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Although digital advances have enabled hundreds of universities to offer massive open online courses (MOOCs) to millions of students worldwide, the high dropout rate on these MOOCs indicates a disjunct between the potential of the offer and the success of its uptake. Many studies point to issues relating to interpersonal connection as a major factor in this disjunct. Interviews with students support the conclusion that lecturers' interpersonal tone is crucial to shortening psychological distance in pre-recorded videos. However, it is unclear how the interpersonal tone preferred by students can be realised discursively. This paper captures discursive instances by modelling an engagement framework and identifying particularly useful strategies through comparison of a high-rated and a low-rated engineering MOOC course delivered on Coursera. Findings show that in the high rated course the lecturer consistently anticipated students' state of mind and in response constructed a discourse that performed several interpersonal functions. On the other hand, in the low-rated course the lecturer mostly anticipated and addressed knowledge gaps and issues of difficulty, but not students' emotional responses, and so deployed far fewer interpersonal strategies in the lecture discourse. These findings shed light on how lecturers can use interpersonal language in pre-recorded lectures to improve student engagement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Taking broadly sociocultural or sociolinguistic perspectives, the five contributions to this special issue investigate various aspects of the co-construction of knowledge, as this is manifested in K-16 classrooms in Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States. While the authors of these papers address different educational settings, student populations, and curricular content, what unites them is their concern to better understand the cumulative, multidimensional nature of learning and teaching and the ways in which this is enacted in action and discourse across different spaces and over different scales of time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper defines the notion of dialogic local space and highlights its importance to teaching and learning. A dialogic local space values multiple local realities as it invites us to listen to, take up, and have confidence in our own local everyday and personal realities, and to listen to, consider, and respond to other local realities. This openness can deepen and widen how we know and see our own realities. We show what a dialogic local space can look like in a second grade classroom community. We employ sociocultural discourse analysis to illuminate one teacher's pedagogical choices in a month-long poetry Writing Workshop unit for seven-and-eight year olds. We present a big picture look at the unit and then take a close look at five minilessons. Findings detail ways this teacher's minilesson design, flow, and content cultivate dialogic local spaces, and how a dialogic stance, manifest in classroom talk practices, encourages students to participate in these spaces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concepts of 'access' and 'relevance' feature prominently in the discourse of change in mathematics education in South Africa.One way inwhich these concepts have been played out in mathematics classrooms is in the use of mathematical problems with real-world contexts. This paper presents a Critical Discourse Analysis of one such problem, selected from a first-year university access course in mathematics at a higher education institution in South Africa. Fairclough's three-dimensional model for the Critical Discourse Analysis is used to identify traces of different texts within this problem. The author argues that, in spite of evidence of texts that point to recent reforms in mathematics education and some possible signs of change, the mathematics text and the text of the school mathematical word problem remain dominant, and position the student in a particular way. The results of this analysis challenge some of the prevalent assumptions about 'access' and 'relevance' in mathematics education. The paper also highlights the potential for using Critical Discourse Analysis in mathematics education research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The increasing occurrence of multilingualism in the educational sphere is challenging teachers to deal with the coexistence of different languages in the classroom. The present paper presents the analysis of language portraits as a tool to make students' multilingualism visible by using colours to represent their multilingual repertoires. Through a mixed methods design, our research analyses 570 language portraits and sociolinguistic surveys, as well as 21 semi-structured interviews with children aged 6 to 13 in order to investigate the ways in which pupils represent and reflect upon their multilingual repertoires. Using a qualitative content analysis, we have classified the most common patterns within pupils' choices of colours and placement of languages on their portraits, later analysed through a semiotic approach. Results show three recurring patterns of colour choices: colours of national flags, associations with life experiences, and associations with feelings. As for language placement, results show two recurring patterns: structuring languages according to linguistic skills, and according to body functions. The analysis also revealed a tendency among participants of representing their languages through a "monolingual lens" (García and Flores) and draws implications for the implementation of multilingual education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Few studies have