Abstract
Prior research across disciplines has established the value of dialogic, whole-class discussions. Previous studies have often defined discussions in opposition to the notorious triadic pattern called recitation, or IRE/F, focusing on variations to the teacher’s initiating question or evaluative follow-up on students’ responses. Recent scholarship has also identified variations on recitations and dialogic discussions that suggest these categories might be flexible, containing types of interaction associated with particular contexts. However, research remains to be done on how such types, or genres, of dialogic, whole-class discussion emerge and develop over time. In this article, I take up this line of inquiry, analyzing the classroom discourse of five lesson excerpts generated by a prospective teacher and his students in a US secondary History classroom between October and March. I illustrate how, over time, teacher and students repeatedly renegotiated the nature of a recitation-style textbook review activity using similar patterns of language that suggested an emergent discourse genre. These five interactions did not all lead to dialogic, whole-class discussions; I explain their relative success or failure in terms of how they constructed participants’ relationships to historical and classroom events. I argue that even failed attempts at generating dialogic discourse may be part of a developing genre.
Highlights
Education researchers agree on the value of whole-class discussions in which students develop and refine their ideas in relation to what others have already written or said
Researchers across disciplines who study dialogic, whole-class discussions have often contrasted them with the classroom discourse pattern commonly called recitation, in which the teacher initiates a question, a student responds, and the teacher evaluates or “follows-up” on the student’s response; this recurring triad is often abbreviated as IRE/F
Though much prior research on “dialogic,” whole-class discussions has defined them in opposition to the typical IRE/F pattern, attending primarily to types of teacher questions (e.g., Nystrand, Wu, Gamoran, Zeiser, & Long, 2003) and evaluative follow-ups on student responses (e.g., Aukerman, 2007; O’Connor & Michaels, 1993; Sherry, 2014), recent studies have suggested that dialogic discussions may be a flexible category that includes variations or types depending on purpose (e.g., Parker, 2010) or academic discipline (e.g., Sherry, 2016)
Summary
Education researchers agree on the value of whole-class discussions in which students develop and refine their ideas in relation to what others have already written or said. I analyze how teacher and students negotiated the nature of the activity, collaboratively creating relatively stable patterns of discourse Across these examples, I track the emergence and development of a dialogic discussion genre, and the potential reasons for, and relative effectiveness of, its variations. I track the emergence and development of a dialogic discussion genre, and the potential reasons for, and relative effectiveness of, its variations Based on these findings, I discuss connections to prior classroom discourse studies and propose implications for future research and teaching
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