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REFRAMING DISCUSSIONS
By

Michael B. Sherry

A DISSERTATION

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
Cum'culum, Instruction, and Teacher Education

2010

 

 

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ABSTRACT
REFRAMING DISCUSSIONS
By .
Michael B. Sherry

Recitations and discussions are two types of interactions which have long been of
interest to researchers who study classroom discourse in secondary English and Social
Studies. According to research, teachers control the discourse during recitations through
“inauthentic” questions requiring pre-specified answers. In contrast, discussions involve
shared control and include “authentic” questions allowing multiple interpretations. This
research has described recitations and discussions as opposites. Moreover, recitations and
discussions have primarily been distinguished by who speaks and how many answers are
possible. In defining these interactions in terms of stable categories and a multiplicity of
voices and interpretations, little attention has been paid to dynamic relationships created
through discourse during these interactions: If recitations appear to be so persistent, how
might they be “reframed” as discussions through negotiation of the roles, relationships,
and responses that are possible and appropriate in an interaction? If discussions involve
not only expressing multiple Opinions but also engaging with texts and responding to
others’ perspectives, how do speakers relate their experiences to the topic and build on
others’ contributions? My dissertation addressed discussions in terms of dynamic,
discursive relationships through sociolinguistic discourse analysis of field notes, class
transcripts, written reflections, and interviews on 28 lessons over one year in an urban
10th grade English class, a suburban 9th grade Social Studies class, and a rural 12th

grade Composition class. Based on this research, I make the following claims.

Recitations and discussions are not stable discourse patterns determined by
individual speakers or individual turns in conversation. In contrast with prior English and
Social Studies education research, the teacher’s intended purpose did not necessarily
determine the nature of the interaction, and inauthentic/authentic questions were not
necessarily indicators of recitations/discussions. Rather, the discourse seemed to depend
on how the interactional frame could be (re)negotiated among teacher and students.
Recitations were refrained as discussions by relating students to the topic through
“animation” and by relating different opinions to each other via “double voicing.”

“Animation” that cast students as figures in a historical/literary event reframed
recitations as discussions by describing the topic as one with which students could
identify. This finding adds to English and Social Studies education research on how
envisionment of story worlds can increase students’ comprehension/engagement and on
how imagining themselves into events can increase students’ empathy/authority.

“Double voicing” students’ comments reframed recitations as discussions by
repeating what others had said in ways that provoked debate. This finding adds to English
and Social Studies education research on how asking questions about what others have
just said can contribute to discussion and on how interpretive questions encourage debate.

Discussions can depend on the framing of other classroom interactions. Activities
that preceded and followed discussions, in these data, shaped the frame for discussions.
The framing of similar activities among teacher and students during previous classes

shaped the frame for discussions. Repeated renegotiation of the frame led to emergence

of genres, or types, of discussions.

 

Copyright by
Michael B. Sherry

2010

II.

 

To RL, DW, and SZ, for being my teachers.

To AL, who helped me to “write what I could not have known before I had written it.”

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank my advisor, Dr. Mary Juzwik, for her help and support
during the writing of this dissertation and over the six years of my doctoral study, as well
as the members of my committee: Dr. Tom Bird, Dr. Rand Spiro, and Dr. Marilyn
Wilson. The members of a bi-weekly “research club,” including Carlin Borsheim,
Christine Dawson, Anne Heintz, Marini Lee, and Deborah Van Duinen, also responded
regularly to this work. Most of all, I would like to thank the members of my weekly

writing group--Karen Ames, Brett Merritt, and especially Ann Lawrence—for supporting

and challenging me throughout this project.

vi

.4

 

TABLE OF CONTENTS

LIST OF TABLES .............................................................................. x1

LIST OF FIGURES ............................................................................... xrr

CHAPTER 1 ...................................................................................... 1
“Two People Talking by Themselves”: Researching Recitations and Discussions

CHAPTER 2 ...................................................................................... 5
Refi‘aming Discussion: Literature Review and Theoretical F rarnework
2.] Literature Review .................................................................. 5
2.1.1 The continuing persistence of recitations ............................ 5
2.1.2 Defining discussion ..................................................... 10
2.2 Research Questions ................................................................ 18
2.3 Theoretical Framework ............................................................ 19
2.3.1 Theoretical assumptions of this study ................................ 19
2.3.2 Theoretical concepts of this study. . .1 ................................. 23
2.3.2.1 Interactional fi'ame .......................................... 23
2.3.2.2 Animation ..................................................... 25
2.3.2.3 Double voicing ................................................ 25
2.3.2.4 Alignment ...................................................... 26
2.3.2.5 Emergence .................................................... 26
2.3.2.6 Genre .......................................................... 27
CHAPTER 3 ...................................................................................... 3O
Methodology
3.1 Methodological Assumptions ..................................................... 30
3.2 Site/Participant Selection ......................................................... 31
3.2.1 Magnum Appan: Tamara Jefferson ................................... 32
3.2.2 Marquette: Sami Ghanem ............................................. 33
3.2.3 Talbott: Dave Weber ................................................... 34
3.2.4 Researcher positioning ................................................. 35
3.3 Data Sources/Procedures .......................................................... 35
3.4 Data Analysis ........................................................................ 37
3.5 Transcription Conventions ........................................................ 40
3.5.] Lesson transcript conventions ......................................... 40
3.5.2 Interview transcript conventions ........................................ 42
3.5.3 Figure conventions ....................................................... 43
CHAPTER 4 ...................................................................................... 45
Reframing Recitations
4.1 Reframing Recitations in Two Classrooms ..................................... 45
4.1.1 Sami’s class: the activity as initially fiamed ........................ 46

vii

 

4.1.2 Sami’s class: proposed reflaming .................................... 47

4.1.3 Sami’s class: response to reflaming proposal ........................ 51

4.1.4 Sami’s class: emergence of the interactional frame ................ 55

4.1.5 Tamara’s class: the activity as initially flamed ..................... 56

4.1.6 Tamara’s class: proposed reflarning ................................. 58

4.1.7 Tamara’s class: response to reflarning proposal. 61

4.1.8 Tamara’s class: emergence of the interactional flame ............. 63

4.2 Discussion/Implications ............................................................ 66
4.2.1 Teacher/student control ................................................ 68

4.2.2 Authentic/inauthentic questions ....................................... 70

4.2.3 Uptake ..................................................................... 72

4.2.4 Creating new meaning ................................................... 73
4.2.4.1 Juxtaposing events ............................................ 73

4.2.4.2 Alignment ...................................................... 74

4.3 Chapter 4 Summary ................................................................ 75

CHAPTER 5 ...................................................................................... 76
“A Whole lot of Stories to Tell”: Reframing Events in a Secondary Social Studies

Discussion
5.1 Juxtaposing events .................................................................. 77
5.1.1 Emergence of the interactional flame: discussion flom their
own perspectives ........................................................... 77
5.1.2 Features of the discussion: making the past more present and
personal .................................................................. 88
5.1.3 Narrative reframing: how the hypothetical event affected the
discussion ................................................................ 93
5.2 Discussion/Implications ............................................................ 96
5.2.1 From their own perspectives .......................................... 97
5.2.2 Making the past more present and personal ......................... 101
5.2.3 How narrative affects discussion ...................................... 104
5.2.4 Other issues: alignment ................................................ 105
5.2.5 Other issues: pedagogical genre ....................................... 106
5.3 Chapter 5 Summary ................................................................ 108

CHAPTER 6 ...................................................................................... 109
“Devil’s Advocate”: Alignment and Reframing in Secondary Literature Discussions
6.1 Juxtaposing Alignments ........................................................... 111
6.1.1 Disagreement without discussion: alignment in Tamara’s 4th

hour class ................................................................. l 1 1
6.1.2 Disagreement with discussion: alignment in Tamara’s 6th .

hour class .................................................................. 1 16
6.1.2.1 Emergence of the interactional flame: double-
voiced disagreement .......................................... 116
6.1.2.2 Features of the resulting discourse: the language of
debate ......................................................... 123

6.1.2.3 Narrative reflarning: how alignment affected the

viii

‘0

 

discussion ..................................................... 129

6.2 Discussion/Implications ............................................................ 133
6.2.1 Disagreement without discussion ..................................... 134
6.2.2 Emergence of the interactional flame through double-voiced
disagreement ............................................................ l3 6
6.2.3 Discursive features and the language of debate ..................... 142
6.2.4 Narrative reflaming: how alignment affects discussion. . . . . 144
6.2.5 Other issues: sequence of activities and recurring genres ......... 147
6.3 Chapter 6 Summary ................................................................ 148
CHAPTER 7 ...................................................................................... 151

DiscussionS--Past, Present, and Future: Emergence of a Pedagogical Genre
7.1 Hypothetical narrative discussions: emergence of a pedagogical genre. . .. 153

7.1.1 Chapter 5 revisited: an invading army marches through

Talbott ..................................................................... 153
7.1.2 Trench warfare on the football field: digging deeper into a
pedagogical genre ...................................................... 157
7.1.3 Trench warfare on the football field: relationship to other
interactions ............................................................... l 65
7.2 Hypothetical narrative discussions: variations on a pedagogical genre. . 168
7.2.1 The stock market crash: hypothetical narrative and collapsing
the past .................................................................. 168
7.2.2 The stock market crash: relationship to other interactions. ....... 173
7.2.3 Collective bargaining: hypothetical narrative and negotiating
the future ................................................................ 176
7.2.4 Collective bargaining: relationship to other interactions .......... 180
7.2.5 The Berlin airlift: hypothetical narrative and the balance of
past and present ......................................................... 183
7.2.6 The Berlin airlift: relationship to other interactions ................ 187
7.3 Discussion/Implications ............................................................ 189
7.3.1 Emergence of a pedagogical genre .................................... 191
7.3.2 Relationship to other interactions ..................................... 196
7.4 Chapter 7 Summary ................................................................ 198
CHAPTER 8 ...................................................................................... 200
Discussion and Implications
8.1 Summary ............................................................................. 200
8.2 Reflaming Recitations and Dialogic Discussions .............................. 203
8.2.1 Focusing on the frame ................................................... 204
8.2.2 From recitation to discussion ........................................... 212
8.2.3 Relationships between who and what: juxtaposing events in
discussion.................... .............. ....................... 215
8.2.4 Relationships among turns in conversation: Juxtaposing
alignments in discussion ................................................ 219

8.2.5 Relationships with other interactions: pedagogical genres of

discussion ............................................................... 224

ix

 

 

8.3 Limitations. and Implications: Reflarning Discussions in Theory,

Methodology, and Practice ......................................................... 230
8.4 Summary of Claims (Overarching and by Chapter) ........................... 240
REFERENCES ................................................................................... 242

LIST OF TABLES

Table 1. Participants, sites, data sources (with dates), and focal examples .............. 37

Table 2. Summary of overarching and chapter claims of this dissertation ............... 240-241

xi

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1. Emergence of the interactional frame in journal entry grammar activity. . 55

Figure 2. Emergence of the interactional flame in journal entry grammar activity
and verbal irony review activity ................................................... 64-65

Figure 3. Recitation reframed as discussion in Schlief’fen plan review activity. . . . . 85-86

Figure 4. Past event becomes more present and personal in discussion of
hypothetical invasion of Talbott/Belgium ........................................ 92

Figure 5. How juxtaposing events contributed to reflarning discussion .................. 96

Figure 6. Emergence of the interactional frame in Hiroshima “All’s fair in love and
war” activity .......................................................................... 121

Figure 7. Increasing regularities of language in Hiroshima “All’s fair in love and
war” activity .......................................................................... 128

Figure 8. Relationship among interactional flames: How narrative of
historical/literary events and narrative of classroom interaction
contributed to framing discussion ................................................. 132

Figure 9. Discursive patterns in discussion of hypothetical/historical invasion of
Talbott/Belgium ..................................................................... 1 56

Figure 10. Discursive patterns in hypothetical narrative discussion from 10/15/07
lesson ................................................................................. 163-164

xii

1. “Two People Talking by Themselves”: Researching Recitations and
Discussions

MS. SMITH (to her class): Remember when we talked about monologue? What was a
monologue?

DIANA (raising her hand): One person talking by themselves.

MS. SMITH: Right! Well, if a monologue is one person talking by themselves, then a
dialogue is. . .?

JOHNNY: Two people talking by themselves?

Education researchers who study classroom discourse in secondary English and
Social Studies have long been interested in recitations and discussions. According to
prior research, the type of interaction identified as recitations often involve repeated
exchanges like the one above: A teacher asks questions to which s/he already knows the
answer in order to test students’ knowledge, evaluating their responses as correct or
incorrect. Previous studies of classroom discourse have suggested that this kind of
“monologic” exchange, with its pre-specified answers, requires little thinking and heavily
constrains students’ responses. Nevertheless, recitations have appeared for over a century
in American classrooms, a familiar and recurring type of interaction among teacher and
students. Indeed, though many previous studies have attributed responsibility for
recitations to teachers, the above example suggests that this interaction depends as much
on students. . .and students do not always cooperate. And although recitations have often
been described negatively in terms of a single, stable recurring pattern, some research has
suggested the possibility of variations in the nature, value, and purpose of this way of

organizing roles, relationships, and responses through classroom talk.

The type of interaction called discussions also has a long history, dating back to
pre—revolutionary European salons, where literary lights shared and challenged
intellectual ideas. Today, discussing with others is still a common and valued practice in
American society: In secondary English and Social Studies classrooms, it is a means for
students to exchange ideas, to engage in shared inquiry, and to encounter other
perspectives, preparing themselves for lifelong enjoyment of literate pursuits and adult
participation in a democratic society. However, there has been far less education research
on discussions. Despite the fact that several national studies Show a correlation between
discussions and student achievement in secondary English classrooms, and that others
show that teachers and students claim to value this type of interaction, discussions have
remained rare in comparison with recitations. Although discussions have usually
appeared during recitations, little research has described how one arises flom the other.
Indeed, most studies have described discussions primarily as the opposite of recitations:
Instead of a constraining pattern of question, response, and evaluation, as in the example
above, teacher and students share control. Despite this emphasis on shared responsibility
for defining the interaction, few studies have described how the nature of this type of
interaction is negotiated among teacher and students. Instead, as in research on recitation,
studies of discussiOns have often focused on teacher questions, which in discussions often
allow an unspecified number of answers.

Thus prior definitions of “dialogic” discussions emphasize the presence of
multiple speakers and the possibility of multiple interpretations. But such definitions risk
defining discussions as “people talking by themselves”: Discussions are not only about

expression of one’s own opinions, but also about engagement with texts and others’ ideas

in order to expand or deepen one’s understanding of the world. Yet little research
addresses dialogue in terms of relationships—between speakers and the topic of
discussion, among turns in the conversation, and between discussions and other

classroom interaction routines. In other words, how do the relationships between speakers
and the text/event/topic, in Literature or Social Studies, contribute to defining this type of
interaction? How do the relationships among speakers’ stances toward those events, in
disagreement, for example, shape the nature of discussions? And how does what precedes
or follows it, as well as experience with other, similar interactions, influence a
discussion? Addressing these questions is important to defining an interaction which is at
the heart of disciplines like English and Social Studies that value collaboration and
“talking to learn.”

My dissertation study addresses these questions about discussions and discursive
relationships through interactional sociolinguistic discourse analysis of field notes, class
transcripts, reflections, and interviews associated with thirty lessons in three secondary
school classrooms over one year. In chapter 2, I review the relevant literature on
recitations and discussions, define my research questions, and articulate a theoretical
flarnework based on assumptions and concepts flom interactional sociolinguistics.
Chapter 3 describes my methodological assumptions and decisions, including selection of
sites/participants, generation of data sources, and means of analysis (including
transcription conventions). In chapter 4, I focus on how what began as recitation was
renegotiated among teacher and students in Sami Ghanem’s 12th grade Composition
class at niral Marquette High School and Tamara Jefferson’s 10th grade Literature class

at urban Magnum Appan High School. Next, I address in chapter 5 how a discussion

brought events into relationship with students’ experiences, and how that shaped the
nature of the interaction, in Dave Weber’s 9th grade Social Studies class at suburban
Talbott High School. Chapter 6 returns to Tamara Jefferson’s Literature classes at
Magnum Appan to explore whether and how disagreement contributes to discussions by
bringing different perspectives on a topic into relationship. And in chapter 7, further
examples flom Dave Weber’s Social Studies class illustrate how the sequence of
activities, and repeated experience with other, similar interactions, shaped a certain kind
of discussions. Finally, in chapter 8, I discuss these analyses in relation to previous
research in English education, Social Studies education, and classroom discourse, as well

as their implications for theory, research, and pedagogical practice of discussions.

2. Reframing Discussions: Literature Review and Theoretical Framework
2.1 Literature Review

Below, I first review the relevant research on the continuing persistence of
recitations; then, I synthesize research on defining dialogic discussions. Based on a
review of the literature, I next articulate research questions and propose a theoretical
flamework for this dissertation study.

2.1.1 The continuing persistence of recitations. For over a century, English
education researchers have noted patterns of discourse associated with recitations, and
how those patterns shape the possible roles, relationships, and responses of teacher and
students. In the late 18005, researchers described the way teachers tested students’ recall
of textbook knowledge through an “oral examination” consisting of the “rapid” and
“mechanical” posing of questions, instructing students, “Don’t stop to think, but tell me
what you know” (Morrison, 1860; Rice, 1893, p. 175). An early 20‘h century study
similarly described how recall of textbook content seemed to be of primary importance in
American classrooms; rather than “really teach[ing]” by “building up new knowledge in
class,” teachers acted as “chairmen of a meeting” at which students reported what they
had learned through study of the textbook (Burstall, 1909, pp. 156, 158). Stevens (1910,
1912) also found that teachers posed “rote memory” and “superficial comprehension
questions” at the rate of one to four per minute, making “the classroom a place for
displaying knowledge, rather than a laboratory for getting and using it” (p. 16). For
Colvin (1919), as well, few of the questions teachers posed were “genuine thought

questions” (p. 269). Thus early English education research described recitations as a

discursive practice which constructed the teacher as examiner of students’ rote recall of
textbook knowledge through rapid-fire questioning. Relating to the content, or building
on others’ ideas was of less importance than students’ demonstration of knowledge for
the teacher.

Subsequent research in the late 20th and early 21 st century affirmed the
continuing persistence of these long-standing patterns of classroom discourse, as well as
the relatively negative roles and relationships they suggested for teacher and students
(Applebee & Squire, 1968; Applebee, J. Langer, Nystrand, & Gamoran, 2003; Gallimore,
Dalton, & Tharp, 1986; Hoetker & Albrand, 1969; W. Miller, 1922; Nystrand, Gamoran,
Kachur, & Prendergast, 1997; Thayer, 1928). These studies further identified the patterns
of discourse associated with recitations, noting a recurring, triadic pattern called I-R-E, in
which the teacher Initiates, the student Responds, and the teacher Evaluates that response
(Cazden, 1986; Mehan, 1979; Sinclair & Coulthard, 1975). Like previous work, these
studies found that the questions initiated by the teacher during recitations tended to be
“inauthentic,” asking for already-known answers, and to involve “lower-order thinking”
(Nystrand et al., 1997; Nystrand, Wu, Gamoran, Zeiser, & Long, 2003), requiring only
“the routine application of previously learned knowledge” (N ewmann, 1990, p. 44).
Similarly, the teacher’s “follow-up” (Wells, 1999) to students’ responses usually
evaluated them as right or wrong, sending the message that there was a single, correct
answer which students must produce (Marshall, Smagorinsky, & M. W. Smith, 1995).
This repeated cycle has thus been characterized as “monologic” (Applebee et al., 2003;
Nystrand et al., 1997): that is, there is little opportunity for students to relate their own

CXperiences to the content or to engage in dialogue with others.

This is not to suggest that research on recitations has described them as one—
sidedly negative. Early studies found recitations to be democratic, emphasizing students’
equality and independence as they studied and were tested on textbook knowledge
(Burstall, 1909). One review of the history of recitations (Thayer, 1928) described them
as a progressive reform that allowed teachers to teach large groups (rather than through
one-on-one tutorials, as had been more usual), efficiently estimating their collective
knowledge by questioning a sample of students. Recitations have also been described as a
“teaching game” (Bellack, Kliebard, Hyman, & F. Smith, 1966) in which teacher and
students willingly participate, and on which teacher preparation ought to focus (Hoetker
& Albrand, 1969). More recently, recitations have been called “a sort of genre” (Lemke,
1990) and “the dominant discourse genre” found in teaching (Wells, 1993). Indeed, some
researchers have surmised that recitations can be useful in certain contexts for
constructing, establishing, or passing on shared cultural knowledge and group norms
(Lotrnan, 1988; Mercer, 1995; Wells, 2007). Thus, though recitations in some research
has appeared to be a reified category defined by the I-R-E pattern, other studies suggests
that not all of what has been called “recitations” is the same.

Indeed, researchers have called recitations a “classroom language game” (Bellack
et al., 1966), an “instructional practice” (Hoetker & Albrand, 1969) and a “social
organization of the discourse and the respective roles of the conversants” (Nystrand et al.,
1997, p. 9). Others have termed the recurring combinations of roles, relationships, and
responses “an instructional frame” (Chinn, R. Anderson, & Waggoner, 2001).
Collectively, these descriptions have suggested that recitations, as a type of classroom

discourse interaction cannot be understood

...outside the organized interrelationships of the [participants]. . .. The crux of the
matter is not the subjective consciousness of the speakers. . .or what [they] think,
experience, or want, but in what the. . .social logic of their interrelationships
demands of them. In the final account, this logic defines the very experiences of
people... (Medvedev & Bakhtin, 1978, p. 153).
Recitations are not simply defined by the teacher’s role or the kinds of questions s/he
asks, but are rather a way of organizing experience which shapes and is shaped by the
discursive interactions of the participants. That is, recitations depend not on individuals
but on relationships, and the way those relationships Shape and are shaped by their uses
of language.

In sum, recitations are a long-standing type of classroom interaction typically
characterized by patterns of discourse such as a recurring cycle of teacher question,
student answer, and teacher evaluation or follow-up, which enable and constrain certain
roles, relationships, and responses. Prior research has addressed these patterns as stable
and universal in the way they construct teacher/student control, attributing responsibility
for the interactions to the teacher, who “tightly regulates” (Chinn et al., 2001 , p. 378)
classroom talk and allows students “no control over the flow of the discussion” (N ystrand
et al., 1997, p. 38). From this perspective, recitations are a type of interaction whose
organization is determined by the teacher (Chinn et al., 2001, p. 378). That teachers are
solely responsible for the persistence of recitations seems unlikely given long-standing
condemnation of recitations not only by English education research, but also by
curricular materials and practitioner literature (Hoetker & Albrand, 1969); moreover,

researchers have found that most teachers and students value peer discussions in literature

instruction (Adler, Rougle, Kaiser, & Caughlan, 2003; Commeyras & DeGroff, 1998).
Rather than teacher-determined, recitations have been described by some research as a
game or “dance” in which students “. . .play along, of course, so that we can tell that they
know that we know that they know what we know!” (Nystrand et al., 1997, p. 18). Yet
few studies have described how recitations, as an “instructional flame” (Chinn et al.,
2001) or way of co-organizing experience, are established, maintained, or transformed by
interaction among teacher and students. Research on whether and how recitations are
negotiated among teacher and students, rather than determined by the teacher, seems
necessary given the persistence of this type of discursive interaction across classrooms
for over a century.

If further research is necessary on how recitations are negotiated among
participants, more study is also required into the dynamics of this type of interaction.
Much prior work on recitations describes the l-R-E cycle, with its inauthentic, lower-
order thinking questions, as a stable pattern of discourse (Applebee et al., 2003; Nystrand
et al., 1997). However, some studies suggest possible variations in the features and
purposes of this “genre,” or recurring type of discursive interaction (Mercer, 1995; Wells,
1993). Indeed, Mehan, one of the first to name the I-R-E sequence, has cautioned
sociocultural researchers against treating such teaching interactions as static events and
has called for more attention to their processual struggles and conflicts: “Trouble is an
essential feature of teaching—leaming interaction; it is always there, a feature that defies

our attempts to correct it, or repair it, or make it disappear” (1998, p. 264). But few
previous studies describe what “troubles” recitations—how they are dynamically

negotiated, maintained, or transformed through interaction, and even struggle, among

teacher and students. Such study seems warranted if English education researchers are to
learn more about variations in this genre of classroom discourse, as well as its
relationship to other classroom interactions, like discussion.

2.1.2. Defining discussion. Despite much prior research on recitations, far less
study has been devoted to defining discussions. One reason for this may be their relative
rarity in American classrooms. A national study of English instruction, conducted in over
1,600 classes, found that only 23 percent of class time was spent on talk other than
teacher lectures and recitations (Applebee & Squire, 1968). Further, Nystrand, Gamoran,
Kachur, and Prendergast’s (1997) national study of English classroom discourse reduced
this figure to less than 50 seconds per class period in middle schools (and even fewer in
high schools). And a more recent national study of approaches to teaching literature put
the national average at an only slightly higher 1.7 minutes per sixty-minute secondary
school class session, in contrast with other kinds of classroom talk, like recitations
(Applebee et al., 2003). Despite its rarity, discussion-based approaches to teaching
English were correlated in both of these national studies with increased student
achievement and high literacy performance across school contexts and secondary grade
levels. The rarity of discussions, as well as their apparent correlation with desirable
student performance, suggest that this type of interaction merits further study by English
education researchers.

As these national studies have suggested, prior research has defined discussions
primarily in contrast to the roles, relationships, and responses associated with recitations

(Adler et al., 2003; Billings & Fitzgerald, 2002; Chinn etal., 2001; Nystrand, 2006).

Indeed, Nystrand et al.’s (1997) study of hundreds of classrooms suggested that

10

discussions often arise from recitations (p. 36). However, little prior research has
described how this transformation occurs.

Instead, discussions have often appeared as a reified category defined primarily in
opposition to recitations. Whereas previous studies have described recitations as
“teacher-fronted” (Forman, McCormick, & Donato, 1998) with the pace and direction of
interaction “continuously controlled” by the teacher (Adler et al., 2003, p. 313),
discussions have been defined as the “flee exchange of information among students
and/or between at least two students and the teacher” (N ystrand et al., 1997, p. 36). And
recitations’ focus on rapid-fire questions posed by the teacher has been contrasted with
interactions in which “students. . .voice their understandings and refine them through
substantive discussion with others” (Applebee et al., 2003, p. 680). As with research on
recitations as determined by the teacher, prior definitions of discussions have thus
focused on their difference flom recitations primarily in terms of who participates: across
studies, discourse in which students take more turns in conversation has often been
associated with discussions. Less attention has been paid to what is discussed and to
whether and how topic and turns in conversation affect discussions. That is, the number
of student turns does not necessarily address the nature and quality of the classroom talk.

Research on discussions has not only addressed who participates and how often. It
has also addressed patterns of discourse, mirroring the focus of recitation research on
kinds of questions. In contrast with recitation questions, which commonly require “lower-
order,” reporting of facts gleaned from a text, discussion questions usually involve
“higher-order” thinking, such as those which ask students to answer “Why?” or to

speculate about the value and possible consequences of decisions (Applebee, 1981;

ll

Britton, Burgess, Martin, McLeod, & Rosen, 1975; Moffett, 1983; Nystrand et al., 1997).
And instead of rapid-fire, “inauthentic” questions which test students’ knowledge of what
they and the teacher often already know, discussions have been associated with
“authentic” questions for which the asker does not require a pre-specified answer
(Cazden, 1986; Mehan, 1979; Nystrand et al., 1997; Sinclair & Coulthard, 1975). The
posing of authentic, higher-order questions by the teacher has often been a defining factor
in research on discussions. However, as with research on recitation, this definition
focuses primarily on the teacher’s discourse, rather than on how that discourse and its
meanings are negotiated among teacher and students in particular situations. For instance,
the authenticity of the question, in this prior work, is determined by the asker, rather than
by how it is received]. Of course, authentic teacher questions are not the only discursive
feature associated with discussions by previous research. Student questions (which tend
to be authentic) also often accompany discussion (N ystrand et al., 1997; Nystrand et al.,
2003). But overall, previous studies have distinguished recitations’ emphasis on a single,
correct answer flom the way discussion questions seem to allow for an unspecified
number of responses. In conjunction with the attention in this research to who
participates, one way to characterize the discourse of discussions might be in terms of a
multiplicity of voices—multiple speakers, and multiple possibilities for response. But this
characterization has suggested little about the relationships among those voices.

Indeed, current research on discussions has often contrasted the “monologic”

tendency of recitations with “dialogic” discussions (e.g., Adler et al., 2003; Applebee et

I An exception is Nystrand (2003), in which the authors note that “judging the authenticity of a question
ultimately depends on the context of the question. . .. The nature of a given instructional episode. . .is the
most reliable indicator of authenticity” (p. 15); however, even here the researchers consulted the teacher,

rather than student responses, to resolve ambiguity in coding a question as authentic.

12

al., 2003; Billings & Fitzgerald, 2002; Chinn et al., 2001; Nystrand et al., 1997). These
terms, drawn flom Bakhtin’s sociolinguistic theory of “dialogism” (Bakhtin, 1984, 1981,
1986a; Morson & Emerson, 1990) would seem to fit with a definition of recitations as
“univocal” (Lotrnan, 1988)—dominated by a Single voice or a single possibility for
response—and discussions, by contrast, as “multivocal” (N ystrand et al., 1997, p. 38)—
involving multiple speakers and multiple perspectives. However, there are several
practical and theoretical problems with this understanding of dialogic discussions.

First, the presence of a multiplicity of speakers or perspectives says little about
what is being discussed. Authentic questions posed in a free exchange among at least
three people could be applied equally to a discussion of Math (Forrnan et al., 1998),
Science (Lemke, 1990), History (Husbands & Pendry, 2000), or English Language Arts
(Applebee et al., 2003), and to reading comprehension (N ystrand, 2006) or to
composition (Applebee, 1981), as well as to discussions of literature (Marshall et al.,
1995) or discussions of students’ oral narratives about their personal experiences (J uzwik,
Nystrand, Kelly, & Sherry, 2008). Are all discussions the same, regardless of discipline?
Does the object of a discussion shape its organization as an interaction, or its discursive
features?

Recent research has suggested that Social Studies class discussions may differ
according to purpose: seminars whose focus is exploring an issue may differ flom
deliberations whose purpose is to consider possible choices and reach a decision (Parker,
2001, 2006; Parker & Hess, 2001). Social Studies education research has also found that

discussion of particular topics, such as controversial issues, can be more or less

conducive to discussions (Hess, 2002, 2004; Husbands & Pendry, 2000). These prior

13

studies have suggested that what is being discussed may matter as much as who is
discussing it. However, they have not explored how the relationships between speakers
and the focus of their discussion might enable or constrain dialogic discourse.

Further, some research suggests that certain kinds of oral and written texts may
seem to have more or less potential for dialogic discussions (Bernstein, 1994; Morson,
1994; Wells, 2007). For example, previous research has identified two tendencies in
historical/literary narratives: one toward order, and coherence and another toward
uncertainty and ambiguity (Bernstein, 1994; Morson, 1994; Ochs & Capps, 2001;
Wertsch, 2002; White, 1987). According to Ochs and Capps (2001), “the former
proclivity offers a relatively soothing resolution to bewildering events...” (p. 4). This
function of narrative allows events to be drawn together into “a well—configured story”
(W ertsch, 2002, p. 58). Such stories order historical events clearly for students (Center
for History and New Media, 2008; Singer, 2003). However, because this type of
historical narrative can “flatte[n] human experience” (Ochs & Capps, 2001, p. 4),
reducing past events to generic patterns, such stories in Social Studies and English classes
can also serve to diminish the engaging particularities of historical situations for
secondary students. By turning past events into predictors of those to come and present
events into the inevitable consequences of their precursors, such narratives can also
create a sense of predictability, and even an ironic distance between a knowledgeable
narrator and the oblivious characters (Schweber, 2004). And the idea that historical
events were coherent and predictable, and thus easily understood, may also diminish for
students “the presentness of the past” (Morson, 1994, p. 7) and the complexity of

historical research. Moreover, the inevitable quality of histories narrated by a single teller

l4

may also reduce the possibility of discussion about past events by Social Studies students.
According to prior research, a polished narrative performance of the kind often presented
in history classrooms “is finished when we begin to read it, its opening, middle, and end
already established between the covers of a book. This appearance of form is reassuring”
(Langer, 1991, p. 17, emphasis in original) not only for readers, but for teachers who
must plan and present a coherent curriculum to students. However, this finished quality
of such polished narratives may come at the expense of student participation that might
lead in unexpected (and productive) directions.

In contrast, some narratives, such as stories composed of interwoven and even
conflicting accounts from multiple perspectives, can furnish “a more intimate, ‘inside’
portrayal of unfolding events. . .[because] narrators and listeners can. . .[experience events]
aS contingent, emergent, and uncertain alongside the protagonists (Ochs & Capps, 2001,
p. 4). Indeed, Bakhtin himself, as a literary philosopher, originated his theory of
dialogism in relation to the non-linear, multivocal qualities of novels by Dostoyevsky and
Tolstoy (Bakhtin, 1984), which invite the reader to identify with a variety of characters
and voices. Although such historical and literary narratives, characterized by “uncertainty
and conflicting sensibilities” (p. 4) may be less orderly, they can invite students closer to
the complexity of a historical event. This potential to engage students is one reason why
teachers may use such narratives in Social Studies and English classes. In revealing
multiple perspectives and possibilities in historical situations, such narratives emphasize
the ambiguity of history, “restoring some of the presentness that has been lost” (Morson,

1994, p. 7). This presentness may draw high school students into the historical situation,

making the past more “usable” (Wertsch, 2002; Zamora, 1997) by “harnes[sing] it for

15

some purpose in the present” (Wertsch, 2002, p. 31). In short, some research has already
implied that what is discussed may matter as much to defining dialogic discussions as
who is doing the discussing. This is not to suggest that certain texts are inherently more
“discussable.” While some texts may seem to have more potential for discussion, any text
can be read or heard as more or less open to interpretation (Wells, 2007). Still, the
relationship between the text/event/topic and students discussing it——-between what and
who—may be at least as important as how many students participate during an
interaction.

Defining dialogic discussions in terms of a multiplicity of speakers or possible
interpretations also raises a second theoretical and practical problem. Such a definition
says little about the relationships among turns in conversation, or the “social logic of
reciprocity” that suggests “appropriate and respective acts by reciprocal others”

(N ystrand et al., 1997, p. 10) during this type of interaction. Does the fact that many
speak, voicing multiple interpretations, mean that “students refine [their understandings]
through substantive discussion with others” (Applebee et al., 2003, p. 680)? What kind of
relationships among what is said define discussions as an “instructional frame” (Chinn et
al., 2001)?

Prior research on dialogic discussions has begun to suggest answers to these
questions, though few illustrative examples exist as yet. Nystrand (1997) warns that
“discourse is not dialogic because the speakers take turns, but because it is continually

structured by tension, even conflict, between conversants, between self and other, as one
voice ‘reflacts’ another” (p. 8). It is not the turns but the relationships among the turns

that matter to structuring the discourse of discussion. Indeed, dialogism, for Bakhtin, is

16

not simply about dialogue, in the traditional sense, meaning any verbal interaction
(Bakhtin, 1984, p. 40); rather, dialogic discourse is about relationships among past,
present, and future uses of language. Attention to whether students have a chance to
speak, while important, may not be enough to define discussion. For instance, Nathan
(2005) found that much of what passes for discussion could be described as “a sequential
expression of opinion spurred directly by a question or scenario devised by the teacher,
which is subject to little or no commentary [and in which] ideas are rarely debated and
even more rarely evaluated”(p. 95). In short, though dialogic discussions depend on the
struggle among voices in discussion, examples of discussions involving debate and
disagreement have rarely appeared in previous research in this area.
This is not to suggest that dialogic discourse is synonymous with disagreement.
Even agreement, during a discussion or debate, necessarily involves the “reflaction” of
another’s words as one adds one’s own evaluation to them. Nor is it useful in defining
dialogic discussions to rely solely on the idea that all discourse draws on previous uses
by other speakers, carrying with it and invoking those prior usesz. For English educators,
in particular, are concerned with how a speaker makes “use of someone else’s words for
his [sic] own purposes” (Bakhtin, 1984, p. 189), by taking up a passage flom the class
text, identifying with an historical/literary figure, or taking issue with what someone else
has just said.
Indeed, the importance of the relationships among what is said in a discussion has

already been addressed by attention to “uptake” as a discursive feature of dialogic
discussions; through uptake, another person “picks up on a student’s response” by asking

M

2 This is, in fact, one definition of “dialogism” (Bakhtin, 1984):, consider the possible connotations of the
word “discussion,” itself, in the following phrases: . .I enjoyed our discussion of Macbeth today"; “. . .in
the Discussion section of this paper. . .”; “we need to have a serious discussion, young man!”

