The Research Process In Classroom Discourse Analysis

This volume gives intellectual space to a range of current perspectives on classroom discourse research and provides a forum for conversations about the research process. Classroom discourse researchers from different theoretical perspectives provide five separate analyses of the same instructional unit in a high school biology class, using the same set of data. Interwoven with the five research reports are several conversations among the editors and researchers regarding specific aspects of the research process. These conversations illuminate some of the actual decisions that researchers make when looking at data and crafting their analyses. This book is intended for graduate students, researchers, and teacher educators across the fields of applied linguistics and education who are interested in studying classroom discourse and, more generally, language-in-use. With its focus on both the research process and the outcomes of research, as well as on the theory-method relationship, this book is relevant for courses in research methodology, language in education, applied linguistics, discourse analysis, language development, and multiculturalism in the classroom.

Language, both spoken and written, is key to understanding learning processes in the classroom. Research Methods for Classroom Discourse is for those who want to investigate spoken interaction or other discourse in the classroom. It lays out clearly the different approaches which are possible, identifying the key principles of each. It addresses the differences between them and the consequences these differences might have for teachers and researchers. Each approach is outlined in terms of practical methods advice, reasons for use, and case studies in which the approach has been used in classroom discourse. Common approaches such as conversation analysis, positioning theory, and critical discourse analysis are included alongside more specialised approaches such as discursive psychology and corpus linguistics. The context of classroom research is used to frame all discussions, with connections to other uses and applications where it can enhance the research being undertaken. The authors demonstrate the relationship between these different theoretical approaches through considering particular applications to common topics within classroom research, such as multilingual learners, knowledge/ knowing and identity. The authors assume no prior knowledge of technical terms and a glossary of key term terms is included. Practical issues such as ethics, data collection and transcription are an integral part of the discussion throughout, providing students with all the knowledge needed to embark upon a successful research project in this area.

This book in the NCRLL Collection provides an introductory discussion of discourse analysis of language and literacy events in classrooms. The authors introduce approaches to discourse analysis in a way that redefines traditional topics and provokes the imagination of researchers. For those who have limited knowledge of discourse analysis, this book will help generate new questions about literacy events in classrooms. For those familiar with this research perspective, it will map diverse new approaches. “Offers examples of classroom discourse with analyses that researchers and practitioners can use as the basis for pursuing their own analyses.” —Rob Tierney, Dean, Faculty of Education, University of British Columbia “On Discourse Analysis provokes us to rethink discourse analytic approaches as generative tools that can open up new ways of seeing language and literacy events in classrooms. The authors richly illustrate the complexity and potential of discourse analysis studies with cases that orient us to foreground the local with broader cultural, historical, and social relations in ways that make evident what it means to be human. On Discourse Analysis provides a fresh approach to discourse analysis studies.” —Kris Gutierrez, University of California at Los Angeles

This practical guide to doing classroom discourse research provides a comprehensive overview of the research process. Bringing together both discourse analysis and classroom discourse research, this book helps readers to develop the analytic and rhetorical skills needed to conduct, and write about, the discourse of teaching and learning. Offering step-by-step guidance, each chapter is written so that readers can put the theoretical and methodological issues of classroom discourse analysis into practice while writing an academic paper. Chapters are organized around three stages of research: planning, analyzing, and understanding and reporting. Reflective questions and discourse examples are used throughout the book to assist readers. This book is essential reading for modules on classroom discourse or thesis writing and a key supplementary resource for research methods, discourse analysis, or language teaching and learning.

