¿Cómo se llama? ¿Quésignifica? Análisis de las interacciones docente-alumno en el tratamiento de palabras desconocidas

Abstract

The paper analyzes the conversational moves that teachers devote to the treatment of unknown words in elementary school science lessons. The corpus consists of 48 teaching situations recorded in 1st, 3rd, and 5th classrooms of 4 elementary schools located in the province of Córdoba, Argentina, which were selected according to criteria of typical representation. A system of dimensions and categories was designed, inductively, following the constant comparative method. This system made it possible to qualitatively analyze the conversational moves that teachers employ to support the learning of unfamiliar words. Through the Kruskal-Wallis H and the Mann-Whitney U tests, quantitative differences and similarities were identified depending on educational level. The results showed that 1st grade teachers have a greater tendency to correct the unknown word and provide gestural information than 3rd grade teachers. The analysis of the opportunities that children have to learn words in the classroom made it possible to evaluate the quality of teaching situations. © 2013 by Psykhe.