developing elementary teachers’ understanding of the discourse structure of inquiry-based science...

ALANDEOM W. OLIVEIRA

DEVELOPING ELEMENTARY TEACHERS’ UNDERSTANDINGOF THE DISCOURSE STRUCTURE OF INQUIRY-BASED

SCIENCE CLASSROOMS

Received: 18 August 2008; Accepted: 18 June 2009

ABSTRACT. This study examines the effectiveness of using scholarly descriptions ofinquiry-based teaching as a professional development strategy aimed at improvingelementary teachers’ social understandings (i.e., how teachers perceive their own and theirstudents’ social roles and relationships in the context of inquiry-based science instruction).The reported findings reveal that, while participating in expert-guided discussions,teachers articulated deeper, theory-based social understandings. Teachers recognized thedialogic nature of initiation–response–feedback, considered the third move in triadicdialogue as multifunctional, identified potential complications of avoiding evaluation,recognized nonverbal means of evaluation, and defined teacher feedback and guidancediscursively. Teachers also identified lack of neutrality as having a negative impact oninquiry, considered the implications of verbatim repetitions of students’ responses, andarticulated strategies to deal with students’ misconceptions and remain neutral. Thesignificance of this study is that it shows how expert-guided introduction of scholarlydescriptions of classroom discourse can serve as effective means to bring educationaltheory and practice together in the context of professional development and to increaseteachers’ awareness of the discourse structure of inquiry-based science instruction.

KEY WORDS: discourse, inquiry, neutrality, reactive comments, science, socialunderstanding

The science education literature provides ample evidence that teachersfrequently have difficulties interacting with students engaged in class-room inquiries or investigations. Lotter (2004) shows that teachers oftendisplay inadequate classroom management and feel a loss of control.Hayes (2002) describes teachers’ uneasiness at letting go of the authorityto control and direct students’ science learning experiences as well astheir struggles to adopt a form of classroom relationship that is new tothem. Friedrichsen, Munford & Orgill (2006) observe a teacher repeatedlyexpressing concerns about not giving away the answers and allowingstudents to create their own evidence-based explanations. Roehrig & Luft(2004) highlight that teachers’ enactment of inquiry science lessons isoften constrained by students’ expectations that they will be given thecorrect answers. Keys & Kennedy (1999) identify refraining fromanswering students’ questions directly and turning students’ questionsback to them as major challenges, and Furtak (2006) notes that teachers

International Journal of Science and Mathematics Education (2009) 8: 247Y269# National Science Council, Taiwan (2009)

have problems managing student requests for the right answers. Suchinteractional difficulties indicate that many science teachers are unpre-pared to effectively cope with the social demands of inquiry teaching.

Close examination of descriptions currently used to inform teachersabout the nature of inquiry-based science instruction can shed some lighton the reasons behind science instructors’ interactional difficulties. Inthese descriptions, teaching science through inquiry is typically associatedwith interactional activities such as guiding and facilitating (NRC, 1996).Teachers’ and students’ new interactional roles are described metaphor-ically, through the use of ill-defined labels that suggest a more symmetricor equal form of social relationship. The student becomes an activeinquirer (Martin, 2006), whereas the teacher enacts the role of a fellowinvestigator (Lawson, Abraham & Renner, 1989), experienced colearner(Moscovici & Nelson, 1998), co-inquirer, guide, or resource person(Martin, 2006).

In inquiry-based science classrooms, the teacher deliberately avoidsevaluating the value and accuracy of students’ explanations andencourages students to ask questions that she/he can answer with simpleyes or no responses (Suchman, 1966). The teacher also accepts students’ideas without judging them by repeating and paraphrasing students’responses; extends students’ inquiries by providing responses that clarify,compare, correct, and apply students’ ideas; and probes students’ ideas byresponding with follow-up questions that encourage students to clarify,justify, or verify their own ideas (Carin, Bass & Contant, 2005).Additionally, to promote independent thinking, the teacher avoids tellingstudents what to do and refrains from praising, criticizing, evaluating,rejecting, or discouraging students’ ideas (Colburn, 2000). Otherinteractional behaviors commonly associated with inquiry-orientedscience teaching include providing helpful suggestions (Lawson,Abraham & Renner, 1989); modeling scientific behavior and skills,using appropriate scientific terminology, and providing students withappropriate clues and prompts (Ash & Kluger-Bell, 1999); andprompting students to reexamine their work (Worth & Grollman,2003).

The persistence of interactional difficulties among teachers suggeststhat the above descriptions fail to convey the complex interactionalexpertise that effective inquiry-based science teaching requires, leavingmany teachers unprepared to effectively cope with the social demands ofinquiry science teaching. To develop higher levels of interactionalexpertise, teachers need to be provided with descriptions that are moreelaborated and firmly grounded in the social realities of science

ALANDEOM W. OLIVEIRA248

classrooms. The present study attends to this issue by examining theeffectiveness of using scholarly descriptions of inquiry-based teaching asa professional development strategy aimed at improving elementaryteachers’ social understandings (i.e., how teachers perceive their own aswell as their students’ social roles and relationships in the context ofinquiry-based science instruction). More specifically, it explores thesocial understandings developed by a group of elementary teachers whileparticipating in a summer institute in which they were introduced toscholarly research on discourse structures (turn-taking patterns commonlyfollowed by teachers and students engaged in science discussions) andteacher reactive comments (commentary provided by teachers in responseto students’ oral contributions to science discussions).

RESEARCH QUESTION

What social understandings did elementary teachers develop as a result ofbeing introduced to scholarly descriptions of classroom discourse?

