Abstract
The research reported sought to develop a framework for systematically analysing classroom dialogue for application across a range of educational settings. The paper outlines the development and refinement of a coding scheme that attempts to represent and operationalise commonalities amongst some key theorists in the field concerning productive forms of educational dialogue. The team has tested it using video recordings from classroom settings in the UK and Mexico, across age phases, subject areas, and different interactional contexts including whole class, group and paired work. Our Scheme for Educational Dialogue Analysis (SEDA) is situated within a sociocultural paradigm, and draws on Hymes' Ethnography of Communication to highlight the importance of context. We examined how such a tool could be used in practice. We found that concentrating on the ‘communicative act’ to explore dialogue between participants was an appropriate level of granularity, while clustering the 33 resulting codes according to function of the acts helped to highlight dialogic sequences within lessons. We report on the application of the scheme in two different learning contexts and reflect on its fitness for purpose, including perceived limitations. Development of specialised sub-schemes and a version for teachers is underway.
Highlights
Dialogue is a distinctive human achievement with evolutionary and social relevance (Müller-Mirza & Perret-Clermont, 2009)
Gee and Green (1998, p. 120) have argued that systems for analysing classroom discourse must be integrated within an ethnographic perspective to form a coherent ‘logic-of-inquiry’ that recognises the importance of established educational process and cultural practices in shaping the meaning of teachers' and students' contributions
It is important to stress that the communicative acts (CA) comprising the coding scheme are conceived as dynamic interactional processes, where the temporal sequencing of both the teacher's and students' interventions throughout a lesson is crucial
Summary
Dialogue is a distinctive human achievement with evolutionary and social relevance (Müller-Mirza & Perret-Clermont, 2009). Our mapping and synthesis across a wide range of perspectives in the literature evolved iteratively through subsequent input from colleagues in the field and through initial trialling with video recordings of practice across diverse educational contexts in the UK and Mexico; from pre-school to higher education; across subjects (e.g. mathematics, literacy, science, humanities) and whole class and small group contexts; including activities with and without digital technology This inductive–deductive cycle allowed us to distil out the essence of dialogic interactions and operationalise them in the form of a new scheme of systematic indicators for these productive forms of educational dialogue. Our reflection on these examples includes the scheme's workability and usefulness of the chosen levels of granularity (CA and clusters) in characterising dialogic interactions
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