Introduction to Volume 3: Discourse and Education (original) (raw)
Related papers
2017
In this third, fully revised edition, the 10 volume Encyclopedia of Language and Education offers the newest developments, including an entirely new volume of research and scholarly content, essential to the field of language teaching and learning in the age of globalization. In the selection of topics and contributors, the Encyclopedia reflects the depth of disciplinary knowledge, breadth of interdisciplinary perspective, and diversity of sociogeographic experience in the language and education field. Throughout, there is an inclusion of contributions from non-English speaking and non-Western parts of the world, providing truly global coverage. Furthermore, the authors have sought to integrate these voices fully into the whole, rather than as special cases or international perspectives in separate sections. The Encyclopedia is a necessary reference set for every university and college library in the world that serves a faculty or school of education, as well as being highly relevant to the fields of applied and socio-linguistics. The publication of this work charts the further deepening and broadening of the field of language and education since the publication of the first edition of the Encyclopedia in 1997 and the second edition in 2008.
Discourse Analysis in Educational Research
Discourse analysis as a method of inquiry has improved our collective understanding of teaching and learning processes for at least four decades. This chapter provides some historical context for understanding the emergence of discourse analysis within educational research, describes some of the different ways that discourse analysis continues to be used and useful in educational research, and synthesizes scholarship that has influenced how discourse analysis has enhanced educational research. It explores key contributions in the study of discourse, including how underlying social systems shape (and are shaped by) interaction, how identities are constructed in and through talk, the relationship between interaction and learning in both formal and informal educational contexts, and how embodiment, multimodality, and virtual spaces offer new sites of analysis, which raises important questions about what new modes of communication imply for discursive methods of research and representation. It also covers four major approaches to discourse analysis in education – anthropological, narrative, classroom-based, and critical – and shows that the study of language and discourse in education has blossomed into a dynamic and interdisciplinary endeavor. Although educational researchers using discourse analysis as a method/tool of inquiry continue to wrestle with questions of context, definitions of “text,” and notions of discourse, this approach to inquiry remains extremely useful and influential. After describing recent advances in the study of discourse within educational research and the problems and challenges that remain, the chapter concludes with a discussion of future directions and suggests recommended additional reading.
Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 2007
Discourse Analysis and the Study of Classroom Language and Literacy Events presents analyses of classroom discourse in relation to language and literacy events from a microethnographic perspective. It is a timely publication that reflects increasingly strong concerns over issues ranging from gender, race, identity and power relations within and beyond classrooms. The book contains a forward, an introduction and five chapters. The forward by Brian Street begins the book well on a good note. It is in this forward that Street sets a clear tone by introducing some of the important issues concerning the topic with which the authors engage themselves. He swiftly highlights the authors' laudable efforts to have successfully built a close link between their analysis of linguistic features of social interaction with what Gee (1999) calls the "social turn" in language study that extends from the social nature of identity (i.e., the construction of identity is socially determined), power relations in classroom events, to the role of multiple literacies, which are important topics in discussions on literacy and multiliteracies (e.g., Luke, 2003; New London Group, 1996). He concludes his forward in a fashion with metaphoric use of language by comparing the authors to what Yeats described in his poem; namely, the authors are "dancers in the dance, their glance and their bodies cannot be excluded from the question of choreography posed by Yeats, which runs throughout this elegant and well balanced book" (p. xi). Meanwhile, he cautions that, while it is true that the authors approach the classroom language and literacy events at a micro level, researchers need to analyze their own framing and interpreting of the classroom language and literacy events. Immediately following the forward is the introduction, whose purpose it is to introduce the authors' approach to discourse analysis. The authors explain that the approach they have adopted in the book is basically "social linguistic" or "social interactional" (p. xv) within the large framework that examines the sociology of language use. For the sake of clarity, the authors label it a microethnographic approach. Given the nature of the book (i.e., it is a series of research studies of language and literacy events in classrooms), the authors should be commended for their clear description of their work in the introduction. By virtue the clarity of the introduction, any beginning researchers intending to follow the ethnographic paradigm in methodological orientation or those who are classroom teachers but interested in knowing something about how researchers interpret and frame their daily language-related activities will find that the introduction prepare them well for a sustained reading experience. It is in this introduction that the authors clearly delineate the specific theoretical positions and frameworks for data analysis and interpretation. They state that the particular approach they have adopted in their work builds on sociolinguistic ethnography (i.e., microethnographic), linguistic anthropology, related discussions on human communication, anthropological studies of narratives and poetics,
