The teacher orients to Weiwei’s quiet speech and provides immediate scaffolding in turn 13. He then gives a quick evaluation of Weiwei’s answer and takes her answer to the whole class level through prosodic chopping, which is a signal of the teacher’s addressivity to the whole class. Yali then contributes to the interaction in turn 17. The teacher gives a quick positive evaluation in turn 18 and again revoices Yali’s response to take her answer to the whole class. In turn 20, Lily volunteers to provide her answer, which is ‘to read the questions after the article’. The teacher gives extended feedback to Lily’s response in turn 21.

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Word repetition accompanied by prosodic features (abrupt cut-off speech sound and pauses) in the teacher’s speech (turn 23) functions as a floorholding device, bridging the broken utterances.

Sequence 3: Second solo teacher-initiated sequence (turns 27–31) The final sequence in our excerpt (turns 27–31) marks a return to solo teacher discourse as he moves the lesson on to a new activity (skimming the text by the students). In turn 27 the teacher uses elliptic signals, ‘Ok↑, ‘Now↓‘ to mark the end of an open interaction, and he further instructs the whole class to listen to him. He then in turns 28 and 29 gives another strategy for skimming, which is ‘to read the pictures or charts’. Prosodic chopping on the word ‘picture’ and ‘charts’ functions as an emphasising tool, drawing the attention of the students in the class to these key concepts.

Discussion From a macro-analysis perspective, the interaction between the teacher and three students (Weiwei, Yali and Lily) can be viewed as merely transmissive where students’ responses are limited to only a word or a sentence (turns 12, 17, 20), as shown in Figure 12.3. However, the analysis of prosodic features such as prosodic chopping shows that this is an object-oriented interaction. Prosodic chopping here functions as a pedagogic tool for teachers to place emphasis on key information to aid students’ comprehension as well as a marker for a shift from teacher–individual student interaction to a teacher–multiple students interaction. The IRE sequences here are not aiming to test an individual student on a given question. Instead, the IRE sequences are used by the teacher to equip the whole class with the speed-reading skill needed for the next task, which is to ‘find the main idea of a text paragraph in a short time’ (turn 31). The teacher in turn 31 takes on an orchestrator’s role, using an elliptic signal to mark the start of a new task. Prosodic chopping is used by the teacher in his question initiation move in turn 10 which shows that the question is open to multiple students instead of a student nominated by the teacher. Evidence can be seen that the three students volunteer to contribute to the conversation (turns 12, 17, 20). Previous research has found that a teacher’s revoicing moves (repetition or reformulation of students’ responses) in an EFL context can give credit to students for their contributions (O’Connor & Michaels, 1993). The micro-analysis of the interaction supports this

Figure 12.3 Turn taking of IRE sequences with multi-student participation

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215

argument. It also shows that the teacher’s revoicing moves when accompanied by prosodic chopping can draw out the significance of an individual student’s response for the instruction of multiple students. IRE sequences in this episode therefore are not only for evaluating an individual student’s response, but more importantly they are used for scaffolding the whole class for the next task, which is ‘to get the main idea of a reading passage as quickly as possible’. In turn 28 the teacher provides an answer to his own question. This also supports the argument that the teacher’s question is not to test students but to instruct them on the speed-reading skills. From Sequence 3 we can see that the whole class has been equipped with the skimming skills before they proceed to the next task: ‘read your text as quick as possible and get the main idea’ (turn 31). The skill arising from the interaction is to look at the ‘first and last sentence’ in turn 12, ‘title’ in turn 17, ‘questions after the article’ in turn 20, and ‘pictures and charts’ in turn 28. Thus the SPS of the lesson shifts from Figure 12.2 to Figure 12.4. Weiwei, Yali and Lily orient to the teacher’s prosodic chopping and volunteer to answer the teacher’s questions. They thus are participating at the core participation ground (shown in orange). The knowledge generated from the teacher’s interaction with them is then shared with the rest of the students who are on the peripheral participation ground (shown in blue) by watching the interaction. From Sequences 2 and 3 we can see how one IRE

Figure 12.4 The social participation structure of IRE between the teacher and multiple students

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sequence develops into a multilateral IRE sequence and creates learning opportunities for more students.

Conclusions Data analysis shows that IRE sequences are not necessarily all monological or limiting of students’ participation. They are expository in nature and IRE sequences during instructional activity can be used as a front-loaded scaffolding to equip students with the necessary knowledge and skills which can prepare them for future in-depth group discussions or a transition from teacher-centred to student-centred activities. The microanalysis of the IRE sequences shows how the teacher uses prosodic chopping in the evaluation or feedback moves to draw out the significance of the individual student’s response and take it to the whole class level. Moreover, the analysis shows that, in addition to the teacher’s feedback move which goes beyond mere evaluation (Hellermann, 2003; Wells, 1993, 1999), prosodic chopping in the teacher’s initiation moves is important in signalling a shift of classroom SPS. It can provide learning opportunities for multiple students to co-construct classroom dialogues, from which knowledge can be generated and shared by the rest of the class. The knowledge of ‘reading skills’ in the IRE sequences is thus not transmitted from the teacher to students but generated from and shared by students. The study also shows that prosodic analysis can function as an effective analytical tool to unfold the pedagogical importance of classroom interaction in classroom teaching and learning (cf. Chapter 13, current volume). Informed by Community of Practice theory (Lave & Wenger, 1991) and Academic Task and Social Participation Structure (Erickson, 1982), which place participation at the core of learning development, the current chapter employed an exploratory case study approach to examine the function of speech prosody during the co-construction of classroom talk-in-interaction in IRE sequences in teacher-fronted instructional activities. Our findings show that the triadic IRE sequences are expository in nature and can scaffold students in their participation during a shift among different classroom tasks. Our findings also indicate that speech prosody can function as a pedagogic tool to accomplish changes in classroom Academic Task and Social Participation Structure (cf. Daniels, Chapter 3, current volume, on the concept of cultural tools that mediate human activity). We conclude by suggesting that the analytic framework developed in the present study provides a research tool for future studies on group work or EFL teaching and learning. We propose that the use of message unit analysis combined with analysis of speech prosody can make visible the processes whereby ATS and SPS are constructed and aligned. It can also provide empirical evidence of the accomplishment of learning processes through social interaction.

