This study is concerned with how teachers use and guide classroom talk to support students in developing an understanding of scientific conceptual knowledge. The focus is on teachers and teaching. The study involves developing theoretical tools for describing the ways in which teachers make scientific ways of talking and knowing available to their students in classroom settings. The study has both theoretical and empirical components. The theoretical component involves drawing on aspects of Vygotslcy's socio-cultural theory of learning and development and the work of other neo-Vygotskian scholars to develop theoretical tools, based on the concept of the teaching narrative, for analysing the teaching interactions of the classroom. The empirical part involves taking those theoretical tools and applying them to real classroom situations. It is anticipated that the process of applying the theoretical tools to particular classroom situations will enable elaboration and further development of those tools; in this respect there is close interlinking between theoretical and empirical components of the study. The empirical component is based on two case studies. These case studies detail short teaching sequences in which two teachers introduce their classes to particular scientific concepts. The first case involves teaching and learning about chemical change (focussing on the process of rusting) and the second about air pressure. In summary, the main aim of this thesis is to draw upon Vygotskian theory to develop ways of talking and thinking about language-based pedagogical strategies of science teaching. The intention is that such ways of talking and thinking, framed in terms of the teaching narrative, should contribute to the professional language of science teaching providing tools for reflecting on and developing teaching practice.

The present study aimed to explore the culture specificity of student self-regulation and its supporting motivational attitudes. Specifically, it enquired about similarities and differences between Chilean and English 8 to 9 year-old students in terms of their expression of self-regulatory behaviours, the psychological factors underlying these behaviours, and the functionality of these behaviours for task performance. It also compared student adoption of achievement motivational attitudes as well as the functionality of these attitudes for investment of effort and self-regulatory activity between cultures. Finally, the role of classroom cultures for self-regulation was studied. In particular, it examined the effects of classrooms and the quality of teacher talk (teacher-to-student communicative interactions/demands), such as teacher ‘regulatory talk’ and ‘socio-motivational talk’, on student self-regulation. A quantitative approach to the analysis of qualitative data (i.e. videos of student behaviour engaged in 11 to 13 experimental tasks, semi-structured interviews, videoed literacy lessons) was adopted. Eight classrooms situated in different schools from Chile and England were part of the study. In total, 8 teachers and 49 students – one teacher and six to seven students per classroom – took active part in the study. Qualitative data was primarily analysed using observational scales (for student behaviour), thematic analysis (for interview data), as well as socio-cultural discourse analysis (for videoed lessons). Statistical techniques, such as Mann Whitney U test, Factor Analysis, Multinomial logistic regressions, and Multilevel regressions were then applied on numerical transformations of the data. Overall, results suggest that self-regulation and achievement motivational attitudes vary to important extents according to culture. Most interestingly, these varied between cultures not so much in terms of the degree to which children used or adopted them, but rather in terms of their functionality. Some key findings supporting this conclusion were: i) Strong similarities between English and Chilean children’s levels of self-regulatory behaviours; ii) substantial differences across country samples in relation to the psychological factors underlying the expression of specific self-regulatory behaviours; iii) the finding of evaluative actions being self-regulatory in England but not in Chile; iv) a higher variety of self-regulatory behaviours being predictive of task performance in England than in Chile; v) the fact that learned self-regulatory behaviours accounted for effects of effective metacognitive control on task performance in England but not Chile; vi) some important differences in the achievement motivational attitudes expressed by Chilean and English students; and vii) culture-specific functionalities of various achievement motivational attitudes with respect to student effort and self-regulatory behaviours. Moreover, results suggest that some aspects of children’s self-regulation and motivational attitudes develop as tools to adapt to classroom cultures, specifically to the learning interactions/demands socially afforded by teacher talk. Among key findings supporting this conclusion were: i) effects of classrooms on children’s cognitive, social, and motivational self-regulation behavioural strategies, and ii) clear effects of teacher ‘regulatory talk’ (e.g., teacher ‘self-regulatory talk’ predicting more planning and asking for clarifications in students) and ‘socio-motivational talk’ (e.g., teacher ‘talk against self-efficacy’ predicting higher dependency-oriented help-seeking in students) on those behaviours with respect to which classrooms were found to matter. Thus a theory about the culturally adaptive functionality (CAF) of self-regulation and motivational attitudes supporting self-regulation is developed throughout the thesis.