Classroom Interaction

Abstract

A social interaction perspective on classroom interaction studies the mechanisms teachers and students use to conduct their classroom business. This article on classroom interaction first discusses the ways teachers and students have organized turn-taking and the ways they use their turns at talk to engage in classroom activities. One particularly important format for these activities is the action sequences of teacher initiation, student response, and teacher evaluation of that response (the IRE sequence). Next it addresses two strands of classroom interaction research that particularly aim to relate classroom practices to larger societal issues such as modes of production (critical research) and ethnic and linguistic diversity (diversity research). Finally, the article contains a detailed discussion of recent research of learning in interaction.