Abstract
Content area teachers have a crucial task in promoting students’ building of disciplinary knowledge and language. This paper explores, on an elaborated theoretical foundation, how subject-specific knowledge and discourse in educational contexts may be discerned and promoted. The study draws on data from an interdisciplinary design-based three-year research project. Teacher–student interaction in a lower secondary science classroom is examined, and findings from analyzed video-recorded data reveal the complex use of semiotic resources. The teacher seeks to promote student participation and raise awareness about scientific discourse. In this paper, the verbal teacher–student interaction is visualized and described, and the results display a dynamic language use, revealing how the discourse, in wavelike patterns, gradually moves towards dense nominalized expressions, aligned with the features of disciplinary discourse. The results contribute to the understanding of content area teachers’ discourse strategies when they seek to facilitate the development of disciplinary knowledge and language.
Highlights
Language and literacy are embedded within a range of school subjects, along with their specialized knowledge
A school subject can be regarded as a disciplinary discourse, re-contextualized in educational context, with specific ways of reading, writing, speaking, doing, and thinking, which differs from daily perspectives on the world (Halliday & Martin, 1993)
The gradual building of knowledge and language in these contexts may in addition be conceptualized as a waving pattern or as a recurrent movement between and within discourses (e.g., Martin, 2013; Maton, 2013; Nygård Larsson, 2011)
Summary
The focus in the present study is on how the building of and movement towards subject-specific knowledge and disciplinary discourse in educational practice may be discerned and promoted. The study explores the educational potential in teacher–student interaction in a Swedish lower secondary science classroom. How does the teacher–student interaction introduce students to scientific discourse and what strategies does the teacher use to promote scientific knowledge and literacy?. To provide a foundation for the findings, the article starts by exploring and outlining some major theoretical approaches to building knowledge and disciplinary language and literacy in educational contexts, including perspectives on how the movement towards disciplinary discourse may be understood and interpreted. The paper suggests that the gradual building of disciplinary knowledge and literacy in classrooms in addition may be conceptualized as recurrent movements between and within discourses
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