Classroom Interactional Teacher Language Awareness: Expert Talk Contextualizing Pedagogical Content Knowledge

Abstract

The study investigated a second language teacher educator and teacher learners’ awareness of classroom interactional competence (CIC) to communicate pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) on a teacher education course in Iran. Therefore, the teacher educator’s classroom discourse was scrutinized using classroom observation triangulated with an interview data with the educator to characterize the interactional features of his talk-in-interaction with respective discourse modes. The resulting 43 interactures represented four interacture types which mediated Effective Eliciting, Shaping Learner Contribution, Facilitating Interactional Space Focused on the Learner, and Facilitating Interactional Space Focused on the Teacher. The corresponding mode analysis revealed frequent mode integrity incorporating classroom context mode with a pivotal role in all except Facilitating Interactional Space Focused on the Teacher interactures. Later, the taxonomy was incorporated into CIC TLA questionnaires. 32 teaching candidates, and the educator completed respective ethnographically-developed questionnaire versions indicating their awareness of the teacher educator’s choice of CIC interactures. Besides, the interview data concerning the TLA deliberation was triangulated with a Spearman rho correlation results of the perceived CIC strategy frequencies. Consequently, the confirmatory evidence for the significant degree of correspondence (rho = 0.67, n = 33,  < 0.01) between the educator and teacher learners’ awareness revealed the student teachers’ heightened declarative TLA. The findings urge language teacher educators to tune interactures in type, mode, and intensity to the professional content and the TLA they negotiate with teacher learners thereby.