investigated the discourses and ideologies around parents' enrollment decisions in Chinese-English immersion contexts, and how these discourses and ideologies affect their involvement with their children' bi/multilingual development. Conducted in a K-5 50/50 one-way Mandarin immersion school, this paper focuses on ethnographic interviews with parents that represent different social and cultural backgrounds. Findings demonstrate multiple ways that parents support and invest in their children's bi/multilingual development. Findings also reveal that the ideology of neoliberal multilingualism and multiculturalism permeates parents' decision-making, expectations, and investment. This ideology motivates parents to actively advocate for this school's survival and combat with the local discourse of monolingualism, which creates a space with a humanitarian emphasis with multiculturalism but also shapes the school space in a certain way. Meanwhile, tensions exist among different parent groups in terms of their perceptions toward the ultimate benefits of this immersion school and the unbalanced parental influence on local language policymaking. This case study aims to investigate the discourses and parents' ideologies in Chinese immersion education, and to offer some implications for language planning in one-way foreign language immersion contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents research exploring 'writing and text construction' practices in contemporary primary classrooms. In particular, the ways 17 teachers and their students engaged with technologies in the construction of classroom texts were investigated. The case studies presented prompt the necessity to extend more traditional understandings of classroom writing and the writing process. This paper challenges and broadens 'what counts' as classroom writing, and results reveal that the pedagogy of writing requires teachers to account for the collaborative dimension of constructing texts in writing instruction. Results challenge teachers to use technology to enhance students' creative possibilities in the construction of new and dynamic texts and build learning about the elements of design into their instruction. It is argued that the prevalence of design, presentation and production in classroom writing lessons now demands that it be reframed as 'the multimodal writing process'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports on research that examines the use of acknowledging moves in the single-sex group discussions of 12-13-year-old girls and boys in their Key Stage 3 Design and Technology lessons. Within structural-functional models of discourse analysis, acknowledging moves are a discourse feature that perform the function of providing feedback to another speaker's utterance. Cullen (2002) has noted that little attention has been paid to the use of these moves in classroom interaction, arguing that this is a serious oversight as this part of the classroom exchange can perform important educational functions. The study of acknowledging moves has been even more neglected in the study of pupil group discussion, especially in relation to gender, and this paper aims to provide a contribution towards addressing this research gap. Employing techniques of functional discourse analysis, the findings of this study show that there are considerable differences in both the amounts and types of acknowledging moves used by the girls and boys in their respective group discussions. I suggest that, and attempt to illustrate how, these discoursal differences may contribute to our understanding of gender-differentiated attainment levels in Key Stage 3 Design and Technology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to improve the understanding of some aspects of campus life faced by a mature student and to help inform institutional strategies for enhancing student retention. The 'fit' between students' production of their own identity and their perception of the successful student (both academically and socially) in their institution/ programme of choice is considered to be a significant factor in student retention. While the concept of identity can be variously specified, identity as a production, something that is available for use, and embedded in some social activity, is the conceptual approach taken here. This paper demonstrates how identity as a [mature] first-year teacher-education student is produced by interaction in the course of an interview narrative. A microanalytic discourse analysis of the sequential nature of the interview talk is used to display successive instances of the social production of [mature] first-year student identity, displaying movement towards a better 'fit' with the institution/programme of choice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the social and cultural knowledge embedded in the textbooks for language and literacy education in a Chinese heritage language school, the Zhonguo School, in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. It examines how Chinese language arts textbooks introduce the child reader to cultural knowledge considered legitimate and valued in China as well as in Chinese diasporan communities. Furthermore, it looks at the construction of cultural knowledge in Chinese language textbooks in relation to the mainstream ideology to which immigrant children are exposed in and out of mainstream school classrooms. It looks at how the power relationship between legitimate cultural knowledge in majority and minority contexts is established and to what extent it affects language minority students' literacy practices in mainstream school and heritage language school contexts. Data sources are the Chinese textbooks used from kindergarten to Grade 5 in a Chinese heritage language school. