Seminar 5 Education
Conversation analysis and education
In the next four topics of the subject, we will have the opportunity to apply our foundational knowledge of how interaction works to particular practices in institutional settings. Having established the rules of turn-taking in interaction, how these turns operate in sequences, how any misunderstanding is repaired and how speakers affiliate with each other (or not!) and align with the project of the conversation (or not), we can now explore these interactional practices in workplace settings. Study of the interactional features of talk itself can be considered pure conversation analysis, and seeing how these mechanism operate in institutional settings is know as applied conversation analysis.
The two key questions we will explore in this topic are:
What are the interactional features of talk in educational settings?
How can we see learning-in- interaction? The importance of teaching in the third turn.
“‘CA considers that any speaker’s talk at any moment should be viewed as a demonstration of the speaker’s understanding of prior talk by the co-participants, and simultaneously its delivery and design should be viewed as a reflection of the speaker’s orientation and sensitivity toward the particular co-participants. Furthermore, the recipients’ conduct during the current talk or in the next turn is likewise considered to reflect their understanding of the current talk.’
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“As a form of institutional talk, classroom interaction shows characteristic features in terms of the “distribution of knowledge, access to conversational resources, and to participation in the interaction’ (Drew & Heritage, 1992a: 49)”: the teacher is the one who mainly imparts knowledge to the students, generally corrects students and controls turn-taking and sequence organization, and who has greater rights to initiate and close sequences. (p.593)
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Epistemic status
(2) Are you married?
(3) You’re married, aren’t you?
(4) You’re married.
Heritage, J. (2012) Epistemics in action: Action formation and territories of knowledge. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 45(1), 1-29.
“In the classroom, the underlying agenda is one of teaching and learning, with knowledge an important consideration for these practices. While teachers are generally considered to be more knowledgeable than students (k+) and students to have less knowledge than the teacher (k-) (Gardner & Mushin, 2013; Heritage, 2012a; Kääntä, 2014; Stivers, Mondada, & Steensig, 2011), as in mundane interaction, epistemic stance is navigated during the unfolding turns at talk within teacher-child interactions. In an effort to gather the epistemic stance of students, teachers often question to call for displays of knowledge from students. Teachers overwhelmingly rely on questions to which they already know the answer (McHoul, 1978; Mehan, 1979b). These “known information” questions (Mehan, 1979a, p. 285) are used to request (or ‘test’) students’ knowledge, and can be implemented through a variety of turn designs.
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Activity
How do you know these extracts are from classroom interaction?
Extract from Mehan, H. (1979). Learning lessons: Social organisation in the classroom. Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press.
Extract from: Lee, Y.-A. (2007). Third turn position in teacher talk: Contingency and the work of teaching. Journal of Pragmatics, 39, 1204-1230.
Read the following extract from Mondada, L. (2011) Understanding as an embodied, situated and sequential achievement in interaction. Journal of Pragmatics, 43 (2), 542-552:
In his Lectures, Sacks distinguishes between claiming and demonstrating understanding, on the basis of the following (invented) example:
(Sacks, 1992:II:141)
1 A: where are you staying
2 B: Pacific Palisades
3a A: oh at the west side of town
vs
3b A: oh Pacific Palisades
Whereas in 3a, by re-describing the location given by B, A displays that he recognizes the place referred to, in 3b, by merely repeating it, A does not. In the former case, he demonstrates understanding, in the latter case he just claims it. In this sense, the repetition is equivocal, whereas the reformulation of the location is not – even when it provides for the evidence of a misunderstanding (such as in 3c: ‘‘oh in the center of town’’, which can then be repaired in the next turn). Thus, Sacks answers the question of ‘‘how understanding is shown’’ (1992:II:140), by pointing to the fact that participants make available different forms of understanding by performing some kind of operation on the previous turn. In these cases, participants ‘‘do showing understanding,’’ as they can do ‘‘questioning’’ or ‘‘answering’’ in conversation (1992:I:141).
Interactions in early childhood education
Now we are going to look at two cases studies in early childhood interaction, to familiarise yourself with this teaching and learning environment (as you will be analysing data from early childhood in your online workshop).
Young Learners Project
Review the following six examples of child-initiated utterances, and identify features of what the teacher does next. Remember, we are interested in "what is the relevant next action?" How does the teacher (ECT) respond to children's contributions to the activity.
Example 1
Example 1
Example 2
Example 3
Example 4
Example 5
Example 6
Example 6 (no audio available)
Children’s contributions to the ongoing activity display communicative competencies in addition conceptual understanding.
Teachers typically orient to an existing pedgagogic script, privileging of the goals of the task in favour of children’s orientation to the task. Learning how to do classroom interaction in favour of learning about literacy?
Extending child-initiated utterances – while not always possible – provides the very essence of ‘teachable moments’.
You will be exploring this data further in the workshop, so I look forward to reading your commentaries!