No description available.

Conversational prosody or tone of voice (e.g. intonation, pauses, speech rate etc.) plays an essential role in our daily communication. Research studies in various contexts have shown that prosody can function as an interactional device for the management of our social interaction (Hellermann, 2003, Wennerstrom, 2001, Wells and Macfarlane, 1998, Couper-Kuhlen, 1996). However, not much research focus has been given to the pedagogical implications of conversational prosody in classroom teaching and learning. Informed by Community of Practice theory (Lave and Wenger, 1991) and Academic Task and Social Participation Structure (Erickson, 1982), which place participation at the core of the learning development, the current research employs an exploratory case study to examine the function of speech prosody during the co-construction of classroom talk-in-interaction in and between different classroom activities (e.g. whole class instruction, group discussion, group presentation, etc.). Audio–video data of classroom lessons were collected over a two-month period. Transcribing conventions described by Atkinson and Heritage (1984) were adopted to note the prosodic features in the recordings. Prosodic features such as pauses, volume, intonation, and speech rate were set as the main criteria for analysing the classroom talk. Analysis of the transcripts showed that speech prosody can function as a coordination tool for language learners to organise their social participation roles in collaborative learning activities (e.g. forming alignment, managing turn-taking, signalling repair sequences, etc.). The research also showed that prosody can function as a pedagogical tool for language teachers to manage classroom interactional ground (e.g. provide scaffolding, align academic task structure and social participation structure, frame classroom environment, etc.). Moreover, the research showed that prosodic analysis can be an effective tool in unfolding the pedagogical importance of classroom interaction (e.g. IRE/F sequences) in classroom teaching and learning.

Traditionally, language policy (LP) has been conceptualised as a notion separate from that of practice. That is, language practices have usually been studied with a view to evaluate the extent to which a LP is (or is not) implemented (e.g. Martin, 2005; Johnson, 2009). Recently, however, Spolsky (2004, 2007, 2008a) has argued that policy and practice need not be seen as distinct and that, in fact, there is policy in language practices themselves (I use the term ‘practiced language policy’). Therefore, Spolsky’s claim represents a decisive development in the field of LP research. However, this proposal remains essentially programmatic since Spolsky does not indicate how practiced language policies can be investigated. The aim of this thesis is to address this methodological gap. The main claim of the thesis is that Conversation Analysis (CA) – a method specifically developed to describe conversational practices – can be used to investigate practiced language policies. In order to support this claim, a case study has been conducted on the language practices of an induction classroom for newly-arrived immigrant children in France. In the thesis, a broad view of CA is adopted, incorporating both sequential and categorisation analysis (Membership Categorisation Analysis). More specifically, I have used the conversation analytic approach to code-switching (as developed over the last few years by researchers such as Auer, 1984; Li Wei, 2002; Gafaranga, 2009; Bonacina and Gafaranga, 2010) and investigated a corpus of audio-recorded classroom interactions I collected in the above mentioned setting. Observation of these interactions revealed a number of “norms of interaction” (Hymes, 1972) the classroom participants orient to in order to go about the routine business of talking in an orderly fashion. For example, it was observed that each of the languages available can potentially be adopted as the “medium of classroom interaction” (Bonacina and Gafaranga, 2010) depending on who is doing being the language teacher. When no one is doing being the language teacher, it was observed, a key determinant of language choice is participants’ language preference. Finally, in the absence of any shared preferred language, French was adopted. The practiced language policy of this induction classroom consists of the set of such interactional norms. It is because CA can be used to discover and describe such interactional norms that this thesis claims it can be used to investigate practiced language policies in this induction classroom and in other settings as well. In summary, this thesis is primarily a contribution to the field of LP research. It starts from recent proposals in the field, especially by Spolsky (2004, 2007, 2008a), that there is policy in practices and shows how this programmatically formulated proposal can be implemented. More specifically the thesis shows that and how CA can be used to discover a practiced language policy. The research reported here has adopted a case study methodology, investigating language choice practices in a multilingual educational setting. It therefore contributes to the study of bilingual classroom talk, albeit indirectly. This is particularly the case as there has been very few, if any, studies of bilingual classroom talk which combine both sequential and categorisation analysis.