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Current guidelines on teacher-student rapport, while providing helpful suggestions, fail to address the question of how rapport building can be achieved in contextualised classroom interaction in which a balance needs to be reached between rapport and instructional tasks. Using discourse analysis informed by a conversation analytic approach and bringing in the notions of face (Brown & Levinson, 1987) and participation framework (Goffman, 1981), this paper examines in close detail how rapport is concretely accomplished in the moment-to-moment interaction of one ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) grammar class. The teacher is found to use various interactional resources that allow him to simultaneously orient to the immediate instructional tasks and the social and interpersonal dimension of the interaction with the students. Microanalysis of one calling-to-attention sequence, two correction sequences, and one summarisation sequence shows that the teacher strategically interweaves rapport building into instruction in order to facilitate the instructional tasks at hand. The teacher also successfully engages students' co-participation in creating and maintaining rapport. This analysis offers insights into the social processes in the language classroom, as well as suggests practical pedagogical implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores whether an urban school teacher's participation in an inquiry based Master's degree programme contributes to any shifts in her understanding of her non-dominant students and her own teaching. In the first section I define the theoretical constructs of critical education and dialogic discourse. The second section, through a micro-analysis of representative data, demonstrates how the English Language Arts teacher's discursive practices at the beginning of the year positioned non-dominant students as deficit learners. By the end of the year, however, the teacher was affording her students multiple literate identities. The analysis also shows how the school's disciplinary and tracking policies throughout the year impacted the teacher's process. The final section reflects on the need for urban school--university partnerships to use teachers' inquiry-based research as an essential component of any critical dialogue about local sociopolitical issues of schooling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There has tended to be an overemphasis on the teaching and analysis of the mode of writing in 'academic literacies' studies, even though changes in the communication landscape have engendered an increasing recognition of the different semiotic dimensions of representation. This paper tackles the logocentrism of academic literacies and argues for an approach which recognises the interconnection between different modes, in other words, a 'multimodal' approach to pedagogy and to theorising communication. It explores multimodal ways of addressing unequal discourse resources within the university with its economically and culturally diverse student body. Utilising a range of modes is a way of harnessing the resources that the students bring with them. However, this paper does not posit multimodality as an alternative way of inducting students into academic writing practices. Rather, it explores what happens when different kinds of 'cultural capital' (Bourdieu, 1991) encounter a range of generic forms, modes and ways of presenting information. It examines how certain functions are distributed across modes in students' texts in a first year engineering course in a South African university (specifically scientific discourse and student affect) and begins to problematise the visual/verbal distinction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper the sociocultural notion of ‘scaffolding’ and the way in which various ‘scaffolding’ strategies support students' learning are examined through classroom data. A distinction is made between scaffolding at a macro level, consisting of a planned, 'designed-in' approach to a unit of work in a subject discipline and the lessons that constitute it, and contingent scaffolding that operates at a micro level or ‘at the point of need’. By drawing on Systemic Functional Linguistic (SFL) theory it has been possible to articulate the kinds of discourse and multimodal strategies that constitute the nature of scaffolding and then examine the ways in which these function in the discourse to support student learning in the local and immediate context. In addition, this paper identifies an Induction genre that provides foundational understandings about the study of history for apprentice historians. This is supported by two post-foundational lessons that form a Macrogenre. This Macrogenre reinforces the application of focus questions that are fundamental to historical study and an approach to answering these questions that is consistent with the methodology of the subject. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mathematics is commonly seen as a discipline with no place for linguistic ambiguity. In this paper, the treatment of ambiguity in two data extracts is critically examined. Analysis draws on two contrasting models of the nature of mathematics and mathematical language. The formal model sees meaning as fixed and relating to language relatively unproblematically. The discursive model sees meaning as situated in and by interaction, and so as shifting and changing as interaction unfolds. Analysis of the extract from the National Numeracy Strategy suggests that it is based on the formal model. This analysis is contrasted with analysis of classroom interaction which reveals how, from a discursive perspective, ambiguity can be seen as a resource for doing mathematics and for learning the language of mathematics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses various reports within the issue on topics including dialogic pedagogies, student voice and dialogic interaction.

