One of the challenges for analysing science classroom discourse is a better understanding of intercontextual relationships in the learning process. In this paper, we used orientations from ethnography in education to organise and propose an analytical metaphor called the hourglass approach. It involves three phases of analysis that correspond to…

In this work the WIHIC (What is Happening In this Classroom) instrument was used to assess the types of interactions, from students' perspectives, that occur in two science classrooms in Trinidad & Tobago. It was the first attempt to use the WIHIC instrument in the research context. An exploratory case study research design in the quantitative…

This paper was part of a larger study to examine one primary and one secondary teacher's classroom. The study analysed the classroom discourse to describe the types of interaction and illustrate how the teachers used talk moves to mediate talk for learning science around visual representations (VRs). The study employed ethnographic approaches to…

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…

The integration of socioscientific issues (SSI) in science education calls for emphasizing dialogic classroom practices that include students' views together with multiple sources of knowledge and diverse perspectives on the issues. Such classroom practices aim to empower students to participate in decision-making on SSI. This can be accomplished…

This naturalistic observational study examined teacher-child interactions in a third-grade science classroom. Of interest was the extent to which the quality of teacher-child relationships was associated with various categories of interaction, and students' understanding of science concepts. Teacher-child relationships of an intact class of 17…

Triadic dialogue, the Initiation, Response, Evaluation sequence typical of teacher /student interactions in classrooms, has long been identified as a barrier to students' access to learning, including science learning. A large body of research on the subject has over the years led to projects and policies aimed at increasing opportunities for…

Every student has a powerful wireless signal transmitter, his or her cell phone, that can be used to replace the "clicker" as a personal response device. Our mobile phone-based response system (iQlickers) collects and analyzes the answers or opinions sent in by the students as SMS (short message service) messages. The statistic of the…

Background/Context: There are few examples from classrooms or the literature that provide a clear vision of teaching that simultaneously promotes rigorous disciplinary activity and is responsive to all students. Maintaining rigorous and equitable classroom discourse is a worthy goal, yet there is no clear consensus of how this actually works in a…

This paper describes a qualitative study that investigated the nature of the participation structures and how the participation structures were organized by four science teachers when they constructed and communicated science content in their classrooms with computer technology. Participation structures focus on the activity structures and…

Teacher-led whole class discussions are essential when it comes to guiding students' construction of knowledge, and recent studies on teaching and learning emphasize the need for more student-centered teaching methods. In previous studies, the extent to which different types of communication take place in the classroom have been extensively…

Orchestrating inquiry-based science learning in the classroom is a complex undertaking. It requires fitting the culture of the classroom with the teacher's teaching and inquiry practices. To understand the interactions between these variables in relation to student learning, we conducted an investigation in two different classroom settings to…

This research investigates the interconnectedness of scientific inquiring at the early childhood level, as we explore the discourse-in-interaction processes occurring within small inquiry groups of 5- and 6-year-old children. The rationale behind this research is to explore the nature of science-related discourse, and to that end, this work…

Laughter is a fundamental human phenomenon. Yet there is little educational research on the potential functions of laughter on the enacted (lived) curriculum. In this study, we identify the functions of laughter in a beginning science teacher's classroom throughout her first year of teaching. Our study shows that laughter is more than a gratuitous…

This study investigated associations between teacher-student interaction and students' persistence to complete written electron configurations in a high school chemistry classroom. Analyses of the interactions were guided with an Expectancy-Value framework to identify the discourse strategies used by the teacher to build engagement in a classroom…