The authors present a social linguistic/social interactional approach to the discourse analysis of classroom language and literacy events. Building on recent theories in interactional sociolinguistics, literary theory, social anthropology, critical discourse analysis, and the New Literacy Studies, they describe a microethnographic approach to discourse analysis that provides a reflexive and recursive research process that continually questions what counts as knowledge in and of the interactions among teachers and students. The approach combines attention to how people use language and other systems of communication in constructing classroom events with attention to social, cultural, and political processes. The focus of attention is on actual people acting and reacting to each other, creating and recreating the worlds in which they live. One contribution of the microethnographic approach is to highlight the conception of people as complex, multi-dimensional actors who together use what is given by culture, language, social, and economic capital to create new meanings, social relationships and possibilities, and to recreate culture and language. The approach presented by the authors does not separate methodological, theoretical, and epistemological issues. Instead, they argue that research always involves a dialectical relationship among the object of the research, the theoretical frameworks and methodologies driving the research, and the situations within which the research is being conducted. Discourse Analysis and the Study of Classroom Language and Literacy Events: A Microethnographic Perspective: *introduces key constructs and the intellectual and disciplinary foundations of the microethnographic approach; *addresses the use of this approach to gain insight into three often discussed issues in research on classroom literacy events--classroom literacy events as cultural action, the social construction of identity, and power relations in and through classroom literacy events; *presents transcripts of classroom literacy events to illustrate how theoretical constructs, the research issue, the research site, methods, research techniques, and previous studies of discourse analysis come together to constitute a discourse analysis; and *discusses the complexity of "locating" microethnographic discourse analysis studies within the field of literacy studies and within broader intellectual movements. This volume is of broad interest and will be widely welcomed by scholars and students in the field language and literacy studies, educational researchers focusing on analysis of classroom discourse, educational sociolinguists, and sociologists and anthropologists focusing on face-to-face interaction and language use.

This second edition of Classroom Discourse Analysis continues to make techniques widely used in the field of discourse analysis accessible to a broad audience and illustrates their practical application in the study of classroom talk, ideal for upper-level undergraduate and graduate students in discourse analysis, applied linguistics, and anthropology and education. Grounded in a unique tripartite "dimensional approach," individual chapters investigate interactional resources that model forms of discourse analysis teachers may practice in their own classrooms while other chapters provide students with a thorough understanding of how to actually collect and analyse data. The presence of a number of pedagogical features, including activities and exercises and a comprehensive glossary help to enhance students‘ understanding of these key tools in classroom discourse analysis research. Features new to this edition reflect current developments in the field, including: increased coverage of peer interaction in the classroom greater connecting analysis to curricular and policy mandates and standards-based reform movements sample excerpts from actual student classroom discourse analysis assignments a new chapter on the repertoire approach, an increasingly popular method of analysis of particular relevance to today’s multilingual classrooms

This book offers a model of classroom discourse analysis that uses systemic functional linguistic theory and associated genre theory to develop a view of classroom episodes as 'curriculum genres', some of which operate in turn as part of larger unities of work called 'curriculum macrogenres'. Drawing on Bernstein's work, Christie argues that two registers operate in pedagogic discourse: a regulative register, to do with the goals and directions of the discourse; and an instructional register, to do with the particular 'content' or knowledge at issue. Each can be shown to be realized in distinctive clusters of choices in the grammar. The operation of the regulative register determines the initiation, pacing, sequencing and evaluation of the overall pedagogic activity. The book sets out the its methodology in detail by reference to a number of classroom texts, and a range of school subjects. Overall, schools emerge as sites of symbolic control in a culture.

This text introduces teachers to research methods they can use to examine their own classrooms in order to become more effective teachers. Becoming familiar with classroom-based research methods not only enables teachers to do research in their own classrooms, it also provides a basis for assessing the findings of existing research. McKay emphasizes throughout that what a teacher chooses to examine will dictate which method is most effective. Each chapter includes activities to help readers apply the methods described in the chapter, often by analyzing research data. *Chapter I, Classroom Research, introduces the reader to major research purposes and research types as they relate to classroom research, the distinction between quantitative and qualitative research, the formulation of research questions and research designs, and ethical issues in research. *Chapter II, Researching Teachers and Learners, presents research methods that can be used to examine teachers' and learners' attitudes and behaviors: action research, survey research, interviews, verbal reports, diary studies, case studies, and ethnographies. *Chapter III, Researching Classroom Discourse, deals with methods that can be used to study the oral and written discourse of classrooms: interaction analysis, discourse analysis, text analysis, and ways to examine the social and political assumptions underlying the choice and presentation of content in second language teaching materials. *Chapter IV, Writing Research Reports, provides guidelines for both thesis writing and journal articles. Researching Second Language Classrooms is an ideal text for TESOL research methods courses and an essential resource for inservice teachers who wish to undertake classroom research.