Adopting a case study approach with multiple data sources, this paper explores the ways in which rapport is built, and its impact on the learning process based on five successive writing support consultations between a native English-speaking (NES) tutor and her second language (L2) tutee in a Hong Kong university. With reference to the prepared coding categories, six strategies that realize the four key elements of rapport management were identified, namely greetings, small talk, the use of qualifiers and mitigation devices, first-person plural pronouns, praises and expressions of empathy, and open-ended questions. These strategies symbolized association, addressed face work and emotional reactions, and encouraged equity in the directive and tutor dominance writing consultations. Motivated by the harmonious relationship, the tutee gradually took a more active role in learning in different ways by asking questions, expressing an opposite view, admitting inadequate knowledge, reflecting on cognitive processes, and initiating small talk. The implicit impact was further reflected in her improved self-rating and the completion of the five consultations. Pedagogical recommendations for tutor training are made. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Mathematics curricula increasingly emphasise the importance of mathematical communication. Students are seen as progressing from the use of a more informal or everyday form of communication to a more mathematical approach. There have, however, been very few studies of how mathematicians actually talk about mathematics. This paper reports analysis of mathematicians’ talk in the context of a live, unscripted radio discussion between three mathematicians and the series presenter. Analysis draws on discursive psychology and highlights an interpretative repertoire drawn on by participants that constructs mathematics as expert practice. Mathematicians’ expert ways of seeing and thinking are contrasted with the more everyday perspective of ‘most people’. The findings raise questions about what it means to learn to talk about academic mathematics in a school setting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lesson transitions are important units for analysis not only for establishing the presence of group/pair work but also for examining the contextual conditions for small-group learning. Scholars have suggested that the ‘open’ or ‘closed’ contextual conditions set up through the teacher's use of language to introduce group/pair work influence the quality of pupil's talk and interthinking, i.e. the use of language for thinking together and collectively solving problems. The nature of transition, however, has not been fully characterised in the research literature for us to understand what these conditions are. In this paper, we present the findings from an analysis of teachers’ discourse when the teachers introduced their pupils to group/pair work in two primary English classrooms in Singapore. Our analysis shows the extended and recursive nature of lesson transitions in these classrooms, as well as how the two teachers orchestrated conditions of entry into group/pair work and how the pupils were (un)successfully inducted into such tasks. These preliminary findings about transitions can have pedagogical implications for the ways teachers can create conditions that will support learning when they introduce group/pair work to their pupils. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study proposes that communication problems may be procedurally managed in intercultural interaction. Drawing upon a number of office-hour interactions between international teaching assistants and American college students, this paper examines the linguistic and cultural sources of communication problems. The close analyses of these interactions revealed that problematic understanding could be managed in the communicative procedures of correction and prevention. The findings here suggest that procedural knowledge is particularly important for achieving mutual understanding in education contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we identify four formats of classroom talk for integrating everyday and scientific discourse - replacement, interweaving, contextual privileging and pastiche. In the replacement format, progress in understanding is gauged by the extent to which scientific representations replace the more concrete and everyday representations in students' talking and thinking. Research by Ballenger (1997) on Haitian children's engagement in classroom science talks illustrates the interweaving format. The classroom science talks interweaved scientific perspectives and concepts with issues of morality and identity raised by students. Wistedt and Martinsson (1996) provide evidence for a contextual privileging format. They identified different voices in children's discussions on mathematics topics - the everyday voice of practical reasoning, the voice of conventional schooling and the mathematical voice per se - the specific context of talk determined which voice was given precedence. Through our research we have identified the pastiche format of classroom talk. Pastiche refers to the process of compiling multiple representations of a concept for consideration by others. Greater articulation of the ways that everyday and scientific talk can be integrated extends existing research on Vygotsky's theory of learning and identifies styles of classroom talk for enhancing student inquiry and knowledge co-construction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I