The construction of understanding in a sixth-grade bilingual classroom

Abstract

In this article, teaching and studenting ore conceived of as performances defined both institutionally and interactionally. Schools are viewed as providing an institutional framework and an organizational definition for teacher and student roles, whereas the actual roles experienced by teachers and students are viewed as interactionally constituted. From this perspective, each school and classroom is a particular kind of setting with particular opportunities for interacting and learning, even though schools and classrooms, as a general class of institutional entity, may share certain common organizational patterns. I present an analysis of how members of a bilingual sixth-grade classroom construct knowledge as they interact within a particular event of a social science history project. This analysis shows how theory informs analysis, and conversely, how analysis informs theory. Data are presented to illustrate ways in which knowledge is constructed by members through interactions in a local event (i.e., the presentation and defense of their island history) and over time (a 2 1 2 -month period). Ways in which positions (institutional definitions) and positionings (interactionally constructed definitions) are established by bilingual and Spanish or English dominant students through their actions and interactions are discussed along with related issues of language use.