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References Alexander, R.J. (2001) Culture and Pedagogy: International Comparisons in Primary Education. Malden, MA: Blackwell. Applebee, A.N., Langer, J.A., Nystrand, M. and Gamoran, A. (2003) Discussion-based approaches to developing understanding: Classroom instruction and student performance in middle and high school English. American Educational Research Journal 40, 685–730. Bakhtin, M.M. (1981) The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. Brouwer, C.E. and Wagner, J. (2007) Developmental issues in second language conversation. Journal of Applied Linguistics 1, 29–47. Cazden, C.B. (2001) Classroom Discourse: The Language of Teaching and Learning. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Couper-Kuhlen, E. (1996) Towards an interactional perspective on prosody and a prosodic perspective on interaction. In E. Couper-Kuhlen and M. Selting (eds) Prosody in Conversation (pp. 11–56). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Couper-Kuhlen, E. (2001) Interactional prosody: High onsets in reason-for-the-call turns. Language in Society 30, 29–53. Cutler, A., Dahan, D. and Van Donselaar, W. (1997) Prosody in the comprehension of spoken language: A literature review. Language and Speech 40, 141–201. Drew, P. and Heritage, J. (1992) Talk at Work: Interaction in Institutional Settings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Elbers, E., Rojas-Drummond, S. and Van de Pol, J. (2013) Conceptualising and grounding scaffolding in complex educational contexts. Learning, Culture and Social Interaction 2, 1–2. Erickson, F. (1982) Classroom discourse as improvisation: Relationships between academic task structure and social participation structure in lessons. In L.C. Wilkinson (ed.) Communicating in the Classroom (pp. 153–181). New York: Academic Press. Gumperz, J.J. (1996) The linguistic and cultural relativity of inference. In J.J. Gumperz and S.C. Levinson (eds) Rethinking Linguistic Relativity (pp. 374–406). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Guo, X.J. (2008) An analysis of classroom discourse features of EFL student teacher – a case study. Shandong Foreign Language Teaching Journal 6, 7. Harvey, S.T., Bimler, D., Evans, I.M., Kirkland, J. and Pechtel, P. (2012) Mapping the classroom emotional environment. Teaching and Teacher Education 28, 628–640. Hellermann, J. (2003) The interactive work of prosody in the IRF exchange: Teacher repetition in feedback moves. Language in Society 32, 79–104. Hellermann, J. (2005) The sequential and prosodic co-construction of a ‘quiz game’ activity in classroom talk. Journal of Pragmatics 37, 919–944. Hellermann, J. (2008) Social Actions for Classroom Language Learning. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Hu, Q.Q. (2007) An analysis of classroom discourse features of five excellent English teachers. Shandong Foreign Language Teaching Journal 1, 11. Hutchby, I. and Wooffitt, R. (1998) Conversation Analysis: Principles, Practices and Applications. Chichester: John Wiley. Ingram, J. and Elliott, V. (2014) Turn taking and ‘wait time’ in classroom interactions. Journal of Pragmatics 62, 1–12. Kovalainen, M. and Kumpulainen, K. (2005) The discursive practice of participation in an elementary classroom community. Instructional Science 33, 213–250. Kovalainen, M. and Kumpulainen, K. (2007) The social construction of participation in an elementary classroom community. International Journal of Educational Research 46, 141–158.

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Van De Pol, J. and Elbers, E. (2013) Scaffolding student learning: A micro-analysis of teacher–student interaction. Learning, Culture and Social Interaction 2, 32–41. Waring, H.Z. (2009) Moving out of IRF (initiation-response-feedback): A single case analysis. Language Learning 59, 796–824. Wells, B. and MacFarlane, S. (1998) Prosody as an interactional resource: Turn-projection and overlap. Language and Speech 41, 265–294. Wells, G. (1993) Reevaluating the IRF sequence: A proposal for the articulation of theories of activity and discourse for the analysis of teaching and learning in the classroom. Linguistics and Education 5, 1–37. Wells, G. (1999) Dialogic Inquiry: Towards a Socio-cultural Practice and Theory of Education. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wennerstrom, A. (2001) The Music of Everyday Speech: Prosody and Discourse Analysis. New York: Oxford University Press. Wilson, D. and Wharton, T. (2006) Relevance and prosody. Journal of Pragmatics 38, 1559–1579. Wood, D., Bruner, J.S. and Ross, G. (1976) Role of tutoring in problem-solving. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry and Allied Disciplines 17, 89–100.

13 Claiming Our Own Space: Polyphony in Teacher–Student Dialogue David Skidmore and Kyoko Murakami

Talk and Learning A well-established tradition of research and theory attests to the important role played by talk in promoting learning among school students in classroom lessons (Cazden, 2001; A.D. Edwards & Westgate, 1994; Mehan, 1979). Studies have shown that much classroom discourse follows a predictable pattern in which the teacher asks a question to which s/he already knows the answer, nominates a student to respond, then provides an evaluative comment on the response, such as ‘Correct’, or ‘Yes’ (Galton et al., 1980). It has been argued that such ‘recitational’ talk restricts the ability of students to participate actively in the construction of knowledge, and that its predominance is detrimental to the goal of developing principled understanding of the subject or topic in hand (D. Edwards & Mercer, 1987; Gutierrez, 1994). Research has also documented the possibility of establishing alternative, more dialogic patterns of spoken interaction in the classroom, which provide greater opportunities for students to make their thinking explicit, and thus to reach a deeper level of understanding of the subject matter (see Chapter 9, current volume; Skidmore, 2000; Wells, 1999; Young, 1991). At the same time, empirical studies have revealed the persistent and rooted nature of traditional teacher-dominated modes of exchange, and shown how difficult it is for schoolteachers to make lasting reforms in longestablished traditions of pedagogy (Galton et al., 1999; Mroz et al., 2000; Skidmore et al., 2003). Comparative research in primary education has indicated that question-and-answer exchanges led by the teacher are ‘probably the dominant teaching method internationally’ (Alexander, 2001: 516). Other studies have built on the theory of dialogic pedagogy and extended its scope to encompass second language learning among schoolchildren 220