17

a question about what that speaker has just said (such as “what makes you say that?”)
(Collins, 1982; Nystrand et al., 1997, pp. 38-39). However, like other discursive features
of discussions, “uptake” has been primarily applied to teacher follow-up questions. And
while some research suggests that conflict can be valuable in peer- and teacher—led
discussions (Almasi, 1995), little research exists on the dialogic relationships among
turns in discussions characterized by disagreement and debate.

In sum, less research exists on discussions, perhaps because of their relative rarity
in comparison to recitations. Much of this prior work has defined discussions as a reified
category in opposition to recitations, mirroring the focus of recitation research on
teacher/student control and kinds of questions posed during discussions. As with research
on recitations, studies of discussions tend to focus on teacher roles and teacher discourse,
or to emphasize the presence of a multiplicity of speakers and possible interpretations. If
the roles and discourse patterns of discussions are “social processes and not synchronic
fact[s]” (Hanks, 1996, p. 208), how are those processes negotiated among teacher and
students? What part in those processes (if any) is played by the relationships of speakers
to what they are talking about? And how (if at all) do the relationships among turns in
conversation shape discussions, especially those characterized by disagreement and
debate?

2.2. Research Questions

Based on my review of prior research on recitation and discussion, the present

study addresses the following research questions:

1. How are interactions like recitations and discussions established, maintained, or

negotiated among teacher and students?

18

a. If recitations and discussions often co-occur, how does one become the
other?

b. What kinds of discourse accompany the transitions from recitations to
discussions?

2. Do the relationships between who and what is being discussed contribute to
promoting or sustaining discussions? If so, how?

3. Do the relationships among turns in a discussion, particularly agreement or
disagreement with another speaker, contribute to promoting or sustaining
discussions? If so, how?

4. Do other classroom discourse activities affect discussions? If so, how?

a. How do prior and subsequent activities Shape discussion interactions?
b. How does participation in other, similar interactions shape discussions?
2.3. Theoretical Framework

In this theoretical flamework section, 1 detail the underlying assumptions and the
combination of theories applied in answering my research questions. I begin with a brief
explanation of some assumptions about social interaction and classroom talk implicit in
the theories on which I draw. Next, I address the specific theoretical concepts applied in
this study.

2.3.1 Theoretical assumptions of this study. Broadly, the assumptions I make in
this study belong to the field of interactional sociolinguistics, and to what might be
considered a precursor of that field: Bakhtin’s theory of dialogism (Bakhtin, 1984, 1981,
1986a; Medvedev & Bakhtin, 1978). Whereas a linguist might study language in terms of

stable systems that apply across contexts and across particular instances of

19

communication in order to characterize cultural populations, as a sociolinguist I am
concerned with discourse, or language in use (J aworski & Coupland, 1999), particularly
language used by particular teachers and students in secondary school English and Social
Studies classrooms. If not all teachers and students communicate in the same ways,
attending to how their classroom discourse shapes teaching and learning is important not
only to equitable secondary school instruction but also to teacher preparation (Hymes,
1972)

Like many sociolinguists, I assume that classroom discourse, or language in use
among a teacher and his/her students, is never quite the same flom interaction to
interaction (Gumperz & Hymes, 1972; Gumperz, 1982). Each “utterance,” or turn in
conversation, is not an instantiation of an underlying system but is communicated among
people for particular purposes in a particular situation (Bakhtin, 1986a; Morson &
Emerson, 1990, p. 126). That is, the meanings of an utterance depend on its contexts.
Those contexts include not only the accumulation of cultural habits and procedures, but
also the utterances that immediately precede and follow a turn in conversation (Bakhtin,
1981, 19863). For instance, a question posed by the teacher can be “doubly contextual,”
(M. Goodwin, 1990, p. 4; Heritage, 1984, p. 242), both responding to the context—what
has just been said—and reshaping the context—what subsequent utterances might be
appropriate. In including attention to this “microsocial” contextualization of utterances
through their relationship to what precedes and follows, 1 do not mean to ignore or
devalue the “macrosocial” tendencies which result flom the accumulation of these
interactional relationships, but merely to call attention to how the relationships among

what is said during a single lesson activity can also shape the context for that interaction.

20

“Utterance” does not only refer to a turn in conversation (it can also be applied to
written communication, like a lesson plan); however, I focus primarily on the
relationships among spoken utterances in classroom discourse, and how those
relationships contribute the contexts for classroom interactions. Because of this focus,
features of language often marginalized in linguistics, such as choice of syntax, accent, or
dialect, intonation, speech rhythm, gestures, and other methods of signaling situation and
relationship (Gumperz, 1982), are relevant in my study to how teacher and students make
meaning together in classroom interactions. These features of language, among others,
are also important to understanding implicature, or how speakers discern what is not
explicitly expressed (for instance, what kinds of responses are expected in an interaction,
or whether an utterance is intended ironically). In short, I am interested in pragrnatics, the
area of sociolinguistics concerned with how discourse shapes and is shaped by the
contexts in which it occurs. Pragmatics helps me explore how, in classrooms, the
relationships among discourse and contexts affects teaching and learning.

Like other interactional sociolinguistic researchers, my study of how teachers and
students contribute to the discursive contexts for their interactions is open to criticism
related to what Grimshaw (1987, 1990) has called “disambiguation.” This criticism
points out that speakers’ interpretive practices should be not be conflated with intentions
attributed to them by the researcher. In this study, I neither pretend nor desire to “get
inside people’s heads” by studying what they said and did. Indeed, I do not believe that
teachers and students, themselves, always fully understand the interpretations or
intentions behind their responses to each other, or what those utterances might “mean”

when taken together. Thus, my interpretations of the nature of classroom discourse

21

interactions, and how they unfold across subsequent utterances, are arguably no less
plausible than those of actual participants.

In focusing on how context shapes and is Shaped by the relationships among
spoken utterances in classroom discourse within and across lessons, my study is also
open to the critique that it does not address contextual factors beyond those focal events
(such as the cultural setting or background assumptions shared by the participants)
(Duranti & C. Goodwin, 1992). However, I believe that such “macrosocial” factors are
continually re-expressed and reconstituted through the accumulation of tiny alterations
that make up the daily “event of being” (Bakhtin, 1979). Nevertheless, I draw on multiple
discursive sources in an effort to determine what is salient to a particular classroom
discourse interaction.

Before moving on to the specific theoretical concepts applied in this study, I
summarize the preceding sociolinguistic assumptions:

0 Classroom discourse can be studied in relation to particular interactions among
teacher and students.

0 Discourse in particular classroom interactions is never quite the same, depending on
the contexts.

0 The contexts for an utterance include the turns in classroom conversation that
immediately precede and follow it.

o Various features of spoken language can imply the contexts for an interaction among

teacher and students.

22

o How teachers’ and students’ discourse shapes and is Shaped by the contexts for an
interaction can be inferred from study of the relationships among turns in
conversation.

2.3.2 Theoretical concepts of this study. lnow turn to the specific concepts
applied in this study to understanding how classroom interactions like recitations and
discussions are shaped and reshaped by the relationships among conversational turns in
particular contexts. As such, I address each of these concepts in terms of dialogism, a
theory which is itself concerned with sociolinguistic relationships among utterances
(Bakhtin, 1984, 1981, 1986a; Medvedev & Bakhtin, 1978; Morson & Emerson, 1990). I
begin with the “interactional flame” (Bateson, 1972; Goffrnan, 1986), or the definition of
a social situation. Then, I address how this definition is collaboratively negotiated among
participants through strategies like “animation” (Gofflnan, 1971, 1981, 1986) and
“double voicing” (Bakhtin, 1984), strategies which allow speakers to communicate
stances or “alignments” (C. Goodwin, 1986; M. Goodwin & C. Goodwin, 2004; M.
Goodwin, 1990) toward the way people and events are framed. Finally, I theorize how
the repeated reframing of interactions results in genres, or recurring patterns of social
interaction (Bakhtin, 1984, 1986a; C. Miller, 1984; Swales, 1990).

2.3.2.1 Interactional frame. One way recitations’ and discussions’ “social logic”
of roles (Medvedev & Bakhtin, 1978, p. 153), “reciprocal relationships” (Voloshinov,
1986, p. 86), and “appropriate and respective acts by reciprocal others” (Nystrand et al.,
1997, p. 10) can be defined is through the sociolinguistic concept of the “interactional
flame” (Bateson, 1972; Goffinan, 1981, 1986; Sawyer, 2003). Drawing on Bateson’s

(1972) concept, Goffinan (1986) defines the interactional frame as the definition of a

23

situation, which organizes participants’ experience of and involvement in that situation
(p. 10-1 1). That is, the meanings of words and actions, as well as the roles, relationships,
and responses that are possible in an interaction, depend on how it is flamed. This
concept is invaluable to describing how interactions like recitations and dialogic
discussions are defined and negotiated among teacher and students through discourse.
Though prior work has associated flames derived from previous interactions with
cognitive schema (e.g., Schutz, 1971; T annen, 1979), I do not use “flame” here in terms
of a psychologistic script, mental representation, or underlying principle’. In keeping with
my sociolinguistic assumptions, I do not conceive of the frame as merely an instantiation;
nor does honoring the “eventrress” of the event (Bakhtin, 1986b) mean that all flames are
relative. While the interactional frame is conditioned by past experiences with similar
situations, the possible roles, relationships, and responses that define an interaction are
also shaped by the immediately preceding discourse (Heritage, 1984, p. 242). That
discourse often recreates context: when a speaker asks a question, s/he “makes producing
an answer to that question an appropriate thing to do next” (M. Goodwin, 1990, p. 5).
Asking a question thus proposes a reflarning of the interaction. The reflarning is a
“proposal” because the other person can choose to participate in ways other than those
suggested—for example by answering with an unexpected response or even
reinterpreting or dodging the question. Thus flames, like utterances, are conditioned but

not determined by prior (re)framing proposals.

M

3 Actually, in contrast with Schank and Abelson’s (1977) well-known definition of schema as “scripts,”
both early and recent work on schema has described them as active developing patterns (Bartlett, 1932;
Spiro, Coulson, Feltovich, & D. K. Anderson, 1988), which do not determine, but merely “foreground or
make relevant certain aspects of background knowledge” (Gumperz, 1982, p. 132).

24

2.3.2.2 Animation. While questions are one way of subtly proposing the flame for
an interaction, another way that speakers more strongly pr0pose or affirrn the flame is by
explicitly attributing intentions, actions, or words to another person or to themselves (M.
Goodwin, 1990). This “animation” enables or constrains certain kinds of responses
(Goffrnan, 1971, 1981, 1986). For example, when a teacher gives directions or a student
repeats what another student has just said, s/he may describe other people as if they were
figures in a story. Indeed, animation may be particularly relevant to how interactions are
flamed during discus‘s'ions of literature and history because it is so much a part of talk
about literary and historical figures. As the preceding example suggests, animation can be
applied proactively or retroactively, either to encourage certain kinds of responses or to
reinterpret what has already been said.

2. 3.2.3 Double voicing. When speakers animate another person by attributing
words or actions to him, they always also imbue that other person’s discourse with their
own purposes, voicing their own intentions as well (Bakhtin, 1984; Tannen, 2007;
Voloshinov, 1971). Bakhtin’s theory of dialogism (Bakhtin & Holquist, 1981; Morson &
Emerson, 1990) has described this “double voicing”: A participant intends for multiple
voices (her own, as well as another’s) to be heard within an utterance. Indeed, Wortharn
(1994, 2001, 2006) noted how such double voicing functioned in a secondary English and
History classroom in which discussion of Athenian and Spartan work ethics implicitly
indexed class members, creating a subtext to the discussion about contemporary race
relations and welfare. Again, this concept may be especially relevant in disciplines like
English and Social Studies, in which students are often asked to read, cite, and respond to

what others have said and written. Participants in an interaction like discussion can thus

25

animate others, using double voicing to reinterpret prior discourse and reflame
subsequent interactions.

2.3.2.4 Alignment. Such double voicing can indirectly express a relationship of
agreement or disagreement with regard to the previous utterance. A speaker might thus
repeat the form or the content of another’s words in order to express his/her disagreement
(sometimes implicitly, through subtle prosodic or gestural features like a sarcastic tone or
a facial expression). While this evaluative relationship between the speaker and a
previous utterance or event has been called by various names’, I refer to it as “alignment”
(Georgakopoulou, 2007; C. Goodwin, 1986; M. Goodwin, 1990; O'Connor & Michaels,
1993; Wortham, 2001). Thus speakers in a discussion characterized by debate may
participate in similar ways that suggest agreement about the nature of their roles and what
constitutes appropriate participation in that particular interaction, but they may also make
contributions that seem to express disagreement through different alignments toward talk
and behavior associated with that interaction.

2.3.2.5 Emergence. If participants need not agree upon the nature of the flame for
their interaction (Matusov, 1996) then the flame cannot be understood solely in terms of
an individual mental conception. Neither is the flame a static definition of the situation.
Reflaming proposals can implicitly suggest new possibilities and constraints for roles,
relationships, and responses. The possibility of proposing to refrarne an interaction does

not mean that “anything goes” (consider what is involved in changing the subject of a

 

4 For instance, Goffman (1981) has called it “footing”; though I have drawn heavily on other concepts of
Goffman’s here, I prefer “alignment” because the word itself implies a relationship between speaker and
utterance, rather than a status in relation to a stable ground. Goffman himself, writes, “A change in footing
implies a change in the alignment we take up to ourselves and others present as expressed in

the. . .production or reception of an utterance. A change in our footing is 3110316? way 0f talking 31301“ a
change in our frame for events” (p. 128).

26

conversation once that topic has been established over several turns): Reframing
proposals must be accepted by other participants in an interaction. And once they are,
established features of the flame can take on a life of their own and exert an influence on
subsequent participation (Sawyer, 2003). Thus, some possibilities and constraints of the
flame are emergent: irreducible to prior qualities, intentions, or contributions of
individuals. Rather, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts (Sawyer, 2001a, 2002,
2003,2005)
2.3.2.6 Genre. So far I have drawn on Bakhtin’s dialogism to describe the way
discourse shapes and is shaped by interaction (Bakhtin, 1984, 1986a, p. 166): An
utterance has connotations flom prior use and is geared toward anticipated audiences;
because utterances can be reinterpreted by subsequent discourse, proposing to redefine
the interaction, the flame is emergent. This logic can be scaled up: what the utterance is
to the interactional flame, the flame for a particular situation is to the genre, or recurring
pattern of social interaction (Bakhtin, 1984; Devitt, 1993; C. Miller, 1984; Swales, 1990).
By genre, I do not refer to a category characterized by a set of rules, nor solely to

the historical variations in the discursive features of literary texts (Freedman & Medway,
1994, p. 1). Rather, like other North American genre theorists, I am interested in
connecting regularities of discursive form and content to social relationships and to
participation in communities with shared practices. This approach to genre theory
suggests that an activity like literary discussion is subject to the influence of “relatively
stable” social conventions which have accumulated over time, but such a “genre” is
nevertheless “flexible...and free” (Bakhtin et al., 1986, p. 121-127). Much research has

already applied this approach to genre to written classroom discourse (Bazerman, 1997;

27

 

Bazerman, Bonini, & Figueiredo, 2009; Hicks, 1995; Prior, 1998), however less attention
has been paid to oral classroom discourse genres (Juzwik, 2009; Juzwik et al., 2008; C.
Lee, 1993; Rockwell, 2000). Such “pedagogical genres” like recitations and discussions
might be described in Bakhtinian terms as “unfinalizable” (Morson & Emerson, 1990):
those conventions which have accumulated over time in particular contexts remain open
to variations. Thus Bakhtinian dialogism, and especially its definition of genre, helps to
describe the recurrence of patterns of discourse associated with the repeated reflaming of
similar interactions. That is, teachers' interactions with students involve utterances
proposing and affirming repeated (re)flamings of context which lead to the recurrence of
pedagogical genres, like recitations and discussions, that shape and are shaped by the
discourse in that classroom community, as well as by the history of discourse in
American schools, more generally.

In sum, one way to theorize how classroom interactions like recitations and
discussions are contextualized is through the concept of the interactional frame. The
frame, or definition of the possible roles, relationships, and responses possible in a
particular situation, shapes and is shaped by classroom discourse, as participants propose
and accept redefinitions of the interaction. Speakers may make reflaming proposals
through animation, or by explicitly attributing intentions, actions, or words to other
speakers or to themselves. In revoicing or imitating others’ talk and behavior, participants
use double voicing, communicating (often implicitly) their evaluations of that discourse.
Through these double-voiced evaluations, speakers express their stances or alignments
toward the topic, the situation, or a previous utterance. The resulting frame is emergent

when subsequent utterances can reinterpret previous ones, established features of the

28

interaction can take on a life of their own and constrain subsequent utterances, and the
whole is greater than the sum of its parts. What an utterance is to a flame, a flame is to a
genre: repeated negotiations among teacher and students of classroom interactions like
recitations and discussions lead to the accumulation of recurring patterns of classroom

discourse which condition, but do not determine, subsequent classroom discourse.

In this chapter, I have reviewed the relevant literature on recitations and
discussions in order to demonstrate the importance of my research questions on whether
and how these classroom discourse interactions are negotiated among teacher and
students, affected by the relationships between speakers and the text/event/topic, and
shaped by the relationships among turns in conversation. My theoretical flamework
addresses these questions in suggesting that teachers' interactions with students involve
utterances proposing and affirming repeated (re)flamings of context which lead to the
recurrence of pedagogical genres like recitations and discussions. In the next chapter, I
describe the methodology with which I applied this theoretical flamework to answering

my research questions.

29

3. Methodology

In this chapter, I describe the methodology of this dissertation study. First, I
explain the methodological assumptions which inform this study. Then, I describe the
participants and the school sites where I conducted my research. How discourse data
were collected or generated is the subject of the second section. Finally, I detail the ways
I approached those data, including the transcription conventions I applied to discourse
analysis, in order to address my research questions.
3.1 Methodological Assumptions

Abbott (2004) describes a series of basic methodological, ontological, and
epistemological debates and practices in Social Science. In terms of these debates, this
dissertation study is interpretivist, rather than positivist, assuming that meaning cannot be
measured in the abstract, outside of interactions. It assumes that knowledge is situated
and contextual, but that in-depth studies of classroom discourse, like good stories, can
invite identification and comparison with other situations, expanding reader’s
imaginations. My goal in the subsequent discourse analyses is to suggest what is possible,
rather than what is probable—to change readers’ imaginations, rather than to prescribe
particular practices.

In keeping with my theoretical framework, I assume that discourse, or symbolic
interactions used for particular purposes among individuals, are a legitimate foundation
for analysis of how social phenomena are continually (re)produced. Moreover, I assume
that social ernergents exist which are irreducible to individuals and can be real objects of
social scientific analysis. Thus, while I describe the selection of participants and sites in

the next section, I include that information not to suggest a focus on individual behavior,

30

 

but because it is relevant to my relationship, as researcher, with those individuals and
relevant to the analysis of discourse generated in those particular contexts.

3.2 Site/Participant Selection

In this first section, I describe my selection of research sites and participants, as

well as my own position as researcher in relation to these people and places. In 2007-8,
while observing three teacher candidates who had graduated to Midwestern University’s
fifth-year internship, I collected or generated data in a rural 12th grade Composition
classroom, an urban 10th grade Literature classroom, and a suburban 9th grade Social
Studies classroom. For these teacher candidates, whom I first met during their 2006-7
senior year English methods course (which I taught), I was not only a researcher but also
their “field instructor.”

Midwestern University is somewhat unique in offering a fifth-year internship
during which pre-service teachers who have graduated flom the Teacher Preparation
program are placed in local secondary schools where they gradually take over full
responsibility for a mentor teacher’s classes. During this year, “interns” are visited on a
bi-weekly basis by “field instructors” who have been hired by Midwestern University to
observe and discuss their lessons with them about ten times over the course of the year.
The three interns I observed were placed at three local secondary school sites: Sami
Ghanem at rural Marquette High School, Tamara Jefferson at urban Magnum Appan
High School, and Dave Weber at suburban Talbott High School. In keeping with my
theoretical framework, 1 describe each school and teacher in order to clarify how aspects
of place and personality might have conditioned (but not determined) classroom

interactions. Readers may wish to consider this information as part of ongoing

31

 

“conversations” (Gee, 2005, pp. 21-22) which firrther contextualize the interactions I
describe in my data chapters.

3.2.1 Magnum Appan: Tamara Jefferson. Magnum Appan High School, which
might be described as an urban, working-class school with a diverse student body, was
chosen for the constraints and affordances it might provide for pre-service secondary
English teacher Tamara Jefferson, an Afiican American female in her early twenties, who
interned there with two thirty-something Eurcpean American female ELA mentor
teachers, several blocks flom the high school she, herself, had attended. Magnum Appan
is a school in the Stone School District which serves children of urban, working-class
families employed in industry. Statistically, the median household income for the area is
about $35,000 a year (compared to approximately $52,000 for the county, and $51,000
nationally) (News and World Report, 2008). Magnum Appan High School’s student body
is about 55% European American and 35% Afiican American, figures which are nearly
opposite to those for Stone, itself. According to Tamara and her grandmother, a 30-year
native of Stone, some schools there give extra credit to students for bringing tissues to
school, so great is the shortage of resources.

0n the other hand, Magnum Appan, itself, is located outside the city of Stone
along a suburban thoroughfare several miles flom the nearest mall. Large, green
residential neighborhoods surround the schools expansive playing fields. Indeed, the
school’s facilities are state-of—the-art: the campus includes a pool, several picturesque
courtyards with rock gardens, a café, and long ball cases devoted to trophies, pictures,
and school memorabilia. The English hallway’s recently replastered walls, and the

sagging shelves of YA novels in the 10th grade classroom of Tamara’s mentor, Amy, are

32

 

only slightly less impressive than the glistening, glass-lined corridors and general air of
newness about the rest of the building. In addition, the school population is more diverse
than the general statistical demographics suggest: for example, several ceiling tiles in the
English hallway have been decorated by after—school student ethnic clubs, such as the
Muslim Students’ Association, run by Tamara’s other mentor, Jessie. According to
Tamara, these features of Magnum Appan are much different than those of the high
school she attended.
3.2.2 Marquette: Sami Ghanem. Marquette High School, which might be

described as a rural, working-class school with a homogenous student body, was chosen
for the constraints and affordances it might provide for Sami Ghanem, a Lebanese, non-
native English speaking female pre-service secondary English teacher. Sami, who is in
her mid-thirties, was schooled under the French system and taught for two years in her
home country before beginning teacher preparation in the US. According to local legend,
Marquette officials refused permission ten years ago to members of the Klu Klux Klan
who wished to hold a demonstration there, and the town is known by some as “Mar-
tucky,” a derogatory nickname meant to invoke its rural status. Statistically, the median
income of Marquette households is about $46,000 (compared to $61,000 for the county,

and $51,000 nationally). 94% of these households are Eurcpean American, a proportion
reflected in the ethnic composition of Marquette High School, itself ("MuniNet Guide,"

2008)

However, Marquette High School, like Magnum Appan, defies such generalities.
A bumper sticker on a white truck in the parking lot proclaims “Born to bowhunt!!!”

Above it towers the glass building that is Marquette High School’s “Performing Arts

33

 

Center,” where national celebrities like Wynton Marsalis sometimes give sold-out
performances. Fog, creepng in among the gravel-lined intersections, evergreen glades,
and railroad tracks near the school, sometimes causes a “delayed opening” to
accommodate students driving in flom farms, as well as those tempted by the county’s
investment in educational programs to commute flom a nearby city. Sami’s 12th grade
composition classroom adjoins the spacious media center through one door and faces the
computer lab through the other. The small windows of both doors are papered over with
signs that read, “Go Away.” A similar logo, engraved on a rock paperweight, sits on the
desk of Sami’s mentor, Alan, a veteran ELA teacher.

3.2.3 Talbott: Dave Weber. Talbott High School, which might be described as a
suburban upper middle-class school with a homogeneous student body, was chosen for
the constraints and affordances it might provide for Dave, a preservice secondary
European American male ELA and Social Studies (SS) teacher in his early twenties, who
grew up and attended high school in a nearby suburban town. In Talbott, the median
income is $63,000 (compared to $50,000 for the county and $51,000, nationally)
("MuniNet Guide," 2008). A combination of small businesses, playing fields, and a high
percentage of middle-class European American families (90%, according to MuniNet
Guide [2008]) surround Talbott High School, where Dave interned with two forty-
Something male, European American mentors——Rick, who teaches SS, and Don, who
teaches ELA.

Rick and Don’s rooms are located just down the hall flom each other, and from
the school’s TV studio, where students use state-of-the-art cameras, blue-screen

technology, and video editing equipment to run a local news station. The clean, bright

34

 

clothes and minimizing my interactions with students. Second, I made it clear to the
teachers that I saw my role as that of a facilitator of their reflections: Since I observed a
lesson only every other week, I caught a mere glimpse of their day-to-day interactions,
and so as a field instructor would primarily ask questions about why they had made
certain moves, how those moves related to their goals for the lesson, and what other ways
they might have accomplished those goals. Third, I worked in several ways to separate
my pedagogical role flom my researcher role; I always gave participants the option to
decide not to allow a particular lesson or interview to be included in my research; and l
enlployed procedures in my field notes and interviewing to explicitly separate these two
agendas, when possible (for more on this, see “Data Sources/Procedures”).

3.3 Data Sources/Procedures

Data I collected or generated during Sami, Tamara, and Dave’s internship year
included lesson plans, field notes taken as I sat in the classroom and observed a lesson,

classroom discourse transcribed frOm videotape of each lesson, transcripts of interviews

35

 

 

by each teacher about their teaching of the lesson. These data allowed me to see flom
each teacher’s plans how she had intended to flame interactions during lesson activities,
to observe during her lessons how those activities unfolded among the teacher and her
students, and to hear in interviews and reflections how Sami, Tamara, and Dave
described the opportunities and constraints S/he experienced during those moments.

My presence during a lesson as pedagogical evaluator may have affected both
teacher-student interactions and participants’ interviews with me afterwards. Because I
served as field instructor, my questions about a particular interaction during a lesson drew
attention to that moment—and, perhaps, that kind of moment—as important. For
instance, because I had asked questions about discussions before, participants sometimes
anticipated that I would ask about them when they planned or implemented discussions
during a particular lesson. I tried to separate the evaluative aspect of my role as field
instructor flom the more descriptive and exploratory purposes of my role as researcher by
adopting a system in my fieldnotes that separated my pedagogical and research goals (see
“Data Analysis”), allowing me to distinguish between questions/comments in which my
goal was to evaluate certain behavior, thinking, or attitudes, and those for which my goal
was to clarify the relationship between lesson plan, lesson discourse, and the emergent
refraining of lesson interactions.

Table 1 summarizes the nature and chronology of data collected or generated in

the course of this study; shaded cells indicate lessons in which focal examples appear:

36

 

 

 

 

 

 

rticipant- Sami Ghanem - Tamara Jefferson - Dave Weber -
te IMarquettte High School Magnum Appan High School Talbott High School
bacrvation 09-17-07 09-19-07 09-24-07
ates and Ian I Notes Plan I Notes Plan I Notes
ata sources ideo I Transcript Video I Transcript Video I Transcript
eflection I Interview Reflection I Interview Reflection I Interview
10-05-07 10-10-07 10-15-07
Plan I Notes Plan I Notes Plan I Notes

Video I Transcript
Reflection I Interview

Video I Transcript
Reflection I Interview

Video I Transcript
IReflection I Interview

 

1 1-20-07

Plan I Notes

Video I Transcript
Reflection I Interview

1 1-05-07

Plan I Notes

Video I Transcript
Reflection I Interview

11-28-07 _

Plan I Notes

Video I Transcript .‘ _
IReflection I Interview

 

12-06-07

Plan I Notes

Video I Transcript
Reflection I Interview

new;
Plan 1 Notes

Video I Transcript
ReflectiOn Interview

12-13-077 . _

Plan I Notes

Video I Transcript
eflection I Interview

 

01-24—08

Plan I Notes

Video I Transcript
Reflection I Interview

0 1-22-08

Plan I Notes

Video I Transcript
Reflection I Interview

01-17-08

Plan I Notes

Video I Transcript
Reflection I Interview

 

02-05-08

Plan I Notes

Video I Transcript
Reflection I Interview

02-14-08

Plan I Notes

Video I Transcript
Reflection I Interview

01 -3 1-08

Plan I Notes

Video I Transcript
Reflection I Interview

 

02-20-08

Plan I Notes

Video I Transcript
Reflection I Interview

03-1 9-08
Plan I Notes
Video I Transcript

IReflection I Interview

02-1 2-08

Plan I Notes

Video I Transcript
Reflection I Interview

 

03-06-08

Plan I Notes

Video I Transcript
eflection I Interview

 

 

04- 1 6-08

Plan I Notes

Video I Transcript
Reflection I Interview

 

03-05-08

Plan I Notes

Video I Transcript
@eflection I Intervievv

 

 

Table 1. Participants, sites, data sources (with dates), and focal examples.

These focal examples were chosen flom among the data according to several criteria.

First, these lessons included discourse that could be coded as recitations and/or

discussions (still a relative rarityl), according to my analysis of the relationships among
turns in conversation; interviews and other materials related to these lessons then became
relevant. Second, these lessons contained examples of animations, double voicing, and

other discursive features that seemed to suggest negotiation of the interactional flame

37

 

——

 

.ullllt; 3....I..1 I
IrIIllllrl sin.

(see Data Analysis), Third, I chose moments that had rhetorical complexity—that would,

when taken together, convey the plausibility of my assertions while also offering
different aspects of the points to be illustrated (Bogdan & Biklen, 2003, pp. 206—207).

3.4 Data Analysis

To analyze the data I generated, I drew on two qualitative research traditions.

Though my study was not an ethnography, I drew on qualitative ethnographic research
methodology (e.g., Emerson, Fretz, & Shaw, 1995) to make interpretive fieldnotes,
conduct stimulated recall interviews, and write initial memos. For example, in my
fieldnotes I adopted a four-column system during data collection to record

observations/interpretations of classroom discourse, and to separate my goals as field

 

 

instructor and researcher:
Times of lesson Brief description Pedagogical Research questions
activity shifts questions about emergent

moments

 

 

 

 

During open-ended interviews, I used these notes and the corresponding video timecodes
as a means to stimulate teacher recall—and encouraged them to identify similar
moments—~as they compared lesson plan to enactment. A typical protocol included a
comment like “I noticed that you ,” which would point out a particular
moment, followed by a question like, “What made you decide to do that?” which would
invite the teacher to explain how his/her response was shaped by what preceded or
followed it during the lesson. Finally, I wrote initial ethnographic memos that attempted
to connect data sources like lesson plans, observed details of interactions, and interview

commentary.

38

 

To answer my research questions, I drew on sociolinguistic and narrative
discourse analysis (Goffman, 1986; Juzwik, 2006a; Sawyer, 2003) to identify turns of
conversation that proposed elaborations or revisions to a possible flame for an activity,
and to track patterns of discourse across lessons. Using Transana (Woods, 2008), which
allows one to categorize moments of video data, and ATLASti (Team, 2003-2008) for
coding discourse transcripts, I identified, developed, and refined coding categories which
emerged flom the data set over time and across contexts. In developing these coding
categories, I paid special attention to discursive features suggested by my research
questions.

I focused on discourse data associated with lessons in which the initial flame for
activity suggested roles, relationships, and responses associated with recitations and
discussions. In analyzing the classroom discourse, I attended to moments in which
participants made contributions which seemed to propose revisions to the interactional
frame by suggesting other possible roles, relationships, and responses, especially those
which animated other participants by attributing intentions, actions, or words to them,
and which double-voiced other speakers, implicitly expressing alignment toward those
utterances/speakers/Situations.

For instance, because animation often involved stories about past or future events
I attended to changes in verb tense. In addition to temporal clauses, such narrative
discourse, as well as directives like “Now I’d like you to. . .”, also often used nouns and
pronouns to refer to class members. During these animations, I paid close attention to

how features of spoken discourse like tone, facial expression, gesture, and the reactions

of other listeners (like laughter) implied and contributed to evaluations or aligmnents

39

toward that discourse. This implicit alignment, as well as the presence of reported speech
(signaled by quotes or phrases like “So you’re saying...”) helped me to identify double
voicing when it occurred. In noting, transcribing, and coding these moments, I began to
look for recurring patterns, such as repetition of certain verb tenses, pronoun use,
laughter, reported speech, or ironic tone. I also attended to when and why these patterns
seem to recur with regard to the prior and subsequent discourse during the conversation,
lesson, and unit.

3.5 Transcription Conventions

Because my research questions focused on how talk and behavior shaped and
were shaped by interactional relationships, data are transcribed according to conventions
based on those developed by Jefferson and described in Sacks, Schegloff, and Jefferson
(1974, pp. 73 1 -73 3): some conventions of the original system which do not apply to these
data have been omitted; others have been simplified for the sake of readability. Below, I
include brief examples of the conventions I use to address lesson transcripts, interview .
transcripts, and figures in my data chapters; each of these examples is labeled with
numbers which refer to a subsequent list of conventions

3.5.1 Lesson transcript conventions.

5

1 2 3 4
l I l
l l. STUDENTS: (laughter

12. TAMARA: I walked (h)in, Colby said (deepening voice), "That's a nice outfit MS.
13. Jefferson." (resuming normal voice) He kind of looked, and (h)he——(looking up

14. and down)

15. ALICE: Azzh, he looking!

5

40

l.

2.

3.

Line numbers: I use line numbers in order to facilitate discourse analyses of
social interactions. For example, line numbers help to illustrate the Sequence of
turns in classroom discourse (and when discourse has been omitted), as well as to
refer to the relationships between specific moments of discourse that are not
necessarily contiguous. For this reason, I use line numbers only in my transcripts
of classroom discourse generated during lessons. I do not number lines in my
interview transcripts because they formed a secondary data set in which my
analyses focused on content rather than on relationships among conversational
turns.
Pseudonyms: All names of teachers, schools, and students are pseudonyms; at
times, I have used the collective label, “STUDENTS,” to attribute discourse
generated simultaneously by three or more people.
Laughter: I have transcribed laughter because it often accompanies moments
when the flame is “breaking (or cracking) up” (Goffinan, 1986, pp. 351—352).
When laughter is a turn in itself (for example, in line 1 1, above), I have noted it
with a transcriber comment (see Explanation #4, below); when it appears within a
turn (e. g., in lines 12-13), I have used an h in parentheses to indicate plosive
aspiration.

Transcriber comment: Single parentheses enclose material that is not part of the
talk being described or features of the talk that are not easily transcribable.

Double parentheses enclose discourse about which the transcriber was uncertain

(for example, talk that was unintelligible). I have thus reversed the conventions

41

applied by Sacks et a1. (1974) with regard to single and double parentheses in
order to increase the readability of these transcripts for a general audience.

