Initiation Response Evaluation Research Articles

Following up: Questions and Talk Moves in Preservice Teachers’ Mathematics Classroom Conversations

<p style="text-align: justify;">Our research aim is to describe how Preservice Teachers (PSTs) can rehearse and prepare for leading productive talks in mathematics and other subjects. Based on literature and previous research on what constitutes productive talks, we focus on questions and talk moves in this case study, where we follow three groups of PSTs during their practicum, practicing conducting productive talks in mathematics. Our research questions are: What kinds of questions do PSTs ask? What kinds of talk moves do they use? How do these questions and talk moves contribute to the PSTs breaking the IRE (Initiation–Response–Evaluation) pattern and moving towards more productive mathematics talks with complex exchanges of questions and responses? And furthermore: How can we use these findings to improve teacher education in this field? We find that leading productive talks in the mathematics classroom is a challenging task, but there is variation between our three groups in what they struggle with. In accordance with previous research, we also find that the third turn in the exchange, following up after a question and a response is a crucial point in the conversation. One recommendation for teacher education is that video filming and analysing classroom talks might help PSTs to become conscious of and improve on this point. Further research is needed both on long term effect of such practice and focus, and on other ways to improve classroom talks in mathematics and other subjects.</p>

Hypothetical mistakes: hedging wrong answers with conditional language in initiation-response-evaluation (IRE) sequences in an American high school classroom

Abstract This article analyzes American high school students hedging incorrect responses to teacher-initiated questions in IRE (Initiation-Response-Evaluation) format using conditional language and hypotheticals in ways that facilitate an affiliative stance between students and their teacher. Scholarship on hedging details its use to approximate responses as a shield against doubt and criticism or as collaborative communication, whereas stance is a grammatically encompassed expression of attitudes related to the content of a message. This study brings together theories of stance, hedging, and conditional language use to outline how errors can be a student-initiated pedagogical tool to deepen explanations and engagement. To broaden understanding of the form and function of both incorrect answers and hedging as a structure expanding traditional IRE turntaking for managing classroom discourse, this article outlines seven examples total where students hedge what they know to be incorrect answers drawn from recordings made in forty, fifty-minute high school level Latin lessons over the 2019–2020 academic year. This study presents a model and impacts of students creatively reconfiguring evaluative responses along with their teacher during instruction through hedging incorrect information in conditional, and sometimes hypothetical, formats.

Discourse Pattern in the Major Subjects of English Language Learners during Synchronous Meetings

Students’ participation is one of the forefront responsibilities of every teacher. Through a well-designed discursive move, students take responsibility in their learning and take ownership of the development of the lesson. Since classroom talk is highly recognized, this study was conducted to examine the discourse patterns in the major subjects of English Language Learners during synchronous meetings. This qualitative study considered Literature and Language Major Subjects during the second semester of school year 2019-2020. The recorded synchronous meetings were analyzed to determine the prevailing discourse patterns. The result revealed that three discourse patterns were identified namely: Initiation – Response – Feedback (IRF), Initiation – Response – Evaluation (IRE), and student – initiated: Initiation – Response (IR) /Initiation – Response – Follow-up (IRF) exchange. In the IRF pattern, teachers intentionally used non-evaluative follow-up to encourage and elicit more talk from students and the use of non-evaluative feedback to maintained students’ engagement throughout the class time. In the IRE pattern, the teacher provided evaluative feedback when the desired answer was rightly provided by the students. However, the teacher would initiate another interaction when the right answer was not provided without explicitly stating the incorrectness of the answer to further students’ participation until the expected answer is given. In the inverted IRF, students initiate interaction in the class and it is a vivid picture that students are not apprehensive and hesitant to share their thought about the lesson being developed in their major classes.

The Use of Teachers’ Repetitions in One-on-one EFL Tutoring Interactions: A Case Study of a Korean English Learner

Adopting a conversation analytic framework, this paper examined the delay and potential indeterminacy of teacher’s repetition as an other-initiated repair (OIR) strategy, which took place at the third turn of the Initiation-Response-Evaluation (IRE) sequence in one-on-one tutoring sessions. Tutor-tutee interactions for a Korean secondary student were transcribed and analyzed along with notes used in the class. Data showed that when repetition was used as an OIR strategy, it was delayed and inaccurate. The learner was sometimes unsure whether the teacher’s repetition constituted a repair initiation regarding her prior turn. Furthermore, the learner could not successfully recognize which part of the repeated phrase should be repaired. Prior studies have confirmed that repetition can promote learners’ interactions rather than simply highlighting error while also giving learners an opportunity to correct their errors themselves. However, the analysis in this paper suggests a potential risk associated with using repetition as an OIR strategy at feedback turn in instructional discourse.

