Understanding the intricacies of teaching is a fundamental pursuit within the realm of educational research. As we chart the trajectory of research in this field, we find that the earliest conception of teaching was premised on a set of ideologies and beliefs that were formulated through observation and emulation of an established sage of a stage or gleaned from philosophical treatises that aim to theorise about the nature of teaching (Markee Citation1995). Propelled by Conversation Analysis (CA) is the treatment of teaching as a set of locally enacted practices that are accomplished through the detailed orchestration of verbal and non-verbal resources and that can be studied through rigorous analysis of naturally occurring interactions in the classrooms. The Practical Nature of L2 Teaching delves into the practical nature of teaching from a conversation-analytic perspective in order to offer a fine-tuned understanding of how teaching unfolds in real-world language classrooms. While intended for varied audiences, this book holds particular value for novice CA researchers looking for a repository of CA findings to refer to as they work on their data, novice teachers seeking to further their expertise, and teacher educators working towards integrating a practice-based approach into their existing teacher preparation programmes. I will revisit this later in detail, but for now, let us acquaint ourselves with the structure and content of the book. It is worth mentioning that while I will provide a general overview of the book, my aim is not to exhaust this limited space by providing an extensive chapter-by-chapter analysis. Instead, I will focus more on showing who can benefit from it, suggesting various ways to harness its insights, and offering pathways to build upon it.
This article examines multilingual interactions in an upper secondary Language Introduction Programme (LIP) classroom in Sweden. The LIPs, highly affected by both glocal linguistic and cultural diversity and the monolingual-monocultural habitus of the surrounding society, offer recently arrived immigrant youth (ages 16?19) education where emphasis is on the majority language of the surrounding society, Swedish, but where teaching can also include other subjects. The study stems from a larger ethnographically framed project, which aims at both creating new knowledge on translanguaging as a pedagogical practice as well as contributing to school development. The paper has a threefold focus. First, it examines everyday multilingual languaging among the participants. Second, it discusses their doing of language policy from a practiced perspective. Third, it reflects upon the implementation process of translanguaging as a pedagogical practice. Data in the study includes video and audio recordings of classroom interactions, fieldnotes, literacy and interview data. Micro-analyses of interactional data are employed in order to discuss the ways in which students and teachers engage in (trans)languaging and language policing processes. Finally, the tension between seeking to teach and learn through linguistic diversity and participants? understandings of what kind of languaging is appropriate is critically reflected upon.
This article presents a case study of a student-teacher’s change in classroom interactional practices as she engages in video-enhanced reflections and collaborative feedback encounters during her practicum in Sweden. We specifically focus on an interactional practice that can be observed in many classrooms: teachers’ use of (overt) negative evaluation (i.e. ‘No!’) that immediately follows learners’ incorrect answers. Using discursive timeline analysis (DTA), which is a combination of Conversation Analysis and Interactional Ethnography, we track the use of the focal interactional phenomenon across (1) video-recorded classroom interactions, (2) audio-recorded triadic post observation conferences, (3) student-teacher portfolios, and (4) interviews. We demonstrate that after getting video-based feedback with a video-tagging tool (i.e. VEO) and reflecting on her overuse of (overt) negative evaluation, the focal student-teacher avoids this interactional practice in her future teaching. As the analysis illustrates, this change of practice is possible thanks to data-led reflections and the evidence-based feedback that the student-teacher received. Our analysis therefore shows that reflection and feedback with a mobile video-tagging tool can facilitate increased awareness of classroom interactional practices. We argue that digitally enhanced, video-based reflections can promote teacher-learning in teacher education programmes and that using discursive timeline analysis can provide rich insights into these processes.
Using the framework of conversation analysis, this paper examinesaided-speaking students’ unsolicited speech-generating device(SGD)-mediated questions in teacher-fronted classroom talk. Theanalysis draws on a corpus of 18 h of video-recorded classroominteractions including 23 aided-speaking students using SGDs orpicture-based communication boards. In all, 5% of the students’contributions were unsolicited questions, produced by three students.The students were found to orient to turn transition relevanceplaces, but due to prolonged production time their questionsrisked sequential and topical misplacement in the ongoing classroomtalk and were vulnerable to misunderstandings. To addressthis problem, students activated the synthetic voice before finalisingthe question, claiming the interactional floor while securingtime to complete their utterance. They also refrained from activatingthe synthetic voice and instead made the question visuallyavailable for the teacher to read, thereby transferring the responsibilityfor answering the question to the teacher when sequentiallyand topically relevant. The study demonstrates the complex interactionalprocess of formulating SGD-mediated questions, sometimesrequiring that the teacher, assistants, and students engagein repair work and scaffolding to establish the meaning ofa student’s utterance. The findings imply that the treatment of nonspeakingstudents’ contributions as questions requires designatedteacher work.