. Reported speech: Because of my interest in the relationship between double
voicing and reframing, I have signaled speech that is ostensibly authored by
another person (or by the current speaker but at a previous point in time) with
quotation marks. This does not necessarily mean that the discourse is a direct
quote (Tannen, 2007), only that those words are being attributed to another
author.

Cut-off: A dash marks a sudden cut—off of sound, as when a speaker interrupts
herself (or is interrupted) in mid-course.

3.5.2 Interview transcript conventions.
...we had some people, you know, she's thinking about the army, thinking about the
march, and I could hear them all talking about it, and I'm thinking, Right now, I need
to relate them to something. And this is right before I do the Talbott thing, and that

was a conscious effort on my part to say, "Let's talk about something we all know."
7 8

Thoughts: When a speaker vocalizes what s/he claims to have been thinking, I
indicate this with italics. For this reason, lesson plan excerpts are also included in
italics.

Authenticity/Readability: In transcripts and interviews, I have punctuated speech
in order to balance authenticity and readability. For example, I have transcribed
sentences according to how speakers did or did not pause while speaking, but I
have opted to use familiar punctuation like commas and periods (rather than

marking silence in terms of time in seconds). Similarly, I have tried to capture the

42

speaker’s syntax and word choice but have not indicated latching or other

conventions developed by Sacks et a1. (1974) to capture pronunciation, as these

aspects of the discourse were not relevant to the analyses in my data chapters.

3.5.3 Figure conventions.

9
:‘f’P’r‘éééii’t’ reuse and '
Conditional mood
and “we”

 

l

SHIRIN: Question: When they g9 through all those places gig they like g1 '
to get them to go with them? Or an; they like-—

DAVE: Well, I don't know they were necessarily trying to gain military
strength through grabbing people as they went. But say there was another
country's army marching through [the modern town of] Talbott What
impact would that have on Talbott if tens of thousands of soldiers. . .it'dbg
kind of weird?

9. Figure labels: When discourse is represented in figures, I label analytic categories

in the left column of a table.

10. Figure shading: Across figures, I have used shading not only to make the

boundaries of analytic categories easier to distinguish but also to represent

changes over the course of a transcript (for example, to note increasing repetition

of certain kinds of discourse)

11. Figure formatting: At times, I have used formatting not detailed among these

conventions to call attention to certain aspects of the discourse in a particular

figure. These temporary conventions are noted in figure captions.

Having described my methodological assumptions, my selection of sites and

participants, my data sources and procedures, and my approach to discourse analysis,

including transcription conventions, I now turn in the following chapter to analyses of

these data with respect to my research questions. In chapter 4, I address how dialogic

43

 

discourse arises from recitation, using examples from Sami Ghanem’s 12th grade
Composition class at Marquette High School and Tamara Jefferson’s 10th grade
Literature class at Magnum Appan High School. In chapter 5, I explore how the
juxtaposition of events that are the subject of a discussion in Dave Weber’s 9th grade
Social Studies class affects the relationship of the participants to those events, and thus
shapes the interaction of the discussion. Chapter 6 returns to Tamara Jefferson’s class to
examine how alignment, and the relationship among turns in a discussion characterized
by disagreement, shape the interaction of the discussion. And finally, I once again focus

on Dave’s class in chapter 7 to describe recurring patterns of discursive interactions, or

pedagogical genre, during discussions.

44

 

4. Reframing Recitations
English education researchers who study classroom discourse have long been

frustrated by the persistence of recitations and the relative rarity of dialogic discussions.
Prior studies have described the differences between these types of classroom discourse
primarily in terms of how teachers’ talk and behavior define the interactions (Billings &
Fitzgerald, 2002; Chinn et al., 2001), by asking certain types of questions (Applebee et
al., 2003; Nystrand etal., 1997; Nystrand et al., 2003) or responding to student
contributions in particular ways (Mercer, 1995; Wells, 1993). However, these studies also
theorize dialogic discourse as the result of collective interaction, and the dynamic
recontextualization of turns in conversation. But, though previous studies have suggested
that recitations and discussions often co-occur, little research has described how dialogic
discourse arises from recitation through discursive negotiation—and perhaps even
struggle—among teacher and students. How are recitations reframed as discussions?
What kinds of discourse accompany the emergence of the interactional frame for
discussions? Below, I address these questions through discourse analysis of lesson
excerpts from Sami Ghanem’s 12th grade Composition class at Marquette High School
and Tamara Jefferson’s 10th grade Literature class at Magnum Appan High School.

4.1 Reframing Recitations in Two Classrooms

In the two sections that follow, I describe lesson excerpts from Sami Ghanem’s

and Tamara Jefferson’s secondary English Language Arts classes. In each example, I
describe the frame for the lesson activity as outlined by the teacher’s plan and the initial

discourse. In both cases, this initial frame resembles recitation: the posing of known-

answer questions by the teacher to test student knowledge (Cazden, 1986; Mehan, 1979;

45

A

 

Sinclair & Coulthard, 1975; Wells, 1999). In each section, I then describe the subsequent
responses of students and teachers in order to show how those responses propose changes
to the frame for the lesson activity, as well as whether and how those changes are
accepted into the frame. Finally, I offer a chart which illustrates the reframing of the
interaction during the activity. Through this analysis, I explore how the interactional
frame was negotiated among teacher and students, how interactions that began as
recitations were refi'amed as more dialogic, and what discursive moves accompanied
those reframings.

4.1.1 Sami’s class: the activity as initially framed. I first describe how Sami’s
lesson plan and the beginning of the activity proposed an initial frame for the interaction.
During a lesson in early March, each student in Sami’s 12th grade composition class
shared a journal entry s/he had written during a previous lesson on a topic of his/her
choice that also included at least one grammatical element the class had studied——for
example, an adjective clause—as part of several lessons on sentence variation. This was
the way the activity had been framed in Sami’s lesson plan, which read:

Students will share the journals they have been writing in class for the last week.

Students will comment on each others ’ journal and decide whether the student
who is reading his/her journal has applied ...the particular
clause/phrase..correctly.... I will leave the choice for the students to pick the
journal they like to share (Sami, lesson plan, 03/06/08).
While this activity ostensibly provided students with the opportunity to sit in a circle
facing each other, and to share personal writing, in fact its purpose was to illustrate the

correct usage of grammatical clauses. Sami’s lesson plan, and its initial implementation,

46

suggested that each student on the circle would be expected to read, in succession, his/her
journal entry; another student on the circle, chosen by the teacher, would identify and
evaluate the use of a grammatical clause in that entry after it had been read. That is,
although students had had the choice, before this activity, of what to write about, the
purpose of the readings of these journal entries appeared to be the review of grammatical
clauses the class had already studied. According to the initial frame for the activity, then,
participation appeared to be tightly controlled, to involve students providing responses to
questions to which both they and the teacher already knew the answer, and to provide
little opportunity for students to interact with each other or accomplish social purposes
other than those already defined. In these respects, the roles, relationships, and possible
responses proposed by the initial frame for the activity resembled those associated with
recitation. In the next section, I describe how students responded to this prOposed flaming
of the interaction in order to explore whether and how recitation can be reflamed by
subsequent classroom discourse.

4.1.2 Sami’s class: proposed reframing. To describe how students responded to
the proposed flaming of the lesson activity as recitation, and how those responses
affected the interactional flame, I focus on several successive journal entry readings that
took place partway through the activity. Nathan and Ryan sat next to each other on the
large circle in which the desks had been arranged. In the following excerpt, Ryan had just
read his journal entry about leaving for basic training, and Nathan was about to share an
entry which challenged the initial activity flame.

(Sami, lesson transcript, 03/06/08)

1. SAMI: Uh, Nathan?

47

11.

12.

13.
14.
15.
16.

17.

18.

19.

20.
21.

22.

23.

24.
25.

26.
27.

RYAN: Oh, his is on the back of my paper.
SAMI: Oh, OK, so you shared?

NATHAN: Yeah, we saved a tree. I think I'm going to read his, though,
because mine's not that good. Can I do that?

SAMI: I think it's better to read your own. I know you can do it.

NATHAN: No, no, no, I can't, I can't read mine, it's sloppy. I'm going to read
this, OK?

SAMI: No, I'd—I'd rather have every person read his own. If you're

. uncomfortable reading yours-—

NATHAN: No, mine's not very good, but I'll read it out for you.
SAMI: OK.

NATHAN: (reading) “Yesterday, I was kicked out of class because of
something that, (h)uh, that was not even a big deal. The teacher looked—or
took-a little thing and turned it into a big deal, which then got me kicked out
of class, this class is--”

STUDENTS: (laughter).

SAMI: OK, so what is that you, so we can—-

NATHAN: (H)old on, I'm not done.

SAMI: What is that you're using? adverb clause? adjective clause? apositive?
prepositional phrase? absolute?

NATHAN: I forgot. (Ryan whispers to him). Adjective.
SAMI: Oh, thank you, Ryan. OK, go ahead, Nathan?

NATHAN: “This class 15 unfair because she says if we need help we can stay
after class, but we can't always stay after class.

SAMI: O(h)K, so (h)you used adjective clause, that's what Ryan suggested
you were writing about when you wrote your journal.

48

In this excerpt, Nathan made several moves that challenged the frame of the activity: At
first he refused to read his own entry (4—8), and later he implied that he had no interest in
what kind of clause was used (22). But he also fulfilled the requirements of the
assignment and the initial flame for the activity by ostensibly writing and reading a
journal entry that utilized a grammatical element.

However, Nathan’s journal entry did more than fulfill the assignment. It also
animated Nathan and Sami as characters in a story about prior classroom interactions (13-
16, 24-25): As she explained to me afterward, she had asked him the day before to step
outside the room and talk with her about a disruption during the lesson, and before that
had often invited him to stay after class for extra help. But Sami’s version of those events
was quite different than Nathan’s, which portrayed him as a victim of the situation and
subtly criticized his teacher’s actions. Nathan’s animation thus allowed him to
simultaneously fulfill the initial requirements of the activity and also to indirectly
criticize the class through double voicing. I was not the only one to appreciate the nature
of Nathan’s critique as the nervous laughter of Nathan( 14), Sami (26), and Nathan’s
classmates (26) suggested.

In animating himself and Sami, Nathan’s reading not only used double voicing to
critique his interactions with Sami during previous lessons, but it also proposed a change
to the initial flame of the activity: that the journal could also be used to accomplish non-
academic——-even critical—~purposes. Moreover, the subtle nature of Nathan’s criticism
made it difficult for Sami to respond without turning a “little thing” into a “big deal” (15)
through a direct confrontation—the very thing Nathan had criticized. Sami’s reactions to

Nathan showed their implicit struggle: she interpreted (perhaps intentionally) his refusal

49

to read his own entry as embarrassment rather than insubordination, and offered to let
him off the hook if he was ‘firncomfortable” (9—10); but rather than taking this opportunity
(indeed, perhaps spurred on by it), Nathan agreed to read.

Nathan’s reading of his journal entry did not wholly conform to the roles,
relationships, and responses of the interaction as initially flamed. Though his reading
fulfilled the obligations of the activity, it also used animation and double voicing to
indirectly criticize it. This criticism proposed a reframing of the activity Sami had
envisioned. In particular, Nathan’s reading accomplished this by referring to another
event which bore a relationship to the current interaction (13-16, 24-25); I will address
the relationship between narrated events and classroom discourse interactions, and how
that relationship might be used to promote discussion, in a later section of this chapter, as
well as in Chapter 5. Moreover, Nathan’s reading subtly expressed an opinion about that
event which also applied to the current interaction: I will address the relationship between
a speaker’s alignment, or stance toward an event, and how that relationship might be used
to promote discussion, in a later section of this chapter, as well as in Chapter 6. Having
described a proposed reflaming of this recitation activity, I next describe responses to that

reframing proposal.

50

4.1.3 Sami’s class: response to reframing proposal. How did teacher and
students respond to the criticism of the recitation activity, and the reframing it proposed?
Instead of responding to Nathan’s indirect critique, Sami stuck for the moment to the
original flame of the activity: she treated Nathan’s journal as she had the others, only
noting the grammatical element he had used. As the activity continued, Sami took stock,
listing aloud the names of those who had not read their entries:

28. SAMI: OK! Uh J o—we still have Josh, Andy, me-~I (h)mean no(h)—-Catherine—-

29. RYAN: Oh, you're going!
When Sami laughingly pretended to count herself into the circle, Ryan pounced on her
joke, challenging Sami to read a journal entry, too. Like Nathan’s subtle parody, Ryan’s
comment also animated Sami (this time with regard to a future, rather than a past action)
and implicitly criticized the initial flaming of the activity, in which only students on the
circle were forced to read their journal entries and answer questions about grammatical to
which they already knew the answer. However, because he had double voiced Sami’s
own joke, Ryan could easily pass off his remark; like Nathan’s, it would be hard to
respond to without causing further disruption.

The next student to read, Josh, shared a more traditional entry about a trip with his
Mom to a casino in the north of the state. This produced some laughter from Nathan and
Ryan, who often poked fun at Josh. Sitting next to Josh, Andy made a move similar to
Nathan’s by using his “journal entry” as an indirect commentary on the events of the
class:

41. ANDY: I did adjective clause. "There's this dude who really gets on my

42. nerves. Every day I go to my composition class, and write my journal about

43. him. I write about him to work on my grammar and to help understand how to
44. use different kinds of clauses and phrases." (looking across the room)

51

45. SAMI: OK. So what's the clause you wanted to point out?
46. ANDY: "who really gets on my nerves".

47. CHRIS: Who's the dude?

48. ANDY: I wonder.

Like Nathan and Ryan’s comments, Andy’s “reading” animated another member of the
class. But instead of criticizing the teacher, Andy’s journal entry was an indirect criticism
of another student, possibly Nathan. In relation to Nathan’s previous turn in the
conversation, Andy’s reading affirmed the revision to the interactional flame which
Nathan’s contribution had proposed: that the journal entry was an opportunity to
accomplish social purposes at the same time as one fulfilled the official grammar and
sentence variation task. Again the rest of the class seemed to recognize this dual purpose:
Chris acknowledged that the journal entry indexed class members by asking about it
directly (47).

Subsequently, Sami seized an opportunity to make a similar move: to indirectly
comment on the events of the classroom under cover of a “journal entry.” Catherine, who
read after Andy, used a participial phrase in her journal entry about choir practice; while
she read, Nathan and Ryan were talking, and Andy, saying that he couldn’t hear, asked
Catherine to read again. Nathan and Ryan agreed, laughingly asking Catherine to stand
and read again flom the center of the room, perhaps because they thought she was
attractive. After Catherine read again (flom her seat), and since no one else had used a
participial phrase, Sami took the opportunity to re-explain this grammar point and restate
the purpose of the activity, while at the same time admonishing Nathan and Ryan:

55. SAMI: So basically, participial is when you use a verb and you end it with "

52

56. ing"? or "ed"? and most of the time you start a sentence with that, for

57. example, uh not all the time, your example you didn't start the sentence with
58. that. (raising volume) "Trying to pay attention in class was a hard job for me
59. because I was distracted with these two students sitting on my left and right."
60. See? This is participial. "I am trying to pay attention in class, period." This is
61. not participial, it's just part of the verb.

62. CATHERINE: Yes.

63. SAMI: OK? So if you want to have variation in your essay, you want to talk
64. about these two students sitting beside you and distracting you, you have two
65. ways of doing this, OK? One way is "I am sitting in class, period. There are
66. two students sitting beside me, period. These two students are distracting me,
67. period. That's why I find it hard to pay attention in class, period." Or you can
68. say it the other way which I just said it before. See? Now you know how to
69. write in two different ways, either using participial phrase or--clause, phrase
’70. or clause--or having uh you know different number of sentences. OK? and I'm
71. not saying one is better than the other. It's just that you know both and you

72. have the option to use which one based on what you have in your essay.

As she made this explanation, Sami also raised her voice (58), and Nathan and Ryan, the
“two students” (59) she had animated in her “journal entry” stopped talking and sat up in
their seats (as did others). Moreover, Sami’s response, like Nathan’s, used double
voicing: overtly, she was illustrating her explanation of participials with an example, and
reaffirming the point of the sentence variation activity; implicitly, she was scolding
Nathan and Ryan by referring to their actions during Catherine’s reading. Furthermore,
she utilized the same technique proposed by Nathan and affirmed by Andy: commenting
indirectly, through the journal entry, on classroom events.

Sami’s reading also responded to the constraints Nathan’s critique and Ryan’s
challenge had created: to ignore the criticisms of Nathan and Ryan might have seemed
naive or cowardly; but to confront them directly would have disrupted the activity, and
either boy could have denied any ill intentions. As Sami explained in a post-lesson

interview,

53

I thought I'm not going to interrupt the class and say ‘Listen, you need to be

quiet, ’ and so on. So what I did was, they were asking me about a. . .sentence or a

clause, and I-they wanted an example. And in my example, I used them. Without

saying their names. But they knew that I'm talking about them. And when I used
that example, they were quiet, because they felt embarrassed about that (Sami,

interview, 03/06/08).

Despite the constraints, Sami managed to admonish both boys by using their own strategy

against them and without breaking the frame of the journal entry activity to comment .,
directly on their behavior. Further, she rejoined the non-academic social purpose to the

academic topic of the activity: to illustrate the use of particular grammatical clauses, and

how those clauses might be used to accomplish certain rhetorical effects, with reference

to students’ personal writing. Thus the resulting interactional flame, with its ostensible

focus on writing and grammar, and its implicit social sallies, was emergent—~—irreducible

to the precedent qualities or intentions of the individual participants.

In this section, I described the responses to Nathan’s critique of the activity which
appeared to be framed initially as recitation. Subsequent responses flom students and
teacher accepted that critique as a reflaming of the interaction by using the same
technique: they used the journal entry reading as a means of indirect social commentary.
This commentary was accomplished through animation and double voicing. Like Nathan,
subsequent speakers also referred to other events that bore a relationship to the current
interaction, a relationship I address further in the Discussion section and in Chapter 5.

Andy and Sami also subtly expressed an opinion about the events to which they referred,

54

an alignment which affected the current interaction, as well; I address this relationship
further in the Discussion section and in Chapter 6.
4.1.4 Sami’s class: emergence of the interactional frame. Figure 1 charts the

changes in the flame during the interaction above.

 

iriii'nhr'rr’aine” LESSON PLAN. Students will share the journals they hhve been wrung" in clamfor théfi ‘
. last week. Students will comment on each others ’j'ournal and decide whether the student
who is reading his/her journal has applied... the particular clartseljohrase. .. correctly-.. . I
will leave the choice for the students to pick the journal they like to share.

I

, SAMI: Uh, Nathan?

f

 

Challenges to RYAN: Oh, his is on the back of my paper.
initial frame
SAMI: Oh, OK, so you shared?

NATHAN: Yeah, we saved a tree. I think I'm going to read his, though, because mine's not
that good. Can I do that?

SAMI: No, I'd~l'd rather have every person read his own. If you're uncomfortable reading
yours—~—

NATHPLN: No, mine's not very good, but I'll read it out for you.

SAMI: OK.

 

Proposed
reframing

NATHAN: “Yesterday, I was kicked out of class because of something that, (h)uh, that was
not even a big deal. The teacher looked-~0r took-a little thing and turned it into a big deal,
which then got me kicked out of class...”

STUDENTS: (laughter).

Dou ble voicing

Animation

SAMI: O(h)K, so (h)you used adjective clause, that's what Ryan suggested you were writing
about when you wrote your journal.

 

Response to
refraining

proposal

SAMI: So basically, participial is when you use a verb and you end it with "ing"? or "ed"?
and most of the time you start a sentence with that, for example, uh not all the time, your
example you didn't start the sentence with that. "Trying to pay attention in class was a hard
job for me because I was distracted with these two students sitting on my left and right."
See? This is participial. See? Now. . .you know both and you have the option to use which
one based on what you have in your essay.

Double voicing

Animation

 

 

 

 

Figure 1. Emergence of the interactional frame in journal entry grammar activity
In summary, the initial flame for the journal entry grammar activity suggested the pattern

of discourse associated with recitation, typically described as teacher-controlled testing of

55

students’ knowledge by asking them questions to which teacher and students already
know the answers; Sami’s plan to have students identify and evaluate the use of
grammatical clauses the class had previously studied appeared to fit this typical
description of recitation. However, through animation, student responses proposed a
reflaming of that activity as one in which non-academic social work could be
accomplished by using the journal entry to comment implicitly on classroom events and
relationships. The reflaming involved double voicing, as students used others’ words for
their own purposes. The nature of students’ double voiced reframing constrained
subsequent responses by the teacher. However, Sami’s reading of her own “journal entry”
not only addressed those constraints and participated in similar double voicing, but also
rejoined the academic purpose of the journal entry grammar activity. Thus what began as
recitation became more dialogic, as teacher and students shared control of the interaction,
“used others’ words for [their] own purposes”(Bakhtin, 1984, p. 166), increased the
relationship among subsequent turns in conversation, and created new meaning that was
irreducible to the contributions of individuals. I address the ideas of control over the
interaction, of the repurposing of others’ words, of the relationship among utterances, and
of the creation of new meaning among teacher and students in the Discussion section. But
first, I address a similar example in Tamara J efferson’s classroom of whether and how
recitation can be reflarned as more dialogic, beginning with the initial flaming of a lesson
activity.

4.1.5 Tamara’s class: the activity as initially framed. I first describe the initial
frame for the interaction as proposed by Tamara’s lesson plan and the beginning of the

activity. On a Tuesday in early December, Tamara’s 10th grade students reviewed in

56

preparation for a standardized test on elements of story grammar like “exposition,”
“climax,” and “verbal irony.” Tamara and the other English teachers at Magnum Appan
High School had only just learned on Monday that their students would take this test,
which would cover material they had addressed two months earlier. To help her students
practice on their own the identification in context of story elements, Tamara had decided
to show an excerpt flom an episode of the TV sitcom Full House and have students fill
out a “plot development chart” (Tamara, lesson plan, 12/04/07).
(Tamara, lesson transcript, 12/04/07)
1 TAMARA: So we'll watch this sitcom, and then as we're watching I want you
to fill this out and we'll go over this. . .. OK? Before we start this, before we

2.
3. start this, really quickly: On your plot development chart, I want you to write
4. "verbal irony. " ...So what is verbal irony, then?

Tamara’s plan and her initial comments to students seemed to propose a flame for this
activity as a “really quick” review for students of material they had already encountered
before they practiced applying those concepts on their own while watching a video, an
idea Tamara had come up with the night before. The fact that the video was cued up and
that this question was posed just “before we start this,” also suggested Tamara expected
to quickly review a previously established definition of verbal irony. In short, the activity
involved recitation, or the testing of students’ knowledge through questions to which

teacher and students already knew the answer.

In a post-lesson interview, Tamara confirmed that this was her initial intention,
saying, “We already went and covered it. We already tested on this information. . .. We
talked about, you know, that whole umbrella definition of what irony really is [but]. . .I
really felt, like, crunch time to reteach information. . .to make sure that they understand

that for the exam” (Tamara, interview, 12/04/07). Under pressure to review for the

57

upcoming standardized test, Tamara intended to hold a quick review before the video. To
explore whether and how recitation can be reflamed by subsequent classroom discourse, I
describe in the next section how students responded to this proposed framing of the
interaction.
4.1.6 Tamara’s class: proposed reframing. Below, I describe students’
responses immediately after Tamara’s introduction of the activity, and how those
unexpected responses resulted in a reflaming of the “quick review.”

4. TAMARA: ...So what is verbal irony, then?

5. LAVERNUS: Sawdy.

6. RICHARD: When someone says something--

7. TAMARA: OK... “sawdy,” but what did I say “sawdy” was, though? What's
8. “sawdy”?

9. JILL: Sarcasm.
10. COLBY: Verbal irony. Means “sawdy.”
l 1. STUDENTS: (laughter)

12. TAMARA: (to Richard) Exactly. When you say something that you don't
13. really mean, right? (to Colby) No, but what did I tell you when you said
14. "sawdy"? What did I say in response to that?

In response to Tamara’s “review” question (4), several students provided answers.
Richard’s (6) and Jill’s (9) answers seemed to most closely approximate what Tamara
appeared to be looking for: that one definition of verbal irony is when someone says
something they don’t really mean, as in the case of sarcasm. The resemblance between
Richard’s answer (6) and Tamara’s (12) may even suggest that Richard was repeating a

definition that had already been discussed during a previous lesson. However, Lavernus’

58

(5) and Colby’s answer (10), that verbal irony is “sawdy,” seemed to especially attract
Tamara’s attention. Repeatedly, she returned to that answer (at 7 and 12-14), posing
questions that seemed intended to animate herself and the two boys in a way that would
narrow the possible responses and reaffirm the “quick review” flame.

At other times in Tamara’s classroom, “Sawdy” was often used to mark
disappointed expectationss. It seemed meant either to diminish the speaker’s own
embarrassment at having misread social expectations—a kind of “sour grapes” or “just
kidding!” move—or to poke fun at another’s embarrassment. During another lesson, for
instance, one student proudly produced flom his bag a novel he thought the class was
starting that day, only to learn that it would not be addressed till next week; at that point,
both he and his classmates exclaimed, “Sawdy!” In this sense, “sawdy” seems closer to
what is sometimes called “situational irony” or “dramatic irony”: a fictional character,
like Oedipus, is unaware of some aspect of his fate that is obvious to other characters, or
to the reader, such as the fact that he has inadvertently killed his father and married his
mother. In a post-lesson interview, Tamara spoke about recognizing this seeming
confusion in students’ responses. “. . .I saw that they were getting confused with ‘sawdy’
but it's not that. . .. We talked about irony but we didn't go over, um, the different kinds of
irony, like situational irony.”

Despite Tamara’s attempts to rule out “sawdy” as a definition of verbal irony and
to reaffirm the quick review flame for the activity by animating the two boys, Colby’s

response addressed her question in an unexpected way:

 

S ‘ - n u ,9 u ,3 v - - - -
Urban Dictionary (1999; 2009) defines “sawdy, sawty, and salty Similarly as an mterjectron used
when someone is “mad,” “upset,” or “humiliated” by situations such as waiting for someone who doesn’t

show up or thinking a person returns one’s affections only to hear that s/he is engaged to someone else; the
terms seem to have originated in Chicago or Philadelphia in the mid-19905.

59

l3. TAMARA: No, but what did I tell you when you said "sawdy"? What did I
14. say in response to that?

15. COLBY: (nasal teacher voice) "No, Colby. "

l6. STUDENTS: (laughter)

Colby responded to Tamara’s question, “What did I say?” with a literal answer. His “N o
Colby” animated Tamara by repeating what she had said in an earlier assertion about the
relation between “sawdy” and “verbal irony.” But the nasal, “teacherly” tone with which
he imitated her voice implied that he knew he was not giving her the answer she wanted.
As in Sami’s interaction with Nathan, the class’s laughter suggested that others
recognized this double-voiced subversion of her question, a parody which was, itself a
sophisticated example of verbal irony.

As in Nathan’s double-voiced journal entry, Colby’s answer not only animated
and criticized Tamara’s past words also but also proposed a present reflaming of the
“quick review” as one in which non-academic social work could be accomplished. Colby
could protest that he had literally answered her question, but for Tamara to ignore
Colby’s parodic response would mean not only conceding the point about verbal irony
but also allowing his subtle criticism of her.

As in the previous example, Colby’s criticism proposed a refrarning of the
recitation activity by referring to another event that bore on the current interaction; in the
Discussion section and later, in Chapter 5, I address the relationship between the narrated
event and the interactional flame for discussion. Like Nathan, Colby criticized Tamara by
animating her as a figure in that previous event, though he re-enacted her actions rather
than animating her through narration of them. This double voicing of her words subtly

expressed an opinion of that prior interaction that affected the current one: by parodyin g

60

what she had said to him previously, Colby indirectly criticized her attempts to elicit a
particular answer. In the Discussion and later, in Chapter 6, I address how parody of a
previous speaker’s alignment toward an event relates to the interactional flame and to
promoting dialogic discussion.

4.1.7 Tamara’s class: response to reframing proposal. How did teacher and
students respond to Colby’s implicit criticism of the recitation flame for the activity?
Following Colby’s parody, Tamara narrated her own story, a story which animated Colby
but also returned to the topic of verbal irony.

l3. TAMARA: It was sawdy, but it was considered—verbal irony is when one
14. someone says something that they really don't mean. So the other day. . .Colby
15. s(h)aid (deepens voice), "Ms. J efferson...that's a nice outfit."

16. (returns to normal voice, whispers) But I think he was being kind of

17. sarcastic and was trying to tell me that my outfit was...(h)not nice.

18. STUDENTS: (laughter)

l9. COLBY: I never——

20. TAMARA: That was verbal irony.
21. STUDENTS: (laughter)

Tamara’s narrative animated Colby by quoting what Colby had said and imitating his
voice. As in Colby’s response, Tamara’s imitation was double-voiced and ironic,
deepening her tone to parody a “manly” voice. Indeed, students’ laughter and Colby’s
protest may have been the result of a further subtext of Tamara’s story, a subtext which
developed as she continued.

22. COLBY: I don't pay no attention to her clothes!

23. STUDENTS: (laughter)

24. TAMARA: I walked (h)in, Colby said (deepening voice), "That's a nice outfit

61

25. Ms. J efferson." (resuming normal voice) He kind of looked, and (h)he—
26. (looking up and down)

27. ALICE: A::h, he looking!

28. TAMARA: And (h)he-he kind of double~(cocking head slightly, stepping
29. back)

30. STUDENTS: (laughter)

3 l. TAMARA: So that was verbal irony. He didn't mean that. He didn't really
32. mean that. He was making fun of me.

33. STUDENTS: (laughter).

34. TAMARA: But that's verbal irony. He say something and really don't mean it.
35. So that's kind of the whole idea of being sarcastic. . .. So I want you to be able
36. to identify that, and you'll see a lot of verbal irony in this sitcom. You all

37. know it. You use it every day. Especially Colby.

Tamara’s animation of Colby included an enactment of Colby’s actions as he looked her
up and down (26, 28-29). This enactment, combined with Alice’s “Ah, he looking!” (27),
as well as Colby’s own protests that “I don’t pay no attention to her clothes!” (22) created
the subtle implication that Colby might have been hitting on her. However, this
implication was a double-voiced subtext to the narrative’s ostensible purpose of re-
explaining verbal irony. Moreover, it responded to his parody of her by animating and
double voicing Colby’s previous behavior, the very technique Colby’s imitation had
proposed.

The subtlety of Tamara’s criticism, like Colby’s, constrained subsequent
reSponses, making it difficult for him to protest: In the story, Colby’s commentiabout her
outfit was either sincere, in which case he was hitting on a teacher, or else it was intended
to make fun of the teacher—not something to which a student could easily admit—by

using irony. Indeed, Tamara’s Story not only responded to and imitated Colby’s in the

62

way it used irony to make a gentle criticism, but also re—illustrated the concept of verbal
irony, reinterpreting the teasing Colby had initiated as an opportunity to redefine the
literary term. Because this opportunity could not be attributed solely to either Colby’s
unexpected impertinence or Tamara’s response, it was an example of emergence.

Like Colby, Tamara referred to a previous event that bore on the current
interaction (a relationship I address further below, and again in Chapter 5). And like
Colby, she subtly expressed an alignment towards that event through narration and
parody of another’s words and actions that shaped the current interaction (this, too, I
address below, and then in Chapter 6).

4.1.8 Tamara’s class: Emergence of the interactional frame. In summary, the
interactional flame emerged as Colby and Tamara animated each other, using double
voicing in ways that both reinterpreted what the other had said and constrained
subsequent responses. The result was an opportunity to define verbal irony for which
neither was solely responsible. After the lesson, Tamara commented, “I didn't plan on
how it might sound... But I think they understood what I was going for. Because Colby,
he does that all the time. .. So I thought that would be a good idea to use because they all
heard him, and of course everyone was laughing, so I knew they would remember”
(Tamara, interview, 12/04/07). Despite its emergence, this exchange still addressed the
goals of the “quick review” Tamara had initially planned, defining “verbal irony” with
several vivid examples in a way that might not have been possible had Tamara simply
ignored Colby and accepted Richard’s “right” answer.

Figure 2 charts the emergence of the flame during the interaction above in

comparison with the example flom Sami’s class:

63

 

 

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you

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shared?

‘a tree I

t .

 

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m seeder

 

 

 

 

Figure 2. Emergence of the interactional frame in journal entry grammar activity
and verbal irony review activity (cont’d on next page).

64

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Figure 2. (cont’d)

65

As in Sami’s class, what appeared to have begun as recitation became more
dialogic: after attempts to reinforce the initial frame, a reframing proposal using
animation and double voicing was made and accepted. Teacher and students shared
control of the interaction, “used others’ words for [their] own purposes”(Bakhtin, 1984,
p. 166), increased the relationship among subsequent turns in conversation, and created
new meaning that was irreducible to the contributions of individuals. These ideas of
teacher/student control, of how utterances shape what precedes and follows them, and of
the creation of new meaning among teacher and students, I address in the next section.

4.2 Discussion/Implications

In the preceding sections, I addressed the question of how what appears initially
to be framed as recitation might become more like dialogic discussion, and what kinds of
discourse might accompany that refraining. In Sami’s and Tamara’s classes, the frames of
the activities initially prOposed by each teacher’s lesson plan changed as a result of
subsequent contributions by students and teacher. In Sami’s class, Nathan’s “journal
entry” both fulfilled the obligations of the activity and proposed a refraining of it by
using animation and double voicing to comment indirectly on classroom events; this
reframing was accepted by subsequent participation in the activity, as first Andy and then
Sami did the same. Likewise, in Tamara’s class, Colby’s answer proposed a reframing of
the “quick review” of verbal irony by using animation and double voicing to parody the
teacher’s question; this reframing was accepted by Tamara as she responded with her
own parody.

This reframing suggests that, just as individual utterances are emergent, i.e., open

to reinterpretation by discourse that follows them (Bakhtin, 1984; M. Goodwin & C.

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Goodwin, 2004; M. Goodwin, 1990; Heritage, 1984; Morson & Emerson, 1990), so the
discursive frame for classroom interactions is emergent. Indeed, Sawyer (20013, 2002,
2003, 2004) has already shown that certain kinds of conversations depend on the
emergence of the interactional frame. The present study has implications for English
education researchers, English teachers, and English teacher educators in describing how
classroom conversations characterized by features typically associated with recitation can
become more like dialogic discussion: How might attention to reframing expand the way
English education researchers understand the features of dialogic discussion? How might
English teachers learn to recognize or to initiate proposals to reframe recitation as
discussion?

Prior research on discussion-based approaches to English Language Arts
describes recitation as ti ghtly-controlled and teacher directed (Applebee et al., 2003;
Billings & Fitzgerald, 2002; Chinn et al., 2001; Nystrand et al., 1997), allowing students
“no control over the flow of the discussion” (Nystrand et al., 1997, p. 38). Recitation is
typically associated with the testing of students’ knowledge through questions to which
the teacher already knows the answer (Cazden, 1986; Mehan, 1979; Sinclair &
Coulthard, 1975). As a result, there is little opportunity for students to construct new
meanings through interaction with others. Dialogic discussion is typically described as
the exact opposite: a “free exchange of information among students and/or between at
least two students and the teacher” (Nystrand et al., 1997, p. 36) which allows students’

“exploration of ideas”(Applebee et al., 2003, p. 680). Dialogic discussion is characterized
by “authentic questions” (to which the questioner does not have a preconceived answer)

and “uptake” whereby the teacher or another student “picks up on a student’s response”

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(Collins, 1982, p. 432; Nystrand et al., 1997, p. 38) in a subsequent question. As a result,
new meaning that was not possible before is created by the interaction among students
and teacher. Prior research thus suggest four areas—teacher/student control,
authentic/inauthentic questions, uptake, and the creation of new meaning—~40 which the
emergence of the interactional frame illustrated by Sami’s and Tamara’s classes may
contribute new understanding. Below, I address each of these four areas; in the final
section, I return to the relationships suggested by the two examples above between
narrated events and the current classroom interaction, and between the speaker’s stance
toward those events, or her alignment, and the current classroom interaction, before
outlining the next two chapters.