This study is an exploration of the relationship between subjectivity and pedagogy in the secondary school English classroom in South Africa during a time that can be characterised as one of considerable social change. It examines the subject positions students take up in relation to a teaching intervention that invites them to historicise their identities. In so doing, it seeks to contribute to the growing body of education research on how to meaningfully engage young people in post-conflict societies with their recent past and their shifting present, with the primary aim being to understand how these students are positioning themselves in relation to the changing sociopolitical context. The research was conducted in two Grade 11 English classrooms, one a de(re)segregated former Model C school and the other an elite private school. The research design is a two-case case study, employing ethnographic tools to generate a multi-layered and multifaceted understanding of the students’ engagement in all its forms. Poststructuralist theories on discourse and subjectivity form the theoretical framework for this study, informing both the methodology and the data analysis. At the heart of this lies Foucault’s notion of the discursively constructed subject, extended through the work of Stuart Hall, Chris Weedon, Bronwyn Davies and others in ways that facilitate their application to individual subjectivity, particularly in relation to the classroom as a pedagogically structured discursive space. The data is subjected to poststructuralist discourse analysis, adjusted to suit the mode and type of data which includes, inter alia, the analysis of a multimodal artefact, analysis of performative classroom talk and moment-by-moment analysis of classroom interaction. The analysis shows that students’ subjectivities are not fixed but shift in ways that are contingent on the pedagogic context. Such shifts are particularly noticeable when there is a shift in the interactional situation; when students move between different semiotic modes; or when they are provided with the opportunity for extended conversational interaction around an issue. In addition, students’ participation in the section of work on South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) shows that engaging with the past in post-apartheid South African classrooms can have unpredictable results. Students’ resistance to engaging with recent history seems to be related to discomfort with the ways in which the grand narrative of the past works to position them in racialised ways. While there is evidence of students seeking to ‘unfix’ racialised subject positions, it is also clear that past discourses linger. Despite their desire to be rid of the past, students’ subject positions are frequently tied to their historically constructed locations in the sociopolitical and economic landscape of South Africa. These ambiguities and contradictions are viewed in part as a function of the complexity of the relationship between subjectivity and pedagogy, where what students are able to say and who they are able to be is shaped by the discursive structure of the classroom space. Ultimately it would seem that more serious consideration needs to be given to ways of developing a pedagogy that is able to tolerate contingency and heterogeneity and that would have relevance not only in post-conflict contexts but also beyond. Keywords: subjectivity, pedagogy, poststructuralist discourse analysis, positioning, identity, English classroom, TRC, multimodal artefact, classroom talk, South Africa

Este trabalho se alinha a estudos de vertente sociocultural que buscam descrever organizações interacionais entre múltiplos participantes que oferecem condições para a produção conjunta de conhecimentos no plano social (HEWITT, 2004; SCHULZ, 2007; ABELEDO, 2008; BULLA, 2007; STAHL, 2011, SALIMEN; GARCEZ, SALIMEN, 2011, entre outros). Tendo como ponto de partida descrições já realizadas sobre a relação entre perguntas na organização da fala-em-interação de sala de aula e a criação de oportunidades de construção de conhecimentos nesse cenário, o objetivo é descrever a mobilização de perguntas em um laboratório de desenvolvimento de tecnologia de ponta, onde – diferentemente do que costuma ocorrer em sala de aula – não há um participante que se coloca