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(Haneda & Wells, 2008), discourse strategies used by K1 teachers to enable students to improvise scientifically (Jurow & Creighton, 2005), the distribution of student engagement in language arts instruction in the middle school years (Kelly, 2007), the development of argumentation skills in elementary school children (Reznitskaya et al., 2009), and teacher talk strategies which enable the teacher to apprentice his/her students into disciplinary thinking in high school history lessons (Sharpe, 2008). We might summarise by saying that the field of classroom discourse shows the vitality and capacity to generate novel insights characteristic of a progressive research programme (Lakatos & Musgrave, 1970), although empirical evidence suggests that much pedagogic practice continues to follow the monologic format described by Bakhtin in his account of ‘pedagogical dialogue’: ‘someone who knows and possesses the truth instructs someone who is ignorant of it and in error’ (Bakhtin, 1984: 81; Skidmore, 2006). In these circumstances, it seems timely to revisit one of the founding texts of the research tradition, Sinclair and Coulthard’s (1975) Towards an Analysis of Discourse, and reappraise their contribution to the study of classroom discourse (see also Chapter 5, current volume). In what follows, we review the findings and methodology for discourse analysis (DA) described in the book and test this against an excerpt of contemporary teacher-led classroom discourse. Building on the discourse analytic approach developed by Sinclair and Coulthard, we go on to re-analyse the same excerpt using conversation analysis (CA; see Hutchby & Wooffitt, 1998; Maxwell Atkinson & Heritage, 1984; Sacks, 1992) as our guiding methodology (see Appendix for a list of CA transcription conventions). We argue that CA makes visible the complex and intricate dynamics of classroom discourse and shows that the teacher in plenary discussion works on tasks more significant than the simple checking of students’ understanding by asking questions and evaluating their answers. While the DA proposed by Sinclair and Coulthard shows the monologic character of teacher-led discourse in the initiation-response-feedback (IRF) sequence, our CA reveals the unfolding, dynamic nature of the plenary session as a jointly constructed interaction between the teacher and the students. We conclude by suggesting avenues for further research in the field and suggest possible applications of our perspective to the practice of classroom teaching and learning.

The Essential Teaching Exchange In Towards an Analysis of Discourse: The English Used by Teachers and Pupils (1975), Sinclair and Coulthard developed a system to analyse classroom discourse; see Chapter 5 in this volume for a full account of their approach, including a description of their coding framework and their classification of the structure of a typical lesson into transactions, exchanges, moves and

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acts, as summarised in Table 5.1. By drawing attention to the IRF sequence as the typical teaching exchange, their study allowed later researchers to demonstrate that this sequence need not always be an unproductive structure (see Chapter 12, current volume; Hall, 1997; Hall & Walsh, 2002; Nassaji & Wells, 2000; Wells, 1993) as well as leading others to ask what alternative kinds of interaction might be possible in the classroom (Barnes, 1992; Cazden, 2001). In the following section, we first analyse a sequence of teacher–student talk using the categories identified in their theoretical framework for DA, before going on to compare and contrast this approach with a transcript of the same excerpt of recorded talk produced using the conventions and conceptual framework of CA. We illustrate the ways in which the teacher manages the plenary discussion when a divergent voice arises and indicate how intricate the teacher’s tasks are in handling the classroom. Contrary to what might be expected from the discourse analytic model of classroom discourse, the teacher-led control of the question and answer sequence diminishes when a student makes an unexpected contribution. In this instance, the smooth flow of the IRF sequence gets disrupted in terms of the teacher’s role of facilitating a plenary discussion. In fact, such disruptions to the normal machinery of classroom discourse may open up opportunities for the development of learner-initiated subtopics (Waring, 2009). Our analysis focuses on how such disruption is handled by the teacher, with particular attention to features of speech that are foregrounded in the CA tradition, such as preference organisation, hedging and prosody. These are considered as devices for the organisation of interaction which interlocutors use normatively and reflexively for producing social actions, and also as a point of reference for the interpretation of their actions (Sacks et al., 1974; Seedhouse, 2005). In the following section, we describe the context of the lesson from which the excerpt of talk presented in the chapter is taken. We then present a DA of the excerpt, using Sinclair and Coulthard’s framework, as a backdrop for our argument. Following this, we suggest that a CA perspective enables us to go beyond a rigidly sequential view of classroom interaction and the role of the teacher therein, and gives further insight into the intricate, dynamic, coconstructed nature of classroom discourse. This is in keeping with the findings of Lee’s study of the teacher’s use of the ‘third turn’ in exchanges with students in the second language classroom, which illustrated that their utterances often went beyond straightforward feedback or evaluation moves and responded in more varied and flexible ways to the local contingencies of interaction established by a student’s preceding turn (Lee, 2007). Such a finding also lends support to the idea that dialogic approaches to pedagogy facilitate inclusive educational practice. A better understanding of the discourse strategies available to the teacher can help to promote ways of conducting discussion in lessons in which multiple, at times divergent, voices and perspectives from students can be heard and embraced.

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‘Mother, Any Distance Greater Than a Single Span’: An Excerpt From an Episode of Plenary Discussion The excerpt of talk examined below is taken from a Year 10 English lesson (the students being 14–15 years old) in a co-educational comprehensive secondary school in south-west England. The class was mixed ability with a wide spread of attainment; the teacher’s forecasts for predicted grades in English at GCSE (General Certificate of Secondary Education, the schoolleaving examination taken at age 16) for students in the class ranged from A* to E. The class contained a roughly equal number of boys and girls in a total of about 30 students. The lesson was video-recorded by the class teacher in the second term of the school year. The teacher and students had thus built up a history of shared lesson experience over a period of more than three months prior to the recording, and had had the chance to get used to each other’s typical interaction styles and ways of behaving before the lesson in question. In this lesson, the teacher led a whole class discussion of a poem by Simon Armitage, ‘Mother, any distance greater than a single span’ (Armitage, 1993), which was included in the poetry anthology being studied for GCSE English at the time. The students had already encountered the poem in a previous lesson; at the beginning of this lesson, the teacher read it to the class again, then asked the students to discuss its meaning in pairs, before initiating the plenary discussion by inviting bids to ‘put into a sentence what the poem’s about’. The entire episode of plenary discussion lasted about 25 minutes, and the excerpt we examine in this chapter represents just over a minute’s worth of talk that occurred about half-way through the plenary discussion episode. The episode is teacher-led throughout, the sequence of speakers being Teacher-Student1-Teacher-Student2, etc., with the teacher nominating different students to speak in turn. We pick up the discussion with the teacher echoing words just uttered by a student in a preceding turn, before handing the floor to a new student (Ali), who has not spoken up to this point in the plenary discussion episode. Through the school, we sought and received consent in writing from the parents or guardians of all students in the class for the lesson to be video-recorded, and for the recording and transcription of the lesson to be used and reported for research purposes (BERA, 2004). We have used pseudonyms to protect the confidentiality of participants.