4.2.1 Teacher/student control. The emergence of the interactional frame calls
into question the opposition between teacher and student control over discursive
classroom interactions in other research on dialogic discussion. The activities in Sami’s
and Tamara’s classes, as they were initially framed by each teacher’s plan, seemed to be
tightly-controlled and teacher-directed: students in Sami’s class, though they had a choice
of what to write beforehand, were charged during the journal entry reading activity with
identifying and evaluating the use of grammatical clauses; in Tamara’s class, students
were asked to provide a previously discussed definition of verbal irony. Students thus
appeared to have little control over the roles, relationships, and responses that were
appropriate in these activities as initially framed. However, students in both classes
managed to accomplish “unofficial social work” (Dyson, 1993), as well as to propose

unexpected revisions to the interactional frame of the academic activity. Moreover, their

contributions both enabled and constrained subsequent responses by others, including the

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teacher. In keeping with some prior classroom discourse research (Mercer, 1995; Wells,
1999), this finding suggests that students can still have significant influence over the
nature and direction of classroom discourse interactions, even in recitation. This
understanding may be important to education researchers and teachers interested in how
classroom discourse interactions like discussion are promoted and managed by teacher
and students.

Indeed, if individual utterances are open to reinterpretation (Heritage, 1984), and
the nature of the interaction can be reframed by subsequent turns in conversation
(Sawyer, 2003 ), then the frame for a classroom activity could be understood as emergent:
Both teacher and students have the power to propose new possible roles, relationships,
and responses by using discourse to bring events into relationship or to parody other
speakers, and neither recitation nor discussion can take place without some degree of
coordination of the frame among the class members. This claim builds on one definition
of Bakhtinian dialogism as a potential in all discourse for reinterpretation; as such,
recitation is not inherently monologic and has the potential to be reframed.

This is not to suggest that the teacher’s initial plan is unimportant, or that teachers
have no influence over the outcome. It is worth noting that, despite the emergence of the
interactional frame in both lessons, both teachers’ initial obj ectives—to illustrate the use
of grammatical clauses, and to define verbal irony—were addressed, and perhaps better
than they might have been otherwise. In Sami’s class, the reading of journal entries that
commented indirectly on actual classroom events served to illustrate that grammatical
clauses are not simply mechanical, and can be used to bring events into relationship for

rhetorical effect; and the parodies enacted in Tamara’s class resulted in a more complex

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definition of verbal irony than if Tamara had simply accepted Richard’s initial answer. In
short, the opposition between teacher and student control, in research and pedagogy
associated with discussion, might be replaced by further attention to which frames are
proposed and accepted by teacher and students, and whether and how such emergent
interactions can still address academic objectives. That is, how is the nature of a lesson
activity negotiated among teacher and students through talk? And how might that
negotiated definition of the situation, or the process of negotiation, itself, address lesson
goals?

4.2.2 Authentic/inauthentic questions. The distinction between authentic and
inauthentic questions, often used to distinguish recitation and discussion, may also be
understood differently in terms of the emergence of the interactional frame. The
questions initially posed by Sami and Tamara—about which clause was used and what
had been said about irony—were inauthentic in that they asked for answers from students
which the teacher in each case already knew. However, Nathan and Colby’s answers to
these questions were unexpected, provided new information, and involved sophisticated
uses of language. Moreover, their responses did not exactly address the questions as they
were posed. This finding suggest that it is not the inherent nature of questions,
themselves, that produce certain kinds of subsequent discourse; indeed, prior research
already suggests that the same question can be made either authentic or inauthentic by the
teacher’s intentions Nystrand et al., 2003). Perhaps this is because the teacher’s
intentions are communicated in the question as proposing a particular frame for

interaction. But it is equally important to attend to how that preposal is taken up by

subsequent discourse. If all utterances are emergent, and open to subsequent

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reinterpretation, then even “inauthentic” questions may produce “authentic” answers (and
vice versa).

The questions initially asked by Sami and Tamara, and the ones often asked by
teachers during recitation, might seem to propose a frame in which students are “dupes”,
and do not realize that the teacher already knows the answer——-what Goffinan (1986) calls
a “fabrication” (p. 158). But the parodic answers by Nathan and Colby suggest that they
are not taken in by this fabrication; rather, it may be the teacher who appears as the dupe
“contained” within the fabrication for not realizing that students actually do know the
answers. Goffman’s notion of the fabricated frame may explain the resistance of students
like Nathan and Colby, as well as the efforts of Sami and Tamara to avoid appearing
naive about students’ double-voiced criticisms of their recitation questions. “Frame-
breaking” behavior (Goffman, 198 6) is characteristic when individuals are cast in or
forced to play a social role with which they do not identify; indeed, the laughter that
followed these disruptions in Sami’s and Tamara’s classes often accompanies moments
when the frame is “breaking (or cracking) up” (p. 351-3 52).

But why, then, did both students and teachers avoid truly “breaking” the frame
with a disruptive refusal to comply with the social obligations created by previous,
utterances? Perhaps because of the consequences for students and teacher of disrupting
the lesson. And perhaps because by choosing instead to selectively reinterpret those
utterances through animation and double voicing, they might demonstrate that they were
not “contained” but rather outside the fabrication. Or as Nystrand (1997) puts it, '

“. . .students play along, of course, so that we can tell that they know that we know that

they know what we know!” (p. 18). This finding may help English education researchers

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and teachers to explain why, how, and when certain kinds of questions (and other
utterances) contribute to recitation, resistance, or discussion: Do questions and
subsequent responses seem to suggest a fabricated frame for an interaction or an
emergent one?

4.2.3 Uptake. The emergence of the interactional frame may also suggest new
ways of understanding “uptake” (Collins, 1982; Nystrand et al., 1997, pp. 38-39), a
discursive feature associated with dialogic discussions in which a student or the teacher
“picks up on a student’s response,” and which is often “marked by the use of pronouns.”
These features of uptake were present in the discourse of Sami’s and Tamara’s classes, as
students and teachers animated each other, double voicing others’ words in order to
accomplish their own purposes.

However, uptake, as defined by previous research on dialogic discussion, applies
only to those moments when a speaker asks another person a question about what s/he
has just said (Collins, 1982; Nystrand et al., 1997, pp. 38-39), for example “What makes
you say that?” But the discourse “taken up” by others in these classes was not limited to
the words and ideas of other speakers: Andy and Sami picked up on the revision to the
interactional frame for the journal entry activity proposed by Nathan; and Tamara
followed up on Colby’s proposed revision of the verbal irony quick review frame. Thus,
each teacher also took up her students’ proposed reframing of the interaction. In both
cases, this “uptake” involved more than referring to what another speaker had already
said. It also involved bringing events into relationship, and using contextualization cues
like gesture, intonation, and prosody to communicate the speaker’s intentions with regard

to that previous utterance. An expanded definition of uptake might thus allow researchers

72

and teachers to better explain how participants in discussion use prior discourse to
collaboratively create new meaning.

4.2.4 Creating new meaning. The emergence of the interactional frame may help
to describe how new meaning is created among students and teachers during classroom
discourse interactions like dialogic discussion. Emergence is, by definition, the creation
of something new which was not predictable by its constituents and is therefore
irreducible to individual properties (Osberg & Biesta, 2007; Sawyer, 2001b, 2005); that
is, what came before conditions but does not determine what follows, and the whole is
greater than the sum of its parts. This definition of emergence is in keeping with the
Bakhtinian notion that dialogue is “partially ordered”: a relationship of unity in which
meaning is nevertheless “unfinalizable,” and “surprisingness” remains an essential
element (Bakhtin, 1984, 1979; Medvedev & Bakhtin, 1978; Morson & Emerson, 1990).
English teachers and English education researchers will recognize this as relevant to the
idea that discussions involve a collaborative interaction which does not simply elaborate
a single interpretation or combine the isolated opinions of each participant. Rather, the
participation of students and teachers comes into relationship in ways that create new
meaning. But how is this new meaning created?

4.2.4.1 Juxtaposing events. In the excerpts from Sami and Tamara’s classes,
participants were able to propose changes to the interactional frame by bringing events
into relationship; one way they did this was by recasting the relationship between past
event and present situation. Researchers who study narrative discourse have already
begun to explore the dialogic relationship among past and present events in literary,

historical, and conversational narratives (e. g., Bernstein, 1994; Juzwik, 2006; Morson &

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Emerson, 1990; Ochs & Capps, 2001; Schweber, 2004; Wertsch, 2002), as well as how
such “narrated events” relate to the “storytelling event” (e.g., Jakobson, 1971; Wortham,
2001) or to the interactional frame in which they take place. This relationship may be
important to bringing students’ experiences into relationship with history and literature
through discussion in ways that create new meaning. It may also be important to
understanding how discussion of those events affects the framing of discussion, itself
(and vice versa). In chapter 5, I examine an interaction at Talbott High School between
teacher Dave Weber and his 9th grade Social Studies students that began with recitation
and ended in discussion. That interaction used animation to cast students as figures in a
hypothetical “what if. . .?” scenario based on a historical event; that scenario brought
events into dialogic relationship in ways that seemed to make the past more present and
personal, reframing the historical event, as well as shaping the discussion.

4.2.4.2 Alignment. Sami, Tamara, and their students were able to propose
changes to the interactional frame by using contextualization cues, including gesture,
intonation, and prosody, to communicate the speaker’s intentions with regard to the
previous utterance. Education researchers who study literacy, language, and culture have
already begun to explore the dialogic relationship among such stylistic features and
communal affiliation with others (e.g.,Ball, 2002; Dyson, 1993, 2003; Gee, 2005; Heath,
1982, 1983; C. Lee, 2006a). In chapter 6, I return to Tamara Jefferson’s 10th grade
literature classes at Magnum Appan to examine another interaction which began with
recitation and ended in discussion. In that interaction, speakers used double voicing to

express their intentions, or alignments, toward previous utterances in a debate over a

74

moral issue; that double voiced disagreement allowed students to try on moral stances

and other uses of language, and also shaped the discussion, itself.

4.3 Chapter 4 Summary

1. Classroom conversations characterized by features typically associated with recitation
can become more like dialogic discussion.

2. Neither recitation nor discussion can take place without some degree of coordination
of the frame among the class members.

3. Even “inauthentic” questions may produce “authentic” answers (and vice versa).

4. Recitation’as “fabricated” frame may explain the resistance of students, as well as the
efforts of teachers to avoid appearing naive about students’ criticisms of their
recitation questions.

5. An expanded definition of uptake might better explain how participants in discussion
use prior discourse to collaboratively create new meaning.

6. Juxtaposition of events in classroom discourse may bring students’ experiences into
relationship with literary/historical events, reframing the events, as well as reframing
the interaction of discussion, itself (see Chapter 5).

7. Alignments toward a previous utterance in classroom discourse may bring students’
moral stances and uses of language into relationship with those of others, and may

also affect the interaction of discussion, itself (see Chapter 6).

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5. “A Whole lot of Stories to Tell”: Reframing Events in a Secondary Social
Studies Discussion

Previous research on dialogic discussions, across discipline, has defined them
primarily in opposition to recitations: control over classroom discourse is shared by
teacher and student, multiple speakers participate, and talk is characterized by features
like authentic questions, or questions to which an unspecified number of unexpected
responses may be possible (Applebee et al., 2003; Forman et al., 1998; Lemke, 1990;
Parker, 2001). While this definition focuses on the presence of multiple speakers and the
possibility of multiple interpretations, it says little about the particular focus of the
discussion. Are all discussions the same, regardless of content? Recent research has
suggested that Social Studies class discussions may differ according to purpose: seminars
whose focus is exploring an issue may differ from deliberations whose purpose is to
consider possible choices and reach a decision (Parker, 2001, 2006; Parker & Hess,
2001). Social Studies education research has also found that discussion of particular
topics, such as controversial issues, can be more or less conducive to discussions (Hess,
2002, 2004; Husbands & Pendry, 2000). These prior studies have suggested that what is
being discussed may matter as much as who is discussing it. However, they have not
explored how the relationships between speakers and the focus of their discussion might
enable or constrain dialogic discourse. How do the relationships between participants
and texts/topics/ events under discussion contribute to (re)framing the interaction?

In chapter 4, I showed that what began as recitation could become more dialogic

through the emergence of the interactional frame. Through analysis of Nathan, Andy, and

76

Sami’s journal entries about class members, and Colby and Tamara’s imitations of each
other, I suggested that animation could be used to make and accept reframing proposals.

I also noted that the animations in the journal entry readings and imitations
brought events into relationship: Nathan’s journal entry referred to an incident during a
previous lesson; Colby’s response to Tamara’s “What did I say. . .?” imitated a previous
answer. Both Sami’s and Tamara’s responses also included references to other events.
Furthermore, the events referred to seemed to relate to the current interaction among each
teacher and her students: that is, speakers juxtaposed those events with the current
interaction to accomplish certain purposes, in ways that enabled and constrained
subsequent responses.

In this chapter, I examine further the relationship between the juxtaposition of
events and the interactional frame. How does classroom discourse bring students’
experiences into relationship with historical/literary events? How does this juxtaposition
of events affect discussion?

To address these questions, I first describe the emergence of the interactional
frame for a discussion of an historical event among Dave Weber and his students in
Dave’s 9th grade Talbott Social Studies classroom. I then describe the features of the
resulting discourse in order to further explore how it brought events into relationship in
ways that reframed the historical event under study, as well as the discussion, itself.

5.1 Juxtaposing Events

5.1.1 Emergence of the interactional frame: discussion from their own

perspectives. In this first section, I describe how an activity that began as recitation led

to discussion through the emergence of the interactional frame. During the lesson that

77

follows, Dave planned to address several local Social Studies Benchmarks, including
Standard 2.5: All students will describe and explain the causes, consequences, and
geographic context of major global issues and events; and Standard 1.3: All students will
reconstruct the past by comparing interpretations written by others flom a variety of
perspectives and creating narratives from evidence. To address these standards, Dave’s
plan called for students to examine a political cartoon published in 1914 and to describe
the relationship among the characters and the chain of events associated with the
beginning of WWI, about which they had read a chapter for homework the previous day.
According to his plan, homework review would continue with the completion of a chart
on the electronic SMART board. Then Dave would introduce the idea of trench warfare
and read students an excerpt from All Quiet on the Western Front before assigning them
to write a “Letter Home from the Trenches” as homework (Dave, lesson plan, 10/15/07).

Thus, Dave’s plan initially framed the following activity as a brief homework
review in which he would elicit known answers from students to fill in a chart with facts
from their textbook reading. But subsequent student responses led to a refraining of this
recitation.
(Dave, lesson transcript, 10/15/07)

1. DAVE: ...What was the Schlieffen plan?

2. BECCA: Um. . ..

3. DAVE: Yeah, Becca?

4. BECCA: (reading from her book) It called for holding action against Russia.

5. PENNY: I didn’t really understand that.

6. AMY: Yeah, I didn’t remember that at all.

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Dave’s question asked students to recall a textbook answer about the Schlieffen plan. But
Penny’s and Amy’s responses to Dave’s question showed that they (and perhaps others,
like Becca) hadn’t fully understood the textbook’s explanation of the Schlieffen plan.

Dave might have ignored this confusion and filled Becca’s initial answer into the
SMART board homework review chart, but instead, he chose to draw a map on the
whiteboard to better illustrate Germany’s plan to attack Russia.

7. DAVE: OK, that's what it says in the book, right? And then, while they're

8. holding action, just holding the line against Russia. On the East. They've got

9. this (drawing on board). There's Russia. . .. We've got Germany here, and

10. we've got Belgium here. Alright, and they decide they want to hold this line

11. against Russia, but while they're doing it, they want to start marching into

12. Paris, France. After that, then they go over and attack Russia. Does that help?

13. BECCA: No.

14. PENNY: Well, yes.

15. AMY: But what are the three...?

16. OLIVIA: Yeah, what are the three little bubbles?

l7. PENNY: Yeah, what are the rocks?

18. STUDENTS: (laughter)

l9. DAVE: Rocks? (going back to map) Germany, Belgium, France.
Dave’s first attempt to re-explain the textbook definition of the Schlieffen plan
accompanied his drawing of a map to represent the relationship among the four countries
involved in the plan. His map and accompanying explanation set in motion the way the
German invaders were “holding the line against Russia” (8) and “start marching into
Paris, France” (1 1-12), animating the interaction among the countries. However, this

animation of the historical events via map and explanation had little effect on Amy,

Olivia, and Penny, whose responses implied that they had not understood the circles

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Dave drew to be bordering nations. Moreover, this explanation of the textbook definition
by Dave to his students did little to alter the initial frame of the review activity.
Shortly afterward, Shirin interrupted to ask an unexpected question about

Germany’s invasion of Belgium.

20. SHIRIN: Question: When they go through all those places, do they like try to
21. get them to go with them? Or are they, like--?

22. DAVE: Are they trying to ask people to go with them? Is that what you're--?
23. SHIRIN: Kind of, yeah.

24. DAVE: Well, I don't know they were necessarily trying to gain military
25. strength through grabbing people as they went. But say there was another
26. country’s army marching through Talbott. What impact would that have on
27. Talbott if tens of thousands of soldiers. . .it'd be kind of weird?
Like Dave’s first attempt at explanation, Shirin’s question animated the German invaders
But unlike Dave’s map explanation, which animated events associated with the
Schlieffen plan in terms of its intended outcome, Shirin’s question “when they go. . .do
they. . .or are they. . .?” (20) raised the possibility of alternative courses of action the
invaders might have taken. Again, Dave could have ignored Shirin’s question, which was
not ostensibly related to clarifying the Schlieffen plan. Instead, his response to Shirin
took up this idea of possible alternatives, proposing a different kind of interactional
frame. His hypothetical “what impact would that have. . .?” (26) proposed a change in the
frame from a review of historical past events to an imagination exercise in which students
were encouraged to envision a fantastical present event, which had not yet occurred, in

their hometown.

Dave’s comments during a subsequent interview revealed his thoughts at this

moment of the lesson:

80

...we had some people, you know, she’s thinking about the army, thinking about
the march, and I could hear them all talking about it, and I'm thinking Right now, I
need to relate them to something. And this is right before I do the Talbott thing,
and that was a conscious effort on my part to say, "Let's talk about something we
all know" (Dave, interview, 10/15/07).
According to his comments, Dave sought on the spur of the moment to clarify confusion
and respond to Shirin’s unexpected question by making a hypothetical comparison that
would help students relate to the historical event. To do this, Dave juxtaposed the
historical event of the invasion of Belgium with a hypothetical scenario occurring in the

town of Talbott.

Dave’s question thus proposed not only a reframing of the present interaction as
one in which students could “talk about something we all know,” but also cued to
students that their talk would be double voiced, referring simultaneously to an actual past
event that had happened to other people and to a hypothetical scenario in which students,

themselves, would be animated as figures.

25. DAVE: ...say there was another country's army marching through Talbott.

26. What impact would that have on Talbott if tens of thousands of soldiers. . .it'd
27. be kind of weird?

28. PENNY: Um people would maybe follow them?
29. DAVE: OK.

30. PENNY: To see where they're going?
31. DAVE: Some might follow them?

32. AMY: Maybe freak out?

33. DAVE: What kind of impact would it have on the roads?

81

34. PENNY: A lot!
35. DAVE: On traffic?
36. STUDENT: Well, they'd break them.
37. STUDENT: They'd screw everything up.
38. DAVE: I couldn't even imagine how bad Glen Road would be.
39. STUDENTS: (laughter) l
40. STUDENT: Oh my god!
41. AMY: We'd have to, like, walk everywhere.
In contrast with Dave’s map, which students had seen as “bubbles” and “rocks,” this
proposed reframing of the review activity was taken up by students: hesitantly at first (as
indicated by the questioning tone of their responses) and then more confidently, Penny
and Amy, and then others, accepted the idea of constructing a hypothetical scenario and
began to make contributions from their own points of view that animated both the
invading army and the inhabitants of Talbott, elaborating the imagined scene with
multiple, concrete, and even conflicting details of the army’s impact on the town’s
infrastructure. In terms of the lesson activity, students had ratified a move from a frame
in which they responded to Dave’s review questions with textbook answers to one in
which they all contributed from their own perspectives to an imaginary scenario.
Dave and students continued to elaborate this imagined scenario before returning
to explicit comparison with the historical event.
42. DAVE: They'd have to eat something, right?
43. LAURA: Yeah, they'd take all our food!

44. DAVE: They'd take all our food. They'd take a lot of our stuff. . ..
45. And here they are just marching through, and say they were trying to get to

82

46. [the neighboring town of] Burch: would it be our fault that we were in
47. between?

48. GARY: Yeah, I would~
49. BECCA: No, because we just happened to be there.

50. DAVE: And what impact would it have on all of us if these people were
51. violent? Would you want to stay here?

52. STUDENTS: No!

53. TOM: I'd fight them.

German invasion of Belgium on the way to France. The double-voiced details of the
events supplied by the speakers thus applied dialogically to both a modern and a
historical context.

Students’ subsequent comments demonstrated their understanding of the
juxtaposition between the hypothetical event and the historical event, as they, too
returned to the invasion of Belgium:

56. BECCA: Wait, so what was the impact? Negative?

57. DAVE: I would say there was a lot of negative impact of that.

58. AMY: But some positive: they were safe.

59. SHIRIN: No, not really.

60. DAVE: You don't necessarily know these people are trying to protect you,
61. right?

83

 

 

62. BECCA: They could be, like, protecting you. . ..

Once Dave had made the connection between the hypothetical invasion of Talbott and the
historical invasion of Belgium, Becca, Amy, and Shirin continued to debate the army’s
impact, but now in terms of the historical invasion. Students’ reactions suggested that
they had understood and participated in the reframing that included double-voiced
elaboration of both the hypothetical and the historical event. Thus, the initial frame of
review of the textbook definition of the Schlieffen plan was reinterpreted, leading to an
interaction that could not be attributed solely to Dave, Shirin, or any other individual
speaker. Despite having begun with a review question to which all participants knew the
answer, what emerged was a discussion of the impact of events associated with the
Schlieffen plan.

In sum, the interactional frame was emergent, as the initial frame of the
homework review was modified by Dave’s attempts to clarify the Schlieffen plan and by
Shirin’s question. Dave’s “what would it be like. . .?” proposal cued a frame which
dialogically juxtaposed past event and present context. Changes in the frame for this

interaction are charted in Figure 3:

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Figure 3. Recitation reframed as discussion in Schlieffen plan review activity

(cont’d on next page).

86

Unlike his other attempts, this refraining proposal was taken up by students. The
juxtaposition of events seemed to allow students to contribute to the imagined scenario
from their own perspectives, leading to discussion of the historical event.

Despite its emergent quality, the resulting interaction still addressed the standards
for which Dave had planned , describing and explaining “causes, consequences, and
geographic context of . . .events,” as well as “reconstruct[ing] the past by comparing
interpretations. . .from a variety of perspectives and creating narratives from evidence.”
But instead of a review which framed the interaction as one in which Dave elicited facts
from students about the textbook account of the historical past event, the emergent frame
for the activity invited multiple, conflicting details from students’ own perspectives as
participants in co—creating a complex account of a hypothetical, present parallel to that
event. Indeed, in a reflection on this lesson, Dave wrote, “This class had more difficulties
with understanding the cartoon warm-up [so] we spent a considerably longer time on it.
The warm-up set the tone for the class period and set us off schedule right out of the
chute. .. [But] on the positive side, the discussion from this hour was much richer...”
(Dave, lesson reflection, 10/15/07).

In this first section, I described the emergence of the interactional frame for a
discussion as it related to the juxtaposition of past, historical and present, hypothetical
events in Dave Weber’s 9th grade Talbott Social Studies class. Bringing an historical
event into relationship with a fantastical, hypothetical event in a modem context seemed
to allow students to make contributions from their own perspectives, contributing to the

reframing of recitation as discussion. In the next section, I examine the features of the

87

discourse of that discussion in order to further explore how it brought students’
experiences into relationship with historical events.

5.1.2 Features of the discussion: making the past more present and personal.
Having described how the frame for the discussion above emerged among Dave and his
students, 1 next address the features of the resulting discourse: Besides refraining
recitation as discussion what, if anything, was gained by juxtaposing the historical event
with a hypothetical one? To answer this question, I pay special attention to the way that
discourse reanimated Dave and his students in relation to the historical event.

Dave’s initial question, “What was the Schlieffen plan?” and Becca’s answer, “It
called for holding action against Russia,” referred to the historical events associated with
the Schlieffen plan as an “it” that “was.” Thus verb tense and noun/pronoun use
portrayed the Schlieffen plan as removed from students’ present experience and
portrayed it as a faceless idea. Further attention to verb tense and noun/pronoun use
revealed changes in this portrayal over the course of the discussion.

20. SHIRIN: Question: when they go through all those places, do they like try to
21. get them to go with them? Or are they like——

24. DAVE: Well, I don't know they were necessarily trying to gain military

25. strength through grabbing people as they went. But say there was another

26. country's army marching through [the modern town of] Talbott. What impact

27. would that have on Talbott if tens of thousands of soldiers. . .it'd be kind of

28. weird?
Shirin’s question animated the historical situation in the present tense, using verbs like
“go” and “try.” She also animated both the invading army and the inhabitants of Belgium
by using the pronouns “they” and “them” (20-21). But though Dave’s response initially
used the past tense “were” and “went,” and the pronoun “they” (24-25), he shifted to the

conditional “would” and located the action in the students’ hometown of “Talbott” (26-

88

27). These animations dialogically juxtaposed the past, historical event with a present,
hypothetical event that was no longer faceless and was also located in a time and space
more familiar to students.

Subsequent turns in the discussion by Dave and his students affirmed this shift in
verb tense and noun/pronoun use:

28. PENNY: Um people would maybe follow them?

32. AMY: Maybe freak out?

33. DAVE: What kind of impact would it have on the roads?
41 . AMY: We'd have to, like, walk everywhere.

42. DAVE: They'd have to eat something, right?

43. LAUBA: Yeah, they'd take all our food!

44. DAVE: They'd take all our food. They'd take a lot of our stuff. . .. And here

45. they are just marching through, and say they were trying to get to [the

46. neighboring town of] Burch: would it be our fault that we were in between?
Dave and his students continued to use the conditional “would” and to animate the
invading army as “they.” But Dave and his students moved from animating the townsfolk
as “people” to employing the pronouns “we” and “our” (41-46) as they elaborated the
hypothetical scenario in relation to the contemporary context of Talbott and its neighbor,

the town of Burch. This animation thus not only located the event in their hometown, but

also identified Dave and his students with the inhabitants of Talbott.

89

46. get to [the neighboring town of] Burch: would it be our fault that we were in
47. between?

48. GARY: Yeah, I would~
49. BECCA: No, because we just happen to be there.

50. DAVE: And what impact would it have on all of us if these people were
51. violent? Would you want to stay here?

52. STUDENTS: No!

53. TOM: I'd fight them.
From the conditional “would,” Dave and his students shified to using the present tense
“are” (45) and “just happen to be there” (49). In addition, they moved from using the
pronoun “we” (46) to using “you” and “I” (48, 51). This discourse thus animated Dave
and his students as present tense, first-person participants in the event.

A final shift in verbs and nouns/pronouns appeared toward the end of the
discussion, as Dave and his students returned explicitly to the German invasion of
Belgium.

53. DAVE: So it did have--it did have very profound impact on the people of
54. Belgium. . .. That will later factor into the war.

55. BECCA: Wait, so what was the impact? Negative?
56. DAVE: I would say there was a lot of negative impact of that.
5 7. AMY: But some positive: they were safe.

58. SHIRIN: No, not really.

90

At the end of the discussion, Dave and his students switched from the present tense back
to the past tense “did” (53), “was” (55), and “were” (57). And from using the pronouns
“you” and “I,” they returned to referring to “the people of Belgium” (53-54) and “they”
(57). These shifts in verb tense and noun/pronoun use suggest that Dave and his students
were no longer identifying themselves in their animations with the subjects of the
historical event.

In summary, attention to changes in verb tense and noun/pronoun use suggests the
following patterns in the discourse that resulted from this emergent interaction: A
prologue using present tense and “they” (to animate the subjects of the historical event)
prompted the proposition of a fantastical “What if. . .?” scenario using the conditional
mood. In the discussion that followed, speakers began to use “we” or “our” to animate
themselves and each other in this scenario. As the discussion progressed, the present
tense also appeared, and speakers’ animations used “you” and “I.” The discussion ended
with a return to past tense and “they.” Patterns resulting from shifts in verb tense and
noun/pronoun use during this emergent interaction are thus represented in the figure

below (verbs are underlined and nouns and pronouns appear in bold):

91

....

 
 
 
 

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people as they went. Butsa say 35% sanother country's army marching through [the modem town of]
Talbott. What impact______ would that have on Talbott if tens of thousancb of soldiers“ .it 'd be kind of

Weird?

PENNY: Um people would maybe follow them? To see where they‘re going?
AMY: Maybe freak out?

DAVE: What kind of impact would it have on the roads?

PENNY: A lot!

DAVE: On traffic?

STUDENT ; Well. they'g break them.

STUDENT: They/g screw everything up.

DAVE: I 99mm} even imagine how bad Glen Road would be.

STUDENTS: «laughter»

 

STUDENT: Oh my god!

AMY: We'c_l have to like walk everywhere.
STUDENT: I don't even know what-
DAVE: They'_d_ lave to eat something right?
LAURA: Yeah. they_d_ take all our food!

DAVE; They'd take all our food. They'd take a lot of our stuff... . And here they are jmt marching
through, and say they were trying to get to [the neighboring town oi] Burch: would it be our fault that
we were in between?

 

Conditional/
present tense
and “You”/”I”

GARY: Yeah, I would"
BECCA: No. because we just hm to be there

DAVE. And what impact my it have on all of us if these people 33;; violent? ngld you want to
stay here?

STUDENTS: No?

TOM: I'__d fight them

 

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- . AMY: Butaome positive: theym safe.

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Figure 4. Past event becomes more present and personal in discussion of hypothetical
invasion of Talbott/Belgium (verbs are underlined and pronouns bolded to show changes
in speakers relationship to the event).

92

As Figure 4 suggests, corresponding shifts in verb tense and noun/pronoun use can be
used to divide the discussion into sections which, when taken together, seem to suggest a
general progression from past event to present tense and from “they” to “you”/“I.” This
progression suggests that, through the juxtaposition of the historical and the hypothetical
event, the past may have become more present and personal for participants in the
discussion. Making the past more present and personal may have contributed to
contributed to the refrarning of the interaction, allowing students to contribute from their
own perspectives. I discuss the importance of this change in the next section and in the
Discussion/Implications section.

Thus the juxtaposition of events not only contributed to the refraining of recitation
as discussion, but also re-animated Dave and his students in relation to the historical
event. In the next section, I show how these two analyses are related: that is, that the
reanimation accomplished by the juxtaposition of historical and hypothetical events
contributed to the reframing of the interaction, itself.

5.1.3 Narrative reframing: how the hypothetical event affected the
discussion. As in Sami and Tamara’s interactions with their students (see Chapter 4), in
Dave’s class the animations that referred to other events were related to the current
interactional event in the classroom.

To begin with, the hypothetical scenario was characterized by narrative discourse:
Shirin’s “When they. . .do they. . .?” and Dave’s “What if. . .?” produced subsequent
temporal clauses and elicited evaluations of “what it would be like” if an army invaded
Talbott. This narrative described an interaction between the invaders and the inhabitants

of Talbott. That is, a second interactional frame began to emerge as the narrative was

93

elaborated. As this narrative progressed, Dave and his students began to identify with the
inhabitants of Talbott, animating themselves as figures in the narrative. Their use of “we”
referred simultaneously to the inhabitants of Belgium (the historical event), to the
inhabitants of Talbott (the hypothetical event), and to Dave and his students (the present
interaction of the discussion). The narrative frame and the interactional frame for the
discussion thus began to overlap.

Other examples further illustrate the relationship between the narrative event and
the classroom interaction. In the narrative, some details became established features that
seemed to exert an influence on subsequent details in the story. For example, details of
the negative effect on the roads (3637) led Amy to imagine further consequences for the
inhabitants of Talbott (41). This influence did not always produce consensus: considering
the army’s impact, Penny imagined that their presence might inspire people to “follow
them,” (28), while Amy thought the inhabitants of Talbott would “freak out” (32).
Because these details affected the subsequent participation of other speakers, they exerted
an influence not only on the hypothetical scenario but also on the present interaction in
Dave’s classroom. As figures in the narrative, students like Penny and Amy were able to
contribute details from their own point of view, imagining different consequences of the
army’s presence (28, 32), and shaping subsequent discussion (indeed, their debate
continued until the end, at 53-60).

The framing of interaction in the narrative not only enabled and constrained
subsequent participation in discussion, but also made it possible for some turns in the
discussion to be reinterpreted. For instance, Dave’s questions at 46 and 49 were

inauthentic-almost rhetorical, and seemingly intended to produce a “No” response from

94

students. But not all students complied. Both Gary (47) and Tom (52) gave answers that
did not seem to fit with the intended response voiced by other students; that is, they
addressed the question, but did not give the expected answer, reinterpreting the question
as authentic, rather than rhetorical. Gary’s and Tom’s answers stand out not only because
of the way they seemingly contradict the teacher’s intentions, but also because they
correspond with the switch to “I” in the narrative. Their answers suggest that Gary and
Tom’s reactions as first-person figures within the frame of the narrative may have
affected their participation in the interactional frame of the discussion. (
The same may be true of the last part of the discussion (53-60): even after they
were no longer identified with the inhabitants of Talbott, and their participation as figures
in the narrative frame had ended, Becca, Amy, and Shirin continued to debate the
positive and negative impact of the invasion. Like Gary and Tom, their reactions within
the frame of the narrative as figures seemed to have carried over to the interactional
frame of the discussion. Like Gary and Tom, they even twice contradicted the teacher!
These contradictions were productive: The multiple, conflicting perspectives
students voiced on how the people of Belgium might have concretely experienced the
German invasion provided a more complex picture than a textbook account of the
Schlieffen plan as an “it” that “was.” Describing the various consequences of the invasion
on the roads, supplies, and reactions of the residents suggests that speakers were
envisioning a shared event from multiple, interpretive perspectives, rather than co-
constructing a single, authoritative account. Nevertheless, these multiple perspectives
were part of a coordinated performance. The regularities of verb tense and noun/pronoun

use suggest a coordination of the telling of the narrative among speakers: with only the

95

preceding discourse to direct them, they collectively shifted their uses of language. This
coordination suggests a further relationship between the narrative juxtaposition of
historical past/hypothetical present frames and the interactional frame for discussion.

Figure 5 represents the relationship among these interactional frames:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Present E E

Interaction E E

Narrative (WW) 5 5
Interaction g i
(“Say there was ' Classroom Interaction g
another country’s El? (Discussion) :
army marching E 5
through. . . ”) E g
(Belgium) : }

Past 3 5

Interaction E E

n l

 

 

 

Having thus shown that the juxtaposition of events contributed to the refraining of
recitation as discussion, that it made events seem more present and personal, and that the
frames for the narrated interaction and the discussion interaction overlapped, I now
consider the ramifications of these findings in relation to previous research on dialogic
discussion.

5.2 Discussion/Implications
In the preceding sections, I addressed the question of how the juxtaposition of
events suggested by the examples in Chapter 4 might relate to the reframing of classroom
interactions. How does classroom discourse bring students’ experiences into relationship
with historical/literary events? How does this juxtaposition of events affect discussion?