SCHOLARLY DESCRIPTIONS

Reviewed in this section are scholarly descriptions of classroom discoursethat adopt a sociocultural theoretical perspective on science talk,emphasizing that teacher–student interaction serves both cognitive andsocial functions. From this multifunctional perspective, participation inclassroom verbal exchanges entails not only engagement in scientificthinking and cognition but also construction of social identities (e.g.,expert, novice, partner, guide, peer) and establishment certain types ofsocial relationships (e.g., symmetric, asymmetric). Put differently, whenteachers and students talk science, they also interact socially, adoptingcertain roles and positions and relating to each other in particular waysthough their linguistic choices.

Discourse Structures

In content-centered classroom settings that emphasize testing practicesand knowledge display, teacher–student interactions have been shown tounfold predominantly as initiation–response–follow-up (IRF) exchanges(Sinclair & Coulthard, 1975) a three-part turn-taking structure also knownas initiation–response–evaluation (IRE) sequences (Mehan, 1979) andtriadic dialogue (Lemke, 1990). In this authoritarian discourse structure,

UNDERSTANDING DISCOURSE 249

the teacher makes the initial move by asking a display question (a queryaimed at testing students’ knowledge). A student then makes the secondmove by replying with what she/he considers to be the right answer to theteacher’s question. Finally, in the third move, the teacher reacts to thestudent’s response by evaluating it as (in)correct.

Studies of teacher–student interaction in inquiry-based scienceclassrooms have revealed the occurrence of discourse structures otherthan the authoritative IRE sequences. Wells (1993) described howinvestigative classroom exchanges between a teacher and her thirdgraders unfolded as IRF sequences while devising a method tomeasure time without the use of a clock or watch. In this discoursestructure, the third move was used by the teacher not to evaluatestudents’ responses but rather to provide feedback, that is, to extendstudents’ ideas, highlight the significance of students’ contributions,and make connections to other experiences. Tabak & Baumgartner(2004) pointed out that interactions between a teacher and high-schoolstudents engaged in computer investigations took the form ofresponse–response couplets in which both the teacher (acting as aco-investigator or partner) and students responded to the data at hand.Oliveira, Sadler & Suslak (2007a) found out that, while challenging agroup of undergraduate students’ explanation for how a candle worked,a college professor skipped evaluation moves, leading to a series ofinitiation–response (IR) sequences. Mortimer & Scott (2003) describedhow discussions about hands-on science activities between a secondaryteacher and 14-year-old students were more dialogic when theyunfolded as initiation–response–feedback–response–feedback chains.Chin (2006) pointed out that interactions between teachers and seventhgraders followed an initiation–discussion–response–feedback patternwherein students discussed among themselves before replying to theinitiating question posed by the teacher, and Polman (2004) identifiedstudent-initiated discourse structures wherein high-school pupils pro-posed subsequent investigative action, requested information related toclassroom procedures and logistics, and requested feedback onprevious investigative action. These studies provide evidence of theoccurrence of more symmetric discourse structures in investigativescience classrooms. These symmetric discourse structures are importantbecause they allow teachers and students to be on a more equalfooting and share authority. As a result, students are afforded theopportunity to develop and maintain a sense of authority, ownership,and agency over their science learning experiences (Oliveira et al. 2007a;Polman, 2004; Tabak & Baumgartner, 2004).


Teacher Reactive Comments

Previous analyses of classroom discourse have identified several differenttypes of teacher reactive comments. Tabak & Baumgartner (2004) andWells (1993) distinguish between evaluation and feedback depending onwhether teacher reactive comments serve to evaluate students’ contribu-tions with respect to standard scientific conceptions or to offer newinformation to students. Nystrand & Gamoran (1991) make a distinctionbetween high-level evaluations (the teacher builds on what students havesaid) and low-level evaluations (the teacher does not interact with students’contributions in any way except to evaluate them as right or wrong). Chin(2006) distinguishes among four different types of teacher feedback:affirmation–instruction, responsive questioning (neutral acceptance +follow-up questions), explicit correction–direct instruction, and construc-tive challenge (challenging question instead of explicit correction).O’Connor & Michaels (1993) identify revoicing, reactive comments inwhich elementary teachers reformulate their students’ oral contributions tolarge-group discussions in ways that are more consistent with scientific andmathematic standard terminology (e.g., “so, what you mean is that...?”).van Zee &Minstrell (1997a, b) point out that high school teachers often useneutral reactive expressions such as okay, all right, and uh huh, andWaring(2002) distinguishes between minimal and substantive teacher reactivecomments. In the former reactive comment, the teacher simply demon-strates attentiveness and active listening by uttering minimal commentssuch as okay and yeah, whereas in the latter one, the teacher offers moresubstantive comments by reformulating students’ contributions. This bodyof research highlights that teachers’ reactive comments can have varieddegrees of neutrality, substance, and signification. Described next is howteachers were introduced to this literature.

THE PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM

This research emanated from a professional development program calledScientific Modeling for Inquiring Teachers Network (SMIT’N) offered to15 K-6 teachers who taught all subjects (including science) to children 4–11 years of age in eight different public schools from one district inIndiana. Nine of the teachers taught lower elementary grade levels (K-3),whereas the other six teachers taught higher elementary grade levels (4–6). All teachers were white females and taught in suburban elementaryschools that served a predominantly white, upper middle-class student


population. Their teaching experiences varied considerably (from 3 to25 years) as well as their familiarity with inquiry-based scienceinstruction.

