Classroom dialogue: More than just words
Written by: Katie Jump
9 min read
Katie Jump, Associate Lecturer in ITE, National Institute of Teaching and Education (NITE), UK
When observing an expert teacher, the modes of effective classroom dialogue (word choice, prosody, proxemics and kinesics – described by Norris (2004) as embodied methods) can be interwoven in such a complex way that they would be impossible for a novice to discern comprehensively. To ensure that trainee teachers learn from expert teacher mentors, these decisions need to be unpacked so that trainee teachers can identify techniques and try to replicate them. Mercer’s (2005, p. 137) ‘sociocultural discourse analysis’ describes a process of researching educational settings from the perspective of ‘language [being] regarded as a cultural and psychological tool’. This is the perspective from which this research took place. The research focused on the communication techniques of word choice (what is said), prosody (how it is said), proxemics (teacher positioning) and kinesics (teacher
Join us or sign in now to view the rest of this page
You're viewing this site as a guest, which only allows you to view a limited amount of content.
To view this page and get access to all our resources, join the Chartered College of Teaching (it's free for trainee teachers and half price for NQTs) or log in if you're already a member.
- Alexander RJ (2004) Towards Dialogic Teaching: Rethinking Classroom Talk, 1st ed. York: Dialogos.
- BERA (2018) Ethical Guidelines for Educational Research, 4th ed. Available at: www.bera.ac.uk/publication/ethical-guidelines-for-educational-research-2018-online (accessed 2 April 2023).
- Forest D (2006) Analyse proxémique d’interactions didactiques. Carrefours de l’éducation 21: 73– 94.
- Gee P (2014) How to Do Discourse Analysis: A Toolkit. Oxford: Routledge.
- Goldin-Meadow S, Kim S and Singer M (1999) What the teacher’s hands tell the student’s mind about math. Journal of Educational Psychology 91(4): 720–730.
- Hall E (1966) The Hidden Dimension. New York: Doubleday.
- Hellermann J (2003) The interactive work of prosody in the IRF exchange: Teacher repetition in feedback moves. Language in Society 32(1): 79–104.
- Kang S and Tversky B (2016) From hands to minds: Gestures promote understanding. Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications 1(4): 1–15.
- Koch A (2017) Sounds of education: Teacher role and use of voice in interactions with young children. International Journal of Electronic Commerce 49: 57–72.
- Liu Q, Zhang N, Chen W et al. (2020) Categorizing teachers’ gestures in classroom teaching: From the perspective of multiple representations. Social Semiotics 30: 1–21.
- Martinez‐Maldonado R, Schulte J, Echeverria V et al. (2020) Where is the teacher? Digital analytics for classroom proxemics. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning 36(5): 741–762.
- McNeill D (1992) Hand and Mind: What Gestures Reveal about Thought. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
- Mercer N (2005) Sociocultural discourse analysis: Analysing classroom talk as a social mode of thinking. Journal of Applied Linguistics 1(2): 137–168.
- Michaels S and O’Connor C (2012) Talk Science Primer. Cambridge, MA: TERC.
- Norris S (2004) Analyzing Multimodal Interaction: A Methodological Framework. London: Routledge.
- Sikveland R, Solem M and Skovholt K (2021) How teachers use prosody to guide students towards an adequate answer. Linguistics and Education 61: 1–15.
- Wagner-Cook S, Duffy RG and Fenn KM (2013) Consolidation and transfer of learning after observing hand gesture. Child Development 84(6): 1863–1871.
Subscribe
Please login to comment
0 Comments
