Investigating Peer Interactions in CLIL Contexts

Abstract

This chapter outlines various research approaches for investigating and analyzing peer interactions in diverse CLIL contexts. It focuses on some established qualitative methods of research and analysis, as these possess features that allow for a detailed examination of peer interactions. A focus on qualitative research methods which explore language-in-use adheres to the current linguistic and social turns in the social sciences that recognize the powerful role language plays in constructing and co-constructing meaning in interactions. This chapter begins by explaining features of classroom ethnography, which allows for an investigation of peer interactions from a sociocultural perspective and provides additional means to develop hypotheses and theories about how participants construct learning through various interactions. It then outlines characteristics of microethnography, which seeks to discover features of meaning making that often go unnoticed in other research approaches. This chapter additionally outlines two methods of analysis for investigating naturally occurring speech in social research: discourse and conversation analysis (CA). Discourse analysis provides an analytical framework for illustrating the construction, co-construction, and reconstruction of meaning in interaction, while CA is employed in unexplored settings to investigate patterns of talk-in-interaction.