Each day of the SMIT’N institute focused on a specific interactionaltopic: discourse structures, questioning, hedges, teacher reactive com-ments, directives, personal pronouns, and engaging language. Due tospace limitations, the present study examined only the third day of theinstitute which was split into three basic sessions: a 1.5-h morning expertinstruction session on discourse structures and teacher reactive comments(PowerPoint presentation, followed by discussion of transcribed teacher–student interactions, and discussion of short videos of teacher–studentinteraction); a midday inquiry immersion session wherein a facilitatormodeled a 3-h inquiry-based science lesson on pollination (hands-onexploration of the pollination process, different types of pollinators andflower anatomy through role-playing, form–function discussions andworksheet completion); and an afternoon collaborative assessment sessionthat also lasted for approximately 1.5 h. Within the last session, teacherswere asked to discuss discourse structures and teacher reactive commentsobserved during the pollination inquiry and on prerecorded videos ofinquiry lessons in their own classrooms.

The SMIT’N institute was facilitated by a team of university scienceeducators (professors with different areas of expertise, including abiologist, a linguistic anthropologist, and science educators interested infeminism, nature of science, and classroom discourse) and doctoralstudents in both biology and science education. Facilitators worked inpairs composed of a science content expert and an education/discoursespecialist. The author was a science education student with an interest andexperience in discourse analysis. Because of his familiarity with scholarlydescriptions of classroom discussion, the author served as the institutecoordinator and the facilitator for several of the morning expertinstruction sessions, including the ones examined in this study.

RESEARCH METHODS

The present study adopts a qualitative research approach (Bogdan &Biklen, 2003; Creswell, 2003). As part of this study, descriptive data weresystematically collected through open-ended research methods and thenanalyzed inductively to build a naturalistic account (Lincoln & Guba,1985) of teachers’ social understandings.


Data Collection

To track the development of teachers’ social understandings, participantswere video-recorded while discussing the literature on discoursestructures and teacher reactive comments, while critiquing the pollinationinquiry, and while assessing their own video-recorded inquiry lessons. Inother words, characterization of teachers’ social understandings was basedprimarily on oral data (teachers’ oral contributions to expert-facilitateddiscussions).

Data Analysis

Teachers’ social understandings were obtained through the adoption of agrounded theory approach (Glaser & Strauss, 1967). This approach calledfor the iterative and combined use of interpretative and flexible methodsof analysis such as close reading, inductive or open coding, and memoing(Emerson, Fretz & Shaw, 1995; Bernard, 2002). There were no a priorihypotheses or codes. Instead, analytical categories emerged and weregradually refined based on close examination of meanings and patterns inthe collected data. The video recordings of SMIT’N sessions weretranscribed and then systematically read in order to generate codingcategories for teachers’ social understandings. The emergent codingcategories were revised until patterns or themes became discernable. Awritten report was then produced summarizing themes in teachers’ socialunderstandings.

Peer debriefing sessions were held with other SMIT’N personnel totriangulate emerging interpretations of the data. In these sessions,discursive records of professional development sessions were examinedcollectively, individual analyses shared, and interpretations discussedextensively. The emergent account was adjusted to include any variationthat surfaced from this reflective group interpretation of the data.

TEACHERS’ SOCIAL UNDERSTANDINGS

Two main themes emerged from the data analysis: discourse structuresand teacher reactive comments; each of these is presented in turn below.Teachers of several different grade levels participate in the excerptsprovided in this section, including kindergarten (Mrs. Nichols andWalsh), first grade (Mrs. Adams, Day, and Tracy), second grade (Mrs.Johnson), fourth grade (Mrs. Parker, Carter, and Smith), and fifth grade(Mrs. Simpson). Also present are the facilitator (author), facilitator 2


(science education professor), and facilitator 3 (biology doctoral student).In all transcripts, [ ] are used to identify researcher comments and italicsto indicate shifts in voice inflection.

Discourse Structures

Close inspection of the SMIT’N discussions led to the identification of sixinteractional issues related to discourse structures: the IRE/IRF distinc-tion, reactive multifunctionality, avoiding evaluations, nonverbal evalua-tion, defining feedback, and guiding discursively. Each of these isdescribed, illustrated, and then summarized in the following subsections.

The IRE/IRF Distinction. Early in the morning expert instruction session,participants discussed how the IRE and IRF interactional patternsdiffered, viewing the latter one as less authoritative and more dialogicin nature:

Mrs. Parker: This one [IRF] seems more like a conversation in the sense that is not like aquiz show, because you could say, you could extend their thought, which Ithink pulls children into the conversation, they feel like they added somethingand then you can take it [the student response] anywhere you want.

Mrs. Parker argues that IRF allows teachers to extend students’ oralresponses, a move that can encourage pupils to participate in on-goingdiscussions by highlighting the significance of their contributions (insteadof creating the impression of a quiz show in which students are constantlybeing tested by display questions). Later, the facilitator asked participantsto predict in what phase of the 5-E learning cycle—engage, explore,explain, elaborate, and evaluate (Bybee, 1997)—they expected IRE tooccur more frequently:

Mrs. Adams: In Explain.Mrs. Simpson: I think it could also be in Engage, I can see it happening in both.Mrs. Parker: It could also be in Elaborate, you take it and display it to the whole group.Mrs. Adams: I think the IRF does seem like Elaborate to me.

Mrs. Adams expects IRE to occur in the explain phase (when theteacher normally introduces science concepts and terminology) and IRFduring the elaborate phase (wherein teachers typically encourage studentsto draw connections and apply the learned concepts to differentsituations). In contrast, Mrs. Simpson and Parker propose that IRE canalso happen in the engage and elaborate phases of the learning cycle; anexpectation they later explained in terms of the employment of formativeassessment.


