Instructional activities and discourse features in science classrooms: Teachers talking and students listening or•?

Abstract

In this chapter we discuss the relation between instructional format and discursive patterns in science classrooms. While we acknowledge a huge body of research both within studies of instruction and discourse features in classrooms, related discussions tend to be fragmented. Despite a massive growth of studies of discourse patterns and dialogues in classrooms (Wells 1985; Edwards and Mercer 1987; Mortimer and Scott 2003; Alexander 2006) we still know, for example, little about the productive interplay between discursive engagements, instructional practices and students’ learning in the different subject areas. Foregrounding interaction analyses (i.e. Mundane talk and general linguistic maneuvers) discourse analyses have contributed to expand our understanding of the power of turn taking and competing voices in the classrooms. How these discursive patterns interact with and support learning in different subject domains are, however, still an open question and, more important, how issues of communication patterns are dealt with and made productive within different instructional formats is still not understood. In a recent large scale video study from the US, for example, no relationships were found between discourse features and student learning when examining whether different instructional patterns and discursive formats in mathematics and English Language Arts had an impact on students’ achievement scores (Kane et al. 2011). To maximise their impact, we will argue in this contribution, analyses of classroom dialogues must be brought together with analyses of instructional patterns and linked to specific content areas. For this purpose, in this chapter we bring together studies of discourse features and research on instructional format when analysing offered and experienced learning in science classrooms.