argue that a dominant theme in New Literacy Studies research, the differences between literacy practices inside and outside school, has sometimes involved conflating 'home literacy' with private, unregulated 'vernacular literacy', and the use of an idealised abstract notion of schooled literacy to represent students' actual everyday experience in the classroom. Drawing on linguistic ethnographic research in two British primary schools, I use examples of 'unofficial' and 'official' literacy activities from 10-11-year-olds to show that a wide range of different forms of literacy can be found in the classroom and I argue that the division between 'vernacular' and 'schooled' is not as clear-cut as is sometimes assumed. My analysis of children's literacy activities suggests that, on the one hand, unofficial activities orientate towards and index official knowledges and the macro-level institutional order and, on the other hand, official activities are interpenetrated with informal practices and procedures. I also comment on some implications of using the New Literacy Studies 'events and practices' conceptual framework for understanding what is going on in classrooms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the discourse of whole class teaching in Kenyan and Nigerian primary school English lessons. Twenty lessons were analysed using a system of discourse analysis focusing on the teacher-led three-part exchange sequence of Initiation -- Response -- Feedback (IRF). The focus of the analysis was on the first and third part of the IRF sequence as it is here that research suggests teachers can enhance pupil learning through questions and follow-up which asks pupils to expand on their thinking, justify or clarify their opinions, or make connections to their own experiences. The findings suggest that teacher questions were mainly closed requiring recall of information and teacher follow-up, where it occurred, often consisting of a low level evaluation of a pupil response, thereby severely constraining opportunities for pupil participation in the classroom discourse and higher order thinking. The implications of the findings are considered in the light of their impact on classroom pedagogy and the professional development of Kenyan and Nigerian primary teachers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the familiar issue of parental (non-)involvement in schools. More specifically, it examines the language of selected texts in one school context and finds initially that the roles of parents are not discursively constructed in these texts as their being involved in the school. Rather, a close reading of the texts' discourse displays parents as the deficit half of a contrastive pair (parents vs the school). The issue of parental involvement at this school, first highlighted in a survey analysis as significant, gains a complementary and extended interpretation through the application of discourse analysis to interviews with the school leaders and a section of the school's web page. Further analysis of interview data referring to the implementation of activities designed to increase parental involvement highlights movement towards the discursive reconstruction of parents as standard relational pairs with school leaders. The findings highlight the importance of the use of discourse analysis as a tool for understanding and implementing change in school culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, the oral conversations of primary students were examined in an effort to understand how student participation and role in discourse community affects their learning. Discourse analysis provided both an analytical framework for analysing student and teacher talk and a definition of discourse communities. The concept of discourse communities carries with it an argument for the dialogic or constantly reconstructed 'self'. The focus of this paper is the analysis of one discussion among three grade-2 (ages seven to eight years old) students and the researcher. The students bring with them varying expertise, and are constantly co-creating their 'selves' in different small-group discourse communities. By using discourse analysis as an analytical framework, it becomes easier to determine the different roles that students and teachers play, the different selves that are co-created, and the possible impacts of these on student learning. The analysis reveals the complexity that primary-school teachers encounter as they attempt to set up discourse communities in which all students can actively participate as learners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes the contribution the analysis of visual design can make to a critical reading of educational texts. Drawing on recent work on visual design, the paper analyses the composition of a newspaper advertisement seeking responses to an educational report. It illustrates the way elements of composition work to present a particular reading path, constructing a hierarchy of meanings across the text. This hierarchy of meanings reinforced the Queensland Government's preferred discourse on standards in schools. The paper shows how an analysis of the visual elements adds to the discursive mapping of the advertisement. It argues that the analysis of visual elements should be included in a critical discourse analysis of educational texts in order to gain a deeper understanding of the discourses that construct and produce meanings about educational policies and practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Provides information on a study that presented a discourse analysis of contributions to an online interactive discussion forum of a graduate-level education course on the topic of Discourse in Classrooms. Methodology of the study; Results and discussion on the study.