Reactive Multifuntionality. To illustrate the IRF pattern, the facilitatorhad participants examine transcripts of an inquiry science lesson withsecondary students on solubility wherein a teacher poses the question“what are some factors that affect rate of dissolving?” When a studentresponds “the volume of the solvent,” the teacher reacts by saying “yes, tobe more specific, we are talking about size of solute, surface area.” Forthe complete transcripts, see Chin (2006). This interaction is discussedbelow:

Facilitator: The distinction between Evaluation and Feedback is not always clear and isinterpretative, and that’s something we’re [going] to have to ponder about.

Mrs. Simpson: Because I can see that [the teacher feedback] as evaluative, if you ask mewhy, well, because he [the teacher] is checking to see.

Mrs. Adams: And then adding to it [the student response], which made me thinkElaborate, the Elaboration part.

Facilitator: And also some responses can be both, I’ve seen a couple of cases wherethe teacher is doing, to me, the impression I had was that she wasevaluating and also providing feedback, so that dichotomy doesn’t alwayswork, that’s something we need to reflect about.

When the facilitator points out that the difference between evaluationand feedback can be unclear and contingent upon analytical interpreta-tion, Mrs. Simpson immediately reacts by arguing that she considers theteacher comment to have an evaluative connotation. Mrs. Adams seems torecognize that by prefacing his reactive comment with the affirmative yes,the teacher provides a positive evaluation. This view is supported by Mrs.Adams who adds that the teacher comment also serves an elaborativefunction, that is, the teacher extends the student’s idea by introducing sizeof solute or surface area. The facilitator then highlights the potentialmultifunctionality of teachers’ reactive comments (i.e., the possibility ofteachers’ comments serving both as evaluation and feedback).

Avoiding Evaluations. Later, transcripts of an inquiry lesson on waxcandles were provided to illustrate the interactional nature of IR couplets(for transcripts see Oliveira et al. 2007a):

Facilitator: What’s your impression about this [transcript]?Mrs. Adams: I can see there continuing to be lots of confusion on the part of the student.Facilitator: Do you think this is guiding, like you are supposed to do when you teach

through inquiry? What’s the role of evaluation when you think you areexpected to guide students? Is evaluating part of being a guide?

Mrs. Simpson: Well, this is one of those questions where the kids are trying to guess whatshe [the teacher] has in mind.

Mrs. Adams: It’s like going in a circle, it’s like there is no point, it’s confusing.Facilitator: That’s something we need to ponder about, whether do we really want to

stop evaluating altogether? Is that what we want to do to guide?


Mrs. Parker: If the teacher were to say something like keep going, or try to look at that ina different way, is that an evaluation?

Facilitator: I don’t know, what do you think?Mrs. Adams: It gets more guiding, if you say keep going that kind of gives the impression

that you are on the right track, you’re getting warm [laughs].

Mrs. Adams has a negative view of the teacher’s avoidance of evaluativemoves, considering it to be pointless and a potential source of confusion tostudents. Similarly, Mrs. Simpson suggests that, by not evaluating, theteacher ends up encouraging students to engage in a read-my-mind type ofverbal interaction. Mrs. Simpson recognizes that a teacher’s failure toprovide explicit evaluations is likely to be interpreted by students as apotentially negative evaluation of their responses, thus encouraging them tocontinue to offer responses while seeking to elicit a more explicit form ofevaluation from the teacher. Furthermore, Mrs. Simpson reflects about theevaluative nature of comments such as keep going and try to look at that ina different way; both of which are considered more guiding byMrs. Adams.Mrs. Simpson and Adams seem to suggest that, rather than adopting acompletely neutral stance toward students’ ideas and responses, the teachershould have responded with vague evaluative commentary that could haveprovided students with a sense of direction.

Nonverbal Evaluation. Participants later recognized that teachers canconvey evaluation to students nonverbally:

Mrs. Walsh: I was just thinking this is taking out the nonverbal communication part ofit, because I’m thinking if a teacher gives them a look like the students areon the right track, that’s almost like feedback.

Mrs. Simpson: You do a lot of gestures.Mrs. Walsh: Yeah, gesturing.Mrs. Adams: Intonation.Mrs. Walsh: Exactly, reading it in a paper doesn’t really explain how someone is

actually saying that, you say a lot more than just the words you say.Mrs. Adams: And gestures.Facilitator: I agree, the problem with transcripts is that you can’t tell, sometimes you

can give feedback by your face expression, you deal with studentseveryday, so they know you, so just your face, they know.

Mrs. Walsh: Right, they know what you’re thinking.Facilitator: They start reading you, they can tell whether they are right or wrong, so

you don’t need to verbalize it for them to catch that, that’s why is difficultto be neutral and avoid evaluating because we do that even with our body.

Mrs. Walsh: Yeah, I am sure they that can pick up on that.

Mrs. Walsh points out that it is possible for teachers to communicateevaluation to students without necessarily uttering any words. Her view issupported by Mrs. Simpson and Adams who mention teachers’ intonation


and gestures as possible nonverbal means of conveying evaluations tostudents. Mrs. Walsh also points out the analytical limitations oftranscriptions which tend to focus mainly on verbal aspects of teachers’communicative practices. The facilitator then reinforces Mrs. Walsh’sview, highlighting that teachers do not necessarily need to verbalize theirevaluations to let students know whether they are on the right track or not.Such evaluative information can also be transmitted to studentsnonverbally though face expressions and body movements.