Life Sciences teachers’ practices of informal formative assessment in inquiry-based teaching

ABSTRACT This study explored five Life Sciences teachers’ practices of formative assessment when enacting an inquiry-based pedagogy. The ESRU cycle (teacher Elicits a response; the Student responds; the teacher Recognises the student’s response; and then Uses the information collected to support student learning) was used as a coding system in the analysis of speaking turns involving exchanges between the teachers and learners. By tracking the strategies teachers used in terms of ESRU cycles, we were able to capture differences in assessment practices across the five teachers during inquiry science lessons. The findings of the analysis revealed patterns of teacher–learner interaction described as IRE (Initiation, Response, Evaluation) that are suggestive of ‘incomplete’ ESRU cycles. In the assessment conversations, there was absence of the crucial step of Using information about student learning in order to support students in the construction of knowledge. The findings of his study signal the need for professional development in supporting teachers in their formative assessment practices. This development can be in the form of workshops that focus on strategies for formative assessment such as those that are encapsulated in the ESRU framework. It is also recommended that best practices in formative assessment be modelled to teachers.

Insights into the interaction and discourse in the senior phase natural sciences classroom

This paper investigated interaction and discourse during teacher classroom practices in the Senior Phase Natural Sciences in some rural schools positioned in the Vhembe District of the Limpopo Province, South Africa. The research method employed was a qualitative interpretative multiple case study design. Two schools were selected, and one Natural Science teacher from each school participated in this study. Classroom observations and interviews were used to collect data from Senior phase Natural Sciences teachers. Natural sciences teachers were interviewed in their schools and observed during classroom practice. The findings of the study show that the type of discourse observed from Natural Sciences teachers was authoritative discourse and the pattern of discourse employed was Initiation Response Evaluation. Teacher questioning was used to develop the lesson and evaluate learner understanding. Teachers used an interactive-authoritative communicative approach during their lesson presentations. The consequences of the approaches the teachers use limit the opportunities for learners to interact amongst themselves and the subject content. It is recommended that besides focusing on subject matter knowledge during continuous development programs, there is a need to focus on interactions and discourse. Furthermore, there is a need to conduct further studies on a large scale so that a suitable intervention program can be designed for in-service teachers.

Supportiveness of Existing Classroom Culture to the Implementation of Dialogic Teaching: Analysis of Teacher-Student Interaction in Physics Teaching and Learning

This case study presents the analysis of teacher-student interaction in physics classrooms. The participants of the study were three physics teachers and 131 students from three upper primary schools (Grades 7 and 8) of Ethiopia. Data for the study were collected through observation of eight video recorded physics lessons. The analysis of videos indicated the teacher-student interaction in the existing physics classrooms were characterized by the transferring of factual knowledge; Initiation-Response-Evaluation (IRE) and Initiation-Discussion-Computation-Response-Evaluation (IDCRE) types of interaction pattern; interactive/authoritative type of communication, evaluative feedback and use of low-level oral questions. Authoritative classroom communication, use of low-level questions, evaluative feedback; inappropriate intervention and support were the aspects of teacher-student interaction that seemed to influence the implementation of dialogic teaching as such type of classroom practices contradict the principles of dialogic teaching.

A case study of two South Korean middle school EFL teachers’ practices: instructional stances and use of classroom materials

ABSTRACT This case study uses a sociocultural theoretical perspective to examine how two Korean middle-school EFL teachers nurtured participatory affordances for their students through classroom discourse. We conducted a triangulated analysis of video-recorded classroom discourse, observational notes and teacher interviews. Our findings show how the teachers’ instructional stances, namely orientations to teaching, were linked to their use of materials and their interactional practices. While Ms. Yoon’s instructional stance was undergirded by a focus on grammatical accuracy, Ms. Jin’s stance was student-centred, driven by her desire to make English-language learning meaningful. The teachers’ instructional stances, in turn, fundamentally shaped their discursive strategies, their uses of L2 materials, and the learning opportunities these produced for students. Using decontextualised examples, Ms. Yoon relied on a rapid-paced Initiation-Response-Evaluation (IRE) pattern, positioning students as knowledge-receivers. By contrast, Ms. Jin enacted more dialogic interaction using meaningful intertextual links and playful talk, which resulted in students’ active participation, evidenced by their initiation of topics and extended answers. Our study contributes to nascent classroom-based research on L2 material use by suggesting two additional areas for research: the link between teacher instructional stance and L2 material use and intertextual links as a mediational tool for learning.