In Dave’s ninth—grade Talbott classroom, a review of textbook reading led to discussion

96

of the WI invasion of Belgium. Above, I have addressed a single example of an
interaction which appeared repeatedly in Dave’s classroom. Though Dave’s initial
question was one to which he and students already knew the answer, subsequent
discourse was more dialogic: what was initially framed as a review in which the teacher
asked questions and students reported answers from the reading was subsequently
reframed as a discussion in which participants built on each other’s contributions to
elaborate an imagined scenario. That scenario juxtaposed past event and present context,
referring through double voicing to both an historical and a hypothetical event, and
allowing students to contribute to discussion from their own perspectives. This
juxtaposition of events resulted in discourse which exhibited certain regularities: over the
course of the discussion, the animations used by participants collectively shifted from
past tense and “they” to conditional and “we/our” to present tense and “you/1.” These
shifts suggest that the events became more present and personal for the participants
during the discussion. Moreover, the collective coordination of these regularities suggests
a relationship between the interaction framed by the historical/hypothetical narrative and
the interactional frame of the discussion in Dave’s classroom. Details contributed to the
narrative enabled and constrained responses in discussion. In the sections that follow, I
address each of the three points raised by my findings, as well as two other issues that
form the basis of Chapters 6 and 7.

5.2.1 From their own perspectives. The initial frame proposed by Dave for the
review activity was one in which the teacher would ask questions and students would
report the answers they had found in the textbook. But situating the past event in a

present context, and one that was familiar to students, reframed the interaction as one to

97

which students could contribute from their own perspectives. This finding suggests one
way that recitation can be reframed as discussion. Recitation in prior research is often
described as tightly controlled and teacher-directed (Applebee et al., 2003; Billings &
Fitzgerald, 2002; Chinn et al., 2001; Nystrand etal., 1997), allowing students “no control
over the flow of the discussion” (Nystrand et al., 1997, p. 38). However, what could
students contribute, if offered control, to a discussion of the Schlieffen plan, an event
seemingly removed from their contemporary experience? With this question, I do not
mean to suggest that other researchers have promoted “student control” as the solution to
recitation, but rather that attention to teacher or student “control” may be less productive
than attention to how certain kind of discourse enable, constrain, and reinterpret other
turns in conversation. In this case, perhaps the discussion that emerged from what began
as recitation was made possible by the way the juxtaposition of past and present reframed
the interaction as one to which students could contribute from their own perspectives.
Prior research suggests that students—especially low achievers, poor students, and non-
native English speakers——-fare better when instruction connects to their previous
experiences (Freedman, Simons, Kalnin, Casareno, & The M—Class, 1999', G. Ladson-
Billings, 1995; Gloria Ladson-Billings, 1995; J. Langer, 1992, 2001, 2002; J. Langer,
Bartolome, Vasquez, & Lucas, 1990; C. Lee, 1993, 1995, 2001, 2006b, 2006a; Losey,
1995; Rex, 2001). The juxtaposition of events to reframe classroom interaction may be
one answer to how teachers and students can accomplish this connection between
instructional content and students’ experience—between what is being discussed, and

who is discussing it.

98

Of course the quality of this connection to students’ experiences may depend on
which events are juxtaposed. While the juxtaposition of past and present may encourage
engagement and student discussion, it may also be subject to the criticism that it
encourages “presentism”: Students who imagine the dynamics of an historical event may
uncritically impose their present-day assumptions on past circumstances. However,
Fendler (2008) describes presentism as “a necessary evil” of both rationalistic and
strategic approaches to history. In recognizing the inevitability of presentism,
strategically presentistic approaches encourage students to consider “multiple
interpretations of things both in the past and in the present” (p. 678) as well as why
certain interpretations might be compelling for some historians/readers at particular
moments in history. While Dave and his students did not actively and explicitly question
the assumptions they brought to their discussion of historical events, the “what if. . .?”
scenario clearly situated the hypothetical event in a fantastical situation (i.e., not the same
as an historical event), where multiple interpretations were possible. By this, I do not
mean that the historical event is “what happened” and the “what if. . .?” scenario clearly
distinguished by its imaginary quality; after all, some historical accounts might seem
equally fantastical at other times, or from other perspectives. Rather, I suggest that
because the invasion of Talbott by an army is unlikely, students may have recognized it
as a means rather than a substitute for understanding the invasion of Belgium.
Nevertheless, further research on the juxtaposition of students’ experiences with
historical/literary events in discussion, and its relationship to presentism, may be

necessary.

99

The reframing of classroom interactions through the juxtaposition of events also
depends on how teacher and students respond to refraining proposals. The confusion
voiced by Amy and Penny, and later Shirin’s question, may have prompted Dave to
propose the “what if. . .?” scenario that led to the reframing of the review of textbook
answers as discussion of the invading army’s impact. But Dave might easily have ignored
those contributions as irrelevant. Likewise, student reactions to Dave’s first attempt to
animate events associated with the Schlieffen plan suggest they might not have taken up
the reframing proposed by Dave’s “what if. . .?” scenario. This finding is in keeping with
the idea that students can still have significant influence over the nature and direction of
classroom discourse interactions, even in recitation (Mercer, 1995; Wells, 1999), and that
if individual utterances are open to reinterpretation (Heritage, 1984) then the nature of the
interaction can be reframed by subsequent turns in conversation (Sawyer, 2003). Further
research may thus be necessary into how teacher and students respond to the refraining of
classroom interactions proposed by the juxtaposition of events.

The emergent quality of this interaction, and its dependence on contributions by
students from their own perspectives, does not mean that the teacher’s intentions are
unimportant. The resulting discussion still allowed Dave’s lesson plan objectives to be
addressed. The discussion of an army marching through Talbott allowed students to
“describe and explain the causes, consequences, and geographic context of ...events, " as
well as “reconstruct[ing] the past by comparing interpretations... from a variety of
perspectives and creating narratives from evidence” (Dave, lesson plan, 10l15/07). This
suggests that emergence of the frame for an activity may sometimes be a part—~perhaps

even a necessary part—of addressing lesson objectives. Prior classroom discourse

100

research has found that teachers constantly negotiate the academic task and the social
participation structure with students during the course of a lesson, figuring out how to
balance the constraints of the content with student engagement and learning (Erickson,
1982; O'Connor & Michaels, 1993). This research suggests that teachers change the order
and emphasis of topics addressed, and they allow changes in the way students participate.
Further research may be necessary on whether and how teachers manage to fulfill lesson
objectives in spite of, or because of, the emergence of the interactional frame for
discussion and its relation to the juxtaposition of events.

In this section, I have considered the implications of the juxtaposition of the past,
historical event with students’ present experience on the reframing of recitation as
discussion. Such a juxtaposition may allow students to contribute from their own
perspectives; but it may also encourage presentism, may depend on how teacher and
students respond to reframing proposals, and may enable or constrain how they address
lesson objectives. In the next section, I consider the way the juxtaposition of events
seemed to make the past more present and personal for students.

5.2.2 Making the past more present and personal. Just as the review initially
framed the interaction as recitation, with seemingly little opportunity for students to do
more than report textbook answers, it also initially portrayed the historical event under
study~—the Schlieffen plan which “. . .called for holding action against Russia” -—-as past,
as “finished” (L. Langer, 1991, p. 17), as having a single, objective meaning (White,
1987, p. 3), and as “foreshadowing” the subsequent, inevitable events of WWI -
(Bernstein, 1994; Morson, 1994; Schweber, 2004). However, the shift in describing the

event from the past tense to the conditional to the present tense, which was paralleled by

101

a shift from “they” to “we” to “you”/“I,” implies that the content became more “present”
and more “personal” for the participants as the discussion progressed. This finding may
suggest that, in addition to contributing to the reframing of recitation as discussion, the
juxtaposition of past and present may have contributed to the reframing of the historical
event.

In juxtaposing the historical invasion of Belgium with a hypothetical invasion of
contemporary Talbott, this discussion may have furnished a more “intimate, ‘inside’
portrayal of unfolding events” allowing students to experience them as “contingent,
emergent, and uncertain alongside the protagonists (Ochs & Capps, 2001, p. 4).The
juxtaposition of past event and present context during discussion of the “what if. . .?”
scenario may thus have restored “some of the presentness that has been lost” (Morson,
1994, p. 7) by transforming the Schlieffen plan into an “it” that “was” in the textbook.
That juxtaposition may also have situated the event as an account narrated by and about
particular agents, rather than one in which “events seem to tell themselves” (White, 1987,
p. 3). Indeed, dialogue that disrupts this tendency to see history as objective, faceless, and
disconnected from the present is associated with participation in the disciplinary reading
practices of historians (Bain, 2000; Leinhardt, 1994; Moje, 2008; Wineburg, 1991). How
might juxtaposing events help students to “read like historians,” rather than accepting a
textbook account as “the truth about what happened”?

The inclusion in discussion of multiple, conflicting details and different
perspectives on the hypotheticaUhistorical event also raised the possibility of
“sideshadowing” or “what else might have happened” (Bernstein, 1994; Morson, 1994,

1998) during the invasion of Belgium. Instead of portraying history as inevitable, such a

102

practice sets a past event in motion again, allowing students to consider the decisions
faced by historical figures. Or as Dave put it, “I want them to ask questions beyond the
book. . .. US. History is not in a red book that thick. There's a whole lot of stories to tell”
(Dave, interview, 10/15/07). The juxtaposition of events may thus make historical/literary
events more present and personal for students by encouraging them to see those events as
one account emerging from the results of many choices.

One drawback of this approach is that students may also experience it as
uncomfortable or confusing to find themselves “hurtled into the middle of a situation” (p.
4), especially an upsetting historical event like the Holocaust (Schweber, 2004), by the
juxtaposition of past and present. Another consideration is the way the juxtaposition of
historical and hypothetical may blur the boundary between the “real” and the imaginary
(White, 198 7), making it more difficult to distinguish historical accounts from other kinds
of stories (again, I refer here to fact and fiction not as inherent states of being but as
different kinds of discourse). Social Studies education researchers and Social Studies
teachers may thus wish to consider the affective and academic effects of the way the
juxtaposition of events makes the past more present and personal for students. How does
juxtaposing events make students feel about history? What does juxtaposing events teach
students about the similarities and differences between history and other kinds of stories?

In this section, I have addressed the way the juxtaposition of events seemed to
make the past more present and personal for Dave and his students, portraying the
historical event as more subjective, situated, and uncertain. This portrayal of historical
events may be in keeping with the disciplinary reading practices of historians. However

3

it may also be disturbing to students and may blur the boundaries between historical

103

accounts and other kinds of stories. I now turn to the way the narrative generated during
the discussion by Dave and his students exerted an influence on the discussion, itself.
5.2.3 How narrative affects discussion. The juxtaposition of events not only
contributed to reframing the recitation activity and to making the past more present and
personal for students, but also resulted in a narrative frame which overlapped with and
influenced the interactional frame for the discussion: Details contributed to the narrative
enabled and constrained subsequent responses in discussion; students’ participation as
first-person figures in the narrative allowed them to disagree and even contradict the
teacher; shifts in verb tense and noun/pronoun use in the narrative suggest a coordination
of its telling among the participants. The influence of the narrative frame on the
discussion among Dave and his students is in keeping with prior research on the
relationship between the narrated event and the “event of speaking” (Jakobson, 1971) or
the “storytelling event” (Wortham, 1994, 2001); whereas Wortham’s (1994) study
examined this relationship with regard to how speakers construct identities, the present
study suggests that the juxtaposition of narrated and classroom interactional events may
also be a useful resource in promoting and sustaining discussions. Indeed, some research
has already examined the overlap between conversational narratives and dialogic
discussion (J uzwik et al., 2008); the present study further suggests that narratives which
(directly or indirectly) animate class members may exert a particular influence on
discussion.
Whether the relationship between the narrative frame and the interactional frame
promotes or discourages discussion may depend on the nature of the relationship. For

example, while the narrative in this example framed students as inhabitants of Talbott,

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allowing them to comment from a first-person perspective on the hypothetical impact of
an invading army, Wortham (1994, 2001, 2006) has described how a discussion of
Athenian and Spartan work ethics in one secondary school classroom implicitly indexed
class members, creating a subtext about contemporary race relations and welfare that
negatively constructed Afiican American students. Further research may be necessary
into what kinds of narratives affect discussion, and whether that influence is positive or
negative in the circumstances. In Chapter 7, I address this issue by examining other
examples from Dave Weber’s 9th grade Talbott Social Studies class in which “what
if. . .?” narratives appeared repeatedly.

In this section, I addressed the relationship between the narrative frame and
discussion, suggesting that the influence of a narrative that directly or indirectly indexes
class members may be used to reshape the interaction of discussion. Further research may
be necessary into what kinds of narratives influence discussion, and how.

Having thus considered in light of previous research how the juxtaposition of
events contributed to reframing recitation, to making the past more present and personal,
and to shaping the discussion among Dave and his students, I address below two other
issues raised by this example. These issues are the topics of Chapters 6 and 7.

5.2.4 Other issues: alignment. Because the juxtaposition of events reframed
student participation, positioning students as first-person figures in a historical/
hypothetical narrative, students were able to disagree with each other (and even the

teacher) about aspects of that event. Gary, Tom, Becca, Amy, and Shirin’s conflicting
perspectives on the invading army’s impact and how townspeople might respond to it

were important to creating a more complex account of the historical event than the

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textbook had provided. Their disagreement also seemed to exert an influence on the flow
of the discussion: they continued to debate even after the narrative had ended, and they
were no longer identified with the residents of Bel gium/T albott. This disagreement
recalls examples from Chapter 4 in which Sami’s, Andy’s, and Nathan’s journal entry
readings expressed different, conflicting perspectives toward classroom events, and
Tamara’s and Colby’s imitations indirectly criticized the other person. How does
disagreement—~the relationship among conflicting perspectives, or alignments—relate to
discussion? In Chapter 6, I return to Tamara Jefferson’s 10th grade literature classes at
Magnum Appan High School to address this question with examples from two
discussions characterized by debate over ethical dilemmas.

5.2.5 Other issues: pedagogical genre. In the Chapter 4 examples, students
resisted the inauthentic questions associated with recitation, perhaps because they
proposed a frame that is a “fabrication” in which students are “dupes” who do not know
that the teacher already knows the answer, or in which the teacher is the one oblivious to
the fact that students already know the answer (Goffrnan, 1986, p. 158). But while Sami
and Tamara’s students resisted being framed this way, such “frame-breaking” (p. 351-
352) behavior did not appear in Dave’s class. Instead, students took the opportunity to
voice their confusion, and Dave responded with another explanation. Given the initial
frame for the review activity, Dave might easily have ignored Penny and Amy’s

confusion, as well as Shirin’s unexpected question; his willingness to address these
responses from students, instead, might have been due to his assessment of the students’
“difficulties with understanding the cartoon warm-up” which “set us off schedule right

out of the chute,” or his plans to introduce trench warfare and the “Letter Home from the

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Trenches” assignment later in the lesson, for which a more intimate, first-person
understanding of the historical situation might have been necessary. The idea that the
sequence of activities in a lesson—both what precedes and what follows a discussion——
could shape that discussion is in keeping with both the dialogic potential of all utterances
(Bakhtin, 1986a, p. 72), and with the idea that curriculum is co-constructed among
teacher and students during instruction (Santa Barbara Classroom Discourse Group,
1992). I explore this idea further in Chapter 7.

Further, the responses from Penny and Amy, as well as Shirin’s question, may
suggest prior experience with the interactional frame for the review activity. In fact, in
other reviews in Dave’s classroom, students were encouraged to discuss their answers,
despite the inauthentic nature of the textbook questions. This finding suggests that
repeated experience with the emergence of the interactional frame over the course of
similar interactions may contribute to the formation of patterns of communication in a
classroom community. By “developing concrete examples” (Morson & Emerson, 1990,
p. 282) certain kinds and uses of language are made available (Medvedev and Bakhtin
1978, 134) to teacher and students. In short, teachers and students’ experiences with
recurring patterns of classroom discourse, like recitation or discussion, may shape
subsequent, similar interactions. The formation of these “pedagogical genres” may be
important to identifying which discursive practices recur in secondary school classrooms

and how teachers might capitalize on that recurrence. I explore this idea further in chapter

7, as well.

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5.3 Chapter 5 Summary

I.

What begins as recitation can be reframed as discussion through the juxtaposition of
historical/literary events and events relevant to students’ experiences, which allow
students to contribute from their own perspectives.

The juxtaposition of historical and contemporary events may make the past more
present and personal for students, allowing them to participate as first-person
narrators/figures in discussion.

The overlap between narrated events (especially those which index class members)
and classroom events may shape discussion.

The juxtaposition of events as counter-examples may allow students to disagree, or
express conflicting alignments toward events, in ways that shape discussion (see
Chapter 6).

Prior and subsequent activities, as well as teachers’ and students’ experiences with

recurring patterns of classroom discourse, may shape discussion (see Chapter 7).

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6. “Devil’s advocate”: Alignment and Reframing in Secondary Literature
Discussions

Some prior research on dialogic discussions has suggested that it is not the
presence of multiple speakers or multiple interpretations that distinguishes recitations
from discussions. It is not the fact that speakers take turns or share ideas, but the
relationship among those turns and ideas that is important (N ystrand et al., 1997; Wells,
1999, 1993). Indeed, Bakhtinian dialogism has been characterized by the struggle of
multiple, competing voices, as discourse is repeatedly reinterpreted (Bakhtin, 1984, 1981,
1986a, 1979; Morson & Emerson, 1990). For English educators whose goal is to help
students to compare passages of a class text or disagree with what a classmate has just
said, this repurposing of others’ words may be especially important. However, little
English education research has addressed how the relationships among turns in a
discussion contribute to (re)framing the interaction. Moreover, few studies examine
discussions characterized by disagreement and debate, in which the struggle among
voices and interpretations should be prominent.

In Chapter 4, I demonstrated that, through the emergence of the interactional
frame, what began as recitations could give rise to dialogic discourse. In that chapter, I
addressed the way Nathan’s, Andy’s, and Sami’s journal entries, and Colby’s and
Tamara’s imitations made and affirmed refrarning proposals by repeating others’ words
and actions in order to double voice them.

This double voicing implicitly expressed their own stances, or alignments, toward
that discourse and toward other events: Nathan’s journal entry criticized his teacher’s

handling of an incident during a previous lesson (and perhaps also the journal entry

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activity, itself). Colby’s imitation of Tamara parodied her teacher voice (and perhaps also
her attempts to constrain his answer to her question). Both Sami’s and Tamara’s

responses also used double voicing to indirectly criticize another’s alignment. The current
interactions among each teacher and students seemed to be affected by this double-voiced
disagreement: Nathan’s indirect criticism produced a reaction from Sami; Tamara’s
parody of Colby generated responses from another student. In short, speakers used double
voicing to express their alignment toward classroom events in ways that enabled and
constrained subsequent responses, and thus affected the current interaction.

In Chapter 5, disagreement also played a role in the current interaction of the
discussion among Dave and his students. The juxtaposition of events animated students
as first-person figures in a narrative frame that overlapped with the frame for the
discussion. As such, students’ disagreement about the invading army’s impact
contributed to a more complex historical account and also shaped the flow of the
discussion.

In this chapter, I examine further the relationship between disagreement and the
interactional frame for discussion. How does classroom discourse bring different
alignments toward historical/literary events into relationship? How does the relationship
among alignments affect discussion?

Below, I describe two lesson excerpts from Tamara Jefferson’s 10th grade
literature classes at Magnum Appan High School in order to address the influence of
alignment on discussion. First, I describe a lesson activity from Tamara’s “4th hour”
class (one of several she taught throughout the day) in which disagreement—in this case,

different alignments toward an ethical issue related to the text under study—did not result

110

in discussion. Next, I describe a lesson activity flom Tamara’s “6th hour” class (another
period of the day) in which the manner of students’ disagreement over a similar ethical
issue promoted and sustained discussion, despite the fact that it began with what appeared
to be recitation. With regard to that second example, I first describe the interactional
flame, as it emerged among teacher and students, for a discussion of the issue; then, I
describe the discursive features of the resulting discourse in order to further examine how

the relationship among alignments shaped students’ uses of language, as well as the flow

of the discussion itself.

6.1 Juxtaposing Alignments

6.1.1 Disagreement without discussion: alignment in Tamara’s 4th hour
class. I first describe how an activity that included disagreement did not result in
discussion. In the lesson excerpt described below, Tamara and her 4th hour students were
about to begin Sophocles’ play, Antigone. The Greek tragedy describes the consequences
of Antigone’s decision to bury her brother, despite the fact that Theban law, decreed by
the king (and her uncle) Creon, forbids the burial of traitors. In order to introduce what
she saw as a conflict between individual conscience and communal law, Tamara planned
to have students write a journal entry about a relevant, contemporary situation: a doctor’s
decision to “pull the plug” on a suffering, terminal patient, despite the legal
consequences. They would then discuss their perspectives on this issue before beginning
to read the play (Tamara, lesson plan, 03/19/08).

To Tamara, the dilemma that formed the topic of this journal entry seemed like it

would bring students’ experiences into relationship with the event at the center of the

play’s conflict:

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...I know a lot of students--I hear that all the time they have loved ones in the
hospital, loved ones who, you know, have been sick and possibly on life support.
It's a real topic to them. So I wanted to bring them something that they could
possibly relate to in the 2lst century, but also I could connect it back to Antigone
to let them know that—it's different, of course, the time is different, the issue is
different—but ultimately it's a—it's a choice or a dilemma between law and one's
personal point of view (Tamara, interview, 03/19/08).
In addition, Tamara hOped this ethical dilemma would provoke disagreement among
students and thus lead to discussion that would create anticipation before beginning the
play.
Once most of the students had completed their journal entries, Tamara opened the
floor to discussion, asking them to share their responses to this authentic question: Should

the doctor or nurse “pull the plug,” on a suffering, terminal patient, despite possible legal

consequences?

(Tamara, lesson transcript, 03/19/08)

KAYLA: I don't think. . .I don't think he should because then he go’n’ lose his
. job, and it's all over, and he probably never go’n’ get a doctoring job again.

Nu—t

3. TAMARA: Right. OK. OK. Go ahead.

GARRETT: Um, it's not like I would follow the law, but in my mind, like,
following the law, it‘s like, kind of like my own personal belief that if I push
my ways on other peOple that, like, change their beliefs, maybe in their
religion or something, that they can't do that or something. So it would be

kind of like me pushing my ways on other pe0ple.

WNQMA

9. TAMARA: OK. Good point. Montana?
10. MONTANA: Urn, as you know I haven't written it down. But basically I

1 1. would say that I would follow my conscience, but it would be toward, like,
12. rather than just up and pulling the plug, I would try to go through whatever,

112

13. try to find whatever loopholes I could, try to find an existent family members,
14. or whatever. I would basically work around the system before I made

15. anything decisive, and if that didn't work, yes, I would pull the plug just to

16. stop the suffering.

l7. TAMARA: OK. Derek?

18. DEREK: Myself, I would uphold the law because, uh, look God suffered like
19. that. But you might not want to cut him off, because he might not want to be
20. dead yet, you know what I'm saying? And I would lose my job. I'm going to
21 . jail. And I've got a family. I've got mouths to feed. I got bills to pay. . ..

22. TAMARA: Good point. Ryan?

23. RYAN: I'd do it because I can't bear to see someone suffer like that.

24. TAMARA: Uh huh.

25. RYAN: And if you're a doctor or a nurse it's your job to fulfill whatever your
26. patient's dreams are. They say you know "I want something to drink," you get
27. them something to drink. Well, if they want you to pull the plug you should
28. do it. And if you get your license taken away, you take it to court.

(Five more students share responses in this manner)

112. TAMARA: I wanted to bring this to you all because I wanted you to start

1 13. thinking about this "following your conscience or following the law." I

114. mean here's a. . .here's a situation where doctors and nurses face this

115. dilemma-J mean they make these types of choices. . .. And that is one of the
116. major things brought out in Antigone. So I want you to keep this in mind
117. when we read Antigone.

With the Antigone journal prompt, Tamara proposed an interactional flame in which

students would share their opinions about a common topic; students seemed to accept this

interactional frame: in succession, each shared his/her perspective on the dilemma.

This journal t0pic brought the event at the center of the play’s conflict into

dialogic relationship with a contemporary situation, allowing students to contribute flom

their own perspectives. As in the example in Chapter 5, the verb tense and pronoun use

Changed flom conditional “would/should” and third-person “he” (1) to present tense and

113

“I/you” (4, 18-19). And as in Dave’s class, these shifts in use of language may suggest
that the imagined hypothetical situation became more present and personal for students
(indeed, among the five who spoke later, one shared an actual experience with such a
medical decision in her family). As students identified with the doctor, becoming first-
person figures in the hypothetical scenario, they took part simultaneously in another
interaction flom the one in which they were sharing journal entries. In this narrative
flame, the collective shifts in verb tense and pronoun use may suggest a coordination of
the interactional flame among the participants; for example, those who spoke after
Garrett (4) also used “I/you” and alter Derek, the present tense, without anyone directing
them to make their responses consistent. In this respect, the juxtaposition of events was
much like that in the discussion in Dave’s class (see chapter 5): Students were
participants in a hypothetical event (the doctor deciding to pull the plug, despite the legal
consequences) which also referred to historical/literary event (Antigone deciding to bury
her brother, despite Theban law), while also participating in a classroom interaction
(sharing journal entries). But whereas this juxtaposition of events in Dave’s class led to
discussion, in Tamara’s 4th hour class it did not.

Indeed, in a post-lesson interview, Tamara raised a lingering question about the
usefulness of the activity:

...ultimately it's a-it’s a choice or a dilemma between law and one's personal point

of view. But does that make it right though? .... The laws are there for a reason: is

it alright to break the law every time you feel like it doesn't align with your

morals or values or beliefs? ...there's a blanket statement over here, and then we

go over there, and it does not connect to anything that was said over here. And in

114

6th hour. . .they know how to, uh, like, bring that person‘s thoughts and ideas in

before they make the next comment. So they'll say like ‘Well, Colby said this, but

I think this way because of this.’ And here I haven't yet had a chance to, like, get

them to build on one another's conversation (Tamara, interview, 03/19/08).
Tamara’s questions call attention to the relationship among the various moral stances or
“alignments” students took toward the event. Although the students animated themselves
as characters in the same situation, and explored multiple, conflicting perspectives on the
ethics of various decisions and consequences in that scenario, there was little connection
between the turns in the discussion other than their relationship to the initial prompt and
their use of similar verbs and pronouns. That is, unlike the discussion in Dave’s class,
where details of the narrative exerted influence on subsequent additions, and students
disagreed over the impact of the invading army, here there was little attempt to address
details proposed by previous speakers (like financial and religious concerns or the impact
on others besides doctor and patient) and the alignments for or against pulling the plug
suggested by those details. In fact, one reading of this excerpt might be that it was simply
a sequential expression of opinion in response to a prompt flom the teacher, with no
attempts made to engage the perspectives of previous speakers.

In sum, this activity asked students to give their opinions in response to an
authentic, provocative ethical dilemma which called for hi gher-order thinking involving
speculation about the consequences of a decision. Despite producing differing opinions, it
did not produce discussion. This first example thus highlights the importance of the
relationship among turns in discussions characterized by disagreement, and the

possibility of alignment as a site where one might intervene to foster more uptake of what

115

others have already said. In the next section, I further demonstrate this possibility with
another example, this time flom the 6th hour class Tamara identified as being more adept
at “build[ing] on one another’s conversation.”

6.1.2 Disagreement with discussion: Tamara’s 6th hour class. Having seen the
possibility in Tamara’s 4th hour class of disagreement as disconnected statements of
different alignments toward an event, I now turn to her sixth hour class which, as her
comments suggest, had learned to take up a previous speaker’s words in order to build on
and debate them in discussion. In what follows, I first describe how an interaction that
seemingly began as recitation led to vigorous debate; then, I describe the features of the
resulting discourse in order to further explore how students’ uses of language, as well as
the flow of the discussion, itself, might have been shaped by the relationship among
alignments.

6.1.2.1 Emergence of the interactional frame: Double-voiced disagreement. In
the lesson excerpt below, I describe how an activity was flamed and reflamed by Tamara
and her 6th hour students as they addressed the novel Hiroshima, by John Hersey. The
novel’s plot focuses on the WWII bombing by the US. of the Japanese city of Hiroshima.
Having already discussed the ethics of the bombing on a previous day, Tamara’s goal for
the lesson was to encourage further debate over the fairness of using the atomic bomb on
the Japanese city during WWII. The debate, centered on the phrase “All’s fair in love and
war,” would prepare students to write a position paper addressing that phrase and the
events of the novel (Tamara, lesson plan, 01/22/08).

In a post-lesson interview, Tamara revealed her thoughts about the goals of this

debate:

116

It seems like they had a narrow flame that, ‘Yeah, it's fair for us to do this when
it's in Japan, or when it's not on American territory.’ [But] by. . .showing them that
there are similarities--there are parallelisms with. . .the 9/11 attacks. . ..I wanted
them to get a chance to see that you cannot say that, ‘All is fair in love and war’ if
you say, ‘Yes, it's OK to bomb there, but it's not OK to do that on American
territory.’ (Tamara, interview, 01/22/08).

Tamara’s comments suggest that by juxtaposing events—the bombing of Hiroshima with

the 9/11 terrorist attacks—she intended to provoke debate about the maxim. Her use of

the word “flame” here seems to refer to students’ assumptions about the events and their

conception of fairness, a usage which may be in keeping with the idea of the alignment or

moral stance one might take in relation to a particular event, and how that stance might

be altered by the juxtaposition of counter—examples.

However, rather than explicitly flaming the activity as a debate, in the way her
plan had suggested, Tamara began by asking a student to recall something that had been
said during the previous discussion of the novel.

(Tamara, lesson transcript, 01/22/08)
TAMARA: OK, so we finished up Hiroshima, and we introduced this idea of
“All is fair in love and war.” And what did we say this idea of “All is fair in

love and war” actually means? What does that quote mean, Franklin? What
does “All is fair in love and war” mean? What did we say that was?

99’5”“

(I!

FRANKLIN: Like if you’re in a war, you can go to any extent.

TAMARA: So Franklin said if you’re in a war you can go to any extent. If it
comes. . .gets to the point where you need to drop an atomic bomb, then that’s
fair. If it gets to the point, similar to 9/11 here, where you take a plane and you
crash into the Trade Center and the Pentagon, then that’s also fair.

pass

117

Much like her initial question during the “quick review” of verbal irony described in
chapter 4, Tamara’s question to Franklin was inauthentic in that it asked for information
she (and students) already knew, and thus seemed to flame the activity as a review of
what the class had previously discussed regarding Hiroshima and the interpretation of the
maxim, “All’s fair. . ..” Indeed, at first glance, this exchange might seem like a classic
example of recitation in which a teacher initiates, a student responds with an expected
answer, and the teacher evaluates that answer.

However, Tamara’s response to Franklin’s answer proposed a reflaming of the
interaction in three subtle ways. First, Tamara’s “So Franklin said...” made it seem as if
Franklin was no longer the principal addressee—if he was, she would have used “you”—
and that her words were addressed to the larger audience of the class, inviting others to
participate. Second, she animated Franklin simultaneously as a figure in the bombing of
Hiroshima and the 9/11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, DC. This
animation brought the historical event in the novel into relationship with a more recent
historical event, casting Franklin (and the other students to whom she addressed these
words) simultaneously as both WWII Americans and contemporary terrorist bombers. As
in previous examples, casting students as figures in an imagined scenario invited their
first-person participation. Third, the juxtaposition of these two events seemed intended to
implicitly disagree with Franklin’s comment through double voicing. Tamara pretended
to understand that Franklin thought it was fair for Americans to bomb Hiroshima during
WWII, and that he also thought it was fair for terrorists to bomb the World Trade Center
on 9/11. However, Franklin had not said that, and might, in fact, align himself differently

toward 9/11 with regard to fairness. Tamara pretended to misunderstand Franklin’s

118

_J-

comment in order to disagree with it. The way she repeated Franklin’s words double

voiced them, indirectly communicating her own alignment. In these ways, Tamara’s

response seemed to propose a reflaming of what at first appeared to be recitation.

Students’ responses to Tamara’s comment took up the invitations to participate

and affirmed the proposed reflaming of the interaction:

99°F)?"

11.
12.

13.
14.
15.
16.

17.
18.

TAMARA: So Franklin said if you’re in a war you can go to any extent. If it
comes. . . gets to the point where you need to drop an atomic bomb, then that’s
fair. If it gets to the point, similar to 9/11 here, where you take a plane and you
crash into the Trade Center and the Pentagon, then that’s also fair.

. FRANKLIN: Well no. . .but. . .if they bomb us then--

RICHARD: --If they bomb us, and then we bomb them back, then they can’t
say nothin’ ‘cause it’s fair.

TAMARA: So you’re saying this is more of a retaliation. If someone does
something to me, then I should have the right to do the same thing to them. Or
even if I do something bigger and better than what they did to me, then that
makes it right. OK.

BRIAN: What’s interesting is that, they bombed Pearl Harbor, which was a
naval base, but we bombed a city.

Those students who joined in the discussion seemed to accept the reflaming proposed by

Tamara’s response to Franklin on several levels. First, they seemed to accept the implicit

invitation for others to participate as an audience to Franklin’s words: two other students

(11, 17) contributed without being asked a question by the teacher. Second, they seemed

to accept being animated as figures in an imagined scenario, identifying themselves with

the American forces as “we” and “us” in the discourse that followed. And third, they

seemed to accept the idea that a double-voiced juxtaposition of events could be used to

indirectly criticize another’s opinion: First Franklin and Richard, and then Brian, applied

what a previous speaker had said to another event in order to implicitly disagree with

119

his/her alignment. Both built on Tamara’s comparison to the 9/11 terrorist attacks on
New York and Washington DC. Unlike the 9/11 attacks, Franklin and Richard
suggested, the bombing of Hiroshima was provoked by the bombing of Pearl Harbor; but
Brian pointed out that, like the 9/11 attacks (and unlike Pearl Harbor), the bombing of
Hiroshima involved a civilian city. Tamara, too, responded much as she had the first
time, pretending to understand Franklin and Richard’s “eye—for—an-eye” comment as
extending to revenge on a larger scale. But this pretense was ironic. Although none of the
speakers explicitly disagreed with each other, they juxtaposed events in order to double
voice others’ words and implicitly criticize their alignments. That is, by juxtaposing
counter-examples, they disagreed indirectly.

In summary, like Tamara’s 4th hour students, her 6th hour debated an ethical
issue related to the text under study. And like the 4th hour issue of whether a doctor
should “pull the plug,” the 6th hour issue juxtaposed an event in the text under study with
contemporary events in ways that allowed students to contribute flom their own
perspectives. However, unlike 4th hour, whose differing opinions seemed to have little
relation to previous turns, Tamara’s 6th hour students repeatedly took up what previous
speakers had said in order to disagree with them. This disagreement was accomplished
through double voicing, as speakers repeated others’ words and juxtaposed them with
related counter-examples in order to implicitly criticize other alignments. Thus what

began as recitation, with an inauthentic question about a previous definition of the
maxim, “All’s fair in love and war,” was reinterpreted and emergently reframed as

dialogic discussion. Figure 6 charts the changes in the flame for this interaction:

120

 

 

f7 initial ' ' ‘ LESSON PLAN :' By?" showing them that there are n’milaritiesuthere are parallelismsfiwith..:the 9/1!
1‘ frame attacks....l wanted them to get a chance to see that you cannot say that, ‘All is fair in love and war ’ if
you say, 'l'es, it’s OK to bomb there, but it's not OK to do that on American territory. ’

TAMARA: OK, so we finished up the Hiroshima, and we introduced this idea of “All is fair in love and
war.” And what did we say this idea of “All is fair in love and war” actually means? What does that
quote mean, Franklin? What does “All is fair in love and war” mean? What did we say that was?

FRANKLIN: Like if you’re in a war, you can go to any extent.