Defining Feedback. Toward the end of the morning session, partic-ipants watched and discussed a video of an instructor and fourelementary students investigating what happens when objects (a plasticspoon, a wooden peg for hanging clothes, a metal paperclip, and ametal key) are dropped into a bowl of water. During this investigation,the instructor continuously asks students to predict and then test theirpredictions. First, the instructor hands a plastic spoon to a student andthen asks “what do you think it will happen when we drop this spooninto the water?” When the student says “I think it’s [going to] float,”the instructor repeats his answer “[Bill] thinks is [going to] float.”After observing that the plastic spoon indeed floats in water, theinstructor takes a wooden cloth’s peg, hands it to a second student,and then asks “what do you think will happen when we drop a cloth’spin into the water?” When the student replies “I think it will sink,” theinstructor says “okay” and then directs the student to drop the pin intothe water bowl. Rather than an exemplary case of inquiry scienceteaching, this video illustrates how failure to provide feedback canpotentially undermine teachers’ efforts to guide students. The dis-cussion below is about this video, which can be found in the CD-ROM that accompanies Martin (2006):

Facilitator: What is your impression so far? Anything interesting that you observed?Mrs. Day: Well, the first two times that she [the teacher] had them make predictions

she didn’t give any feedback, and then the girl with the paper clip.Facilitator: Right, I noticed that too, the first two times she only said okay, she didn’t

say anything, she was absolutely neutral.Mrs. Nichols: I was [going to] say the same thing, I felt she didn’t talk about what they

were made of, or why they were, I don’t know if she is [going to] get to itat the end, but at the end it might be confusing.

Mrs. Nichols and Day agree that the teacher does not provide studentswith any type of feedback, an observation that is confirmed by thefacilitator. Instead of following up on issues being raised by the students,the instructor simply acknowledges their responses by uttering neutral


comments such as okay or repeating their ideas verbatim. After showing afew more minutes of the video, the facilitator stops it and then asks:

Facilitator: What’s your impression so far?Facilitator 2: IR IR IR? She is not giving feedback at all, right?Facilitator: Um, she is still making the third move though, right? You could argue that

the okay is the third move, it’s neutral feedback, I guess, what do youthink? What would you argue, it’s IRF or IR?

Mrs. Adams: It’s not F.Mrs. Simpson: I don’t think it’s IRF.Mrs. Parker: I don’t think it’s IRF either.Facilitator 2: In my head, feedback is when you are giving some kind of information,

you are getting them to think.Mrs. Tracy: And her body language doesn’t give anything away either.Facilitator: Right, I think that’s another indication that she is really well trained in this,

not even her body, intonation, nothing, she is giving no information at all,she is neutral. And, is this something that we want to do when we aredoing inquiry or not, what do you think?

Mrs. Adams: I think you could a little bit, or like in the Explore or maybe even Engagebut, I mean, if it goes on too long, it’s like what are you doing?

When facilitator 2 proposes that there are no feedback moves and thevideo-recorded interactions are following an IR discourse pattern, thefacilitator argues that teacher comments such as okay can also be considereda neutral form feedback and then asks participants whether they considerthese interactions to have an IR or IRF structure. Mrs. Simpson, Parker, andAdams all agree with facilitator 2’s view who then offers a definition offeedback as a move in which the instructor provides students with scientificinformation or encourages their thinking. When Mrs. Tracy adds that nofeedback or evaluation is being transmitted through nonverbal communica-tive channels either, the facilitator asks whether adopting such neutralinteractional positioning in relation to students is appropriate when teachingscience through inquiry. In response, Mrs. Adams argues that beinginteractionally neutral and providing no feedback to students can beappropriate in earlier phases of classroom inquiries (engage and explorephases), but such discursive practices can potentially confuse students andfor this reason should not be overused by instructors.

Guiding Discursively. After watching the video, the facilitator askedparticipants whether they considered the instructor to be acting as a guide(this and other metaphorical labels were discussed on the first of theinstitute):

Facilitator: Is she [the teacher] being a guide like what the standards are calling for? Doyou call her behavior as guiding, based on the portion that you saw?

Teachers: No, not really.


Facilitator: So, what makes a guide? What does it take?Mrs. Tracy: A guide helps further your thinking, and facilitate us, she is not, she is really

tipping it back on them.Mrs. Parker: A guide adds vocabulary to your knowledge, so while they are trying to

investigate, you are adding, you are just building on what they know.Facilitator: How about feedback? Does a guide give feedback?Teachers: Yes.Facilitator: Does a guide evaluate?Teachers: Yeah, I think so.Mrs. Adams: I’m thinking of first graders, they get a misconception in their head, and

they learn it wrong, and they cannot unlearn it, I think it’s really risky togo on like this, I can name students in my class that would tell you thewrong stuff, and they will just be convinced no matter what you did, it’shard to unlearn.

Mrs. Smith: I think she could give them some feedback that like allow them, to helpevaluate themselves and then rather than holding in the evaluation, youknow, just something in response from her to help them think morethoroughly so that they can start evaluating themselves, but [on thevideotape] it was just sort of left at that, and so they are just kind ofshooting upwards and there is really no interconnection happening.

When participants respond that they do not consider the instructor to beguiding students, the facilitator encourages them to identify discursivestrategies that teachers should necessarily adopt while interacting withstudents to position themselves as guides. There seems to be a consensusamong participants that teachers should provide students with bothfeedback and evaluations to be able to effectively guide pupils.Furthermore, Mrs. Adams describes her previous experiences dealingwith students’ misconceptions to illustrate how evaluating students isnecessarily part of being a guide. Without resorting to explicit evalua-tions, instructors might not be able to effectively address students’misconceptions related to science. Mrs. Smith then argues that instructorsshould concentrate their efforts on providing students with feedback thatcan enable them to evaluate themselves and interconnect scientific ideasrather than simply withholding evaluations from students.