Discourse Analysis: A Teaching Exchange To begin with, we present in Table 13.1 a transcript of the episode using the model of DA developed by Sinclair and Coulthard (1975). In this system, speaker turns may be broken down into different acts which can be uniquely

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Table 13.1 Discourse analysis transcript Act no. 1 2 3 4

5 6 7

8 9

10 11

12 13

Speaker

Turn

Teacher A voyage of discovery; excellent idea. Go on, Ali. I think that, though everyone’s saying he wants to let Ali go, I think he still wants to be connected to her. I think he wants her respect, but he still wants to be connected to his mum, ‘cos he wants her support still, ‘cos he wants her to be there even though he wants to – Teacher We’ve got this kind of – Sorry to cut you off there, I thought you’d finished – We’ve got this kind of choice that we keep coming back to, don’t we? You know – so, is it that he wants to fly free, or does still need her? Is that what you’re saying? Well, I think he wants his own space. He wants to be Ali able to fly away from her but he wants her still to be there to come back to. Teacher He wants her still to come back to, but he also wants – I mean, you know, that’s what parents are for, really, isn’t it? You know, sort of – you’ve got to get away, but, you know, there’s still the reassurance of having your parents there when you need them. Go on, Cathy.

Symbol e p n rep

i z i

el rep

e i

p n

Key: el – elicit; e – evaluate; i – informative; n – nomination; p – prompt; rep – reply; z – aside.

coded using a set of symbols set out in their framework. It is also worth noting that the level of detail in our transcription reflects that adopted by Sinclair and Coulthard in their original work, and by other authors who have built on their approach in researching classroom discourse (Cazden, 2001; Mercer, 1995). Speech is represented as a connected string of words using normal orthography and punctuation, and may be somewhat ‘tidied up’ into syntactically complete sentences. Utterances such as ‘er/erm’ and repeated words may be shown, but there is no provision in this approach to DA for marking speech phenomena such as pauses, variation in pace or overlapping utterances. The pattern of moves within this exchange corresponds broadly to the IRF sequence described by Sinclair and Coulthard (1975). The discussion is led by the teacher, who controls turn allocation through selecting the next student speaker. Student responses are sandwiched between teacher turns,

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so that the sequence throughout the plenary discussion is teacher–student– teacher–student (etc.). It is also true that the teacher does the majority of the talking in this episode, the content of his turns taken together amounting to more than 50% of the talk, and that his turns are on average longer than those of the students. So far, the episode fits the model of teacher-dominated classroom discourse revealed in Sinclair and Coulthard’s research, and confirmed by many subsequent studies (Cazden, 2001; A.D. Edwards & Furlong, 1978; D. Edwards & Mercer, 1987; Mehan, 1979). However, when we examine its construction in more detail, we find that attempts to apply the taxonomy of speech acts developed by Sinclair and Coulthard become more problematic. The teacher’s first move (line 1) is a straightforward evaluation of a preceding student contribution, which often includes repetition of the student’s words as well as a phrase embodying the teacher’s judgement (Sinclair & Coulthard, 1975: 43). The two initiation moves (acts 2–3, 12–13) take the standard form of (i) a prompt (‘Go on’), whose function is to reinforce an elicitation by suggesting that the teacher is not merely requesting but expecting a response, followed by (ii) a nomination (the use of the student’s name), whose function is to call on a specific student to contribute to the discourse at this point. The elicitation in line 8 is also realised as normal by a question, whose function is to request a linguistic response, although already here there is some departure from the typical form described by Sinclair and Coulthard, in that the question is an open one, inviting the student to confirm or deny the accuracy of the teacher’s interpretation of the student’s preceding contribution. This contrasts with the closed type of question more characteristic of classical IRE exchanges, in which the teacher’s elicitation consists of a query to which they already know the answer (e.g. ‘What’s the capital of Australia?’), and where the expected reply is a short word or phrase demonstrating that the student knows the correct response. The dynamic established by the questioning approach in the present example is more in line with discursive teaching, as described by Young in his model of the genres of classroom talk, rather than the common reproduction questioning characteristic of much teacher-led discussion (Young, 1991). Somewhat trickier to classify in terms of Sinclair and Coulthard’s model are the teacher’s utterances at lines 7 and 11. We have labelled these as informatives, which seems the best available fit from the set of acts they describe, as their function is to provide information to enable the discussion to continue, and no immediate response is expected from the students, their role being to listen and demonstrate continued attention at this point. However, according to the DA model, informatives are realised by statements and are spoken ex cathedra by the teacher, supplying some authoritative fact which the teacher judges salient to the exchange in progress (e.g. ‘The capital of Australia is Canberra’). The teacher’s turns in the present example do not conform precisely to this description. Both are realised by