Teacher smiles as an interactional and pedagogical resource in the classroom

In classroom settings, laughter and smiles are resources for action that are available to both teachers and students. Recent interactional studies have documented how students use these resources to deal with trouble of various kind, but less is known about the sequential and activity contexts of teachers’ laughter-relevant practices, as well as their pedagogical functions. We use multimodal conversation analysis (CA) to investigate the interactional unfolding and pedagogical orientations of teacher smiles during instructional IRE (initiation-response-evaluation) sequences in a corpus of 37 bilingual lessons collected in schools in Finland and Spain. In analysing the focal smiles, we pay attention to their temporal relationships to students’ preceding and subsequent facial expressions and the unfolding of on-going talk. We argue that smiling can index teachers’ affiliative and pedagogical responsiveness to troubles and competences implied by prior student actions. The analysis of selected data fragments shows how smiling is part of multimodal action packages through which teachers manage momentary action disalignments and restore a sense of students as competent actors. The findings contribute towards recent CA research on the embodied and interactional nature of teaching and learning by showing some ways in which smiling is a situated practice used for professional purposes.

Toimintaa lukemisen ja kirjoittamisen rajapinnalla

This article takes a new literacy studies’ view on literacy as a socially constructed practice. In the context of environmental studies in elementary school, it looks at the development of literacy through literacy events, such as the reading of factual texts and completion of pedagogic tasks related to them (taking notes, filling in worksheets, underlining, etc.). First, a multimodal conversation analysis was applied to video-recorded data from two different fourth-grade lessons. From this, we identified a reading comprehension task that combined reading with a collaborative construction of questions about a text. This involved the students fitting their writing and editing activities to teacher-led initiation-response-evaluation (IRE) sequences, with both the teacher and students monitoring the temporal unfolding of activities. By video-shadowing selected students, we are able to show what the students take from the instruction and within which limits they make choices in their own actions. These are displayed through the use of tools and manipulation of textual objects.

IRE and content area literacies: A critical analysis of classroom discourse

This article draws on a research project undertaken in a state secondary school that explored ways of engaging students in the content area of science. The paper argues that high school teachers teaching in specialist areas can better cater for student needs through attention to a pedagogy that is literacy focused. This is particularly relevant in content area subjects in the secondary school where many teachers have not had access to pre-service literacy training and, traditionally, teaching approaches have been content focused. Moreover, contemporary schools are now places characterised by linguistic, cultural and social diversity and coupled with Australia's push for STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics), it is helpful if science teaching incorporates productive (student engagement) and inclusive (student diversity) approaches. A discursive analysis of classroom talk excerpts from three science lessons is used to make comparisons: one from early in the project where the nature of science teaching was investigated and two as a result of findings from investigating the first. The talk was coded using an IRE (initiation-response-evaluation) structure to show how student activity and engagement increased as a result of a pedagogical change. The findings of this research have implications for the way content areas are taught in some secondary schools.

Discourse Patterns and Communicative Approaches for Teaching Nature of Science

This study aims to determine discourse patterns and communicative approaches utilised for teaching the nature of science (NOS) using an explicit–reflective approach. This study was conducted as part of a research project aiming to support teachers’ classroom practices through a long-term professional development program focusing on teaching NOS. Discourse analysis was used to determine classroom discourse patterns and communicative approaches. Audio and video recordings of classroom lectures conducted by 8 of the 22 teachers participating in the project were used for analysis. A total of 505 minutes of teacher–student dialogue was recorded and subsequently analysed. The results indicated that teachers used three different discourse patterns (triadic, chain, and adjacency pair) and three different communicative approaches (interactive–dialogic, interactive–authoritative, and non-interactive–dialogic) for teaching NOS using the explicit–reflective approach. The most common discourse pattern was the triadic pattern (initiation–response–evaluation), and the interactive–authoritative approach was the most common communicative approach. These findings contribute to the literature in terms of increasing the efficiency of using the explicit–reflective approach by considering classroom discourse to teach students NOS.