Summary. As can be seen above, expert-guided introduction of scholarlydescriptions of classroom discourse to elementary teachers served as aneffective means to bring educational theory and practice together in thecontext of professional development. Drawing on both their previousteaching experiences and descriptions being presented, teachers collabora-tively articulated elaborate, theory-based social understandings. Participantsrecognized the dialogic nature of IRF, considered the third move in triadicdialogue as multifunctional, identified potential complications of avoidingevaluation, recognized nonverbal means of evaluation, and defined teacher


feedback and guidance discursively. Social understandings related to teacherreactive comments are described next.

Teacher Reactive Comments

Examination of expert-guided discussions revealed three interactional issues:lacking neutrality, repeating student responses, and written repetitions. Theseare presented, analyzed, and summarized in the subsections below.

Lacking Neutrality. This theme first emerged when the facilitator playeda video recording of Mrs. Neuhall implementing an inquiry sciencelesson. The video is entitled The Properties of Air in First Grade Scienceand is available online (Prentice Hall, 2007). Mrs. Neuhall facilitates awhole-class discussion, opening with the question “how do you know ifsomething is real?” While discussing Mrs. Neuhall’s reactive comments,participants identified her lack of neutrality as a potential issue:

Mrs. Johnson: She [Mrs. Neuhall] affirmed, whether she realizes it or not, by saying oh,how interesting! Or the way she responds to them [students].

Mrs. Adams: And it’s kinda evaluative because when the girl gave the right answer shesaid how interesting! She didn’t want to say yeah, you are right because thatkinda blows it.

Mrs. Simpson: Yeah, that would blow her lesson.Mrs. Adams: So, Susie [student], whatever her name was, already knows.Mrs. Johnson: She didn’t say that the other persons’ was interesting.

The lack of neutrality of Mrs. Neuhall’s reactions is first pointed out byMrs. Johnson who argues that the apparent excitement and surprise of hercomment “oh, how interesting!” serves as an affirmative or evaluativepurpose, that is, it signals to students that the answer she was looking forhas just been provided. This view is reinforced by Mrs. Adams whoargues that Mrs. Neuhall purposively avoided providing a more explicitevaluative comment to Susie. Such reactive move could have had anegative impact on the lesson by creating the impression that the inquirywas too obvious, therefore discouraging the students from furtherdiscussing and investigating the phenomenon at hand.

Repeating Student Responses. Later, the facilitator played a short videorecording of Ali, a fourth-grade teacher, leading a whole-class discussionabout river pollution. Ali asks his students to identify who is responsible forthe pollution of rivers and then continues to repeat students’ responses (fortranscripts, see Oliveira, Colak & Akerson, 2009). Below, teachers discussAli’s repetitions:

Mrs. Day: I remember being taught in a class not to do that [repeat], because itdiscourages students from speaking up and listening to each other.


Mrs. Adams: This year I had a student with hearing aids, and the only way she could hearme, I was mic-ed, and it went right to her hearing aid, so I had to get in thehabit of repeating what everybody said so she would keep up with what wewere doing, and I was just saying how I need to stop that, for that reason, sothey start listening to each other instead of just me.

Both Mrs. Adams and Day hold negative views of verbatim repetitionsof students’ responses. Such practice should be avoided because it canpotentially discourage peer communication and student interactions.Furthermore, the teaching situation described by Mrs. Adams highlightsthat, even though constant repetition is not desirable, it may be required insome particular instructional contexts such as when a student with hearingimpairment is present in the room. In contrast, other teachers expressedmore positive views of verbatim repetitions:

Mrs. Nichols: I know I did it on my video, I repeated everything the kids said, Iremember being conscious of the microphone really, but I don’t knowwhere I got it from, I think I do it all the time, repeat what the kids say. Ithink part of it is that those little guys can’t hear what others say, part of itis because of their speech, part of it is because of how they talk, but I justdo it to say it louder and to reiterate what they were saying. I don’t needfor them to be looking at me.

Mrs. Adams: It’s kind of a reinforcement for them, they will know what they are sayingis important too.

Mrs. Simpson: I think we also do that, at least I’ve been doing this year with all the ESL[English as a Second Language] kids, because their, I understood whatthey said but the kids didn’t understand what they said, so I repeated it togive them a voice in the classroom, because otherwise their answer wouldbe dismissed because of the language, not because of their content.

Mrs. Nichols points out that she repeated what her kindergartenchildren said, arguing that such practice can serve reiterative ends, acommunicative function especially important for younger students whooften have limited communicative competence. Participants identify otherplausible reasons for teachers to repeat their students’ utterances,including reinforcement of students’ contributions and giving a voice toESL students.

Written Repetitions. Participants also considered the implications ofwriting students’ oral contributions on the board:

Mrs. Parker: How about repeating when somebody says something wrong? For example,listing on the board, I knew when I was listing on the board we would puteverybody’s examples.

Facilitator: I think listing on the board is even more official than just repeating out loud,right? Because it becomes something written, almost like a document, doesn’t it?


Mrs. Parker: Probably, if you just list the right ones, but if you list everybody’s.Facilitator 2: Sometimes, what I use is like here is what we think and then list it on the

board so the kids don’t get the idea that everything on there is right, it’sjust what we think, we might change our ideas.