To engage in critical praxis, teachers of literary response writing need concepts and methods for understanding the efficacy of teaching practices in helping students develop particular dispositions towards texts and the social issues they represent. In this article, the author uses concepts from Legitimation Code Theory (LCT) and Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) to reveal the value positions constructed by 8th grade English language arts (ELA) students in essays produced in a critical literary analysis unit. After reading excerpts from two Harry Potter novels, students compared the main characters' views on elvish enslavement as evidenced by the passages. This study uses axiological constellation analysis to explore the language choices in essays that constructed contrasting stances towards Harry's character and the representation of elvish enslavement in the texts. The study contributes to understanding how values are constructed in literary response writing and how these relate to broader sociopolitical discourses, with implications for critical praxis in subject English education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An inclination to advocate is an important orientation for teachers working with emergent bilingual learners; emphasized in both frameworks for teacher education and in teacher education standards. Nevertheless, scholars have only begun to investigate how advocacy is constructed and enacted within online language teacher education coursework designed to promote linguistically responsive pedagogy. This study investigates teacher candidates' orientations to advocacy by examining asynchronous online discussions to understand how candidates' personal stances were interactionally constructed. Analysis drew upon critical discursive psychology for its focus on talk/writing as action-oriented and for its emphasis on the ways that constructs traditionally interpreted as cognitive, such as one's personal beliefs or stance, are made accessible through examining language-in-interaction. Findings demonstrate how candidates oriented to advocacy work as both programmatic and political, while employing specific discursive and conversational features to construct their personal stance within each pattern. This study advances understanding of teacher candidates' 'inclination to advocate' as an essential orientation of linguistically responsive pedagogy and has implications for the planning and design of online language teacher education coursework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This special issue of Language and Education contributes to a distinctive and growing tradition of ethnographic and discourse analytic research on multilingual classroom interaction. To illustrate the nature and significance of the articles assembled here, this introduction provides a brief genealogy of this research tradition. We review two broad generations of studies, along with some of the different orienting theories and methodologies guiding the studies: (1) a first generation of research in multilingual classroom contexts that grew out of the field of linguistic anthropology in North America and (2) a second generation of studies, emerging from the early 1990s onwards, that developed critical, interpretive approaches to the study of multilingual classroom interaction. The second-generation studies were conducted in a wider range of research sites, including post-colonial settings, and they were explicitly framed with reference to language-in-education policies. We then introduce the five articles in this special issue. We argue that they represent a third generation of studies that are opening up new epistemological spaces at the interface with other fields of research, such as multimodality in classroom interaction or ethnography of language policy, while building on the robust foundation of first- and second-generation research in multilingual classrooms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From the cognitive perspective of embodiment and relying mostly on the powerful and revealing tool of metaphor, we approach the issue of education in the Obama administration's discourse trying to unveil the ideological preferences hidden behind the use of the different metaphors. It is assumed that this body of metaphors will contribute to the political and cultural understanding of such strategic issue to a nation. The analysis of speeches on education by leading figures plus the media reflection of educational problems (Washington Post) will let us see from a close distance how education is talked about. After the analysis of the four metaphors, it will be seen that traditional values such as individualism and competition are being imposed against other values such as social justice and equity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We consider what it means to be a dialogic teacher as characterized by Paulo Freire and Robin Alexander, and utilizing discourse analysis, we explicate how one elementary teacher's talk reflects these characteristics. We provide context for and analysis of a seven-minute discussion selected as a cumulative achievement the focal nine-year-olds are capable of after a year's exposure to dialogic teaching. These students explored many authors’ stereotypical treatment of orphanages as a common setting in children's literature and considered how it impacted character development and the readers’ predisposition toward characters. We explore the role the teacher played to mobilize students’ everyday knowledge, listen attentively as students grappled with ideas, and then anchor his questions and comments in students’ contributions. Using talk in this way, he was able to negotiate school