Dialogic Teaching: Rethinking "messy" classroom interactions

The study relies on the concept of "dialogic teaching" (Alexander 2004, Mercer & Littleton 2007, Reznitskaya, 2012) in order to rethink classroom interactions that appear to be “messy” at first sight. To do so a video sequence is taken from the film “Entre les murs” (Cantet, 2008) that is based on François Bégaudeau’s semi-autobiographical novel of the same name. A fine-grained analysis of teacher-student interactions is conducted according to an ethnomethodologically and conversation analytic inspired approach (see e.g. Psathas, 1995). The results of this analysis and the reference to “dialogic teaching” open up a new perspective on the event, i.e. it becomes possible to consider students’ utterances not as digression but ass enriching contributions to an expansion of the learning/teaching object. Teachers can rely on the conducted analysis and the findings to develop their analytical stance and to reflect on their own classroom practice. Furthermore, the study can inspire docents to rely on video sequences in a similar way during their seminars.

References:

• Alexander, R. (2004) Towards Dialogic Teaching: Rethinking Classroom Talk, Cambridge: Dialogos.
• Bégaudeau, F. (2006). Entre les murs. Paris: Éditions Verticales.
• Cantet, L. (2008). Entre les murs [Motion picture]. Haut et Court.
• Mercer, N. & Littleton, K. (2007). Dialogue and the Development of Children’s Thinking. A sociocultural approach. Oxon, New York: Routledge.
• Psathas, G. (1995). Conversation Analysis. Thousand Oaks, London & New Delhi: Sage
• Reznitskaya, A. (2012). Dialogic Teaching. Rethinking Language Use During Literature Discussions. The Reading Teacher, 65(7). 446-456.
• Vygotsky, L.S. (1978). Mind in Society. The Development of Higher Psychological Processes. Cambridge, Massachusetts; London, England: Harvard University Press.