Mrs. Simpson: Right, that’s what I do too.Mrs. Carter: I’ve done that before, then at the conclusion of it, I said okay, this is what

we think so we’re [going to] experiment and whatever to find out if whatwe are thinking can happen or can change.

Facilitator: But let me ask you this though, would you write down on the board like amisconception or not?

Mrs. Simpson: It depends on what part of the lesson you’re in.Facilitator 2: That’s right.Mrs. Parker: You can in the Engage part and then get rid of it at the end.Mrs. Simpson: If I am in the Engage part then yes.Facilitator 2: Then you go back and look at that list and say what do you now think

about this?Mrs. Tracy: Yeah, how did our ideas change?Mrs. Johnson: Otherwise, if you don’t, you are putting your stamp on the wrong answers.Facilitator 3: I don’t know, you could because you can have them go back and reflect on

how their ideas were changing, what did they learn?Facilitator 2: Look our ideas have changed, look how much we’ve learned.Mrs. Simpson: Exactly. And then you cross them out.Facilitator 2: Right.Mrs. Simpson: Ok, now we know this isn’t true anymore.Facilitator: Right, then you put your stamp there saying this is not right. You undo it

[the endorsement] in a way.Mrs. Simpson: But you do it at the end though so we have the time to engage and explore

and explain it all and then now what do you think? Well, we learned thisisn’t true.

When Mrs. Parker points out that she usually writes all of herstudents’ responses on the board regardless of being right or wrong,the facilitator proposes that written repetitions can make students’responses appear more official than spoken repetitions. In response,Mrs. Parker argues that, while selective transcription can indeedfunction as a type of official endorsement of the right answers,teachers can adopt a more neutral stance by transcribing all of theirstudents’ responses. Facilitator 2 then points out that she usually addsan explicit disclosure such as here is what we think to the top of thecolumn where she writes her students’ responses. Mrs. Simpson andCarter then point out that they also resort to similar types ofdisclosures to mark ideas written on the board as being tentative andunder experimental verification. Furthermore, participants agree thattranscription of a misconception can occur in earlier phases of thelearning cycle provided that students revisit the misconception andrecognize its incorrectness at the end.


Summary. As described above, teachers drew numerous connectionsbetween theory-oriented scholarly descriptions and their classroomexperiences and practices, developing deeper social understandingsrelated to the theme of teacher reactive comments. Teachers identifiedlack of neutrality as having a potential negative impact on science inquiryteaching, considered the implications of oral and written repetitions ofstudents’ responses, and articulated strategies to deal with students’misconceptions and to remain neutral while writing students’ ideas on theboard (e.g., explicit disclosures). The next section examines the extent towhich teachers’ social understandings are consistent with stances adoptedby discourse analysts on similar interactional issues.

DISCUSSION

SMIT’N participants adopted different perspectives with regard to theinteractional implications of verbatim repetition of students’ responses byteachers. Some viewed this verbal practice negatively, arguing that it canserve an endorsing or evaluative discursive function (especially writtenrepetitions) and discourage student–student verbal communication.However, others argued that verbatim repetition can also serve positiveinteractional functions such as marking students’ contributions asimportant, giving voice to students who are nonnative speakers ofEnglish, and signaling teacher attentiveness to students. Similarly,discourse analysts who have researched teacher reactive comments seemto disagree whether verbatim repetitions have positive or negativeinteractional effects. Forman, Larreamendy-Joerns, Stein & Brown(1998) and Seymour & Lehrer (2006) argue that, by repeating what astudent says, teachers lend authority to the student (i.e., add weight andforce to the pupil’s utterance), at the same time allowing the student toretain ownership over her oral contribution. In sharp contrast, Tabak &Baumgartner (2004) argue that teacher repetition serves a legitimizingfunction. In re-uttering pupils’ words, the teacher sanctions studentstatements as legitimate contributions, at the same time establishingherself as a knowledgeable expert who holds authoritative speaking rightssuch as evaluating the correctness of oral contributions to sciencediscussions. In other words, the teacher reinforces her own authority (asopposed to lending authority to the student).

The importance of discursive neutrality has been highlighted byprevious analyses of inquiry-based classroom discourse. van Zee, Iwasyk,Kurose, Simpson & Wild (2001) emphasize that neutral acknowledge-


ment of students’ oral contributions (i.e., without signaling an evaluationof student utterances’ correctness) by teachers is essential to help pupilsarticulate their own beliefs and conceptions, encourage students to keeptalking, and encourage them to explore different points of view andmonitor their own thinking. Similarly, Oliveira et al. (2007a) argue that,in order to effectively teach science through inquiry, a teacher needs to beable to help student’s articulate scientific explanations without validatingthem with her institutional authority. These scholars underscore neutralityas a crucial discursive feature of effective inquiry-based science teaching.Furthermore, their arguments are consistent with teachers’ social under-standings which emphasized that explicit evaluations early in inquiryscience lessons can potentially depress student engagement in classroomdiscussions and investigations and that teachers should remain relativelyneutral by strategically resorting to vague language and explicitdisclosures of tentativeness and neutrality while reacting to students’responses.