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interrogatives: turn 7 contains a tag question (‘… don’t we?’) followed by a rhetorical question which embodies a possible ambiguity in the interpretation of the poem under discussion (‘… or does he still need her?’); turn 11 has another tag question (‘… isn’t it?’), which functions as a statement in context, since no verbal response is expected. The DA framework set out in Sinclair and Coulthard’s study specifies only four types of act available to students: bid, reply, react and pupil elicits. The student turns at 4 and 9 fit best with the reply class of act, representing student statements whose function is to provide a linguistic response that is appropriate to the teacher’s preceding elicitations. Although the DA framework set out by Sinclair and Coulthard does not specify that student replies are always short, subsequent research suggests that in practice the use of known-answer questions by the teacher generally results in minimal responses by students; cf. the ‘Guess what teacher thinks’ (GWTT) genre of questioning (Young, 1991). In the present case, it is clear from a cursory examination that Ali’s replies do not conform to the model of short answers typically found in teacher-led IRE recitation. Here, the open character of the teacher’s preceding elicitations helps to draw forth much longer and more fully developed turns on Ali’s part, in which she builds up an argument over a series of connected utterances. These turns have the quality of articulating a position in a continuing exchange of views, explaining the speaker’s perspective and giving reasons to justify it (e.g. ‘I think’, ‘’cos’), and explicitly summarising and responding to previous contributions to the discussion by other speakers (‘everyone’s saying that …’). While they certainly function as replies in the teaching exchange under examination, to describe them as such does not do full justice to the complexity and finessed nature of the student’s discourse at this point. In the following section, we will present a reanalysis of this piece of teacher–student dialogue using CA (Hutchby & Wooffitt, 1998; Maxwell Atkinson & Heritage, 1984; Sacks, 1992), aiming to explore in greater depth the quality of the dynamic that is established between the speakers in this episode of classroom interaction.

‘He Wants His Own Space’: Analysis of Teacher– Student Dialogue Using CA Notation In this section, we discuss the open and unfolding nature of classroom interaction in relation to analytic concepts drawn from CA, including: the speaker’s use of prosody for the purpose of emphasis; preference organisation; turn construction units; response tokens; and hedging. These are wellestablished analytical concepts in the CA tradition for analysing conversation and talk-in-interaction. They enable us to highlight the non-linear, dynamic and open nature of teacher–student dialogue in plenary discussion. The analysis below attempts to make visible how some apparently messy features

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in ongoing interaction, which on the surface appear potentially disruptive, may in fact function as interactional resources for the participants. It also draws attention to the socially organised nature of the interaction order and the management of potential trouble in interaction through face work (Goffman, 1959). We argue that a CA approach allows us to highlight the complex and multifaceted nature of the teacher’s task in managing plenary discussion. In addition to the methodological approach and tools associated with CA, our analysis also suggests that its interest in semantic content, as well as formal structure, reveals how limited a simple DA approach would be if it paid no attention to the meanings that were being negotiated. We thus seek to build on the structural analysis of classroom discourse developed by Sinclair and Coulthard by bringing out the emergent, co-constructed nature of teacher–student dialogue.

Excerpt 13.1 1 Teacher: […] a voyage of dis↑covery excellent id↑ea e:::::rm ((tongue 2 click)) (.) er (.) go on Ali (.hhh) I think (.) that though >everyone’s saying he wants to 3 → Ali: 4→ let go< I think (.) >he still wants to be connected to her I think he wants his own space but he still wants to be 5 6 connected to his m↑um< (.) he cos (.) he wants her support still. 7 Excerpt 13.1 begins (line 1) with the teacher re-voicing the comment of a preceding student turn, i.e. repeating a phrase from the student’s utterance (‘a voyage of discovery’), here with added emphasis on the first part of the phrase (‘voyage’) and a rising tone on the second part (‘discovery’). This is a prosodic device used frequently by the teacher elsewhere during this extended episode of plenary discussion. The combination of verbal repetition and this characteristic pattern of prosody signals an acknowledgement and acceptance of the student’s idea by the teacher. In terms of the sequential structure of classroom discourse, this marks a feedback move in the widespread IRF sequence, a way of showing teacher approval of the student’s response which keeps the discourse open to a wider range of student-initiated topics than would be the case if the teacher used a straightforward evaluation move (such as ‘Correct’). Here the teacher’s approbation is made explicit in the subsequent meta-comment ‘excellent idea’, which comments on the quality of the student’s response. This way of constructing his feedback move also signals closure of the topic introduced by the student in his (i.e. the student’s) previous turn. It is an example of ‘explicit positive assessment’, a frequent instructional practice in language classrooms, which tends to suppress opportunities for students to voice problems or explore alternative answers (Waring, 2008). Examination of other comparable teacher turns in

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our plenary discussion episode shows that, once he has pronounced a judgement like this, it is usual for him to pass the floor to another student to take the next turn. There then follows in the teacher’s talk a noticeable series of hesitation markers: two audible voiced hesitations (‘erm/er’), the first with vowel lengthening, interspersed with unvoiced pauses, before the teacher closes his turn by nominating a new student (Ali) to take the floor. This shows the teacher managing turn taking in the normal way in whole class discussion, but stands in contrast to the fast pace of interaction encouraged in UK government policy promoting ‘interactive whole class teaching’. Rather, the teacher slows down the interaction pace between student turns, thus allowing students time to think before they enter the discussion. This is in keeping with a recognition of the difference between the interaction pace and the cognitive pace at which a lesson is conducted; as research into dialogic pedagogy has shown, reflection is encouraged by talk which is extended rather than abbreviated, and a reliance on quick-fire question-and-answer recitation may ‘frustrate understanding rather than promote it’ (Alexander, 2006: 20). The teacher’s initiation move at the end of this turn is very open (line 2: ‘Go on, Ali’). It does not take the form of a question, as in recitation-type exchanges, but simply manages turn taking through nominating the next student to take the floor; almost any comment by the student relevant to the established topic – the meaning of the poem under discussion – would seem to be in order here. This topic was established by the teacher’s instruction at the beginning of the episode of plenary discussion, nearly 10 minutes before the current exchange occurs (‘Hands up those who think they can put into a sentence what the poem’s about’); he modified it and narrowed it down about one and a half minutes before Ali’s entry into the discussion in response to a comment by another student (‘It’s something to do with the relationship with his mother … Can we just shift the focus on to what that relationship with his mother is’). In lines 3–7, the nominated student (Ali) makes a lengthy contribution. She presents her turn as an act of disagreement with what others have said in the discussion up to this point. The concessive clause ‘everyone’s saying …’ is spoken at a fast pace and with emphasis. This is an instance of an ‘extreme case formulation’ (ECF) designed to attribute responsibility for the state of affairs that Ali is about to criticise, as a means of legitimising the counterposition she articulates (Pomerantz, 1986). The prosodic realisation of her utterance can be seen as a floor-holding strategy. The fast pace achieves a rush-through (Schegloff, 1982), i.e. in line 4 Ali rushes through the possible completion point of a turn constructional unit (TCU) into the next unit and stops right after ‘I think’, on what Schegloff (1996) calls a point of ‘maximal grammatical control’. The substance of her remark presents her disagreement with all the students who have spoken before her in the discussion episode,