 

Proposed TAMARA: So Franklin said if you’re in a war you can go to any extent If it comes. ..gets to the point
reframlng where you need to drop an atomic bomb, then that’s fair. If it gets to the point, similar to 9/1 1 here,
where you take a plane and you crash into the Trade Center and the Pentagon, then that’s also fair... .

 

Response to FRANKLIN: Well no... if they aren’t involved then they shouldn’t, but if they bomb us then~
reframing
proposal RICHARD: --If they bomb us, and then we bomb them back, then they can’t say nothin’ ‘cause it’s fair.

 

Discussion TAMARA: So you’re saying this is more of a retaliation. If someone does something to me, then I
should have the right to do the same thing to them. Or even if I do something bigger and better than
what they did to me, then that makes it right. OK.

BRIAN: What‘s interesting is that, they bombed Pearl Harbor, which was a naval base, but we bombed
a city.

TAMARA: No reason to kill innocent people. Wait, but Kevin said they deserved it!
KEVIN: They did... . They shouldn’t lave killed Americans. For no reason.

RICHARD: You see how Brian was saying that we bombed a city? But when we bombed them, their
military was underground. So who else was there to bomb?

BRIAN: There was no point to build the bomb.
RICHARD: But we did build it, so what's the point in making it sit there and not use it?
BRIAN: What’s the point in them building it?

RICHARD: To kill. So they know who’s boss.

 

BRIAN: But if we bomb them, we just had to rebuild them and pay them back for it.

GLORIA: Why? It doesn't seem to me like, and I don't understand why in Iraq they kinda did mess it up
too, cause they were fighting with us, so why shouldn't they help rebuild it if we gotta rebuild it?

EBONY: Like when they crashed into the Trade Center how come they didn't come and clean up our
(unintelligible). Why are we cleaning up their stuff?

GLORIA: Like, what she said, it's not like they asked for our help. It's kind of like we forced our way
into everybody’s situation, it’s not like they say come over here and help us.

 

TAMARA: ...I think this debate is very is very much needed. We could argue on and on about should
we have dropped the atomic bomb or should we hav en't dIOpped the atomic bomb. But when you write
1 this essay, I want you to keep in mind this idea of ”All is fair in love and war.”

Figure 6. Emergence of the interactional frame in Hiroshima “All’s fair in love and war”
activity.

 

121

In Figure 6, I have included more discourse than has been addressed so far; I examine the
rest of the discussion in the next section, focusing on features of the resulting discourse.
However, I have included it here in order to illustrate the extent to which what began as
recitation was emergently reframed as discussion.

Despite its emergence, this exchange still addressed the goal Tamara had set for
the lesson: to illuminate the parallels and contradictions between the bombing of
Hiroshima and the 9/1 1 terrorist attacks and thus provoke debate over the phrase “All ’3
fair in love and war” that would expand students’ definition of fairness (Tamara, lesson
plan, 01/22/08). In fact, this discussion addressed various aspects of wartime fairness; in
what I have described above, students considered whether it was ethical to bomb
civilians, to retaliate, and to respond on a larger scale than the previous attack. In
subsequent discussion (see below), they would further address whether it was fair to
make a show of force in order to preempt further violence, and to act as both destroyer
and rebuilder of one’s opponent. Moreover, this debate involved finding and addressing
counter-arguments, an important part of preparation for the position paper assignment
that would follow. In fact, Tamara noted this in a later interview:

Richard definitely said ‘Oh yeah,’ you know, ‘that makes sense because at first I

was thinking, you know, they bombed us, oh well, but now I don't think it is fair

for those civilians to lose their lives, you know, like in the Pentagon and the
World Trade Center because—uh, 1 can kind of see that.’ And by the responses I
could definitely tell that they were thinking about the issue beyond surface

level. . .. At first all we got at first was ‘Oh well, they shouldn't have done it.’ But

now it’s like ‘Well, was it really necessary? Why did we build the bomb at all?’

122

...usually I'm always playing devil's advocate; now I have someone to help me!
(Tamara, interview, 02/14/08)
Tamara’s comment suggests that, despite the emergence of the exchange, “playing

devil’s advocate” may have been an effective way to destabilize the initial positions taken

intolerant, ill-informed, and potentially offensive ideas, might seem to call for more

direction intervention on the part of the teacher. But such an intervention might have

implicitly encouraged students to identify with various figures associated with the event
and to consider multiple counter-arguments as they took up and responded to others’
perspectives. I address this pedagogical choice fiirther in the “Discussion/Implications”
section.

So far, I have described two lesson excerpts, one in which disagreement did not
lead to discussion, and one in which it did. The contrast between these excerpts
emphasizes the importance of the relationship among turns in debate, which in Tamara’s
6th hour class was accomplished through double voicing others in order to implicitly
criticize their alignments. Having first described this 6th hour class’s emergent reframing
of recitation as discussion through double—voiced disagreement, I focus in the next
section on the features of the resulting discourse and on how students’ uses of language
Changed over the course of the discussion.

6. 1.2.2 Features of the resulting discourse: The language of debate. In this

section, I describe the features of the discourse that resulted from the discussion in

123

The structure of Franklin’s and Tamara’s initial exchange appeared again in
subsequent responses:

5. FRANKLIN: Like if you’re in a war, you can go to any extent.

TAMARA: So Franklin said if you’re in a war you can go to any extent. If it
comes. . .gets to the point where you need to drop an atomic bomb, then that
fair. If it gets to the point, similar to 9/11 here, where you take a plane and you
crash into the Trade Center and the Pentagon, then that’s also fair.

>0?°.\l.°‘

lO. FRANKLIN: Well no. . .but. . .if they bomb us then~

ll. RICHARD: --If they bomb us, and then we bomb them back, then they can’t
12. say nothin’ ‘cause it’s fair.

Franklin’s initial definition used an “if. . .then. . .” structure. Tamara’s response imitated
this structure, as did Franklin and Richard’s subsequent assertion. In fact, this

“if. . .then. . .” structure was repeated throughout the subsequent interaction, as participants
suggested that one circumstance (e.g., having been attacked first) did or did not justify
another. As in Tamara’s response to Franklin, and his subsequent rejoinder, the pairing of
an “if” with a “then” that did not fit with the previous speaker’s alignment seemed to

provoke further discussion.

Furthermore, Tamara’s response to Franklin referred to him in the third-person,
rather than addressing him as you. As already indicated, this seemed to invite
participation by implying that Franklin was no longer the principal addressee, and that the

. 9 '
rest of the class was also an audience to Tamara 8 words. However, it also served to

124

animate Franklin back into the conversation. This animation of another speaker in order
to draw him into discussion appeared again during the debate:

19. TAMARA: No reason to kill innocent people. Wait, but Kevin said they
20. deserved it!

21. KEVIN: They did.
22. RICHARD: I just want to say something.

23. TAMARA: OK. Wait a minute. Let’s let Kevin make his point and then you
24. can make yours. OK, Kevin. So they bombed us, they deserved it.

25. KEVIN: They shouldn’t have killed Americans. For no reason.

In paraphrasing Brian’s comment about the bombing of a civilians, Tamara connected it
with a previous, contradictory comment by another speaker, Kevin. As she had done in
responding to Franklin, Tamara not only paired the previous speaker’s point with Brian’s
but explicitly named Kevin as that speaker; although it was not addressed directly to
Kevin, it animated him into the conversation, producing a response. Immediately
afterward, Richard made a similar move:

26. RICHARD: You see how Brian was saying that we bombed a city? But when

27 . we bombed them, their military was underground. So who else was there to
28. bomb?

29. BRIAN: There was no point to build the bomb.
Like Tamara, Richard paired Brian’s assertion with another event in order to disagree
with him, double voicing his counter-argument about bombing civilians. Like Tamara,
Richard also explicitly named Brian as the source of the previous utterance, animating
him back into the conversation. A

In response to being named, Brian squared off with Richard in several successive

exchanges; these exchanges demonstrated increasingly parallel structure:

125

 

29. BRIAN: There was no point to build the bomb.

30. RICHARD: But we did build it, so what's the point in making it sit there and
31. not use it?

32. BRIAN: What's the point in using it?
33. RICHARD: To kill. So they know who’s boss.

34. BRIAN: But if we bomb them, we just had to rebuild them and pay them back
35. for it.

Both Richard and Brian repeated parts of the other’s point, double voicing his words and

pairing them with contradictory ideas in a series of quick responses. These responses

included increasing repetition, not only of words but of sentence structure (“What’s the

point in. . .?” at 29-32, and “But we...” at 30, 34). This parallel structure continued as

subsequent responses to Brian criticized the alignment expressed in his last statement by

once again juxtaposing it with post-9/1 1 American policy:

36. GLORIA: Why? It doesn't seem to me like, and I don't understand why in
37. Iraq, they kinda did mess it up, too, ‘cause they were fighting with us. So why
38. shouldn't they help rebuild it if we got to rebuild it?

39. EBONY: Like when they crashed into the Trade Center, they didn't come and
40. clean up our (unintelligible)? Why are we cleaning up their stuff?

41. GLORIA: Like, what she said, it's not like they asked for our help. . ..

42. TAMARA: I think this debate--I think this debate is very is very much

43. needed. We could argue on and on about should we have dropped the atomic
44. bomb, or should we haven't dropped the atomic bomb. But when you write
45. this essay I want you to keep in mind this idea of "All is fair in love and war. "

Like previous speakers, Gloria and Ebony took up part of Brian’s assertion ab0ut

rebuilding, double voicing it by juxtaposing it with a problematic conflation of events

126

from the Iraq war and the 9/11 attacks.6 Moreover, Ebony and Gloria also repeated parts
of each other’s comments, but in order to express agreement, rather than disagreement.
That is, their double voicing aligned them together against the position Brian had
expressed. However, in echoing Gloria’s point, Ebony also imitated the form of Gloria’s
comment (363 8), following an example with an ironic rhetorical question. The use of
rhetorical questions was a device that had already appeared earlier (27, 30, 32). Further,
these rhetorical questions resembled the ironic naiveté of Tamara’s responses in which
she pretended to misunderstand previous comments in order to indirectly criticize them
(6, 13, 19). Again, the relationship among speakers’ alignments seemed to affect the
form, as well as the content. Indeed, as the debate progressed, participants not only took
up the examples used by previous speakers, but also took up the language—phrases and
sentence structures———of that prior discourse.

The changes in uses of language over the course of the discussion are charted in

Figure 7:

6 Again, it is worth considering why Tamara allowed students like Gloria and Ebony, during this
discussion, to associate the “they” of the 9/11 attacks with the “they” of the Iraq war without evidence to
support conflating the two opponents. A more direct teacher intervention might seem warranted to dispel
potential misinformation. Similarly, the reporting by some news sources of information later proved to be
Spurious has led some critics to call for government regulation of the news media (Winter, 2010). I address
this issue further in the “Discussion/Implications” section.

127

 

 

 

TAMARA: OK, so we finished up the Hiroshima, and we introduced this idea of “All is fair in love and
war.” And what did we say this idea of “All is fair in love and war” actually means? What does that
quote mean, Franklin? What does “All is fair in love and war” mean? What did we say that was?

 

FRANKLIN: Like if you’re in a war, you can go to any extent.

 

 

If..then...
Naming the TAMARA: So Franklin said if you’re in a war you can go to any extent. If it comes... gets to the
speaker/ point where you need to drop an atomic bomb, then that‘s fair. If it gets to the point, similar to
Ironic 9/1 I here, where you take a plane and you crash into the Trade Center and the Pentagon, then
naiveté that’s also fair... .
FRANKLIN: Well no... if they aren‘t involved then they shouldn’t, but if they bomb us then—-
RICHARD: --If they bomb us. and then we bomb them back. then they can’t say nothin‘ ‘cause
it’s fair.
TAMARA' So you’re saying this is more of a retaliation If someone does something to me, then
I should have the right to do the same thing to them. Or even if I do something bigger and better
than what they did to me, then that makes it right. OK. 1
BRIAN: What's interesting is that, they bombed Pearl Harbor, which was a naval base, but we
bombed a city.
TAMARA No reason to kill innocent peeple. Wait, but Kevin said they deserved it!
KEVIN: They did... They shouldn’t have killed Americans. For no reason.
RICHARD: You see how Brian was sayjnthhat we bombed a city? But when we bombed them,
Rhetorical their military was underground. So who else was there to bomb?
questions/
Increasing BRIAN: There was no point to build the bomb.
rallel
:rmuhfion RICHARD: But we did build it, so what's the point in making it sit there and not use it?
BRIAN : What's the point in them building it?
RICHARD: To kill So they know who’s boss.
BRIAN: But if we bomb them, we just had to rebuild them and pay them back for it.
GLORIA: Why? It doesn’t seem to me like, and I don’t understand why in Iraq they kinda did
mess it up too, cause they were fighting with us, so why shouldn't they help rebuild it if we
gotta rebuild it?
EBONY; Like when they crashed into the Trade Center how come they didn't come and clean
up our (unintelligible). Why are we cleaning up their stuff?
GLORIA: Like, what she said, it's not like they asked for our help. It's kind of like we forced
our way into everybody's sitmtion, it’s not like they say come over here and help us.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

TAB/LARA: ...I think this debate is very is very much needed. We could argue on and on about should
we have dropped the atomic bomb or should we haven't dropped the atomic bomb. But when you write
this essay. I want you to keep in mind this idea of "All is fair in love and war."

Figure 7. Increasing regularities of language in Hiroshima “All’s fair in love and war”
activity. Nested sections indicate the addition of further similarities within continuing
patterns of discourse.

 

 

 

 

Figure 7 illustrates the regularities in language use that appeared over the course of the

discussion. The “if. . .then. . .” structure used in Franklin’s initial definition was imitated

128

by others, including Gloria, throughout the debate. The explicit naming of other speakers
in order to animate them into the conversation, first used by Tamara, was imitated by
Richard and Gloria. And the ironic naiveté of Tamara’s response to Franklin, as she
pretended to misunderstand his answer in order to disagree with it, resembled the ironic,
rhetorical questions used by subsequent participants to indirectly criticize previous
speakers’ alignments. Finally, Richard, Brian, Ebony, and Gloria repeated phrases and
sentence structures like “what’s the point. . .?” and “Why?” As charted in Figure 7, the
discourse of the discussion can be divided into sections which suggest a progression of
increasing regularities in language use, from general similarities in formulation at the
beginning to strong parallels in phrases and sentence structures towards the end of the
debate. These increasing regularities in language use suggest that, during the discussion,
participants not only disagreed in ways that related prior turns to subsequent ones through
double voicing, but also used the form of others’ words for their own purposes.

Above, I described the discursive features of the discussion among Tamara and
her 6th hour students, paying close attention to the way form, as well as content, was
repeated throughout the discussion. Increasing regularities suggest that participants not
only took up others’ perspectives in order to disagree with them, but also took up similar
forms of language during discussion. Next, I show how these features and the emergence
of the interactional frame are related—~that is, how disagreement shaped the discussion,
itself.

6.1.2.3 Narrative reframing: how alignment affected the discussion. As

suggested by the Chapter 4 examples, the double voicing of others’ perspectives in

129

 

Tamara’s 6th hour discussion exerted an influence on the current interactional event in
the classroom.

As in Dave’s class, the discussion included narrative discourse: the juxtaposing of
events in order to express alignment toward those events, and the repetition of the
“if. . .then. . .” structure to challenge and justify those alignments resulted in subsequent
temporal clauses and evaluations. Tamara’s phrase, “If it comes. . .gets to the point where
you need to drop an atomic bomb, then that’s fair” (6-7), was a simple example of this
narrative discourse. And as in Dave’s class, this narrative discourse described interactions
among historical figures with which the students were identified, elaborating another
interactional frame. In the example above in this paragraph, “you” referred to the generic
figure of the American bomber in the historical narrative frame for the bombing of
Hiroshima, a figure with which students subsequently identified. Perhaps because this
narrative framed students as figures, they were able to contribute and disagree from their
own perspectives.

As in Chapter 5, details added to this narrative frame exerted an influence on
subsequent details. For instance, Richard’s comment, “You see how Brian was saying
that we bombed a city? But when we bombed them, their military was underground. So
who else was there to bomb?” (26-28), demonstrates the influence of Brian’s earlier point
about the bombing of civilians (which was itself influenced by comparison between
Hiroshima and the bombing of Pearl Harbor). Details added to the narrative thus affected
the addition of subsequent details. And as in Dave’s class, those details therefore also
enabled and constrained subsequent turns in the conversation. Further, as Richard’s

above response to Brian illustrates, the addition of other details also reinterpreted

130

previous turns in the conversation, much like in Chapter 5, which also affected the
discussion. In this case, as already mentioned, the effect was to draw Brian back into the
discussion in order to defend his point. Finally, as in Chapter 5, the increasing regularity
in form, as well as content, of the language used to elaborate the narrative of the
bombing(s) suggests a level of coordination of the interaction among the speakers. In
short, the narrative frame and the interactional frame for the discussion overlapped.
However, the animation and double voicing of other speakers also resulted in
another framing of narrative discourse about those other speakers, themselves:
TAMARA: So Franklin said if you’re in a war you can go to any extent. If it
comes. . . gets to the point where you need to drOp an atomic bomb, then that’s

fair. If it gets to the point, similar to 9/11 here, where you take a plane and you
crash into the Trade Center and the Pentagon, then that’s also fair.

99°89

19. TAMARA: No reason to kill innocent people. Wait, but Kevin said they
deserved it!

26. RICHARD: You see how Brian was saying that we bombed a city? But when

27. we bombed them, their military was underground. So who else was there to
28. bomb?

In each of these examples, the speaker animated a class member, representing what that
person had just said during the discussion (as distinct from animation of that person’s
actions as historical/hypothetical figure). Each speaker also double voiced that person’s
words to align herself with or against that person’s perspective. Thus each speaker
generated temporal clauses and evaluations that formed narrative discourse about
classroom events which had just occurred. Because this narrative discourse also indexed
and evaluated class members’ actions, it influenced the interactional frame, much as in

previous examples. Indeed, in each of the above cases, the effect was to draw the person

131

back into the discussion. Figure 8 depicts the relationships among frames for the

historical narrative, the narrative of the classroom interaction, and the discussion:

 

Narrative of Classroom Interaction
(“So Franklin said. . .”)

 

   
 

 

  

 

 

 

I
Present 5
Interaction l
Narrative (9/11 attacks) 5
Interaction 5 Classroom Interaction
' (Discussion)

(“. . .if you’re in
a war you can
go to any extent”)

(Hiroshima)
Past
Interaction

 

 

 

 

 

r

 

 

 

 

Figure 8. Relationship among interactional frames: How narrative of historical/literary
events and narrative of classroom interaction contributed to framing discussion.

As Figure 8 suggests, the narrative frame for classroom events adds another layer to the
juxtaposition of past and present, and the juxtaposition of narrative and classroom
interactions that influenced the discussion, as illustrated in Chapter 5. In addition, Figure
8 and the above analysis call attention to the way the juxtaposition of these events,
toward which speakers sometimes had different alignments, may have contributed to the
refraining of classroom interaction. In short, juxtaposing counter-examples may have
framed events, and other speakers’ opinions of them, as well as those speakers,
themselves, in ways with which they did not agree, thus fostering further discussion.
Thus the juxtaposition of events described in Chapter 5 can be used to express
alignment—in this case, to disagree with a previous speaker through double voicing—in
ways that affect classroom discussion. Whereas in Tamara’s 4th hour class there was no

double voicing, and thus little relationship among turns in the conversation, in 6th hour,

132

 

students’ double-voiced disagreement contributed to the refi'aming of recitation as
discussion, resulted in increasing regularities in the form of language they used, and
generated narrative discourse about not only the historical/literary event, but also the
classroom interaction that influenced participation in the discussion, itself. I now consider
the ramifications of these findings in relation to previous research on dialogic discussion.
6.2 Discussion/Implications

In the preceding sections, I addressed the question of how disagreement affects
discussion. Specifically, how does classroom discourse bring different alignments toward
historical/literary events into relationship? How does the relationship among alignments
affect classroom interaction? The above excerpts from Tamara’s 4th and 6th hour 10th
grade English classes at Magnum Appan High School differed in important ways with
regard to how disagreement shaped discussion and how alignments toward events were
related. In the lesson excerpt from Tamara’s 4th hour, despite the fact that the discussion
began with an authentic, higher-order question, there was little connection among the
different opinions students shared other than their relationship to the initial prompt, a fact
also noted by the teacher. In contrast, an inauthentic, lower-order question sparked debate
in Tamara’s 6th hour class during which students animated and double voiced other
speakers, juxtaposing events related to the topic in order to indirectly criticize those other
speakers’ alignments toward the events. This double-voiced disagreement was
accompanied by increasing regularities in the content and form of subsequent discourse.
These increasing regularities in language use, as well as the way narrative details enabled
and constrained subsequent participation, suggest a relationship between narrative frames

and the current classroom interaction—that is, how speakers were framed in the narrative

133

of the bombing and in the narrative of the conversation affected their participation in
discussion. In the sections that follow, I address four points raised by my findings, as
well as a related issue that forms the basis of Chapter 7.

6.2.1 Disagreement without discussion. In Tamara’s 4th hour class, the sharing
of journal entries began with an authentic question (Nystrand et al., 1997, pp. 38-3 9) ,
allowing a variety of answers which the teacher, though she suspected students could I
personally relate to the situation, did not know in advance. Moreover, the question i
involved hi gher-order thinking (Applebee, 1981; Britton et al., 1975; Moffett, 1983;
Nystrand et al., 1997), calling for students to speculate about the possible decisions and
consequences7 in an imagined situation. According to prior research, such questions often
accompany dialogic discussion, or a “free exchange of information among students
and/or between at least two students and the teacher” (Nystrand et al., 1997, p. 36;
Nystrand et al., 2003). However, while the discourse that followed matches this
definition, it contained no attempts to engage with others’ opinions toward the
hypothetical event. In fact, it might be described as “a sequential expression of
opinion. . .which is subject to little or no commentary [and in which] ideas are rarely
debated...” (Nathan, 2005, p. 95). Indeed, in the ethnographic study from which this
quote is drawn, Nathan found that what passed for discussion in classrooms often
involved this harmonious sharing of conflicting opinions without really addressing
others’ perspectives. However, “Bakhtin teaches us that it is conflict, not harmony, which
fuels response” (Nystrand et al., 1997 , p. 18): this conflict is not a dialectical synthesis of

opposing viewpoints; rather, it refers to the way one can come to know one’s own

k

7 Speculation is highest on the 5-point scale developed by Nystrand et al. ( 1997) to measure the cognitive
order of questions in relation to discussion.

134

perspective better through disagreement with others (Bakhtin, 1981; Morson & Emerson,
1990, p. 49), and can even formulate a better argument (Leitao, 2000). Indeed, such a
transformation of understanding through encounter with other, conflicting interpretations
is one of the purposes and benefits of dialogic discussion (Almasi, 1995). Tamara’s
reactions after the 4th hour and 6th hour lessons hint at this relationship between
disagreement and a change in understanding during discussion. Researchers and teachers
alike may thus be interested in how disagreement (or the lack of it) relates to discussion
in which students engage with others’ conflicting viewpoints in order to formulate better
arguments.

The comments of a student during Tamara’s fourth hour class suggest one
difficulty in fostering disagreement as a means of encouraging discussion. Garrett, the
second to speak and the first to use “I” to identify with the doctor in the situation,
carefully qualified his statement as “my own personal belief” so as not to “push my ways
on other people.” Like Garrett, students and teachers may wish to avoid disagreement
because of its negative connotations. However, while disagreement can be negative, some
research has already described the relationship between “conflict talk” and “positive”
purposes (Grimshaw, 1990; D. Lee & Peck, 1995; Schiffrin, 1984), including
pedagogical ones (Corsaro in Grimshaw, 1990; Smitherman, 197 7, 2000). Indeed,
Tamara’s 6th hour class seemed to have learned that disagreement could be a valuable
tool for anticipating and responding to counter-arguments. Further research is needed into
how teachers and students learn to use disagreement for “positive” purposes in

discussion, such as “bringing that person’s thoughts and ideas in before they make the

135

 

next comment. . .” and “building on one another’s conversation” (Tamara, interview,
03/19/08) in order to anticipate counter-arguments.

In this first section, I have addressed the discourse during Tamara’s 4th hour
class, an example of disagreement without discussion. Despite beginning with an
authentic question, which often leads to dialogic discussion, there was little relationship
among the turns in conversation and the conflicting opinions shared, and thus less
potential for students to deepen their understandings or change their minds. The lack of
engagement with others’ perspectives may be due to the negative connotations of
argument. Further research is needed into how teachers and students can learn to
productively disagree.

6.2.2 Emergence of the interactional frame through double-voiced
disagreement. I now consider the findings from Tamara’s 6th hour class, in which
discussion was accompanied by disagreement that animated and double-voiced other
speakers, as students used the content and form of others’ words for their own purposes.
In contrast with the beginning of Tamara’s 4th hour, the 6th hour discussion began with
what appeared to be recitation: Tamara’s initial question to Franklin seemed to be
inauthentic, one to which she and students already knew the answer (Cazden, 1986;
Mehan, 1979; Nystrand et al., 1997; Sinclair & Coulthard, 1975). Moreover, it appeared
to require only lower-order order thinking (Nystrand et al., 1997, p. 40) or “the routine
application of previously learned knowledge” (Newmann, 1990, p. 44). Such questions
are not typically associated with discussion (Nystrand et al., 1997; Nystrand et al., 2003)
and have, in fact, been shown to constrain student participation in detrimental ways

(Applebee et al., 2003; Nystrand et al., 1997; Nystrand et al., 2003). Moreover, student

136

 

questions, which are typically authentic, and also an indicator of dialogic discussion

(N ystrand et al., 2003 ), in this case were mostly rhetorical questions (also ones to which
the asker already knows the answer). How, then, to explain subsequent participation in
the vigorous debate during Tamara’s 6th hour class?

Examining the nature of the questions, themselves, may not be enough to address
this issue. If questions are understood as proposing a frame for the interaction, then
inauthentic questions may propose a frame in which either the student or the teacher is a
“dupe” taken in by a “fabrication” (Goffman, 1986, p. 158) for not realizing that the other
already knows the answer. This may explain student resistance and derision with regard
to recitation (see Chapter 4): Such behavior is characteristic when individuals are cast in
or forced to play a social role with which they do not identify (p. 351-3 52). However,
“frame-breaking” of this kind did not appear in Tamara’s 6th hour discussion.

The nature of Tamara’s evaluative follow-ups to student responses to her
questions may provide another explanation. While much research has focused on how
questions relate to discussion, evaluation or the follow-up to a students’ response, is also
part of what defines the notorious I-R-E or I-R—F sequence often used to characterize
recitation (Cazden, 1986; Mehan, 1979; Mercer, 1995; Sinclair & Coulthard, 1975;
Wells, 1999). How the teacher Initiates or poses a question can shape the interaction,
signaling how the student should Respond, but how s/he Evaluates or Follows-up is also
important in proposing an interactional frame. In my analysis of Tamara’s evaluative
follow-up to Franklin, I identified three ways in which it proposed a refrarning of the

interaction that seemed to have been accepted by students. First, in using Franklin’s name

(instead of “you,” as she did in another evaluative follow-up), Tamara seemed to signal to

137

 

students that Franklin was no longer the principal addressee, inviting other students to
participate. This move, which was repeated by Tamara and by other speakers in the
discussion, has been identified by other research as one which can restructure a dispute
between two parties to include others as audience and potential participants (M.
Goodwin, 1990, p. 244), and may thus be a useful tactic in reframing recitation and/or
disagreement as discussion. It has also been described as part of revoicing, which can
encourage students to evaluate and theorize an interaction (O'Connor & Michaels, I993 ),
or to debate a common definition or principle (Wells, 1999, pp. ZOO-202), ideas relevant
in this case to the discussion of wartime fairness. Researchers and teachers may thus be
interested in how this evaluation strategy can potentially reframe the two-party
interaction of recitation as multi-party discussion of a controversial theory, definition, or
principle.

A second aspect of Tamara’s evaluative follow-up which I identified as proposed
and accepted by students into the reframed interaction was the animation of students as
figures in two juxtaposed events: the WWII bombing of Hiroshima and the terrorist
attacks of 9/1 1. As in Chapter 5, this juxtaposition of events may have allowed students
to contribute from their own perspectives on a more familiar event (the 9/11 attacks) as
first-person figures in a narrative interaction. I address this further in the section below on
alignment and narrative reframing.

A third aspect of Tamara’s evaluative follow-ups which contributed to reframing
recitation as discussion was her use of “ironic naiveté,” pretending to misunderstand what
they had said in order to indirectly criticize or parody the alignments expressed in their

answers. This aspect of her responses may have signaled to students that her initial

138

 

question was facetious, and that what might appear to be recitation was, in fact, an
opportunity for discussions. The ironic quality of T amara’s responses signaled that
Tamara was neither the “duper” nor the “duped” of a fabrication, but instead wanted
them to know that she was playing a role in order to encourage deeper thinking. A similar
irony is part of rhetorical questions, like the ones that students used during the debate,
which are usually understood by both the person who asks and the intended respondent as
not being real questions but rather posed for rhetorical effect. Thus both Tamara and
students may have used irony to propose and affirm a flame in which neither teacher nor
students were “outside” or “contained” within a “fabricated” recitation frame. The playful
(sometimes ironic) assumption of an opposing position in order to foster debate will be
familiar to researchers and teachers by the phrase Tamara, herself, used to describe it:
“playing devil’s advocate.” While this technique has long been a tool for promoting
discussion, researchers and teachers may wish to consider further how playing devil’s
advocate relates to reframing recitation as discussion through certain kinds of
disagreement.

The possibility of using evaluation or follow-up to previous responses to provoke
debate and thus reframe the IRE/[RF recitation sequence as discussion reminds us of the
emergent potential for prior utterances and interactions to be reinterpreted by subsequent
discourse (Heritage, 1984; Sawyer, 2003). Answers, or evaluations of answers, can
reinterpret teacher questions and reframe an interaction as recitation or as an opportunity
for discussion. But despite the emergent quality of the interaction in Tamara’s 6th hour
class, it still addressed the objectives in her initial lesson plan: In comparing the bombing

8 Goifman (1986) calls this “keying,” when “a given activity, one already meaningful in terms of some
Plintary framework, is transformed into something patterned on this activity but seen by the participants to
be something quite else” (p. 44).

139

of Hiroshima and the 9/1 I attacks, students disagreed over whether it was ethical to bomb
civilians, to retaliate, to respond on a larger scale than the previous attack, to make a
show of force in order to preempt further violence, and to act as both destroyer and
rebuilder of one’s opponent. Further, they addressed counter-arguments in preparation for
the position paper assignment that would follow. In fact, Tamara’s post-lesson comments
suggest that she was pleased with this discussion, which would not have been possible
without the double-voiced disagreement whereby students engaged with others’ ideas and
expressed deeper perspectives than they had initially. However, further research may be
necessary into whether and how teachers manage to fulfill lesson objectives because of
(or in spite of) the emergent reframing of recitation as debate.

Some readers may question the value of the emergent (re)framing of the
interaction given the nature of some students’ comments. During the course of the
discussion, Richard suggested that “if they bomb us and then we bomb them back, then
they can’t say nothin’ because it’s fair”; Kevin asserted that “they deserved it” because
“they shouldn’t have killed Americans for no reason”; and Gloria associated the terrorists
responsible for the 9/11 attacks with the U.S.’s opponents in the Iraq war. In each case,
the student’s position may seem intolerant or simply ignorant, calling for a more direct
teacher intervention to “set the record straight.” Similarly, Winter (2010) reported in
FoxNews.corn that frustrations at the “amount of misinformation” with which “the
general public is being overwhelme ” led Sen. Bruce Patterson to propose a bill to

register reporters so that the general public will know they can “rely on the source.” Such
regulation of the media could be dangerous if politicized. Likewise, for Tamara to

challenge a student’s position directly might have made that student less likely to

I40

participate in discussion, and thus less likely to bring his/her perspective into relationship
with others in ways that might change minds. Instead, the interactional frame as it
emerged seemed to invite commentary from other viewpoints, to encourage identification
with figures associated with the events, and to require the consideration of counter—
arguments as students took up what others had already said in order to disagree with
them. All these are strategies applicable beyond this particular debate. The emergent
frame for this interaction, though it allowed the sharing of some potentially shocking and
misinformed perspectives thus seems in keeping with participation in a democratic
“‘culture of argument’. .. of listening and speaking to similar and different others,
publicly, about ideas, conflicts, and public policy” (Parker, 2006, p. 12). However,
further research may be necessary into how the criticality required by such a culture is
enabled or constrained by certain kinds of teacher follow-ups.

Above, I have contrasted Tamara’s 4th hour class, where an authentic, higher-
order question did not accompany discussion, with her 6th hour class, where an
inauthentic, lower—order question preceded vigorous debate. This may have been possible
because of the nature of Tamara’s evaluative follow-ups to student responses, which
reframed dyadic dispute as discussion of a controversial definition, and which used irony
to reframe recitation as debate. Despite the emergent quality of this interaction, it still
fulfilled the teacher’s lesson plan objectives. Though this means of fulfilling those
objectives allowed the sharing of some controversial perspectives, it seems in keeping
with discussion as a democratic practice. Next, I consider how Tamara’s sixth hour

students used the form, as well as the content, of others’ words for their own purposes to

disagree in ways that promoted discussion.

141

6.2.3 Discursive features and the language of debate. Over the course of the
discussion in Tamara’s 6th hour class, increasing regularities in the uses of language
appeared: Speakers repeated the “if. . .then. . .” structure proposed by Franklin’s initial
definition of the maxim to juxtapose counter-examples, repeated the explicit naming of
other speakers proposed by Tamara’s responses to animate them back into the debate, and
repeated the use of ironic reformulations and rhetorical questions to indirectly criticize
others’ alignments. Goodwin (1990) has called such parallelisms in conflict talk “format
tying” and has identified them as related to promoting and sustaining debate (p. 177-185).
Teachers and researchers may thus wish to consider the affordances of expanding the
definition of uptake (Collins, 1982; Nystrand et al., 1997) to include structural features of
discourse, like format tying, that contribute to promoting and sustaining dialogic
discussion.

Further, the increasing regularities of language use during the debate suggest
coordination among participants of the interactional frame. Without explicit direction,
speakers adopted similar phrases, sentence structure, and uses of irony. This finding is in
keeping with prior research on “conflict talk” which suggests that even disagreement
cannot occur without some degree of intersubj ectivity, or coordination of the interactional
frame; in fact, a true “argument” in the most negative sense, according to those prior
studies, is one in which participants talk past each other without engaging at all with
others’ perspectives (Sawyer, 2001a, p. 191; Tannen, 1998). This description resembles
the talk in Tamara’s 4th hour. In contrast, the regularities of language use in Tamara’s 6th

hour discussion may be further evidence of the collaborative emergence of the

142

interactional flame through disagreement. In short, coordinated use of language among
participants as they disagree may be associated with discussion.

The regularities that appeared during the course of the debate, such as
“if. . .then. . .” propositions, citation of other speakers, juxtaposition of counter-examples,
and ironic, rhetorical questions, are all patterns of language use that one might associate
with academic, persuasive discourse of the kind often required by writing tasks in English
classrooms. Previous research has already addressed how experience with certain kinds
of literary language, such as irony, can make it easier for students to interpret, and
articulate interpretations about, literary texts (C. Lee, 2006a; Rabinowitz, 1987; M.
Smith, 1991). Prior studies have also explored how to help students participate in
disciplinary discourses, especially those students for whom academic discourse may be
less familiar, or less welcoming (Gutierrez, Baquedano-Lopez, Alvarez, & Chiu, 1999; C.
Lee, 2006a; Morrell, 2008). In Tamara’s class, the relationship between double-voiced
disagreement during discussion and the increasing use of academic, persuasive literary
discourse may be of interest to researchers and teachers similarly interested in fostering
students’ participation in disciplinary discourses through certain kinds of discussion and
debate.