knowledge, specifically literate talk, and effectively connect it to what his students already knew. We highlight the concept of dialogic stance and argue that it is not isomorphic with the way a particular utterance is syntactically structured. It is rather a function of how patterns of talk may open up discourse space for exploration and varied opinions, and how teacher- and student decision-making about content is presented and discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In many English as a Second Language (ESL) programs across the United States classroom teachers, ESL specialists, and bilingual paraprofessional share responsibility for teaching English language learners. Expectations of 'shared responsibility' are constructed and negotiated through local discourses. This study explores how the roles and responsibilities of classroom teachers, the ESL department, and students are constructed and reproduced in a site-based inquiry group's conversation. The inquiry team's goal of improving instructional practices for English language learners is constructed through and constrained by local discourses. Through discourse analysis (Edley 2001) I explore the available subject positions and ideological assumptions within local discourses. The three dominant, local discourses normalize particular roles and responsibilities with significant consequences for the education of English language learners. I propose that professional development can engage and manipulate the ideological tensions between existing discourses to promote instructional and cultural changes, making available new expectations of shared responsibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Framed within interactional sociolinguistics, microethnographic discourse analysis, and cognitive science, we examine how intercontextuality, collective memories, and classroom chronotopes were used in generating learning opportunities in a ninth-grade language arts classroom. Five consecutive videorecorded lessons were analyzed focusing on how the teacher and students constructed relationships among past, present, and future events and contexts. Among the grounded theoretical constructs generated were (1) that the teacher and students socially constructed collective memories as interpretive frames for their reading and writing; and (2) they juxtaposed and problematized differing chronotopes in constructing learning opportunities and building a curriculum. We view these grounded theoretical constructs as contributions to current discussions of the nature and use of time in classrooms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Asymmetry in classroom discourse, typified by teachers' frequent use of inauthentic initiating question turns, does not afford the best opportunities for the learning of language skills. More favourable conditions would appear to be associated with collaborative discourse patterns that display genuine interest in the child's contribution and build on, and respond to, the child's turn. Video-recordings were made of consecutive episodes of ‘story-writing’, ‘speaking-book’ and ‘circle-time’ activities to explore the sequential implications of the teachers' initiations across each task. During speaking-book the teacher initiates with topic initial elicitors which invite news, ideas or opinions from the child. In story-writing the teacher employs invitations, which call for the children to generate ideas or suggestions. Analysis of teacher follow-up turns demonstrates ways in which they recast and reformulate the children's response turns and elicit further material related to the pupils' agendas. By contrast, there is limited evidence of negotiation in the circle-time activity. The study demonstrates the potentially facilitative role played by triadic dialogue in language learning and therefore has professional significance for all those involved in the development of oral language skills in classrooms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research describes and analyses the type of verbal discourse and interactions among the children in a group-solving situation. Two groups of five children ages 6,7 and 8, from two different cultures, were observed: one at an English-speaking summer camp in Beirut, Lebanon, and another at a parallel site, a neighbourhood group in Kentucky, in the United States. The same researcher conducted both studies and English was the language of communication. Audiotapes as well as videotapes and transcriptions were use as means for data collection. A comparative microethnographic analysis was applied to find relationships between the different verbal and nonverbal interactions and interpret the process used by the different cultures in similar situations. The rate and type of utterances as well as nonverbal moves were recorded. Evidence of commonalities between the children's verbal cognitive as well as the semantic aspect of the language was observed. More difference was observed in the nonverbal and perlocutionary acts in some segments of the discourse. Difference was also recorded in the intensity of interactions and the type of utterance and propositions produced during both groups' discourses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Describes an action research project which took place at the Johannesburg College of Education in the period immediately before and after South Africa's first democratic election in 1994. Discussion on how a discourse analysis of student journals helped to describe and explain the contests over meaning, some of which involved issues around new teaching methodologies, social identities and fear of change; Explanation on the attempt to create a more productive learning environment in which diverse meanings could be accommodated and accepted.