na posição de quem detém de antemão o conhecimento a ser produzido: um laboratório de tecnologia de ponta. Partiu-se de um corpus de 38 ocorrências de resolução de problema identificadas por Kanitz (2013) em 60h de registros audiovisuais gerados no laboratório investigado. Foram selecionados dois segmentos interacionais cujo início é típico do que ocorre na totalidade dos dados: um participante pede a ajuda de outro, mas em cada um deles o participante que pede ajuda projeta uma posição epistêmica distinta em relação ao outro e à solução do problema Na análise, foram focalizadas as perguntas mobilizadas pelos participantes ao longo de cada segmento e descreveu-se de que modo sua mobilização contribuiu (ou não) para a resolução do problema. Sustenta-se que ao mobilizarem perguntas no laboratório de tecnologia investigado os participantes: 1) implementam ações diversas para resolver os problemas ligados aos projetos do laboratório; 2) calibram, sustentam e negociam seus status epistêmicos, o que é decisivo para a resolução dos problemas que eles enfrentam; e 3) ratificam e sustentam a participação e a competência de cada um para o trabalho colaborativo de resolução do problema. Portanto, é mediante trabalho interacional custoso, com orientação constante a esses três aspectos, que os participantes criam condições para produzir em conjunto o conhecimento necessário para resolver os problemas que emergem das atividades ligadas aos projetos do laboratório. A investigação realizada oferece contribuições para estudos de fala-em-interação interessados em descrever modos de organizar a produção de conhecimento, ao documentar um desenho organizacional em que perguntas são recursos disponíveis a todos os participantes para implementar ações diversas orientadas à resolução de problemas derivados de projetos. Por extensão, a pesquisa oferece subsídios para a defesa de uma pedagogia baseada em projetos. / This work aligns to sociocultural studies that aim to describe interactional organizations among multiple participants that provide conditions for joint production of knowledge (HEWITT, 2004; BULLA, 2007; SCHULZ, 2007; ABELEDO, 2008; SALIMEN; GARCEZ, SALIMEN 2011; STAHL, 2011, among others). Taking as starting point previous descriptions of the relationship between questions in the organization of classroom interaction and opportunities for knowledge production in this setting, the aim here is to describe the mobilization of questions by participants in a leading technology center, where – unlike what usually happens in traditional classroom – there is no participant who stands in the position of someone who has the knowledge to be produced by the others. From a corpus of 38 problemsolving instances identified by Kanitz (2013) in 60h of audiovisual records generated in the laboratory, two segments were selected. The start of each segment is typical of what occurs in the overall data: a participant asks help for the other, but in each instance the participant who requests help projects a distinct epistemic position in relation to the other and to the solution of the problem The analysis focused on the questions mobilized by the participants along the segment and the extent to which their mobilization contributed (or not) to solve the problem at hand. It is argued that participants mobilize questions in the technology lab to: 1) implement several actions to solve problems related to projects of the lab; 2) calibrate, support and negotiate their epistemic status, which is decisive for the resolution of problems they face; and 3) confirm and support participation and competence of each one for the collaborative work of solving problems. It is by costly interactional work, with constant orientation to these three aspects, that participants create conditions to produce the knowledge needed to solve the problems that emerge from the activities related to the lab projects. The investigation contribute to studies of talk-in-interaction interested in describing ways of organizing knowledge production, since it documents an organizational design in which questions are resources available for all participants to implement various activities oriented to the resolution of problems derived from projects. By extension, the research contributes for the defense of a pedagogy based on projects.