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and implicitly with the teacher as well, since (according to Ali’s formulation) he has gone along with the consensus that has emerged so far, which she summarises as the view that ‘he’ (i.e. the speaker of the poem) ‘wants to let go’. There is thus a lot at stake in how her disagreement is received. She manages this by acknowledging that she is disagreeing but in a reasoned way, as signalled by the three repetitions of the hedging phrase ‘I think’. These introduce three TCUs that flow on quickly from one to the next (Sacks et al., 1974). It is noticeable that the first two micropauses in her turn occur after the phrase ‘I think’ (lines 3–4). The syntax of her utterance thus shows that she has not finished speaking at these points; they are not transition relevant places (TRPs; Sacks et al., 1974). They are doing a different kind of situational work from a pause after a semantically complete part of a turn, which signals the possibility of another speaker taking over the floor. Here, Ali is using ‘rush-throughs’ as a means of holding the floor (Schegloff, 1982), the fastpaced speech in much of her turn operating to ensure that she gets to the end of her disagreement before the teacher resumes the floor.

Excerpt 13.2 8 9 10 11 12

→

→

Teacher: Ali: Teacher: Ali: Teacher:

wants [her su-] [cos he wants her] to [be there] [y↓eh] [(even though he °wants to°)] [wewewe’ve] got this

Ali’s attempts to continue speaking at lines 9 and 11 (despite the teacher’s re-entry into the discourse) mark a disruption to the rhythmic flow of the discussion, which up to this point has proceeded in an orderly chain of turns of the form: Teacher-Student1-Teacher-Student2, etc. It is the teacher’s task now to manage this disruption to the established flow of classroom discourse. The timing of the teacher’s entry point in line 8 is not arbitrary, but coincides with a possible TRP, a break in the sense of Ali’s speech projected by the falling tone she uses on the word ‘still’. The subsequent series of overlapping turns at speech (lines 8–12), however, present a competition for the floor between the teacher and Ali that is rare in the present episode and generally unusual in whole class discussion of this kind. The teacher begins by using the revoicing technique we saw in line 1, in which he picks up and repeats a phrase just used by the student in her contribution (‘wants her su[pport]’). In previous exchanges, he has usually closed a turn of this kind by passing the floor to another student. Ali’s overlapping speech at line 9, however, marks an extension of her turn-so-far. The syntax of her turn is continuous with her preceding utterance (‘… cos he wants …’) and amplifies her re-evaluation of the topic under discussion (the relationship between the speaker of the poem and his mother) by providing a reason to back up her claim.

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The teacher responds with the minimal response token ‘yeh’ in line 10. His speech is hearably loud and emphatic at this point, in contrast to the unmarked prosody of the previous revoicing utterance in line 8. The timing of his interjection overlaps with Ali’s attempt to articulate the reason behind her contrasting point of view, at a point where her turn is clearly not complete (‘… he wants her to be there …’). The teacher’s utterance, therefore, can be interpreted as turn-competitive, a pre-interruption device signalling that he is about to resume the floor (Jefferson, 1993). It is noticeable that Ali’s contribution tails off in line 11, with a lowering of volume such that we found it difficult to be sure of the wording of the last part of her speech, which appears to terminate before the utterance is syntactically complete. This sequence of overlaps demonstrates the asymmetric nature of the interaction order of classroom discourse. The teacher is licensed to take the floor from students by using turn-competitive discourse and prosody, but the converse is not the case. It would be highly unusual, for instance, if Ali were to continue speaking once the teacher is fully embarked on his next main turn, or if she were to use a turn-competitive technique like the teacher’s ‘yeh’ to attempt to seize the floor back from him at this point. Our observation here confirms and refines Mehan’s recognition that, in order to display competent membership in the classroom community, students need to master the art of producing responses which are both academically acceptable and interactionally appropriate (Mehan, 1979). It is not enough to have a good point to make in discussion; students must also know both how to hold the floor (as Ali does through the construction of her lengthy turn in lines 3–7) and when to surrender it, even if they have not finished speaking (as Ali does in line 11).

Excerpt 13.3 12 Teacher: [we- we- we’ve] got this 13 kind of ((coughs)) er so- sorry to erm ((coughs three times)) 14 → cu- er cut you off >there I thought you’d< finished 15 erm (1.0) we- erm (.) we’ve got this kind of erm (0.8) choice that we keep coming back to (.) don’t ↓we y’know 16 (sorta) is it that that he wants to (.) fly free i-is that what you’re saying? It is noticeable that the teacher launches into his extended turn (line 12) by using the inclusive pronoun ‘we’. This is a marked shift in the mode of address of his discourse. Whereas his revoicing utterance in line 8 echoed Ali’s words directly back to her, the use of the first person plural indicates that this comment is addressed not to Ali in particular, but to the whole class as a collective, on whose behalf the teacher now speaks, summarising and reformulating the gist of the exchange that has just occurred (‘… we’ve got this kind of … choice that we keep coming back to’). He uses a