Variations on the IRE pattern in a French beginner task-based classroom

ABSTRACTThe use of the Initiation–Response–Evaluation (IRE) sequence is common in education and, although classroom research does not preclude its practice in pedagogy, it recommends introducing other forms of talk into teaching. The present study, inspired by Task-Based Language Teaching research on learner language, uses Conversation Analysis to explore the variations on the IRE pattern that take place in a class of French beginners as they complete a learning task. Based on audio-recorded data collected in situ, the study uncovers two IRE subcategories and one pattern of interaction that diverges from the standard IRE pattern. These variations reflect changes in the lesson phase and show how a three-phase lesson plan focused on a specific task can move classroom participants away from the exclusive use of IRE.

Implementation of Student - Team - Achievement - Divisions Activity and Flipped Classroom to Enhance Student Learning

The typical pattern of classroom interaction is the Initiation - Response - Evaluation (IRE) pattern which has been accountable for 70% of teacher - student classroom interactions. In this IRE approach, a teacher initiation (I) is followed by a student reply (R) and then an evaluation of this reply (E) by the teacher. IRE approach has been considered unrewarding and leads to boring classroom discussions. Also, there is an increasing need to provide students with learning experiences that reflect the challenges and opportunities of the 21st century. One key class of workforce skills relates to Rapid Collaborative Knowledge Building (RCKB). RCKB techniques include problem identification, brainstorming, prioritizing, concept mapping, and action planning. With inclusion of these techniques in the classroom, students learn the existing subject more deeply and also to become active participants in 21st century. Keeping all these aspects in mind the Student - Team - Achievement - Divisions (STAD) collaborative activity was planned and implemented. In traditional teaching approach a teacher in a classroom stands on the dais and delivers a lecture and writes on a black board. The teacher is aware that most students do not understood the lesson and the teacher is helpless as the class slot is just of one hour and there is a lot of material to cover before the test at the end of the unit. This traditional learning model will not encourage students who are accustomed to active learning, either on their own or in small groups of classmates. In order to address this issue flipped classroom was implemented. The work presented in this paper summarizes the effectiveness of collaborative activity and flipped classroom used in enhancing students' learning and performance in basic electrical engineering course.

Different types of student comments in the mathematics classroom

In this paper five classrooms at grades 5–7 (students aged 11–14 years) are studied for one week each during their mathematics lessons. The aim is to study the students’ comments in order to develop categories describing the comments’ different contributions to the mathematical discourse. The main categories developed are student initiatives, explanations, partial answers, teacher-led responses and unexplained answers. The practices analysed are all dominated by the IRE pattern (Initiation–Response–Evaluation), and the different categories of student comments can be seen as a description of the different types of ‘R’ (student response) from the IRE pattern. This also illustrates that different patterns can be hidden behind the IRE-label. The categories can be used to study student comments on a turn-by-turn basis, describing different types of student contribution to the mathematical discourse.

Expert Teachers’ Discursive Moves in Science Classroom Interactive Talk

It is well established that teacher-student interactive talk is critically important in supporting students to reason and learn in science. Teachers’ discursive moves in responding to student input are keys to developing and supporting a rich vein of interactive discussion. While initiation-response-evaluation (IRE) sequences have been shown to dominate science classroom discourse patterns worldwide, teacher ‘prompts’ are important for opening up opportunities for reasoning and higher level learning. This paper describes the analysis of video sequences for five expert elementary teachers across three countries to develop a coding scheme for these teachers’ ‘discursive moves’ to guide and respond to student inputs, that unpacks more completely the strategies they use to develop interactive discussion. The analysis showed varied patterns of knowledge transaction, with teacher discursive moves serving three broad purposes: to elicit and acknowledge student responses, to clarify and to extend student ideas. The patterns of talk were also related to the dialogic-authoritative distinction in analysis of talk, to show that this distinction is only clear for particular types of expert practice. While the particular moves teachers use vary across parts of lessons we argue that they are revealing of teachers’ particular beliefs and of systemic constraints, and that there exist patterns in the use of the discursive categories that capture how expert teachers build deeper level knowledge in classroom interactive talk. We describe ways in which the analysis can inform science teacher education and the professional learning of teachers of science.