Este trabalho se alinha a estudos de vertente sociocultural que buscam descrever organizações interacionais entre múltiplos participantes que oferecem condições para a produção conjunta de conhecimentos no plano social (HEWITT, 2004; SCHULZ, 2007; ABELEDO, 2008; BULLA, 2007; STAHL, 2011, SALIMEN; GARCEZ, SALIMEN, 2011, entre outros). Tendo como ponto de partida descrições já realizadas sobre a relação entre perguntas na organização da fala-em-interação de sala de aula e a criação de oportunidades de construção de conhecimentos nesse cenário, o objetivo é descrever a mobilização de perguntas em um laboratório de desenvolvimento de tecnologia de ponta, onde – diferentemente do que costuma ocorrer em sala de aula – não há um participante que se coloca na posição de quem detém de antemão o conhecimento a ser produzido: um laboratório de tecnologia de ponta. Partiu-se de um corpus de 38 ocorrências de resolução de problema identificadas por Kanitz (2013) em 60h de registros audiovisuais gerados no laboratório investigado. Foram selecionados dois segmentos interacionais cujo início é típico do que ocorre na totalidade dos dados: um participante pede a ajuda de outro, mas em cada um deles o participante que pede ajuda projeta uma posição epistêmica distinta em relação ao outro e à solução do problema Na análise, foram focalizadas as perguntas mobilizadas pelos participantes ao longo de cada segmento e descreveu-se de que modo sua mobilização contribuiu (ou não) para a resolução do problema. Sustenta-se que ao mobilizarem perguntas no laboratório de tecnologia investigado os participantes: 1) implementam ações diversas para resolver os problemas ligados aos projetos do laboratório; 2) calibram, sustentam e negociam seus status epistêmicos, o que é decisivo para a resolução dos problemas que eles enfrentam; e 3) ratificam e sustentam a participação e a competência de cada um para o trabalho colaborativo de resolução do problema. Portanto, é mediante trabalho interacional custoso, com orientação constante a esses três aspectos, que os participantes criam condições para produzir em conjunto o conhecimento necessário para resolver os problemas que emergem das atividades ligadas aos projetos do laboratório. A investigação realizada oferece contribuições para estudos de fala-em-interação interessados em descrever modos de organizar a produção de conhecimento, ao documentar um desenho organizacional em que perguntas são recursos disponíveis a todos os participantes para implementar ações diversas orientadas à resolução de problemas derivados de projetos. Por extensão, a pesquisa oferece subsídios para a defesa de uma pedagogia baseada em projetos. / This work aligns to sociocultural studies that aim to describe interactional organizations among multiple participants that provide conditions for joint production of knowledge (HEWITT, 2004; BULLA, 2007; SCHULZ, 2007; ABELEDO, 2008; SALIMEN; GARCEZ, SALIMEN 2011; STAHL, 2011, among others). Taking as starting point previous descriptions of the relationship between questions in the organization of classroom interaction and opportunities for knowledge production in this setting, the aim here is to describe the mobilization of questions by participants in a leading technology center, where – unlike what usually happens in traditional classroom – there is no participant who stands in the position of someone who has the knowledge to be produced by the others. From a corpus of 38 problemsolving instances identified by Kanitz (2013) in 60h of audiovisual records generated in the laboratory, two segments were selected. The start of each segment is typical of what occurs in the overall data: a participant asks help for the other, but in each instance the participant who requests help projects a distinct epistemic position in relation to the other and to the solution of the problem The analysis focused on the questions mobilized by the participants along the segment and the extent to which their mobilization contributed (or not) to solve the problem at hand. It is argued that participants mobilize questions in the technology lab to: 1) implement several actions to solve problems related to projects of the lab; 2) calibrate, support and negotiate their epistemic status, which is decisive for the resolution of problems they face; and 3) confirm and support participation and competence of each one for the collaborative work of solving problems. It is by costly interactional work, with constant orientation to these three aspects, that participants create conditions to produce the knowledge needed to solve the problems that emerge from the activities related to the lab projects. The investigation contribute to studies of talk-in-interaction interested in describing ways of organizing knowledge production, since it documents an organizational design in which questions are resources available for all participants to implement various activities oriented to the resolution of problems derived from projects. By extension, the research contributes for the defense of a pedagogy based on projects.

