Research into classroom dialogue suggests that certain forms are especially productive for students' learning. Despite the large number of studies in this area, there is inadequate evidence about the prevalence of the identified forms, let alone their productivity. However, scarcity is widely presumed. The overall aim of the study reported in this…

This article explores how opportunities and limitations in creating intercontextualtiy between everyday and scientific ideas emerge in teacher-student interactions, with a particular focus on the teacher's role. The article draws on data from an empirical, longitudinal, study in a lower secondary school in Norway to analyze student-teacher…

Highly explicit language use is prized in scientific discourse, and greater explicitness is hypothesized to facilitate academic achievement. Studies in the mid-twentieth century reported controversial findings that the explicitness of text differs by the income and education levels of authors' families. If income-related differences in…

Collaborative problem solving, when students work in pairs or small groups on a curriculum-related task, has become an increasingly common feature of classroom education. This paper reports a study of a topic which has received relatively little attention: how teachers can most usefully intervene when students are working in a group, but have…

There has been a rich literature on the role of language in learning and on its role in knowledge (co-)construction in the science classroom. This literature, rooted in social semiotics theories and sociocultural theories, discussed research conducted largely in contexts where students are learning content in their first language (L1). In this…

Content-based instruction (CBI) adopts a second language (L2) as the medium of instruction for some or all academic subjects to facilitate L2 learning. There seem however, no uniform policies concerning which academic subjects should be taught in L2, in case only some subjects are involved. Conventional wisdom tends to favour Humanities subjects…

This paper reports on the classroom languaging practices of a group of science teachers in rural and township schools in South Africa where the majority of learners learn through the medium of English, despite the fact that it is the home language of only a small minority; and learners' poor English proficiency frequently restricts their access to…

In this paper, we examine some of the tenets of the current conceptualisations of communicative competence. Drawing on the empirical data collected in linguistically diverse university classrooms, we show that meaning-making in social interaction is considerably more complex and fluid than is envisaged in theoretical models of communicative…

We report on a case study examining the effects of a technology adaptation on patterns of discourse in a sheltered English high school science unit on electricity. The focus here is on how the tool, a classroom response system (CRS), affected access to and participation in classroom discourse with regard to developing science literacy among…

This paper describes research on dialogue between teachers and pupils during primary school science lessons, using talk from two classrooms to provide our examples. We consider whether teachers use dialogue to make education a cumulative, continuing process for guiding the development of children's understanding. Case studies of two teachers,…

Any episode of learning and teaching is necessarily situated in both space and time. But, whereas the spatial arrangement of the classroom remains relatively constant, change is the very essence of the learning that takes place within it. Such is the nature of the data to be examined in this paper. The same curriculum unit was taught by the same…

Describes and discusses the language practice of mathematics, science, and English language teachers and learners in a sample of urban and rural, primary, and secondary schools in South Africa. Particular focus is on reception and production of language through code switching, exploratory talk, and discourse specific talk. (Author/VWL)

This paper proposes to overcome the traditional essentialist and dichotomous ways of conceptualising language and language pedagogies, i.e. to go beyond linguistic purist perspectives. Analysing bilingual teaching practices in a science lesson, the paper proposes that practical bilingual pedagogies can be developed to help students in bilingual…