Classroom Interaction (classroom + interaction)

Distribution by Scientific Domains


Selected Abstracts


Conversational Repair as a Role-Defining Mechanism in Classroom Interaction

MODERN LANGUAGE JOURNAL, Issue 3 2003
Grit Liebscher
This article is concerned with the ways in which the students and the teacher in a content-based German as a foreign language class used repair in order to negotiate meaning and form in their classroom. Through a combination of qualitative and quantitative approaches, we discuss how repair in this institutional setting differed from repair in mundane conversation and how repair was used differently by the students and the teacher. Given that students and the teacher were all competent speakers of both the first language (L1) and the second language (L2), we found that these differences were not merely indications of incomplete L2 usage. Instead, they manifested how the students and the teacher enacted and perceived their respective roles within the classroom and, based on role concepts, demonstrated different access to repair as a resource. The analysis shows that repair is a resource for modified output as well as modified input in classroom settings. [source]


"They Took Out the Wrong Context": Uses of Time-Space in the Practice of Positioning

ETHOS, Issue 2 2004
Kevin M. Leander
Time-space is not merely a backdrop to social interaction; rather, individuals use particular forms of time-space to discursively position themselves and others. This article analyzes how several adolescents interpreted a previous classroom interaction, which was rife with social positioning. Responding to a videotape of this interaction, the adolescents were in general agreement that one of them ("Latayna") acted "ghetto." An analysis of the interview data reveals how participants use typified forms of time-space, or particular chronotopes, in the practice of positioning. These chronotopes index the relative changeability of the social world, the possibilities of individual agency, and the relations of social and individual development. The analysis also makes visible how individual actors, including Latanya, creatively and strategically shape subjectivities by transforming and laminating diverse chronotopes. [source]


Interactive whiteboards: boon or bandwagon?

JOURNAL OF COMPUTER ASSISTED LEARNING, Issue 2 2005
A critical review of the literature
Abstract This article reviews the literature concerning the introduction of interactive whiteboards (IWBs) in educational settings. It identifies common themes to emerge from a burgeoning and diverse literature, which includes reports and summaries available on the Internet. Although the literature reviewed is overwhelmingly positive about the impact and the potential of IWBs, it is primarily based on the views of teachers and pupils. There is insufficient evidence to identify the actual impact of such technologies upon learning either in terms of classroom interaction or upon attainment and achievement. This article examines this issue in light of varying conceptions of interactivity and research into the effects of learning with verbal and visual information. [source]


Subject-Matter Content: How Does It Assist the Interactional and Linguistic Needs of Classroom Language Learners?

MODERN LANGUAGE JOURNAL, Issue 1 2002
Teresa Pica
This study focused on the role of subject-matter content in second language (L2) learning. It sought to identify ways in which teachers modified classroom interaction about subject-matter content in order to assist the input, feedback, and production needs of L2 learners, and to promote their attention to developmentally difficult relationships of L2 form and meaning that they had not fully acquired. Data were collected from 6 preacademic English L2 classes whose content consisted of thematic units on film and literature. Each class was composed of 10,15 high intermediate English L2 students and their teachers. Analysis of the data focused on teacher-led discussions, because these were the predominant mode of interaction in each of the classes, and on form-meaning relationships encoded in noun and verb forms for purposes such as reference, retelling, argument, and speculation regarding film and literary content. Results of the study revealed numerous contexts in which the discussion interaction might have been modified for the kinds of input, feedback, or production that could draw students' attention to developmentally difficult form-meaning relationships. However, there were relatively few instances in which this actually occurred. Instead, the teachers and students tended to exchange multiutterance texts, the comprehensibility of which provided little basis for modified interaction and attention to form and meaning. [source]


Teaching statistics by taking advantage of the laptop's ubiquity

NEW DIRECTIONS FOR TEACHING & LEARNING, Issue 101 2005
Paul Hyden
This chapter reports on a mathematics professor's experience leveraging laptops in a required intermediate statistics course with a challenging student population. Use of laptops streamlined course delivery, enhanced classroom interaction, and improved both his students' and his own overall course experience. [source]


Learning from and responding to students' questions: The authoritative and dialogic tension

JOURNAL OF RESEARCH IN SCIENCE TEACHING, Issue 2 2010
Orlando G. Aguiar
Abstract In this study we present an analysis of classroom interactions initiated by students' wonderment questions. Our interest in such events arises from their potential to stimulate active intellectual engagement in classrooms, which can impact upon the subsequent development of the classroom discourse. In investigating this issue we shall address the following research question: How do student questions impact upon the teaching explanatory structure and modify the form of the ongoing classroom discourse, in selected science lessons? From data collected in a Brazilian secondary school we have selected three classroom episodes, with large differences in both the context in which the student's question emerges and in the communicative approach developed in response to it. The analysis, based on the framework proposed by Mortimer and Scott [Mortimer and Scott (2003). Meaning making in secondary science classrooms. Maidenhead: Open University Press], shows that questions made by students are important in providing feedback from students to the teacher, enabling adjustments to the teaching explanatory structure. These adjustments sometimes occur smoothly, at other times with major changes to the features of the classroom discourse, and elsewhere with misunderstanding and disagreement. The data also suggest the need to consider students' intentions and their active participation in the negotiation of both the content and structure of classroom discourse. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 47:174,193, 2010 [source]


Eye-rollers, risk-takers, and turn sharks: Target students in a professional science education program

JOURNAL OF RESEARCH IN SCIENCE TEACHING, Issue 8 2006
Sonya N. Martin
In classrooms from kindergarten to graduate school, researchers have identified target students as students who monopolize material and human resources. Classroom structures that privilege the voice and actions of target students can cause divisive social dynamics that may generate cliques. This study focuses on the emergence of target students, the formation of cliques, and professors' efforts to mediate teacher learning in a Master of Science in Chemistry Education (MSCE) program by structuring the classroom environment to enhance nontarget students' agency. Specifically, we sought to answer the following question: What strategies could help college science professors enact more equitable teaching structures in their classrooms so that target students and cliques become less of an issue in classroom interactions? The implications for professional education programs in science and mathematics include the need for professors to consider the role and contribution of target students to the learning environment, the need to structure an equitable learning environment, and the need to foster critical reflection upon classroom interactions between students and instructors. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 43: 819,851, 2006 [source]


Inquiry in interaction: How local adaptations of curricula shape classroom communities

JOURNAL OF RESEARCH IN SCIENCE TEACHING, Issue 9 2004
Noel Enyedy
In this study, we seek a better understanding of how individuals and their daily interactions shape and reshape social structures that constitute a classroom community. Moreover, we provide insight into how discourse and classroom interactions shape the nature of a learning community, as well as which aspects of the classroom culture may be consequential for learning. The participants in this study include two teachers who are implementing a new environmental science program, Global Learning through Observation to Benefit the Environment (GLOBE), and interacting with 54 children in an urban middle school. Both qualitative and quantitative data are analyzed and presented. To gain a better understanding of the inquiry teaching within classroom communities, we compare and contrast the discourse and interactions of the two teachers during three parallel environmental science lessons. The focus of our analysis includes (1) how the community identifies the object or goal of its activity; and (2) how the rights, rules, and roles for members are established and inhabited in interaction. Quantitative analyses of student pre- and posttests suggest greater learning for students in one classroom over the other, providing support for the influence of the classroom community and interactional choices of the teacher on student learning. Implications of the findings from this study are discussed in the context of curricular design, professional development, and educational reform. ? 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 41: 905-935, 2004. [source]