Este trabalho se alinha a estudos de vertente sociocultural que buscam descrever organizações interacionais entre múltiplos participantes que oferecem condições para a produção conjunta de conhecimentos no plano social (HEWITT, 2004; SCHULZ, 2007; ABELEDO, 2008; BULLA, 2007; STAHL, 2011, SALIMEN; GARCEZ, SALIMEN, 2011, entre outros). Tendo como ponto de partida descrições já realizadas sobre a relação entre perguntas na organização da fala-em-interação de sala de aula e a criação de oportunidades de construção de conhecimentos nesse cenário, o objetivo é descrever a mobilização de perguntas em um laboratório de desenvolvimento de tecnologia de ponta, onde – diferentemente do que costuma ocorrer em sala de aula – não há um participante que se coloca na posição de quem detém de antemão o conhecimento a ser produzido: um laboratório de tecnologia de ponta. Partiu-se de um corpus de 38 ocorrências de resolução de problema identificadas por Kanitz (2013) em 60h de registros audiovisuais gerados no laboratório investigado. Foram selecionados dois segmentos interacionais cujo início é típico do que ocorre na totalidade dos dados: um participante pede a ajuda de outro, mas em cada um deles o participante que pede ajuda projeta uma posição epistêmica distinta em relação ao outro e à solução do problema Na análise, foram focalizadas as perguntas mobilizadas pelos participantes ao longo de cada segmento e descreveu-se de que modo sua mobilização contribuiu (ou não) para a resolução do problema. Sustenta-se que ao mobilizarem perguntas no laboratório de tecnologia investigado os participantes: 1) implementam ações diversas para resolver os problemas ligados aos projetos do laboratório; 2) calibram, sustentam e negociam seus status epistêmicos, o que é decisivo para a resolução dos problemas que eles enfrentam; e 3) ratificam e sustentam a participação e a competência de cada um para o trabalho colaborativo de resolução do problema. Portanto, é mediante trabalho interacional custoso, com orientação constante a esses três aspectos, que os participantes criam condições para produzir em conjunto o conhecimento necessário para resolver os problemas que emergem das atividades ligadas aos projetos do laboratório. A investigação realizada oferece contribuições para estudos de fala-em-interação interessados em descrever modos de organizar a produção de conhecimento, ao documentar um desenho organizacional em que perguntas são recursos disponíveis a todos os participantes para implementar ações diversas orientadas à resolução de problemas derivados de projetos. Por extensão, a pesquisa oferece subsídios para a defesa de uma pedagogia baseada em projetos. / This work aligns to sociocultural studies that aim to describe interactional organizations among multiple participants that provide conditions for joint production of knowledge (HEWITT, 2004; BULLA, 2007; SCHULZ, 2007; ABELEDO, 2008; SALIMEN; GARCEZ, SALIMEN 2011; STAHL, 2011, among others). Taking as starting point previous descriptions of the relationship between questions in the organization of classroom interaction and opportunities for knowledge production in this setting, the aim here is to describe the mobilization of questions by participants in a leading technology center, where – unlike what usually happens in traditional classroom – there is no participant who stands in the position of someone who has the knowledge to be produced by the others. From a corpus of 38 problemsolving instances identified by Kanitz (2013) in 60h of audiovisual records generated in the laboratory, two segments were selected. The start of each segment is typical of what occurs in the overall data: a participant asks help for the other, but in each instance the participant who requests help projects a distinct epistemic position in relation to the other and to the solution of the problem The analysis focused on the questions mobilized by the participants along the segment and the extent to which their mobilization contributed (or not) to solve the problem at hand. It is argued that participants mobilize questions in the technology lab to: 1) implement several actions to solve problems related to projects of the lab; 2) calibrate, support and negotiate their epistemic status, which is decisive for the resolution of problems they face; and 3) confirm and support participation and competence of each one for the collaborative work of solving problems. It is by costly interactional work, with constant orientation to these three aspects, that participants create conditions to produce the knowledge needed to solve the problems that emerge from the activities related to the lab projects. The investigation contribute to studies of talk-in-interaction interested in describing ways of organizing knowledge production, since it documents an organizational design in which questions are resources available for all participants to implement various activities oriented to the resolution of problems derived from projects. By extension, the research contributes for the defense of a pedagogy based on projects.