In this section, I have addressed the increasing regularities of certain uses of
language during the course of the discussion in Tamara’s 6th hour class. These
regularities may be part of parallelisms which promote and sustain debate and discussion.
They may also suggest ways in which certain kinds of disagreement and discussion can

foster students’ participation in disciplinary discourses. In the next section, I consider

143

 

how these regularities in language use might further relate to alignment and the reframing
of classroom interaction.

6.2.4 Narrative reframing: how alignment affects discussion. In this section, I
consider the relationship between the narrative flames elaborated by Tamara and her
students and the interactional flame of the discussion itself. During the debate in
Tamara’s 6th hour, the juxtaposition of events and the expression of alignments toward
those events generated temporal clauses and evaluations—narrative discourse (Labov,
1972). Narrative discourse about the bombing of Hiroshima and the 9/11 attacks
elaborated another interactional flame beside the one emerging in the classroom
interaction. As in Chapter 5, details contributed to this narrative enabled and constrained
subsequent details (for instance, Richard’s comment, “You see how Brian was saying that
we bombed a city? But when we bombed them, their military was underground...”
demonstrates the influence of Brian’s earlier point about the bombing of civilians) and
thus the narrative interaction exerted an influence on turns in the interaction of the
discussion. As noted in Chapter 5, this finding is in keeping with previous research on the
relationship between the narrated event and the storytelling event (Bauman, 1986;
Jakobson, 1971; Wortham, 1994, 2001, 2006), or in this case, between the narrative
flame and the interactional frame for discussion. That is, what teacher and students talk
about during discussion may also shape how they talk about it.

As in Dave’s class, the discussion in Tamara’s 6th hour class animated students
as figures in the narrative, further contributing to the overlap of narrative and classroom
interactional frames. However, whereas Dave’s students were animated rather

innocuously as “inhabitants of Talbott/Belgium,” during the debate in Tamara’s class,

144

 

students were identified with WWII American forces responsible for the bombing of
Hiroshima, and also at times with contemporary American forces in Iraq and even
terrorists responsible for attacking the World Trade Center. In Chapter 5, I addressed how
the juxtaposition of past and contemporary events made the past more present and
personal for students (Bernstein, 1994; Morson, 1994; Ochs & Capps, 2001), giving them
authority as first-person figures that carried over to the classroom interaction, allowing
them to participate and disagree during discussion. But I also noted that students may
experience it as uncomfortable to be animated as figures in upsetting historical events

like the Holocaust (Ochs & Capps, 2001; Schweber, 2004). Here, Tamara seemed to be
using that discomfort strategically to challenge students’ assumptions, or what she
described in her commentary as their “narrow flame that, ‘Yeah, it‘s fair for us to do this

3”

when it's in Japan, or when it's not on American territory (Tamara, interview,
01/22/08). Tarnara’s use of the word flame here suggests that the flaming of an
interaction, including one’s alignment toward it, is also informed by its relationship to
other interactions; thus, the bombing of Hiroshima, and its fairness, should be understood
in relation to other bombings of civilian cities, like the 9/11 attacks, during times of war.
Clearly, such a comparison between potentially similar interactions may also create a
dissonance in participants’ conception of a particular interactional flame and their
alignments toward it, and that dissonance may provoke clarificatory action. That is, the
juxtaposition of similar events—Hiroshima and 9/11—toward which Franklin seemingly
had different alignments—one was fair, the other unfair—created conflicting conceptions

of the narrative flame that caused Franklin to re-enter the conversation in an attempt to

clarify his position. This response is akin to the “flame-breaking” behavior which

145

participants often have when they are cast in or forced to play a social role with which
they do not identify (Gofflnan, 1986, pp. 351—3 52). In Chapter 4, such flame-breaking
behavior was associated with resistance to recitation. In Tamara’s class, as in Chapter 5,
disagreement about the flaming of the event precipitated discussion.

In addition, narrative discourse generated by Tamara and her students elaborated
another interactional flame besides the one for the bombing of Hiroshima/ September

11th that influenced the interactional flame of the discussion, itself. When speakers

 

referred to what had just been said during the discussion, using phrases like “So Franklin
said. . .,” “So you’re saying. . .,” “You see how Brian said. . .,” and “Like what she said. . .,”
they animated those speakers as figures in a narrative about the current classroom
interaction. These animations also parodied or indirectly criticized those speakers
through double voicing. Because of this double-voiced disagreement, the narrative flame
elaborated about the conversation, and the speaker’s participation in it, may have clashed
with his/her conception of that narrative flame, thus causing him/her to re-enter the
conversation in order to clarify. That is, Tamara’s narrative of what Franklin had just said
flamed his participation in a way with which he did not agree, influencing his subsequent
participation in discussion.

In this section, I have addressed the way narrative discourse generated by Tamara
and her students elaborated two other interactional flames which overlapped with and

affected the flame for the classroom discussion. Students’ first-person participation in a

 

narrative flame related to the bombing of Hiroshima may have lent them authority that
carried over to the flame for the discussion interaction, allowing them to participate and

disagree. The clash between the way students like Franklin were flamed in that narrative

146

and their conceptions of the narrative flame may have provoked further discussion. In
addition, narrative discourse about what had just been said during the discussion may also
have flamed participants in ways that provoked further discussion.

6.2.5 Other issues: Sequence of activities and recurring genres. In the
preceding sections, 1 addressed four points flom my findings: how disagreement can exist
without dialogic relationship among turns, how double-voiced disagreement can reflame
recitation as dialogic discussion, how disagreement can encourage increasing use of the
language of debate, and how disagreement about the flaming of events or speakers can
provoke discussion. The examples in this chapter raise one final issue to which I now
turn; this issue forms the basis of Chapter 7.

Another possible explanation for the discrepancy between the examples flom
Tamara’s 4th and 6th hour classes concerns the sequence of activities and the
participants’ previous experiences with certain patterns of discourse. It might be that the .
nature of the 4th hour activity, which followed the writing of a journal entry about
“pulling the plug,” involved simply reporting on what students had already thought as
they wrote, more in keeping with the discourse of recitation; in contrast, the 6th hour
activity, which preceded the writing of a position paper addressing counter-arguments,
may have encouraged higher-order thinking characteristic of dialogic discussion
(Applebee, 1981; Britton et al., 1975; Moffett, 1983; Nystrand et al., 1997). In short, the
sequence of activities in a lesson—both what precedes and what follows a discussion—
may also shape that discussion. The idea that activity sequence can influence discussion

extends the notion that all utterances have dialogic potential (Bakhtin, 1986a, p. 72) and

that the frame emerges through interaction (Sawyer, 2001 a, 2002, 2003) to include

147

 

consideration of prior and subsequent interactions on the emergence of the flame. I
address the influence of activity sequence on discussion further in Chapter 7.

As Tamara’s comments about the journal entry activity point out, another
explanation for the discrepancy between the two classes might be that she and her 4th
hour class had had less experience than her 6th hour class with discussions in which
speakers “bring [another] person‘s thoughts and ideas in before they make the next
comment... [and] build on one another's conversation” (Tamara, interview, 03/19/08).
This explanation suggests that repeated experience with the emergence of the
interactional flame over the course of similar interactions may contribute to the formation
of patterns of communication in a classroom community. By “developing concrete
examples” (Morson & Emerson, 1990, p. 282) certain kinds and uses of language are
made available (Medvedev and Bakhtin 1978, 134) to teacher and students. That is,
teachers and students’ experiences with recurring patterns of discourse during discussions
can shape their interactions during subsequent discussions. The formation of these
“pedagogical genres” may be important to identifying which discursive practices recur in
English Language Arts classrooms and how teachers might intervene. I explore this idea
of recurring genres further in chapter 7, as well.

6.3 Chapter 6 Summary
1. Even activities which contain authentic, higher-order questions, which juxtapose
historical/literary events with events relevant to students’ experiences, and which
provoke conflicting perspectives, may produce no more than a sequential .
expression of opinions which exhibits little dialogic relationship among turns in

conversation. This may be due to the negative connotations of disagreement;

148

 

further research is needed into how teachers and students learn to use
disagreement for positive purposes, like discussion which deepens or transforms
students’ viewpoints.

Previous research on dialogic discussion has focused on the nature of questions
initiated by teacher or students, and how such questions flame an activity as
recitation or discussion; however, evaluative follow-ups to student responses may
also be means by which what appears to be recitation can be emergently reflamed
as discussion. In particular, evaluative follow-ups which invite others to disagree
and which double voice students’ contributions may provoke further discussion.
Recitation flames interaction as a “fabrication” in which either students or teacher
are “duped” or “contained by not knowing that the other already knows the
answers; ironic responses such as “playing devil’s advocate,” may be one way to
reflame the asking of known-answer questions as an opportunity for discussion.
While previous research has focused on the “uptake” of content, the use of
previous speakers’ phrases and sentence structures may also contribute to
promoting and sustaining discussions characterized by disagreement.

If true “argument,” in the negative sense, is characterized by disagreement in
which turns in conversation have little relation to each other in terms of content or
form, increasing regularities of language use during debate may suggest a
productive coordination of the interactional flame associated with discussion.
Prior literacy and English education research explores how to help students

participate in disciplinary discourse; the increasing use of academic language

149

 

(e.g., citation of other speakers, juxtaposition of counter-examples) during the
debate suggests double-voiced disagreement may be one way to address this goal.
Previous studies describe the influence of the narrated event on the interaction of
its telling: what teacher and students talk about during discussion contributes to
the flame for how they talk about it. The present study specifies that narrative
which flames events or present speakers in ways with which others disagree also
provokes further participation.

Prior research has established the influence of prior and subsequent turns in
conversation on a single turn; previous work also suggest that the interactional
flame can emerge during conversation. The present study adds the idea that prior
and subsequent activities, as well as teachers’ and students’ experiences with

recurring patterns of classroom discourse, may shape discussion (see Chapter 7).

150

 

7. Discussions-Past, Present, and Future: Emergence of a Pedagogical Genre

Prior English and Social Studies education research on recitations and discussions
has sought to characterize the discourse of these types of interactions, and how that
discourse affects teaching and learning. For instance, attention to the kinds of questions
posed during recitations and discussions has led to the identification of the “monologic”
I-R-E exchange cycle in recitations and has associated authentic questions with
“dialogic” discussions: According to previous studies, in I-R-E, student participation is
constrained to answering recall questions or elaborating a single interpretation (usually
the teacher’s), while authentic questions encourage exchange among multiple speakers
and allow multiple possible responses. Both I-R-E and authentic questions have been
called “genres” (Nystrand et al., 2003; Rockwell, 2000; Wells, 1999, l993)——recurring
patterns of discourse which shape the roles, relationships, and responses available to
teachers and students. These “genres” have often been treated as stable and separable
flom the surrounding discourse, rather than flexible and related to prior and subsequent
interactions. What other genres of discussions might emerge flom the repeated reflaming
of interactions among teacher and students? How are those genres related to prior and
subsequent activities during a lesson? How are they related to other, similar interactions
occurring in the same classroom community?

I have raised similar questions in relation to examples flom chapters 5 and 6. In
chapter 5, I noted that, despite the recitation-style review of textbook answers about
WWI in Dave Weber’s 9th grade Social Studies class at Talbott, students seemed willing
to express their confirsion, and Dave to address it with further explanations and

discussion. Dave’s response may have been due to his assessment of student’s

151

 

understanding during the preceding warm-up activity, or to his sense of what students
needed to know to complete the subsequent homework assignment. Students’ responses
may have been conditioned by previous experience with similar activities in Dave’s class,
during which review of chapter questions was often also an opportunity for discussion.
Similarly, I described in chapter 6 the discrepancy between discourse in Tamara’s
Jefferson’s 4th hour class at Magnum Appan High School, and her 6th hour’s discussion
of Hiroshima. One possible explanation for this discrepancy concerned the nature of the
prior and subsequent activities: In Tarnara’s 4th hour, the lack of relationships among the
turns in classroom discourse may have been conditioned by the fact that students were
reporting what they had already written individually in their journals; by contrast, 6th
hour’s repeated use of each other’s words in debate preceded the writing of a position
paper that required them to anticipate and address counter-arguments. Moreover, Tamara
noted that her 6th hour students had more experience than her 4th hour with discussions
in which speakers “bring [another] person's thoughts and ideas in before they make the
next comment... [and] build on one another's conversation” (Tamara, interview,
03/19/08). These examples flom chapters 5 and 6 thus suggest that the sequence of
activities, as well as the (re)flaming of other, similar interactions may shape the
interactional flame for discussions.

In order to address these questions about how recurring patterns of classroom
discourse may be related to prior and subsequent activities, and to the flaming of other,
similar interactions, I now return to Dave Weber’s 9th grade Social Studies classroom at
Talbott High School, comparing the example I introduced in chapter 5 to other examples

flom within and across lessons.

152

7.1 Hypothetical Narrative Discussions: Emergence of a Pedagogical Genre

In Chapter 5, I first described the emergence of the interactional flame during an
activity in Dave’s class. Then, I described the features of the resulting discourse. In
Figure 4, I charted those features, as well as the progression suggested by changes in verb
tense and noun/pronoun use. Below, I briefly review the details of that interaction,
including that chart again as Figure 9, along with a summary of its contents, for the
purposes of subsequent comparison.

7.1.1 Chapter 5 revisited: An invading army marches through Talbott.
During a lesson on October 15, Dave planned to address local Social Studies Benchmarks
2.5: All students will describe and explain the causes, consequences, and geographic
context of major global issues and events; andl .3: All students will reconstruct the past
by comparing interpretations written by others from a variety of perspectives and
creating narratives fiom evidence. To address these standards, Dave’s plan called for
students to examine a political cartoon associated with the beginning of WW1 and then to
review and to complete a chart as a class on a chapter which they had read for homework.
Then Dave would introduce the idea of trench warfare and read students an excerpt from
All Quiet on the Western Front before assigning them to write a “Letter Home flom the
Trenches” as homework (Dave, lesson plan, 10/15/07). During what began as a review of
questions flom the textbook chapter (e. g., “What was the Schlieffen plan?”), students
provided answers they had found for homework (e.g., “It called for holding action against
Russia”), but also expressed some confusion. Dave attempted to explain by drawing a
map on the board, but students did not seem to understand the relationships among the

countries involved. One student, Shirin, asked a question about the invading German

153

army’s impact as they marched through France on their way to Belgium; in response,
Dave proposed a hypothetical “what if. . .?” scenario in which an army invaded the
students’ hometown of Talbott (Dave, lesson transcript, 10/15/07). What began as
recitation thus emerged as discussion as Dave and his students elaborated a narrative that
paralleled the historical event with multiple, conflicting details about the army’s impact
on the town and its people.

Attention to changes in verb tense and pronoun use suggested the following
patterns in the discourse that resulted flom this emergent interaction: A prologue using
present tense and “they” (to animate the characters in the historical event) prompted the
proposition of a fantastical “What if. . .?” scenario using the conditional mood.
Specifically, it used the irrealis conditional, sequencing events that were unrealized and
unlikely to happen. Because it sequenced and evaluated events, the interaction included
narrative discourse. The narrative referred through double voicing to both the historical
and the hypothetical, juxtaposing past event and present context. At the beginning of the
narrative, speakers used the conditional “would” and “we” or “our” to animate
themselves as characters in relation to the action. As the narrative progressed, the present
tense also appeared, and speakers’ animations used “you” and “I.” The narrative ended
with a return to past tense and “they.” Patterns resulting flom shifts in verb tense and
pronoun use during this emergent interaction are thus represented in Figure 9 (verbs are
underlined and nouns and pronouns appear in bold). As Figure 9 suggests, corresponding
shifts in verb tense and noun/pronoun use can be used to divide the narrative into sections
which, when taken together, seem to suggest a general progression flom past event to

present tense and flom “they” to “you”/“l.” These regularities of verb tense and subject

154

position also suggest a coordination of the telling of the narrative among speakers——-that
is, that the relationships of the speakers to the narrative events affected the nature of the
interaction of the discussion, itself.

While this coordination of language use illustrated the emergence of the
interactional flame (see chapter 5), it did not signal consensus: The appearance of
conflicting but related details supplied by tellers of the narrative suggested that speakers
were envisioning a shared event flom multiple, interpretive perspectives, rather than co-
constructing a single, authoritative account. Moreover, this disagreement about the
army’s impact—or in light of my analysis in Chapter 6, these conflicting alignments—
seemed to shape subsequent responses in the discussion as well, provoking further
discussion as speakers defended their perspectives on the event. I have labeled these

moments of conflicting alignments in Figure 9, as well:

155

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DAVE: Well. i don't ”know ihey mneceaeanly trying to gain military strength though grabbing .
peeple as they went. But gym another country's army marching through [the modemt'own of]
Talbott What impactw wow that have on Talbott if tens of thousands of soldiers. .it’gbe kind of ,
weird? .

PENNY: Urn people would maybe follow them? To see where they're going?

AMY: Maybe freakour?

DAVE: What kind of unpact M it have on the roads?
PENNY: A lot!

DAVE: On traffic?

STUDENT: Well, they'_c_l break them.

STUDENT: Theyfid screw everything up.

DAVE: I Woven imagine how bad Glen Road would be.
STUDENTS: (laughter)

STUDENT: Oh my god!

AMY: We'd have to like walk everywhere.

STUDENT: I don't even know what-

DAVE: They’d have to eat something. right?

LAURA: Yeah, they'g take all our food!

DAVE: They’d take all om food. They’d take a lot of our stuff... . And here they age just marching
through, and say they were trying to get to [the neighboring town of] Burch: flgmd it be our fault that

we were in between?

 

Conditional/
pment tense
and
“You”/”I”

Con flitting

Alignments

GARY. Yeah. I would--
BECCA~ No. because we just lamp to be there

DAVE. And what impact wgulg] it have on all of us if these people were violent? ngld you want to
stay here?

STUDENTS. N01

TOM: [d light them.

 

"l DAVE: liwould say there 19.8 hotnegative impact ofthat.
1. AMY: Butaomepositive: theymsafe

’ VDAVE. You don't necessarily brow these P°°P1e militia“! You, 118“? _ . \e,

 

 

DAVE: So it “moortmvery profomd impacted the people of Belgium. .Thatwill later
factorirtothewar

BECCA: Wait, so what an the impact? Neptive?

SHIRIN: No. not really.

 

am. ringwurdbmike m... ~ ._ ‘ g

 

Talbott/Belgium

Frgure 9. Discursive patterns in discussion of hypothetical/historical 1nvasion of

Having recapitulated my charting of one lesson activity in Dave’s classroom, I

now turn to analysis of a second example which occurred later in the same October 15

156

lesson. Below, I describe the features of the resulting discourse in order to compare them
to the first example.

7.1.2 Trench warfare on the football field: Digging deeper into a pedagogical
genre. During the same lesson, Dave had planned to “begin talking about trench warfare.
That it was a new style, some of the conditions in the trenches. Begin passing out the
document packets, which include an excerpt from another textbook, an excerpt from _A__l_l
Qgiet on the Western Front, and their assignment [ to write a ‘Letter Home from the
Trenches 7” (Dave, lesson plan, 10/15/07). As in the scenario in which an army marched
through Talbott, discussion of a hypothetical “what if. . .?” scenario began with a

recitation-style question about the actual historical eventgz

(Dave, lesson transcript, lO/15/07)

64. DAVE: So when they are--they have the Schlieffen plan, they start setting up
65. these wars, battles. And they decide on. . .on a different type of battle. What's

66. that type?

67. TOM: Trench warfare.

68. DAVE: Trench warfare. So this is--what if all of a sudden we decided we
69. were going to take it out to the football field and we were going to get into a

70. battle with Mr. Abbott’s fourth hour?

Dave’s initial question asked students to recall information about trench warfare they had
already read in the textbook. His “what’s that type?” (65) was a seemingly inauthentic,
lower-order question that produced a two—word response from Tom. Although Dave’s
initial comment and question indexed an actual historical event, he used the present tense,

much as Shirin had, in chapter 5, to pose her question about the peeple of Belgium. Here,

9 Because this portion of the lesson immediately follows the excerpt in chapter 5, I have numbered lines as

part of the same transcript.

157

Dave also animated the armies engaged in the historical event as “they” and described
their actions in vague terms like “setting up these wars” (64-65).

All that changed in his next turn: As in the chapter 5 example, Dave’s initial
recitation-style question was followed by one which proposed a “what if...?” scenario that
asked students to imagine themselves into a hypothetical situation based on historical
events. With this question, Dave animations moved fiom present tense to the conditional
mood, shifted from “they” to “we” and “Mr. Abbott’s fourth hour,” and proposed a
concrete, contemporary setting for the fantastical comparison scenario, as he had in
attempting to make the German invasion of Belgium more relevant to students’
experiences. Because Dave’s “what if. . .?” invoked the conditional mood, calling for a
complementary “then...” and inviting reactions about “what it would be like,” his
question also elicited subsequent temporal clauses and evaluations—in short, narrative
discourse—about the hypothetical situation, just as it had in the chapter 5 example.

In the ensuing narrative, he and students imagined what it would be like
hypothetically if they dug a hole in the field and fenced it for protection in order to
continue the battle against the rival class.

78. DAVE: What would it be like when we’re in there?

79. ERICA: Wouldn't they like see, if they're running, wouldn't they like see
80. that there's a hole?

81. DAVE: OK, they would see the hole, but how would they get over to us?

82. ERICA: Um run.

83. CHELSEA: Run and climb.
84. LAURA: Jump.

85. TOM: Dig.

158

86. DAVE: Would there be any——

87. AMY: Couldn't we just shoot them before they got over anyways?
88. STUDENTS: (laughter)

89. AMY: I'm dead serious.

90. DAVE: No, Amy, you are dead serious, go ahead and say it again.

91. STUDENTS: (laughter)

92. AMY: They probably wouldn't be able to get over anyways because if
93. we're just like sitting there we could probably just like shoot them before

94. they could get over a fence.

95. TOM: What if they had guns, too?

Much as they had in the first narrative, Dave and students continued to use the “would”
and “could” of the conditional mood (78-81, 86-87, 92-94). More specifically, that
conditional was irrealis because it described trench warfare with a rival class on the
football field——events that were unrealized and unlikely to happen, as in the previous
narrative of the imagined army’s hypothetical invasion of Talbott. As before, Dave and
his students referred to themselves as “we” in the hypothetical events they described,
thereby identifying with the WWI American soldiers which that hypothetical narrative
indexed. And as before, the details they contributed also suggested different alignments
toward the interaction described in the narrative: Erica wondered why their opponents
wouldn’t simply attack them in the trench, Amy doubted such an attack would survive
their defenses, and Tom pointed out that attackers would have their own advantages.
As the narrative went on, however, Dave and his students made another shift in

verb tense and pronoun use similar to that made during the discussion of the hypothetical

invasion of Talbott:

159

106. DAVE: It would be tough to hide. So let's think about it: what would it
107. be like if we're in the trenches? How would it feel?

108. TOM: Boring.

109. DAVE: Boring.

llO. BECCA: I would feel claustrophobic. Because they're like right on top
111. of you.

112. DAVE: Alright.

1 l3. PENNY: Yeah but they're——

l 14. AMY: But you'd kind of feel powerful.

115. PENNY: --because they couldn't get to you.

116. AMY: Yeah, I'd feel safe.

1 l7. DAVE: OK, you would kind of feel safe, sometimes.

1 18. BECCA: Hiding in a hole?
As in that previous discussion of hypothetical events based on historical ones, Dave and
students began to move from the “would” and “could” of the z'rrealis conditional mood
(106-107) to present tense “are”(l 10-113), and shifted from “we” (107) to using “you”
and “I” (1 1 1-1 16) to identify themselves as subjects in the narrative. And as in that
previous example, speakers contributed conflicting details that suggested different
alignments toward the event: here students disagreed about whether life in the trench
would be “boring” (108), “claustrophic” (1 10, 118), “powerful” (1 14), or “safe” (116).
Towards the end of the narrative, the shift in perspective was more apparent:

138. LAURA: What if you have to go to the bathroom?

I39. DAVE: Oh, there's a good question--Laura, say it again?

140. LAURA: What if you have to go to the bathroom?

160

141. DAVE: What if you have to go to the bathroom. Well, (h)you're more
142. than welcome to try to walk out toward the fifty yard line but(h)... I don't
143. know how that's going to help you. Maybe we forgot to dig a flushy

144. toilet.
145. STUDENTS: (laughter)

146. DANIELLA: What about food?

147. DAVE: What about food? Say we did have food. But you're hungry. It
148. smells.

149. TOM: You're tired.

150. DAVE: You're tired.

151. PENNY: You gotta go.

152. STUDENTS: (laughter)
During this sequence, Dave and students had clearly adopted the present tense and the
use of personal pronouns, especially the “you” that appeared repeatedly in students’

comments. They had made a similar move with regard to tense and pronoun use in the

first narrative about the imagined invasion of Talbott.

Finally, Dave made a move to close the narrative and transition to another
activity. This transition, like the initial move from the actual, historical event to the

imaginary, hypothetical one, was also marked by a shift in verb tense and pronoun use,

much as in the chapter 5 example.
202. MATT: You’re probably going to run out of ammo.

203. DAVE: No, they did have supplies, and they did have ammo. But, I

204. mean, food and bullets, it takes a whole lot more than that to live

205. comfortably. At least for me. So this was not probably the best place to
206. be... And we were going to go ahead and review a little bit of the battles
207. that we went over. But we are running a little a little long because we had

208. such a good discussion of trench warfare.

161

Here, Dave used the past tense to refer to the situation of the soldiers entrenched in No
Man’s Land. And he once again referred to them as “they.” And though his response to
Matt’s comment about supplies of ammunition seemed to discourage firrther discussion,
he also affirmed with his “at least for me” the interpretive quality of the contributions he
and students had made to the narrative during discussion.

In summary, attention to changes in verb tense and pronoun use suggests the
following patterns in these two interactions from the same lesson in Dave Weber’s 9th
grade Talbott Social Studies class: A prologue using present tense and “they” (referring

to the characters in the historical event) prompted the teacher to propose a fantastical

“What if. . .?” scenario using the irrealis conditional mood. That scenario sequenced
unrealized, unlikely events in a narrative that simultaneously indexed a historical, past
event and a hypothetical, present event. In that hypothetical narrative, speakers initially
used conditional “would” and pronouns like “we” or “our” to position themselves in
relation to the action. As the narrative progressed, the present tense also appeared, and
speakers used “you” and “I.” The narrative ended with a return to past tense and “they.”
Patterns resulting from shifts in verb tense and pronoun use during these two hypothetical

narrative discussions are thus represented in the figure below (verbs are underlined and

nouns and pronouns appear in bold) for the sake of comparison:

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164

As Figure 10 suggests, shifts in verb tense and pronoun use followed a similar
progression from past to present tense and from “they” to “you”/“I” in both hypothetical
narrative discussions. Similarly, both examples contained conflicting but related details
that suggested different alignments toward the historical/hypothetical events: in the first
example, students imagined that the army’s presence would inspire people to “follow
them” and “freak out,” to flee and to “fight them,” and to feel threatened and “safe”; over
the course of the second example, life in the trenches was described as "claustrophobic,"
"powerful," "safe," "cold," "hot," "with all your friends," "hungry," "tired," "trying to
fight," "going to get sick," and "waiting." As already addressed in chapter 5, the shifts in
verb tense and pronoun use imply that, through the juxtaposition of historical and
hypothetical event, the past may have become more present and personal for the
participants. Moreover, their first-person participation in the hypothetical narratives may
be related to their disagreement about the nature of the narrated event, as they imagined it
from multiple, “insider” perspectives rather than elaborating an authoritative account
fi'om a single, “objective” point of view. Further, this disagreement seemed to exert an
influence on subsequent turns in the discussion as speakers responded to different
perspectives on the imagined events with contradictory phrases like “wouldn’t they...”
and “yeah but...” (79-81, 87-95, 113-115). In both examples, the juxtaposition of events
and of conflicting alignments thus seemed to promote further discussion.

7.1.3 Trench warfare on the football field: Relationship to other interactions.
What might account for the recurring features of these two hypothetical narrative-
discussions? The similarities between the trench warfare discussion and the hypothetical

narrative that preceded it might seem to suggest that the emergent reframing of the pnor

165

activity influenced the subsequent one. Moreover, unlike that prior example, in which
students’ confusion about the Schlieffen plan prompted Dave first to attempt a map
explanation and then to propose an imagination exercise, here, Dave’s recitation-style
question and Tom’s response were followed immediately by a “what if. . .?” question, as
if primed by the success of the first hypothetical narrative discussion.

However, the similarities between these two hypothetical narrative discussions
might also have been influenced by the “Letter Home from the Trenches” Dave had
planned to assign students for homework. In this assignment, students were to “write a
letter home to a parent, spouse, sibling, etc.” in which they would “create a detailed
picture for the reader [of] what it is actually like in the trenches” (Dave, lesson handout,
10/15/07). The assignment thus called for students to identify with a WWI soldier, much
as they had in imagining themselves into the hypothetical scenario based on the historical
events. Further, in preparation for that assignment, Dave read students a passage from the
novel, All Quiet on the Western Front:

One lands behind us. Some recruits jump up terrified. A couple of minutes later

another comes over, nearer this time . . . Then it begins in earnest. We crawl

away as well as we can in our haste. The next lands fair amongst us. Two
fellows cry out. Green rockets shoot up on the sky-line. Barrage. The mud flies
high, fragments whiz past. The crack of the guns is heard long after the roar of
the explosions . . . It’s got someone pretty badly. Cries are heard between the
explosions. At last it grows quiet. The fire has lifted over us and is now dropping
on the reserves. We risk a look. Red rockets shoot up to the sky. Apparently

there is an attack coming. Where we are is still quiet. I sit up and shake the

166

recruit by the shoulder. ‘All over, kid! It’s all right this time.’ He looks around

him dazedly. ‘You’ll get used to it soon,’ I tell him (Remarque, 1929, pp. 60-62).
This passage from the novel, like the hypothetical narrative discussion of trench warfare
with a rival class on the football field, contained vivid, first-hand descriptions from the
perspective of soldiers in the trenches, and moved between “we/us” and “I/you.” Based
on this comparison, the hypothetical narrative discussions may have also been
conditioned by anticipation of the subsequent lesson activities.

In a post-lesson reflection, Dave wrote that both hypothetical narrative
discussions were “unexpected” and “caused us to miss some parts of the lesson as it was
planned”; despite this, Dave saw these discussions as “much richer than. . .in previous
hours” and “a victory with this group of students” (Dave, lesson reflection, 10/15/07).
Indeed, both hypothetical narrative discussions fulfilled his lesson objective, and Social
Studies Standard 1.3, for students to “reconstruct the past by comparing
interpretations...from a variety of perspectives and creating narratives from evidence.”
Further, Dave wrote, “In this lesson my ultimate goal for the students was to come away
with an understanding of the personal experience in the war, to relate to a human aspect
in history. Gaining an understanding of the characters of history tends to make it more
interesting, relatable and understandable” (Dave, lesson reflection, 10/15/07). These
hypothetical narrative discussions, though somewhat unexpected, may thus also have
been shaped by Dave’s goals for the lesson.

In this first section, I compared two examples from the same lesson of a .

pedagogical genre I call hypothetical narrative discussion. I examined recurring features

of the discourse—such as changes in verb tense/pronoun use and the presence of

167

conflicting alignments—«and their relationship to the interactional frame for the

discussions, as well as the potential influence of prior and subsequent lesson activities on
those discursive patterns. In the next section, I describe three variations that were
recognizable as belonging to the same pedagogical genre before considering the import of
these variations and what they suggest about the recurrence of hypothetical narrative
discussions during the course of a year in Dave’s classroom.
7.2 Hypothetical Narrative Discussions: Variations on a Pedagogical Genre

In this section I address three other, similar interactions from Dave’s class that
occurred at other points in the year in order to compare them to these first two examples
of the pedagogical genre of hypothetical narrative discussions. In each case, I describe
how the interaction was framed and address the features of the resulting discourse.
7.2.1 The stock market crash: hypothetical narrative and collapsing the past.

On November 28th, a little over one month after the first two examples occurred, I
observed Dave and his students generate another hypothetical narrative during a lesson
on the 1920's Black Tuesday stock market crash. Below, I first describe the framing of
this interaction, its discursive features, and the relationship between the narrated event
and the current interaction, much as I did with the example in chapter 5 . Then, I explore
the possible relationships among this interaction and the framing of other, similar
interactions. During the lesson, Dave intended to “Begin the class by reminding the
students of the [stock market simulation] game that we played over the past two days...”

and then “Begin discussing the nature of the great depression, and some causes/eflects in

brief’ (Dave, lesson plan, ll/28/07). However, much as in the textbook question review

168

activity that addressed the Schlieffen plan and trench warfare, Dave and his students
departed from this “reminder” to attempt a clarifying explanation.

(Dave, lesson transcript, 1 1/28/07)

1. VICTORIA: How are [stockbrokers] getting any money off of it? They're
2. just giving people help.

3. DAVE: OK. Very good point. So it works like this. Uh, we're going to go
4. with Tom right here.. .. You owned a lot of Rylant stock [during the stock
5. market simulation game], right?
6. TOM: Yeah, me and Jon had like eight of them.
7. DAVE: Eight of them? So, in the very beginning though, we're just going
8. to start in the beginning. Say you guys together, you had most of the Rylant
9. stock. Now in a real company, a big company like Rylant, if you own the
10. majority of the stocks, in a situation like that, all of a sudden they start-
11. they're very interested in what you think, because when you own stock,
12. like,that certificate proves that you own part of that company. I-I think
13. you guys understood that as we went through it, right? You are buying
14. into that company. So if all of a sudden if you guys combined had like
15. fifty-one percent of it they're really interested in what you have in what
16. you have to say about Rylant Motors.
This example began with a seemingly authentic question from Victoria about the stock
market crash (1). In response, Dave once again pr0posed a hypothetical scenario as a
means of clarifying the historical event: “Say you guys together, you had most of the
Rylant stock. Now in a real company...” (8-9). But this hypothetical scenario differed
from the previous ones in animating students as figures in a generic re-enactment of the
historical event. Students were simply cast as buyers and investors in a typical stock
market exchange. That is, there was no double-voiced comparison between a past event

and a present context that might have been more familiar to students, and thus little

opportunity for them to contribute from their own perspectives.

169

The lack of relationships between students’ contemporary experiences and the

historical event being elaborated seemed to influence the subsequent discourse of the

interaction.

86.
87.
88.
89.
90.
91.
92.

93.
94.

95.

96.

97.

98.

99.

DAVE: OK. So the problem we have here is that Tom starts taking partial
money from Matt because. . .Whitney is lending money to Matt. . .. Now,
Matt, you still have like zero dollars to your name, right? You don't have any
money, you just own that stock and the stock keeps going up, and you're
pretty happy about it. Now all of a sudden, Whitney, you need your money,
right? Because he owes you money. So what do you do?

WHITNEY: Ask him to turn it in?

DAVE: You ask him for it. And Matt, Whitney comes up to you and says,
"Can I have my money please?" And what do you pay her with?

MATT: The stock?

DAVE: You could. Maybe. Whitney, do you want stock? You're a bank.
WHITNEY: No?

DAVE: You want money right?

WHITNEY: Yeah.

100. DAVE: Matt, she's not going to take your stock. What are you going to do?

101. MATT: Turn it in.

The influence of their lack of relationship to this situation can be seen in Matt and

Whitney’s responses, which were short and often ended with the rising intonation more

typically associated with questions. The brevity and tentativeness of these responses

suggested that they were attempting to guess the answer Dave was looking for——

naturally, for they had little means of relating to the interaction between lender and

investor being described. Moreover, Dave’s interjections and corrections (e. g., 96) as he

talked on behalf of students (88-91, 93-94) allowed for little relationship among students’

170

turns in the conversation, in contrast with the way conflicting alignments provoked
further discussion during the previous examples. In short, this interaction was not
emergent, and bore more resemblance to recitation than to discussion.