2004
Discourse Analysis and the Study of Classroom Language and Literacy Events presents analyses of classroom discourse in relation to language and literacy events from a microethnographic perspective. It is a timely publication that reflects increasingly strong concerns over issues ranging from gender, race, identity and power relations within and beyond classrooms. The book contains a forward, an introduction and five chapters. The forward by Brian Street begins the book well on a good note. It is in this forward that Street sets a clear tone by introducing some of the important issues concerning the topic with which the authors engage themselves. He swiftly highlights the authors' laudable efforts to have successfully built a close link between their analysis of linguistic features of social interaction with what Gee (1999) calls the "social turn" in language study that extends from the social nature of identity (i.e., the construction of identity is socially determined), power relations in classroom events, to the role of multiple literacies, which are important topics in discussions on literacy and multiliteracies (e.g., Luke, 2003; New London Group, 1996). He concludes his forward in a fashion with metaphoric use of language by comparing the authors to what Yeats described in his poem; namely, the authors are "dancers in the dance, their glance and their bodies cannot be excluded from the question of choreography posed by Yeats, which runs throughout this elegant and well balanced book" (p. xi). Meanwhile, he cautions that, while it is true that the authors approach the classroom language and literacy events at a micro level, researchers need to analyze their own framing and interpreting of the classroom language and literacy events. Immediately following the forward is the introduction, whose purpose it is to introduce the authors' approach to discourse analysis. The authors explain that the approach they have adopted in the book is basically "social linguistic" or "social interactional" (p. xv) within the large framework that examines the sociology of language use. For the sake of clarity, the authors label it a microethnographic approach. Given the nature of the book (i.e., it is a series of research studies of language and literacy events in classrooms), the authors should be commended for their clear description of their work in the introduction. By virtue the clarity of the introduction, any beginning researchers intending to follow the ethnographic paradigm in methodological orientation or those who are classroom teachers but interested in knowing something about how researchers interpret and frame their daily language-related activities will find that the introduction prepare them well for a sustained reading experience. It is in this introduction that the authors clearly delineate the specific theoretical positions and frameworks for data analysis and interpretation. They state that the particular approach they have adopted in their work builds on sociolinguistic ethnography (i.e., microethnographic), linguistic anthropology, related discussions on human communication, anthropological studies of narratives and poetics,
Linguistics and Education, 1992
Analysis of the discourse demands across the school year within a recurrent event, "Circle Time," is presented to show how 3-and 4-year-old students learned to be conversationally appropriate partners within a group setting, how the teacher's interactional patterns shifted as students learned to participate in socially and academically appropriate ways within this event, and how participation in the subevents of Circle Time (Milling, Transition, Singing, Talking, and Dismissal) placed differing social and communicative demands on both teacher and students. The overtime analysis of one Circle Time subevent, Talking, is presented to illustrate how 3-and 4year-old students, in their first school experience, construct with their teachers a schooled discourse repertoire for participating in large group discussions, and how the discourse demands on the teacher shifted across time in the Talking subevent as well as across all subevents.
Talking knowledge into being: Discursive and social practices in classrooms
Linguistics and Education, 1993
The history of the articles in this issue has two dimensions: the history of the articles themselves, and the history of research on the relationship of language and education grounding these articles. As guest editors, we feel that both histories are essential to understanding why this particular set of articles was selected and to locating these articles within a growing history of research on language and classrooms. The former is generally included in an introduction such as this one, the latter is often invisible, because reader knowledge of "the field" is often assumed. However, given the breadth of interest of readers of Linguistics and Education ,and the depth of research across the range of areas on the relationship of linguistics and education in the past three decades, we feel that both histories are needed to contextualize these articles and to illustrate the particular contributions of the studies represented by the articles in this special issue. The Local History and Organization of the Volume The local history of the articles is grounded in a program of research being conducted by the Santa Barbara Classroom Discourse Group. This community is composed of teachers, researchers, and students who are concerned with understanding how everyday life in classrooms is constructed by members through their interactions, verbal and other, and how these constructions influence what students have opportunities to access, accomplish, and thus, "learn" in schools. The members of this community share a common background in writing process and language as social process. Four of the articles in this issue (Floriani, Heras, Lin, and Brilliant-Mills) are drawn from two classrooms (sixth and seventh grade), which, in turn, are part of a series of linked ethnographic studies in Grades 1,