Peer assessment actively engages peers in the formative assessment and evaluation of work produced by a peer. This thesis explores how social processes, such as classroom talk, influence the quality of children’s learning in more interactive contexts of PA. This focus is needed since children often find PA challenging as they may not have the interpersonal skills to collaborate effectively leading them to use talk ineffectively as a tool for learning. This research was interventionist and children in the year three and four classes I taught received Thinking Together lessons as a strategy to enhance the quality of their talk in contexts of peer assessment. Methods used to examine the impact of the talk intervention, and to gain greater insights into the role that the social context plays in peer assessment, included transcribed digital audio recordings, open ended observations, semi-structured interviews, mind maps and children’s work. Qualitative data were analysed using thematic coding analysis whilst data in transcripts were quantitatively analysed to calculate the frequency of words and phrases associated with exploratory talk before and after the intervention. Findings suggest that children’s characteristics influence the way they communicate in contexts of PA and some of the most challenging learners seemed to benefit most from the talk intervention in terms of its influence on their ability to collaborate, hypothesise and reason throughout the peer assessment tasks. The findings also draw attention to previously under-researched PA social processes such as discussion, negotiation and peer questioning that lead to outcomes for learners such as self assessment. The main conclusions drawn are that more interactive kinds of peer assessment might be viewed as a differentiated and discursive practice where teachers consider the various needs of learners, based on their individual characteristics, and provide appropriate support so they are able to collaborate and use language for mediating effective PA practice.

Traditionally, research about young children has been shaped by developmental approaches which persist in framing them as incomplete adults. This dissertation proffers a relatively new image of childhood that celebrates the possibilities inherent in childrens multiple ways of knowing. It is drawn from a 2006 study of the playful social language of, and interviews with, grade one children attending an urban Canadian school.<p/> Two questions drive this inquiry: a) What is the significance of childrens social language in a primary classroom? b) What is the role of play within childrens social language and within their culture? To maintain a sense of children as collaborators in research and to bring childrens talk into mainstream education discourse, Bakhtinian concepts of dialogicity and responsivity are foregrounded.<p/> The dissertation begins with a literature review that relates extant theory, research, and praxis to the study of language, discourse, and play. Then, participants perceptions of play, as articulated in the interviews, are presented. Because the study focuses upon childrens ability to make sense of their lived experience, their perceptions of play guide subsequent interpretations. Theory is reconsidered, and interpretative analysis is presented as dialogic response to the childrens ways of knowing, as points of contact between texts, as dialogue. Vignettes, drawn from videotapes of the participants social language in class, provide concrete examples of the role of play within the childrens local culture. Three key ideas emerge: children are able, dialogic interpreters of their lived experience and research participants in their own right; play discourse is agentive behaviour; and agentive play discourse is childrens response to problematic life experiences, for example, the worlds gendered texts.<p/> This study illustrates how childrens playful social talk places an imaginative distance between them and entrenched assumptions about what counts as knowledge. And, it challenges readers to distance themselves from the way things are, to redefine what is considered to be legitimate classroom conversation, and to reconsider how, together, children discursively make meaning and imagine themselves as social actors.<p/>

Traditionally, research about young children has been shaped by developmental approaches which persist in framing them as incomplete adults. This dissertation proffers a relatively new image of childhood that celebrates the possibilities inherent in childrens multiple ways of knowing. It is drawn from a 2006 study of the playful social language of, and interviews with, grade one children attending an urban Canadian school.<p/> Two questions drive this inquiry: a) What is the significance of childrens social language in a primary classroom? b) What is the role of play within childrens social language and within their culture? To maintain a sense of children as collaborators in research and to bring childrens talk into mainstream education discourse, Bakhtinian concepts of dialogicity and responsivity are foregrounded.<p/> The dissertation begins with a literature review that relates extant theory, research, and praxis to the study of language, discourse, and play. Then, participants perceptions of play, as articulated in the interviews, are presented. Because the study focuses upon childrens ability to make sense of their lived experience, their perceptions of play guide subsequent interpretations. Theory is reconsidered, and interpretative analysis is presented as dialogic response to the childrens ways of knowing, as points of contact between texts, as dialogue. Vignettes, drawn from videotapes of the participants social language in class, provide concrete examples of the role of play within the childrens local culture. Three key ideas emerge: children are able, dialogic interpreters of their lived experience and research participants in their own right; play discourse is agentive behaviour; and agentive play discourse is childrens response to problematic life experiences, for example, the worlds gendered texts.<p/> This study illustrates how childrens playful social talk places an imaginative distance between them and entrenched assumptions about what counts as knowledge. And, it challenges readers to distance themselves from the way things are, to redefine what is considered to be legitimate classroom conversation, and to reconsider how, together, children discursively make meaning and imagine themselves as social actors.<p/>