Conversational Patterns of Homestay Hosts and Study Abroad Students

AbstractAlthough the initiation, response, and follow‐up (IRF) conversational structure and the initiation, response, evaluation (IRE) structure, commonly termed “triadic dialogue,” (Lemke, 1990) have been extensively documented in relation to classroom conversational style, there is little research on their distribution during, and impact on, learner speech outside the classroom. Data from 37 conversations, collected over a one‐year study abroad homestay program, were categorized to determine how the conversations functioned as well as to reveal general patterns of language use. Triadic dialogue was discovered to be a common conversational style used between New Zealand homestay parents and their 17‐ and 18‐year‐old Japanese study abroad students. More specifically, the evaluative move was isolated and found to occur often with display questions made by the host, which also functioned to restrict conversation. Hosts initiated 83 times from approximately five hours of recorded conversations: 28 of these initiations were display questions, and 33 were referential questions. Students did not initiate any display questions and initiated 12 referential questions. Both the hosts' conversational dominance and the asymmetrical relationship perpetuated particular conversational patterns commonly framed within the triadic structure (Sinclair & Coulthard, 1975), which data suggested were difficult to break during the study abroad period.

Dynamic Variables of Science Classroom Discourse in Relation to Teachers’ Instructional Beliefs

The current study examines if the occurence of dynamic variables namely, authentic questions, uptake, high-level evaluation and student questions in primary science classrooms vary by teachers’ instructional beliefs. Twelve 4th grade teachers from two different schools volunteered to participate in the study. Data was collected through semi-structured interviews and classroom observations. Both qualitative and quantitative methods were used to determine teachers’ instructional beliefs, classroom practices and dynamic variables of classroom discourse. Results showed that teachers were more teacher-centred in their classroom practices than their instructional beliefs. There were no differences among teachers with different instructional beliefs in terms of the frequency of dynamic variables. Implications for education and research were discussed.

Student and teacher interventions: a framework for analysing mathematical discourse in the classroom

Mathematical discourse in the classroom has been conceptualised in several ways, from relatively general patterns such as initiation–response–evaluation (Cazden in classroom discourse: the language of teaching and learning, Heinemann, London, 1988; Mehan in learning lessons: social organization in the classroom. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979) to concepts for more fine-grained description such as the ‘Advancing Children’s Mathematics’ framework (Fraivillig et al. in J Res Math Educ 30(2):148, 1999). This article suggests a framework to be used for detailed studies of mathematical discourse on a turn-by-turn basis. This framework was used to study how single turns affect each other to form patterns in one teacher’s practice. The method used belongs to conversation analysis: studying single turns and characterise these according to their role in the conversation. Two main repeating patterns were identified: one between student explanations and the teacher’s focusing actions, and the other between the teacher’s progressing actions and students’ teacher-led responses. The findings also included other connections that demonstrate how various student interventions (explanations, teacher-led responses, unexplained answers, partial answers, and initiatives) are followed by different types of teacher actions. One implication is that, by developing concepts capable of describing qualities of a discourse on a turn-by-turn basis, it then becomes possible to analyse when mathematical talk fosters delivery of facts and when it fosters mathematical argumentation, debate, and critique.

Positive evaluation of student answers in classroom instruction

Within the context of teacher/whole-class instruction sequences, researchers have associated teacher evaluation of pupils’ answers to forms of traditional pedagogic discourse, also referred to as ‘triadic dialogue’, ‘monologic discourse’, ‘recitation’ and ‘Initiation-Response-Evaluation (IRE) sequences’. Teacher evaluation has also been associated with pupils’ low levels of participation. Explanations and solutions offered by prior research are mainly based on functional categories of actions, characterizing forms and functions of teacher questions and follow-up moves in IRE sequences. Using Conversation Analysis to investigate collections of positive evaluations in video-recorded lessons in two primary school classes, we propose an interactional explanation of the phenomenon and of its predominant use. We show that teachers systematically select the formats of their positive third-turn receipts not only to evaluate pupils’ answers for their abstract truth value, but also with respect to the role of each question–answer in the whole activity. We demonstrate that, in this way, teachers convey judgements about the question within the activity; thus, adding a constitutive property to the pedagogic practice and providing students with interpretive resources for a common understanding of pedagogic goals and procedures.