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parenthetical remark to apologise and mitigate the threat to Ali’s face resulting from his taking control of the floor (lines 13–14, ‘… sorry to cut you off there’). The fast pace of his speech in the completion of this sequence (line 14, ‘… I thought you’d finished’) illustrates that, while functioning pragmatically as an apology, prosodically it is also marked as a floor-holding device: the teacher is not asking Ali to respond directly to the apology, but is going to continue with his turn to develop a new topic of his own. In fact, his remark (that he thought she had finished speaking) might be accurate at the end of Ali’s first long turn (‘… he wants her support still’), since that is a possible completion point, but the claim does not work for his interjection at line 10 (‘yeh’), where he comes in at a point where Ali’s TCU is still under way. The elaboration of his argument that follows (lines 15–16, ‘we’ve got this kind of choice that we keep coming back to …’) is marked prosodically by: a number of pauses, some of them of measurable duration; the use of emphatic speech to stress certain words (‘choice’, ‘[coming] back to’); hedging remarks (‘kind of’, ‘you know’, ‘sort of’); and a slow pace of speech at the end of the substantive point that the teacher is making (lines 17–18, ‘or does he still need her’). The prosodic design of this passage of discourse can thus be seen as combining features of ‘relevant talk’, such as slow pace and a high density of prominent syllables (see also Chapter 12, current volume; Hellermann, 2005), and ‘exploratory talk’ or ‘thinking aloud’, which ‘is usually marked by frequent hesitations, rephrasings, false starts and changes of direction’ (Barnes, 1992: 28). Our analysis suggests that the teacher’s discourse in Excerpt 13.3 is performing a dual function within this episode of interaction. On the one hand, he is attending to the interaction order (Goffman, 1983) by asserting his power to take control of the floor. On the other hand, he uses his turn to reformulate her position into a matter of choice (does he want to fly free or does he still need her?), whereas Ali’s point was to emphasise the character’s need for his mother despite his need for space. In the last TCU of his turn, the teacher shifts his mode of address once more to speak directly to Ali, with a comprehension check that hands the floor back to her (line 18, ‘… is that what you’re saying?’).

Excerpt 13.4 19 Ali: well I think he wants his own space (.) >he wants to be 20 able to fly to fly away from °her° but he wants [her still] 21 → Teacher: [°yeh°] 22 Ali: to be there to come back ↑to< (.)((sniff)) Ali begins her turn (line 19) with hedging devices (‘well’, ‘I think’) which project that she is going to continue to disagree with the teacher’s attempt to paraphrase her point of view. Starting a turn with ‘well’ is a

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recognised ‘dispreference marker’ (Pomerantz, 1984), i.e. a device for doing the interactional work of disagreement. The teacher’s preceding question (line 18) invites agreement as the preferred next turn, but Ali uses a dispreferred turn shape in the design of the second part of this adjacency pair. She uses her turn to restate and elaborate the central claim she advanced in her first contribution, repeating the key phrase with added emphasis: ‘he wants his own space’ (line 19, cf. line 5). This is exactly the phrase that the teacher did not pick up in his previous turn, and by repeating it, Ali takes issue with his mis-representation of her position. The remainder of her turn is spoken at a fast pace, once again signalling a floor-holding strategy, while elaborating on and justifying the position she is arguing for (lines 19–20, 22). The teacher again produces overlapping speech in line 21 at a point where Ali’s turn is manifestly incomplete in terms of syntax and semantic content (line 20, ‘… he wants/her still to be …’). He uses the acknowledgement token ‘yeh’ again, but with a different prosodic realisation from its use in line 10. Here, the volume of his speech is noticeably lowered and unemphatic (line 21). This suggests that his utterance ‘yeh’ is doing different interactional work in the two contexts. It again projects the fact that he is about to resume the floor, as he does shortly afterwards in line 23, but to our ears the reduction of volume and lack of stress in the present instance signals an approach to re-negotiating alignment between his perspective and hers.

Excerpt 13.5 Teacher:

23 24 25 26 27 28

→

he wants her still to come back to (.) but he also wants er >I mean y’know tha- that’s that’s what parents are for really is↓n’t it y’know sort of er< e:r yo- yo- you’ve got to get away (.) but erm y’know there’s um there’s still thee::: er the reassurance of having your parents there er (.) g- go on Cathy

When he begins his next long turn (line 23), the teacher uses the revoicing technique we have seen before, and echoes Ali’s closing phrase with added emphasis (line 23, ‘he wants her still to come back to’). There follows a false start (‘he also wants …’), which suggests that he was about to pursue the two choices he had formulated before (line 23, ‘he wants … but he also wants’), but he then abandons this trajectory and comes to a self-repair and invokes the morality tale of ‘that’s what parents are for really’ (line 24). In so

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doing, he adopts a more concessive stance towards Ali’s main point, although he appears to be doing it ‘begrudgingly’, granting legitimacy to her position while treating it as somewhat matter-of-fact. He thus acknowledges her point of view and converges more with her perspective than was the case in his previous turn (lines 17, 18). There is a noticeable variation in pace across his turn, from a faster passage of interpolated speech (lines 23–25, ‘I mean y’know … y’know sort of er’) at the beginning to a marked slowing down in the syntactically closing clause (line 27, ‘when you need them’). This seems to project that he is about to draw the exchange to a close, and can be seen as an example of the kind of vocal marker used by teachers in plenary discussion to mark the boundary of a topic-related set (TRS), in Mehan’s terms (Mehan, 1979). This interpretation is confirmed by the close of his turn, in which the teacher nominates another student as the next speaker to take the floor.

Claiming Our Own Space: Polyphonic Dialogue To summarise, then, in the present exchange: Ali begins with an act of disagreement that disturbs the prevailing consensus which had emerged in the discussion prior to her entry; the teacher partially incorporates her point by paraphrasing the gist of her turn in an address to the whole class; Ali reemphasises the original thrust of her main point; and, in response, the teacher converges a little more closely with her point, then brings the exchange to a close by recounting a general knowledge anecdote and passes the floor to a different student speaker. All of this is accomplished through a varied and extensive repertoire of prosodic devices for holding the floor, competing for the floor, and projecting the end of a speaking turn, deployed by the teacher and his student interlocutor. There are a series of overlapping turns-at-talk where the teacher comes in ‘too early’, before Ali had finished her turn, and where she attempts to finish her argument in spite of the teacher competitively taking the floor (lines 8–12, 20–22). Where trouble occurs in managing turn taking like this, it is often a sign of temporary misalignment between speaker perspectives, just as the smooth flow of floor passing is an indication of mutual affiliation between speakers (CouperKuhlen & Selting, 1996). Here, we would suggest, there is a divergence between Ali’s point of view and the teacher’s paraphrase of it, which the teacher manages by adopting a more concessive stance and recounting a generalised piece of folk wisdom. There is an interleaving of perspectives throughout the exchange, in which teacher and student listen and respond to each other’s positions, although the cogs of their jointly produced discourse do not completely mesh. This does not mean, however, that the way the teacher handles this moment of turbulence in the flow of classroom discourse should be criticised