However, Labov (1972) and Tannen (1985) argue that evaluation is aninherent and integral part of spoken discourse. While participating inface-to-face verbal interaction, speakers inevitably convey particularevaluative attitudes toward the message and hearers through nonverbalcues such as pitch, tone of voice, intonational shifts, speed, body posture,gestures, and facial expressions. In Tannen’s (1985) own words

In speaking, everything that is said must be said in some way: at some pitch, in some toneof voice, at some speed, with some expression or lack of expression in the voice and onthe face of the speaker... one cannot speak without showing one’s attitude toward themessage and the speech activity. (p. 130)

From this perspective, it can be argued that discursive neutrality isunattainable since teachers inevitably convey evaluative attitudes whilereacting to students’ oral contributions, even when they choose not toverbalize or communicate their evaluations in an explicit manner tostudents. As pointed out above, many of the participants in this research,such as Mrs. Smith, shared this view of inquiry-based science teaching asbeing unavoidably evaluative, acknowledging that teachers also evaluatestudents through nonverbal channels.

IMPLICATIONS

The main implication for teacher education raised by the above findingsand arguments is that educators who set out to prepare teachers to


effectively teach science through inquiry ought to go beyond the simpleprovision of static and ill-defined metaphorical descriptions such as guideand co-inquirer. Not only do such labels have a limited informationalvalue but they also encourage teachers to develop a nonrelational andstatic view of classroom inquiries, thus failing to foster deeper under-standings of the dynamic and complex interactional processes that usuallygo on in the inquiry-based science classroom. As this study shows, amore effective approach is to provide teachers with scholarly descriptionsof classroom discourse that can enable them to develop improved socialunderstandings of oral strategies that they can adopt while facilitatingclassroom inquiries to effectively enact a guide on the side and fosterteacher–student relationships that are consistent with inquiry-basedmodels of science instruction. Put differently, science instructors needto develop a higher degree of pragmatic awareness (Oliveira, Sadler &Suslak 2007b), that is, an improved comprehension of the language-mediated process underlying the enactment of authority or expertise inclassroom encounters. Developing such awareness is essential if teachersare to be able to change their ways of talking as more symmetric inquiry-based classroom social contexts demand.

The implication for classroom instruction is that elementary teacherswho set out to teach science through inquiry need to start reflecting morecarefully about the social implications of the language they use whileguiding student investigative activity. As emphasized by the manyexperienced teachers who participated in this research, it is importantthat science instructors provide students with feedback, encouragestudents to evaluate themselves and draw connections, help pupilsarticulate their thoughts and opinions, avoid explicitly evaluating students(especially at the beginning of inquiry lessons), consider whether reactivemoves such as verbatim repetitions are having a positive or negativeimpact on science learning, and reflect about what their body language iscommunicating to students and whether they need to become more (orless) neutral. Furthermore, becoming completely neutral may not bepossible or even appropriate because it can confuse and even frustratestudents engaged in science inquiries. More importantly, instructorsshould avoid taking a reductionist or simplistic approach to teacher–student interaction. Rather than simply adopting a positive or negativeview of a particular discursive practice (e.g., verbatim repetition ofstudents’ response), instructors should critically and reflectively considerthe appropriateness, effectiveness, and implications of employing suchdiscursive practices in the unique and dynamic social context of their ownclassroom.


LIMITATIONS

An important limitation of the present research was that it paid unequalattention to the instructor and pupil’s ends of inquiry-based teacher–studentinteraction. During the SMIT’N institute, participants were continuouslyencouraged to reflect about the social implications of the language used byteachers to address students engaged in classroom inquiries; only in a fewinstances teachers were asked to consider how students talked to teachers,and expert-guided discussions tended to attribute the establishment of (a)symmetric discourse structures and relationships solely to teachers’ oralpractices, rarely emphasizing how students’ discursive moves served toratify or reject such social structures. As a result, all videos and transcriptsincluded in the study focused primarily on what the teachers said, henceoverlooking the student perspective. This apparent bias toward the teacherperspective is important for it promotes a unidirectional view of inquiry-based classroom discourse (from the teacher to her students) despite theactual bidirectionality of teacher–student interaction. Students do haveagency within classroom relations and do react to teachers’ authority,choosing to either accept it or reject it (Binghan, 2004). Future researchand professional development efforts will need to focus on the studentperspective, that is, the content and social implications of studentutterances to their teachers as well as students’ interpretations of andreactions to the language used by teachers, and given the emphasiscommonly placed in collaborative learning and group interaction ininquiry-oriented science classrooms, attention will also need to be givento student–student discourse.

Another important limitation of this study was that it did not explorewhether the social understandings that elementary teachers developed as aresult of being introduced to scholarly descriptions of classroom discoursecould influence their classroom practices (i.e., the ways teachers actuallyinteracted with students engaged in science inquiries). Such exploratoryundertaking will need to be pursued in the future. Further research will alsobe need to determine whether continued adoption of particular discoursepractices (e.g., repeating students’ ideas verbatim) can overtime lead tofurther changes in teachers’ social understandings. The need for suchresearch is highlighted by Richardson (1996) who proposes that “beliefs arethought to drive actions; however, experiences and reflection on action may[also] lead to changes in and/or additions to beliefs.”Based on this argument,it seems plausible to expect teachers to gradually refine or hone their socialunderstandings and discursive strategies as they continue to engage in andreflect about their inquiry-based interactions with students.


CONCLUSION

Increasing teachers’ awareness of the discourse structure of inquiry-basedscience classrooms is well worth the effort. As suggested by the findingsof the present study, teachers need to have access to professionaldevelopment programs such as the SMIT’N institute in order to developmore sophisticated social understandings and thus become better preparedto effectively engage in inquiry-based teacher–student interaction. Theavailability of such programs is essential for helping teachers developlinguistic abilities and interpersonal skills that can support their pupils’science learning experiences.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This project was funded by the state of Indiana Mathematics and SciencePartnership Program

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