Classroom discussion is one of the most frequently used and often embraced pedagogical strategies. In attempting to enhance participation quality and discussion effectiveness, there is concern over what to do about students who are less inclined to participate voluntarily. We examined the context of intensive graduate business classes--in which…

In this article, the role of young children's emotional practices in science learning is described and analyzed. From the standpoint of performativity theory and social-constructionist theory of emotion, it is argued that emotion is performative and the expression of emotion in the classroom has its basis in social relationships. Arising from…

Deliberative discussions are grounded in particular conceptions of democracy and are intensely difficult to learn to lead. This study uses a sociocultural lens to examine the cases of two elementary school teachers as they worked to foster deliberation in their classrooms. Speech code theory is used to uncover conceptual tools the teachers used as…

This article on pedagogy in the classroom seminar combines the basic principles of dialogue and liberation as expressed especially by 20th-century thinkers Bakhtin and Freire. It argues for a pedagogy of educational growth and facilitation of ideas. Through learner-centered knowledge, dialogic interaction, open exploration, mutual respect, and…

This article seeks to explore the practice of repair in classroom discourse from an ideological perspective of language and literacy. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in an urban high school with a predominant English Language Learner (ELL) population, this paper outlines the theoretical foundations of repair from a "conversation…

Numerous classroom-based research projects have examined the important role social skills play in an elementary classroom (Browning, Davis, and Resta 2000; Burns 2003; Palmer and Wehmeyer 2003; Stone 2001). As Stone (2001, 18) suggested, "Teachers have an enormous influence on children's behavior by speaking directly and honestly to them,…

This study examined the functions that student talk served during partner reading events in a second grade classroom. Five major themes of talk emerged from the data including organizational, disputational, word strategy, meaning making and personal talk. All of these types of talk functioned to support partner reading except for personal talk,…

Promoting discussion and argumentation of mathematical ideas among students are aspects of the vision for communication in recent school mathematics reform efforts. Having rich mathematical discussions, however, can present a variety of classroom challenges. Many factors influence classroom discussions and need to be addressed in ways that will…

In dual immersion classrooms, students from different language backgrounds are immersed in the minority language for large portions of the school day with the expectation that they will become equally proficient in their first language (L1) and in their second language (L2). Research on dual immersion indicates that students reach above-average…

The study set out to investigate the impact of the official endorsement of 'interactive whole class teaching' on the interaction and discourse styles of primary teachers while teaching the National Literacy and Numeracy Strategies. In both strategies, interactive whole class teaching is seen as an 'active teaching' model promoting high quality…

With examples from junior science lessons on magnets, Gibbons (1998, 2001a, 2002) argues that Teacher-Guided Reporting (TGR) is a familiar teaching stage with potential for the development of academic registers when there is linguistic task sequencing, significant student initiation, and press on linguistic resources. In exploring the potential of…

This article explores conversations between preschool children and their teachers in the classroom environment. Teachers have an opportunity to engage students in cognitively challenging conversations at critical times during the day: book reading, playtime, and mealtimes. The article provides examples of the types of conversations preschool…

Drawing on observations and audio-recordings of classroom language use in two postcolonial societies, the Republic of Botswana in Africa and the Sultanate of Brunei Darussalam in south-east Asia, this study seeks to explore how teachers and pupils face the challenge of accomplishing teaching and learning using a language which is not their own. In…

"Is academic speech "more like" casual conversation or academic writing?" [Swales, J. (2001). "Metatalk in American academic talk. The cases of 'point' and 'thing'." "Journal of English Language," 29(1), p. 37]. Taking a corpus-based perspective to the analysis, this study compares the language of university classroom talk to academic prose and…

How speaking turns are taken and allocated in the language classroom, who takes them, and in what sequence (Sacks, Schegloff, and Jefferson 1974), allows mundane talk to be heard as "intellectual quality" and "connectedness" within the "productive pedagogies" framework adopted over the past five years by Education Queensland (2001). This paper…