This article discusses the place of thematic coherence in various approaches to educational dialogue and proposes a unifying approach to the analysis of thematic coherence of classroom conversations based on research in educational dialogue, philosophy of language and recent advances in linguistic research on discourse structure. Addressing the…

The current special issue is dedicated to studies exploring social interaction in second language educational environments that feature technology. In this introduction article, we contextualize the empirical studies included here with respect to the changing role of technology in education and situate them in the research tradition of multimodal…

Since the beginning of the 21st century, the appropriation of the sociocultural perspective by the physics education research community has represented a linguistic turn in the field, pointing out a promising path to overcome the dominance of the "individual paradigm," both in terms of student learning and initial and continuing teacher…

This paper discusses the place of precision in mathematics education by exploring its role in curricular guidelines and in classroom life. By means of a joke on precision delivered by a school student in South Sweden, our study focuses on student participation in mathematical tasks that require precision in processes of measuring and reasoning.…

For many language learners, listening represents a major source of anguish, with apparent success in the confines of the classroom failing to be mirrored in the ordinary interactions of daily life. One contributing factor may be the continued reliance on listening texts and activities that position the learner as a bystander rather than a…

Science teaching and learning are discursive practices, yet analysis of these practices has frequently been grounded in theorizations that place language at the forefront of interaction and meaning-making. Such language-centric analytic approaches risk overlooking key embodied, enacted aspects of students' engagement in science practices. This…

A great deal of research on second language (L2) input has provided useful linguistic evidence for the development of generalizations about and hypotheses on the usage-based nature of L2 knowledge. However, despite the fact that classrooms are one of the most ubiquitous sites of L2 learning, we still know very little about the linguistic quality…

Bakhtin is a source of theoretical inspiration for educational research. This article will be an attempt to activate also Bakhtin's analytical practice and his methodology. I will explore and elaborate the typology of discursive relations which are suggested in Bakhtin's book on Problems of Dostoevsky' Poetics (Bakhtin ,1984), and the potential…

The act of explaining can help students to develop new understandings of mathematical ideas, construct rules for solving problems, become aware of misunderstandings or a lack of understanding and develop their mathematical communication. Their explanations can also offer opportunities for a teacher to understand more fully what the students are…

What makes a productive mathematics discussion? Who does the talking? Whose ideas are taken up? Can a student question take the lesson in an unexpected but valuable direction? What does it mean to be responsive to students' mathematical thinking? These questions intrigued the authors as teachers, teacher educators, and researchers, and they…

To a large extent, the quality of classroom communication hinges on the teacher's ability to tune in and respond to emerging students' voices, which requires the astuteness and agility to hear layered messages, offer tailored assistance, and follow students' leads. It requires responding to multiple contingencies in real time. One important…

Talk is a key component of teaching and learning and teacher talk is an important part of how a teacher teaches. This paper discusses principles and approaches for analysing teacher talk in classroom interaction in order to investigate its effectiveness. The paper presents four reasons for analysing teacher talk: the role of interaction in the…

A new methodology is proposed for qualitative discourse analysis (QDA) aimed at gaining enhanced insights into learning possibilities and indicators that arise during classroom group discussions. The constitution of this new methodology has two principle components: a discourse analysis approach that aims to identify the relationships between…

This paper documents the process and outcome of the development and validation of a coding scheme to analyse mathematics classroom discourse in the context of Hong Kong primary schools. The objective of this coding scheme was to systematically analyse teacher discourse behaviours before and after an intervention programme; the programme aimed to…

While discourse studies have uncovered regular structural patterns in classroom interactions, these patterns are often the result of interpretive decisions teachers make in performing various pedagogical actions. Notably, however, teachers' instructional decisions often stretch beyond topical boundaries and are thus not limited to the current…