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as a piece of pedagogic practice. What our use of CA has helped us to understand is the complexity of the interactional task that the teacher faces in conducting a semantically open whole class discussion, as in the present case. Where the teacher initiates an exploratory dialogue about a topic on which alternative views are possible (such as the interpretation of a poetic text), it is likely – and educationally desirable – that students will express different, and sometimes contradictory, opinions during the course of the discussion. When such divergent views arise, the teacher must find a way of accommodating contrasting perspectives into the collective exchange, without allowing the lesson to become deadlocked in confrontation, while at the same time avoiding dismissing an alternative view in a heavy-handed fashion that would be likely to discourage further debate. There is no magic formula for resolving the situation, and the teacher must use his or her skill, experience and knowledge of the class to steer the discussion as best s/he can. S/he is responsible for ensuring that everyone remains engaged in the discussion as far as possible, and has to make continuous micro-judgements about how much floor space to give to a particular student contribution. Here, the teacher’s decision to take up and elaborate on a subsidiary comment of the student’s can be seen as an example of an ‘improvisation strategy’ in Mehan’s terms, a way of ‘getting through’ when there is an unexpected challenge to the regular turn-taking machinery of the classroom (Mehan, 1979). The overriding pedagogic goal in this sort of dialogic exchange is less for the teacher to evaluate the immediate worth of each student contribution individually, than to lead an emergent process of collective scrutiny of possible readings of the poem. It is not necessary that different perspectives are reconciled into a single, syncretic interpretation on which all are agreed; more important is a shared sense that everyone has been party to a process of dialogue that has enabled each contributor to deepen their understanding of the poem. This fits with Bakhtin’s notion of polyphony (see Chapter 2, current volume), that way of conducting discourse which encompasses ‘a plurality of independent and unmerged voices and consciousnesses’ (Bakhtin, 1984: 6). The moment-by-moment positioning of speakers revealed by CA is a complex, dynamic balancing act that reinforces Sawyer’s view of teaching as ‘disciplined improvisation’ (Sawyer, 2004). From this point of view, there is a sense in which all teaching is necessarily dialogic, since the teacher must attend to the effect of his/her words on their audience, even if they are engaged in a highly monologic mode of exchange, such as delivering a lecture – or, as Bakhtin put it, ‘addressivity, the quality of turning to someone, is a constitutive feature of the utterance’ (Bakhtin, 1986: 99). Research into classroom discourse has revealed many taken-for-granted features of talk in this context and demonstrated the constricting effect that teacher-led recitation can have on the opportunities for students to participate actively in the learning process (A.D. Edwards & Westgate, 1994; D. Edwards & Mercer, 1987). It has also indicated the possibility of

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alternative, more dialogic modes of interaction between teacher and students, and shown how these can lead to a deeper understanding of the field of knowledge being studied (Nystrand, 1997; Skidmore, 2006; Wells, 1999). Most of this research has been informed by the approach to DA originally developed by Sinclair and Coulthard’s (1975) seminal study. There are limitations, though, in the mode of representation of naturalistic speech adopted in this tradition. In the present chapter, the use of CA notation and the habit of close attention to and transcription of detailed features of speech, such as changes in the pace of talk, pauses, overlapping speech and emphasis given to particular words and phrases through prosody has enabled us to examine the exchange between a teacher and student in the course of plenary discussion at a higher level of resolution than is possible with the purely verbal approach to transcription (DA) that has been predominant in much research on classroom discourse until now. The DA tradition has demonstrated the pervasive presence of certain sequential patterns in teacher–student talk, such as the IRF sequence first identified by Sinclair and Coulthard (1975), and has indicated the possibility of alternative kinds of exchange structure, such as Barnes’ notion of exploratory talk and Young’s genre of discursive teaching (Barnes, 1992; Young, 1991). A CA approach to transcription and analysis, however, offers a higher power of magnification for investigating classroom talk that goes beyond the structural classification of discrete speech acts to reveal the dynamic flux of teacher–student dialogue. The character of the relationships of power and authority that obtain between the teacher and the collectivity of students are continuously at stake in the conduct of plenary discussion, as is the direction of development of the joint understanding of the topic set by the teacher at the outset of the discussion episode. In the present exchange, we have identified a discursive tool used by the teacher – the morality tale – to manage a student’s expression of a divergent point of view and steer the course of the discussion in a fashion that aims to keep the interaction open to a range of perspectives, although in so doing he also re-accentuates her argument by giving primary emphasis to a secondary point. Some of this interaction work, of course, is accomplished through the participants’ choice of words, but we have also shown how much depends on prosodic features of their speech (cf. also Chapter 12, current volume). We would suggest that further research using CA techniques has the potential to reveal more about how a shared understanding of a topic is produced through the local dynamic of interaction that is constantly being renewed between the teacher and the class through the mode in which plenary discussion is conducted. The approach could also be valuably extended to the close scrutiny of discourse in other types of classroom activity, such as work in pairs and small groups between students without direct intervention by the teacher, and to other areas of the curriculum such as science and technology subjects, to examine how far the pedagogic relationship between the development of conceptual

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understanding and mode of interaction in these contexts is comparable to that of plenary discussion in humanities disciplines. More broadly, by using CA notation to uncover the prosody of teacher–student dialogue, we have the opportunity to shed light on the elusive but important question of the emotional climate for learning that is established in the classroom (see also Chapter 10, current volume). As Montaigne remarked over 400 years ago: Volume and intonation contribute to the expression of meaning: it is for me to control them so that I can make myself understood. There is a voice for instructing, a voice for pleasing or for reproving. (de Montaigne, 2004: 392)

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Appendix: Conversation Analysis Conventions Used for Data Transcription

[]

overlapping utterances

=

latched utterances

(.)

micropause

(0.8)

measured pause (seconds)

gra::dually

lengthening, according to duration

th-

abrupt cut-off of speech sound

house

accentual emphasis

°they°

quieter speech

↑

rising intonation

↓

falling intonation

slower speech

>