Discursive interactions in the classroom. Ideas to expand research and enhance teaching practice to multiply opportunities to learn

Abstract

During the last five decades, the scientific study of classroom talk has converged in the tradition of classroom dialogue. Empirical research has progressed, showing how dialogic forms of organizing classroom talk would be more conducive to student learning and development than monologic forms. However, two major problems remain unresolved. On the one hand, and despite the research mentioned above, teachers still mostly use a monological teaching method, thus arranging monological ways of organizing classroom discourse. On the other hand, our understanding of the psychological processes that would explain the relationship between the way of organizing classroom talk and learning is still limited. In the present article, we introduce a special section in which we have brought together six papers that sought to extend conceptually and methodologically the limits of the study of classroom talk by explicitly adopting the notion of discursive interactions in the classroom.