Closer attention to the discursive features of this interaction also revealed
differences from the previous examples of hypothetical narrative discussion. In
sequencing events using conditional “if. . .then. . .” (9-11, 14-16) this scenario included
narrative discourse, much like the previous examples. And the initial comment (in this
case, Victoria’s question), which used present tense and “they,” as well as Dave’s use of
the conditional mood, when he said, “If all of a sudden if you guys combined had like
fifty one percent of it. . .,” made for a similar prologue and launching of the narrative. But
unlike the other hypothetical narratives, the situation Dave proposed was not an irrealis
conditional, concerning events known to be false or unlikely, like an army marching
through Talbott or trench warfare on the football field. Rather it was a realis, or factual
conditional—more a retelling of events that had, in fact, taken place leading up to the
stock market crash. In this realis hypothetical narrative, although students were cast as
first-person participants, they could not draw from their own experiences as investors or
lenders and thus could not take up multiple, conflicting alignments toward the event. And
although this narrative moved from conditional to present tense and used “you/l,” those
verbs and pronouns were used by Dave to narrate on behalf of students, rather than by
students to provide progressively more individualized impressions of the event. In
contrast with previous examples, the framing and the discursive features of this .
hypothetical narrative, overall, seemed to emphasize a univocal interpretation of the

historical event through participation in a hypothetical re-enactment of a past event.

171

This is not to devalue this interaction as an attempt to clarify the dynamics of the
historical event. Indeed, at least one student’s response at the end of the hypothetical
scenario suggested that she had achieved a better understanding of the stock market
crash.

163. DAVE: Now all of a sudden people. . .start losing money. Because now the

164. bank is dependent on the company and the company is dependent on the

165. bank. And you get caught in the middle.

166. AMY: Is that why it all crashed?

167. DAVE: That is a good part of why it crashed.

168. AMY: Because it was like all built on itself but nothing was really there?
However, this hypothetical scenario did not answer Victoria’s initial question about how
stock brokers benefited. Thus although it began with an authentic student question, this
interaction did not result in discussion. Perhaps discussion did not occur because there
was little relationship between speakers and the event under study: What could these 9th
grade students contribute to a discussion about lenders, investors, and companies?
Indeed, rather than an overlay of the historical event on specific, fantastical, present
circumstances with which students might have been more familiar (as in the previous
hypothetical narrative discussions), this scenario involved a re-enactment of the past.
Because of this lack of relationship, the way students were framed in the narrated event
did not carry over to the current classroom interaction (as it did in the previous
hypothetical narrative discussions). That is, their participation as figures in the narrative
did not make it easier for them to participate in discussion.

So far, I have shown how this hypothetical narrative contrasted with the previous

examples of hypothetical narrative discussions in that it did not accompany the

172

emergence of the interactional frame, it did not juxtapose past events and present context,
and it did not relate the narrated event to the current interaction in ways that promoted
discussion. Indeed, though it shared many features with the previous examples, this
interaction resembled recitation more than discussion. Below, I consider how these
differences might have been influenced by the relationship among this interaction and the
framing of other, similar ones.

7 .2.2 The stock market crash: relationship to other interactions. As
previously noted, a review of what the class had already studied was often an opportunity
for students to express confusion and raise questions, a fact which may have contributed
to the framing of this interaction; this would explain the appearance of Victoria’s initial
question in the context of a “reminder” about the previous day’s lesson. Perhaps the other
hypothetical narratives generated during the lesson in October also conditioned the
framing of this one, contributing to its similarities; clearly, the animation of students as
figures in hypothetical/historical events was a recurring pattern in Dave’s class. In
addition, the simulation game that took place during the previous day’s lesson may have
exerted an influence on the particular nature of that animation, for it, too, was a re-
enactment of the historical event in which students played the roles of investors. Finally,
this interaction may have been shaped by what followed it during the 11/28 lesson:
further discussion of “the nature of the great depression, and some causes/eflécts in
brief’ (Dave, lesson plan, 1 1/28/07). That is, anticipation of subsequent lesson activities,

as outlined by Dave’s lesson plan goals, may also have shaped this hypothetical narrative.

I73

Dave’s commentary during a post-lesson interview suggested that participation in
a similar interaction during other class periods in which he taught the same lesson may
also have shaped this particular framing of the interaction:
Like I had an. . .I had this type of conversation with every other class. This class——
this, I don't want to say ‘scripted’? Because it was different this time. But it was
something I had planned to do, and I wanted to fit in and I thought hey I can--. . ..
You know, like, and um, so I realize it was a good entrance point? And then
right here this moves into an opportunity where I realize I might have said
something they might not have all known. That the stock itself wasn't just a piece
of paper. It was a part of the company. And so I realize now this is a chance to
cover something that maybe I assumed they knew (Dave, interview, 11/28/07).
Dave saw Victoria’s question as an opportunity to clarify the relationships among
company, bank, and investors in a way he had already done with other classes when
teaching the same lesson earlier that day. As a result, it was something he had “planned to
do,” and Victoria’s question simply provided a convenient “entrance point.” On the other
hand, Dave noted the difference between this interaction and other, similar ones he had
participated in during previous class periods: As he gauged the reactions of these
particular students, he adapted his explanations to address what he thought they
specifically needed clarified. Thus while the frame for this interaction was not
emergent—irreducible to the precedent qualities and intentions of individuals—it was
also not solely a recitation of what teacher and students already knew.
One point at which there was a noticeable disruption in the framing of the activity

and the hypothetical narrative is worth examining in order to better understand the

174

influence of other, similar interactions. This disruption occurred towards the beginning of

the narrative, after Dave had begun to animate students and to ask questions to lead them

through the relations among stockholder, bank, and investor.

21.
22.
23.
24.
25.
26.
27.
28.
29.
30.
31.
32.
33.
34.

35.
36.

DAVE: So now we're going to say Tom and Jon together they've got some
sort of they actually own a good chunk of this company. But your stock's not
going up right? You need more money. How do you make more money then?
JON: Mug peOple?

STUDENTS: (laughter)

DAVE: Say it again?

JON: Mug people?

DAVE: Bug people? Bug them to do what?

TOM: He said, "mug."

JON: I said "mug."

DAVE: (h)Mu(h)g people? OK. Sure that'll be fine for a little while. B(h)ut
maybe eventually you start needing to do-do something else. But-but why
would you mug peOple?

JON: To get more money!

DAVE: To get more money. So your company needs more money. How do
you get more money? How were these companies getting more money?

Jon’s comment could be seen as a simple bid for attention which Dave acknowledged

before artfirlly steering the conversation back to his question. However, it is perhaps

noteworthy that Jon’s comment seemed to intentionally break the flow of Dave’s

narration. Indeed, he could have opted for the verb “bug,” and the idea of bothering

people for money, when Dave offered it (28), but instead he (and Tom) chose to reassert

the more disruptive and aggressive verb “mug” which, though it answered Dave’s

question, was clearly inappropriate. Both times, the disruption of the frame caused by this

175

 

 

inappropriate response produced laughter (25, 31). While this laughter may have been the
object of Jon’s disruptive comment, it is also possible that previous experience with the
pedagogical genre of hypothetical narrative discussion caused Jon to offer a more
fantastical, contemporary solution to Dave’s hypothetical question. Or perhaps it was his
attempt to hijack a narrative which was more constraining than previous, similar ones had
been: In both answering the question and disrupting it, Jon’s response resembled those of
Nathan and Colby in chapter 4, who both similarly seemed to be subtly resisting a
flaming of the interaction as recitation.

In this section, I have addressed the relationship among a hypoflretical narrative
about the stock market crash and other, similar interactions. The flaming of this
interaction may have been conditioned by previous lessons in which review of textbook
answers was flamed as an opportunity for discussion. Its animation of students as figures
in a hypothetical scenario may also have been shaped by other hypothetical narrative
discussions, or perhaps by the stock market simulation game in which the class had
engaged during the preceding lesson. The following section addresses another, related
variation on hypothetical narrative discussions.

7.2.3 Collective bargaining: hypothetical narrative and negotiating the
future. During a December 13 lesson on the Roosevelt era, Dave’s goal was ‘for the
students to gain a contextual understanding...of FDR ’s new deal,” including “how
everyday people would feel eflects” (Dave, lesson plan, 12/13/07). Students had answered
a series of warm-up questions about the previous night’s textbook chapter, and as Dave

reviewed the answers with them, he stopped to explain the 1935 Wagner Act, and the

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concept of collective bargaining, by calling on Mary (whose last name also happened to

be Wagner)'0.

(Dave, lesson transcript, 12/13/07)

1. DAVE: .. .that's something that the Mary Wagner Act helped do. Thank you,
2. Mary, for your time helping all workers like that. Now explain why the Mary
3. Wagner act was important. Besides the fact that it had your last name.

4. MARY: Because it protected the right of workers to form unions and engage

5. in collective bargaining with their employers. And also it prohibited unfair
6. labor practices.

7. DAVE: This was a big effort of the second hundred days. . .and workers,

8. looking more at workers, trying to protect workers a little more, and um,
9. collective bargaining, do you guys know what it is?

10. TOM: Something that a union does?

ll. DAVE: There you go. Uh, it's something that a union does, quite often it's

12. why a union’s so strong: they can bargain as a group. It's the reason why, like,
13. if I tell you we have a test next Thursday-—

As in the previous examples, this interaction occurred during review of textbook
questions students answered as part of their homework the night before. Thus Dave’s
directive to Mary and question about collective bargaining involved recitation-style recall
of what students already knew. And as before, preliminary exchanges about an actual
historical situation during this review were followed by the proposal of a hypothetical
“What if. . .?” scenario meant to clarify the event. As before, this “What if. . .?” scenario
proposed a reframing of the activity flom one in which the teacher posed review
questions for students to answer from their reading of the textbook to one in which a

hypothetical scenario—in this case, Dave bargaining with his students about a test—

_—

ro . . , .
Surce the Wagner act actually exists, I have used Mary 5 actual last name to preserve the sense of this

exchange; I rely on the replacement of her first name with a pseudonym and the commonality of the last
name Wagner to protect her identity.

I77

would be dialogically juxtaposed with an historical event in order to explain the Wagner

Act.

As in previous examples, students took up this reflaming proposal, animating
themselves as figures in a hypothetical/historical scenario. In this case, Penny asserted
that students should be able to use their notes during the test (a practice teachers at

Talbott sometimes allowed), and thus took on the role of negotiator:

18. PENNY: But we can use our notes.

 

25. DAVE: We're going to talk more about it when we get there, but this would
26

. be a perfect example of collective bargaining: Penny, you said we should be
27 .

able to use our notes, right? OK, I value your opinion a lot, but if you get all
28. thirty people in the room all of a sudden that voice is—

29. TOM: Let's take a vote.

30. AMY: Yeah, can we take a vote on——?

31. DAVE: (speaking in higher voice) I(h)t's (h)not even v(h)oteable.
32. (shrugging) (h)l'm sorry, I'm very cruel.

33. TOM: I'm going on strike.

34. STUDENTS: (laughter)
As in chapter 5, details contributed to this hypothetical scenario conditioned and
constrained subsequent contributions: Penny’s negotiation led to Dave’s response about
strength in numbers and Tom’s call for a vote. In this way, some details of the emerging

hypothetical scenario exerted influence on its subsequent elaboration, illustrating the

 

historical concept of collective bargaining. And as in chapter 5, the interactional flame in

the narrative affected the classroom interaction: In their roles as union workers, students

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continued to attempt to bargain even after Dave tried to postpone (25) and discourage
negotiation (3 l -3 2).
At the end of the narrative, Dave’s comments made explicit flris connection

between the present negotiation over the guidelines for the test and a generic past event
made possible by the establishment of the Wagner Act.

45. DAVE: Many times a company would not hear people single voices or
46.

people coming up and saying "Hey you guys should pay us more" they're like i
47. "yeah yeah" but... um, you, as more pe0ple get involved with something, all
48. of a sudden the voice gets stronger, and that's something that the Mary
49.

l.
Wagner Act helped do. Thank you, Mary, for your time helping all workers
50. like that.

Thus this interaction, in which Dave’s “what if. . .?” proposal was taken up by students
and elaborated with details that illustrated collective bargaining, referred through double
voicing to both a hypothetical event and generic historical one. The resulting interaction
could not be attributed solely to Dave’s proposal, Penny’s negotiation, or Tom’s
resistance, and was thus an example of emergence. Nonetheless, the activity addressed
Dave’s lesson plan goals “for the students to gain a contextual understanding of...FDR ’s
new deal,” including “how everyday people would feel eflects” (Dave, lesson plan,

1 2/ 1 3/07).

Moreover, as in the previous exammes, the discourse included shifts in verb tense
and pronoun use that implied changes in the participants’ relationships to the historical

event. From the past tense (l-8) and “workers” (7-8) to the conditional “if...” (1 3, 27)

 

and the pronoun “we” (I 3) the scenario quickly shifted to one in which Dave and
students were positioned as “you” and “I” (26-27, 33) in a present-tense negotiation about
whether students would be able to use their notes during the test. And at the end of the

narrative, Dave transitioned back to the use of past tense and “they” (48). This interaction

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thus exhibited similar features to other examples of hypothetical narrative discussions.
However, it ended quickly and thus, like the stock market example, did not result in
discussion. And though conflicting perspectives appeared on the issue of whether
students could use their notes, the conflict seemed to belong to the event of the narrative,
itself, rather than to different aligmnents toward interpretations of that event. That is, the
narrative did not contain conflicting details flom multiple points of view of the kind that
appeared in the first two hypothetical narrative discussions. I address this further in the
next section, where I consider the relationship between this hypothetical narrative and
other, similar interactions.

7.2.4 Collective bargaining: relationship to other interactions. Some of the
same hypotheses made in the previous sections might apply to the relationships among
this hypothetical narrative and other similar interactions: that it was conditioned by
previous review activities in Dave’s class; that it was influenced by the class’s previous
participation in other hypothetical narrative discussions; and that it was shaped by the
goals of the lesson. However, students’ responses in this hypothetical narrative about
collective bargaining may also have been affected by the fact that, unlike the previous
narratives, the proposed hypothetical scenario concerned an actual, future event: the class
did, in fact, have a test scheduled for next Thursday.

13. DAVE: ..., like, if I tell you we have a test next Thursday——

14. AMY: For real?

15. DAVE: For real.

16. PENNY: Are you serious?

17 . DAVE: Um yeah. See I just combined the two—

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18. PENNY: But we can use our notes.

19. AMY: For real?

20. DAVE: See——

21. AMY: Are we able to?

22. TOM: No.

23. DAVE: No.

24. AMY: Oh.
Amy’s repeated “for real?” (14, 19) and Penny’s “are you serious?” (1 6) suggest that they
were not sure initially about the relationship between hypothetical and actual events.
Indeed, Dave’s response (17) may have been an attempt to explain how he combined past
and present. This uncertainty regarding the relationship between the hypothetical event
and actual classroom events is unlike the previous examples, in which students seemed to
understand and accept the double—voiced overlaying of past event on present context.
This uncertainty may be explained by the fact that this discourse sequenced events which,
though hypothetical because they had not yet taken place, were also likely to happen in
the context of Dave's classroom. That it, it was another example of hypothetical narrative
in realis, or factual conditional mood, like the one generated for the stock market crash.
Further parallels between the hypothetical scenario and actual relationships in the
classroom may also have contributed to this: Though student Mary Wagner has no actual
relation to the senator, Robert F. Wagner, who originated the National Labor Relations
Act (or "Wagner" Act), her name was used in association with the legislation. Penny
Novak, who took on the role of negotiator was not only an obvious choice because she is

an outspoken student, and because she had already made an assertion (not a question!) on

181

behalf of the students ("But you can use your notes"), but also because she is the daughter
of the superintendent of schools for Dave's district (a fact which Dave mentioned in the
post-lesson interview). In short, both girls had roles in the hypothetical narrative that also
reflected, to a greater or lesser degree, aspects of their actual identities in Dave's class.

In this respect, this realis hypothetical narrative contrasted with the irrealis
hypothetical narratives about an army marching through Talbott and about trench warfare
on the football field, which juxtaposed a historical situation and a contemporary context
in a way that was imaginary or unlikely to happen. However, it also differed flom the
realis narrative generated during the discussion of the stock market. In the stock market
narrative, the hypothetical scenario seemed to collapse into a past event which had
actually happened; that is, the explanation of the crash became little more than a re-
enactment of the past. In contrast, the collective bargaining narrative’s hypothetical
scenario seemed to collapse into a present event which would actually happen: that is, the
illustration of collective bargaining became an actual negotiation about the test. In both
cases, this collapse was accompanied by flame-breaking behavior—resistance flom
students to being animated in certain ways.

As in the stock market narrative example, it is worth examining in the collective
bargaining narrative the disruptive tension—indicated by Dave’s nervous laughter and
posture, as well as students’ interruptions and overlapping talk.

26. DAVE: ...this would be a perfect example of collective bargaining: Penny,

27. you said we should be able to use our notes, right? OK, I value your opinion a

28. lot, but if you get all thirty people in the room all of a sudden that voice is—

29. TOM: Let's take a vote.

30. AMY: Yeah, can we take a vote on—?

182

31. DAVE: (speaking in higher voice) I(h)t's (h)not even v(h)oteable.
32. (shrugging) (h)I'm sorry, I'm very cruel.

33. TOM: I'm going on strike.

34. STUDENTS: (laughter)

Although Penny’s bargaining and Tom’s call for a strike served as a “perfect example” of
collective bargaining in the hypothetical, they also threatened to disrupt the actual
relationship between teacher and students concerning the guidelines for the upcoming
test. Perhaps for this reason, Dave attempted to break out of the narrative flame and
clarify the boundary between the hypothetical collective bargaining narrative and the
actual classroom interaction (26) by reasserting his and students’ actual roles in the
classroom interaction (31-32). Tom’s subsequent call for a strike countered this refusal
and reaffirmed his role as flamed by the hypothetical narrative. As in the stock market
narrative, each of these disruptions in the flame was accompanied by laughter.

In this section, I have considered the relationship among the hypothetical
narrative discussion of collective bargaining and other interactions. In addition to
proposing relationships among this interaction and other, previous ones similar to those I
have detailed in preceding sections, I suggested that this discussion was affected by the
relationship between the narrated event and an actual, fiiture interaction that would take
place in Dave’s classroom.

7.2.5 The Berlin airlift: hypothetical narrative and the balance of past and
present. A final example of hypothetical narrative discussion took place during a lesson
on March 5 about the post-WWII division of Germany and Berlin that led to Stalin’s
blockade of the Western part of the city and forced the Allies to fly in supplies. Dave’s

lesson plan called for students to “open up their books to ‘The Berlin Airlifi‘, ’...read the

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page out of the book, and summarize it in three to four sentences. Ask students to
volunteer to read their sentences. Discuss. Move onto the smart board note packet that
was worked on the day before. Pick back up on the Berlin Airlift” (Dave, lesson plan,
03/05/08). To understand the events surrounding the Berlin Airlift was thus a goal of the
lesson.

During the explanation of the division of Berlin, a student, Shirin, asked for
clarification about why a city that was clearly located in the Eastern (Soviet) half of the
country would also need to be divided between East and West.

(Dave, lesson transcript, 03/05/08)

I. SHIRIN: So. Um does are—-Why are we there? Since it's like Communist and
2. everything?

3. DAVE: Why were we in Germany to start with?
4. SHIRIN: In Berlin.

. DAVE: OK. After World War II, it was decided that the fairest way to make

. sure that Germany wouldn't reconsolidate power and start World War III

. would be if each Ally took a zone of Germany. And then when they were

. trying to figure out who should get Berlin, it was decided it's not fair, Berlin

. is—if, if we're talking about [our state] it would be like [a major industrial

10. city]. Or actually I guess we'll say [the capital city]. It's closer. And the

l 1. capital. We'll say it's like [the capital city]. . .. It's not fair, right? If one section
12. of the state. . .if someone got [the capital city]. . .. say you, Laura, Takara, and
13. Amy were dividing up the state, right? It's not fair if just you get [the capital
14. city] right?

\DOOQOUI

In response to Shirin’s question, Dave proposed a “what if. . .?” scenario which compared
the past event to a hypothetical situation set in a fantastical, contemporary context. This
proposal reflamed the sharing of textbook summaries as an imagination exercise which
animated students as figures in a hypothetical scenario. That hypothetical scenario

paralleled post-WWII events in Germany through double voicing.

184

As in previous examples, students took up the proposed hypothetical scenario,

elaborating it with details that enabled and constrained subsequent responses:

26.
27.

28.
29.
30.
31.
32.
33.

34.

47.

48.

49.

50.

51.

52.

DAVE: So we would need to supply flom here to our [part of the city].
...What if they shut off the roads? Closed the railroads?

LAURA: OOOH!

TAKARA: How would we get supplies?

DAVE: Shirin, if you have that part of--if you have, you know, this general
area of [the state]. What's the advantage of closing it off so that the other
three girls can't get

into the city?

SHIRIN: That you have it. They can't get in.

AMY: Why can't you fly?

DAVE: So. What's our one solution, Amy?

AMY: Fly.

DAVE: You have to fly supplies in. Berlin airlift? Alright.
PENNY: That's what they did, didn't they?

DAVE: That's exactly what they did.

Some of the proposed details became established features of the scenario: for instance,

Takara’s question about the desperate conditions seemed to prompt Amy’s solution.

From Shirin’s point of view, however, the blockade was an advantage; the narrative thus

contained multiple, even conflicting alignments toward the event. And as before,

comments by Dave and students at the end of the narrative suggested that thesedetails

applied simultaneously to both the present, hypothetical event and the past, historical one.

Neither Shirin’s initial query, nor Dave’s proposed scenario, nor Takara’s question alone

185

were solely responsible for the emergent scenario. Thus what began with a review of
textbook summaries about the Berlin airlift emerged as a hypothetical narrative
discussion. Despite its emergent quality, this interaction still addressed Dave’s lesson
objectives concerning understanding the causes of the Berlin Airlift.

As in the other examples, this one sequenced unrealized events that were unlikely
to happen in an irrealis hypothetical narrative discussion. The narrative contained a
pattern of shifts in verb tense and pronoun use. Much like the October narrative about an
army marching through Talbott, Shirin’s question, in present tense (l ), acted as a
prologue. Dave’s response shifted flom past tense (5—8) and “they” (7) to the irrealis
conditional mood and to “we” (9—11). From Takara’s “How would we get supplies?”
(29), to Shirin’s “. . .you have it. They can’t get in” (34), and to Amy’s “Why can’t you
fly?” (47), verb tense shifted flom conditional to present tense, and the use of pronouns
shifted flom “we” to “you.” At the end of the narrative, Dave and Penny’s comments
returned to using the past tense and “they” (51-52). This progression flom past to present
to past, and flom “they” to “you” to “they” resembled that of the other hypothetical
narrative discussions, suggesting that the past became more present and personal for the
participants during the course of the discussion.

Students’ participation in the narrative interaction affected their participation in
the interaction of the discussion. As figures in the narrative, students were able to
contribute flom their own first-person perspectives, like Takara, who wondered how they
would get supplies, or Amy, who proposed flying as a solution. Participation in the
interactional flame of the narrative thus shaped students’ participation in the current

interaction of the discussion. While this was also true of the stock market and collective

186

bargaining examples, the way students were flamed in those narratives produced
resistance, perhaps because the narratives were either too far or too close with regard to
the present interaction. In this respect, the hypothetical narrative discussion about the
Berlin airlift most resembled those about the invasion of Belgium and trench warfare: In
all three, the flaming of the narrated event affected the framing of the discussion,
promoting participation through a balance between elaboration of a fantastical,
hypothetical event and an actual, historical one.

In this section, I have described the emergence of a hypothetical narrative
discussion about the Berlin airlift, the discursive features of that interaction, and the
relationship between the narrated event and the current interaction of the discussion.
Unlike the November stock market narrative and the December collective bargaining
narrative, whose hypothetical situations seemed to collapse into a re-enactment of the
past and an anticipated future, respectively, this hypothetical narrative discussion
appeared most like the initial October examples in overlaying a historical event on a
fantastical, contemporary context. In a final findings section for this chapter, I address the
relationship of this hypothetical narrative discussion to other, similar interactions before
moving on to discussion of these findings and their implications in relation to previous
research.

7.2.6 The Berlin airlift: relationship to other interactions. This hypothetical
narrative discussion shared some of the same relationships to other, similar interactions
which I have already detailed above (e.g., the way textbook question homework reviews

were flamed in Dave’s class). Below, I focus on a point of similarity between this

187

example and the stock market narrative in terms of their relationships to other, similar
interactions in which Dave had participated with earlier class periods during the day.

In a post-lesson interview about the hypothetical narrative discussion of the Berlin
airlift, Dave revealed that he had participated in similar discussions with his second hour
and third hour classes in order to clarify the reasons for the division of Berlin. But in
those earlier discussions, he did not use the state’s capital city as a hypothetical parallel to
Berlin:

Second hour, I used the Vatican and that wasn't effective, but just that idea of it's

not fair if one person gets the Vatican. Not in a religious way, I just mean the

Vatican city state. So. But that time it was like ‘What?’ So then I moved to

Washington DC. But then I moved to [the state capital] because, like, I got better

at it by fourth hour so (laughs). . .. We had already done Washington DC. I knew

Vatican wasn't going to work. Um, so I just had to pick something that was-that

was relevant... And I skipped the potential dividing of Talbott because that

undermines the fact that it's a big city. . .. She got it. I-I know-I could tell she got

it. Because she's like ‘Oh.’ (Dave, interview, 03/05/08).

Dave first compared the post WWII division of Berlin to what it would be like to divide
up Vatican City, hoping that comparison to this more familiar, contemporary example
would help students to better understand the historical event. Finding that this was not
effective, Dave tried in the next class period (with another group of students) using
Washington, DC, another important, contemporary city perhaps more familiarto the
experiences of American students. This, too, failed to produce the reaction he had hoped

for during his third hour class. Thus, by the time Shirin asked her question in the

188

discussion described above, Dave had tried two other hypothetical comparisons before
settling on using a city close to home for his Talbott students. From Dave’s point of view,
it was important that the comparison not “undermine the fact that it’s a big city.” That is,
the choice of a contemporary setting was important to the narrative flaming of the
hypothetical/historical event. It also affected the framing of his interactions with students:
whereas the comparison in other class periods had not been “effective,” producing
confusion (“it was like, ‘What?’”), he felt certain that Shirin “got it” in the discussion
above. Dave’s commentary suggested that, as with the hypothetical narrative about the
stock market crash, his participation in similar explanations with earlier class periods
shaped the flame for this interaction. However, unlike the stock market example, which
resembled recitation and produced flame-breaking resistance, this one resulted in
discussion.

In these findings sections, I have addressed four examples, each at different points
of the year, flom Dave Weber’s 9th grade Social Studies classroom at Talbott High
school in order to explore the relationships among discussions and other classroom
discourse interactions within and across lessons. Over the course of the year, hypothetical
narrative discussions emerged as a pedagogical genre in Dave’s class. These hypothetical
narrative discussions, though they exhibited similar discursive features, varied in the
manner in which the historical event and the hypothetical scenario were related. Below, I
situate these findings and their implications in relation to previous research.

7.3 Discussion/Implications
Prior research on recitations and discussions has often described the “genres” —

recurring patterns of discourse which shape the roles, relationships, and responses

189

available to teachers and students—associated with these types of interactions as stable
and separable flom the surrounding discourse, rather than flexible and related to prior and
subsequent interactions. In this chapter, I addressed questions about what genres of
discussions might emerge flom the repeated reflaming of interactions among teacher and
students, how discussions might be related to prior and subsequent activities during a
lesson, and how discussions might be related to other, similar interactions occurring in
the same classroom community.

Four classroom interactions in Dave Weber’s 9th grade Social Studies class at
Talbott High School were compared with the example introduced in chapter 5 in order to
illustrate the emergence of the genre of hypothetical narrative discussions. The first, a
discussion of a hypothetical scenario based on WWI trench warfare, emerged during the
same lesson as the discussion addressed in chapter 5, about the German invasion of
Belgium, and bore many similarities with that example: both sequenced unrealized and
unlikely events in a narrative using the irrealis conditional mood, and included shifts in
verb tense and pronoun use flom past to present and flom “they” to “I/you.” The fourth
example, a discussion of a hypothetical parallel to the Berlin airlift, also shared these
features. In contrast, the second and third examples, though they also included
hypothetical narratives and many of the same discursive features, did not include
discussions. In addition, these two examples differed flom the others in important ways:
first, they both sequenced events that either had happened or were likely to happen, using
the realis, or factual, conditional mood; second, they both included “flame-breaking”
behavior on the part of the participants. I address the significance of these variations on

the genre of hypothetical narrative discussions further in the next section.

190

With regard to other classroom interactions within and across lessons, these
hypothetical narrative discussions appear to have been influenced by previous
participation in other textbook question review activities and in other interactions which
animated students as figures in hypothetical/historical events (like a stock market
simulation game, for example). They may also have been shaped by anticipation of
similar subsequent activities, like a “Letter Home flom the Trenches” homework
assignment or another discussion of the effects of the Great Depression. Finally, this
genre may have been affected by Dave’s participation in other, similar interactions with
the classes he taught during earlier periods of the day.

7.3.] Emergence of a pedagogical genre. In the examples above, I described the
flaming and the discursive features of a similar type of interaction, or what I have called
a “pedagogical genre.” Prior research on classroom discourse has applied the notion of
genre, or recurring conventions of social interaction (e.g., Bakhtin, 1984; Devitt, 1993; C.
Miller, 1984; Swales, 1990), not only to written discourse (e. g., Bazerman, 1997, I988;
Bazerman et al., 2009; Freedman & Medway, 1994; Hicks, 1995) but also to talk and
behavior in classrooms. For example, previous classroom discourse research has
identified as “speech genres” (Bakhtin, 1986a) “the lesson” (Wertsch, 1991, p. 110), I-R-
E or I-R-F sequences (Lemke, 1990; Wells, 1993), authentic questions (N ystrand et al.,
1997, p. 91), and hypothetical narratives (Juzwik, 2006). And while some scholars have
wondered whether discussion can be discerned well enough to identify discussion genres
(Mercer, 1995; Wells, 1999), some that have been identified include “conversational
narrative discussion” in secondary English classes (Juzwik et al., 2008) and “seminars”

and “deliberations” in Social Studies classes (Parker, 2001, 2006; Parker & Hess, 2001).

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To these other pedagogical genres, the present study adds the possibility of “hypothetical
narrative discussions” as a genre that emerged in a secondary Social Studies classroom.

Previous Social Studies education research has defined discussions, in general, in
terms of “purpose” (Hess, 2004). According to these studies, purpose shapes not only the
topic and talk of the discussion but also the relationships of the participants (Dillon,
1994; Parker, 2006). In short, purposes contribute to flaming the interaction of
discussions. They also serve to distinguish different types or “genres” of discussion:
discussion can be either a method of instruction or a curricular goal in and of itself
(Parker & Hess, 2001); it can be aimed at interpreting a central text or deliberating on
courses of action (Parker, 2001). In terms of this previous work, Dave’s hypothetical
narrative discussions resembled the genre of “seminars,” in which discussion focuses on
interpreting a central text, not for the purpose of finding a “right” answer, but rather to
articulate, challenge, clarify, and thereby improve one’s understanding, “not to repair the
world, but to reveal it” (Parker, 2001).

This prior research is in keeping with the present study in arguing that purpose
shapes the flame for a discussion, and that different purposes which flame discussions
differently lead to different “genres” of discussion. However, like other research on
discussion which has focused on the relationships among individuals, rather than among
utterances, this focus on purpose seems to imply that an individual’s intention—the
teacher’s purpose——determines or “specifies” the flame for discussion, and that both that
purpose and that flame result in stable features or “models for leading discussions”
(Parker, 2001). However, hypothetical narrative discussions, though they often seemed to

have the same purpose (to clarify students’ understanding of a historical event through

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comparison to a hypothetical one), varied in their discursive features. The fact that the
genre of hypothetical narrative discussions included variations is in keeping with notions
of speech genres as “relatively stable” social conventions which have accumulated over
time, but which are nevertheless “flexible. . .and flee” (Bakhtin et al., 1986, p. 121-127).
This finding follows other research that addresses genres associated with recitation and
discussion not as a stable set of rules, but as regularities of discursive form and content
connected to social relationships and to participation in communities with shared
practices (Freedman & Medway, 1994, p. 1). In relation to research on classroom
discourse, more specifically, it adds the idea that pedagogical genres may be discursively
negotiated among teachers and students through repeated reflaming of interactions like
recitation or discussion. That is, the nature of dialogic discussions may vary according to
their according to their purposes (Parker, 2001, 2006; Parker & Hess, 2001), but also to
their overlap with other, narrative genres (J uzwik et al., 2008), and according to their
relationship to other, similar classroom interactions.

The discussions in Dave’s class overlapped with the genre of “what if. . .?” stories,
which has also been described by research in Social Studies education (e. g., Husbands &
Pendry, 2000). Variations on the “what if. . .?” story have also been described by research
on oral narrative genres (e. g., Georgakopoulou, 2007; Juzwik, 2006; Ochs & Capps,
2001). The hypothetical narrative discussions generated in Dave’s class differed flom
other, similar narrative genres in ways that seemed relevant to how dialogic discussions
shape and are shaped by the relationship among utterances. Instead of Ochs and Capps’s
(2001) irrealis sequencing of unrealized events in past, present, or future realms (like

imagined alternative endings to sporting events), these narratives juxtaposed historical

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events and contemporary contexts. For example, instead of animating students as WWI
soldiers in a trench, it asked them to imagine trench warfare with a rival class taking
place on the Talbott football field. That is, unlike Juzwik’s (2006) hypothetical
narratives, in which the teacher cast the present-day students as characters in a generic
past event (p. 510), the hypothetical narrative discussions in Dave’s classroom brought
the historical event into the contexts of their state, town, and classroom, making the past
part of students’ present experience. Dave’s interview commentary on his carefirl choices
of which city to compare to the post—WWII division of Berlin suggested that this
juxtaposition of past event and present context was important to how students might
respond. Indeed, the familiarity of those contexts and the fantastical, quality of the
situations may have made it more possible for students to participate in elaborating the
scenario. The multiple, conflicting details supplied by students flom the point of view of
the present/past inhabitants of an invaded city or a WWI trench also resembled the “tum-
by-turn co-authoring and negotiation of details in the taleworld” characteristic of
Georgakopolou’s (2007) “projections” (p. 47-48), another sub-genre of the “what if. . .?”
narrative. Morson (1994) and Bernstein (1994) call such intimations of what else might
have been “sideshadowing,” contrasting them with the “foreshadowing” and
“backshadowing” that portray events as coherent and inevitable predictors or precursors.
In Dave’s classroom, these multiple, conflicting perspectives may have emphasized the
uncertainty and ambiguity of the historical event, and thus created a more complex
account of it than might have been possible if the narrative had been told by a single

teller (Wertsch, 2002).

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There were also moments when hypothetical narratives appeared in Dave’s class
which were not accompanied by discussion. These moments are equally telling for
understanding how this genre emerged and when it was or was not brought to bear on the
production and interpretation of utterances. For example, the animation of students as
bank, company, and stockholder, during one lesson, resembled Juzwik’s (2006)
hypothetical narratives, because the teacher animated the present-day students as figures
in a past event (p. 510). In this narrative, associated with the 19208 stock market crash,
there was little relationship between students’ experiences and the topic and few
opportunities to bring turns into conversation by disagreeing. As such, the interaction
resembled recitation more than dialogic discussion, and one student’s disruptive behavior
may have been a response to this flaming of the interaction. The absence of discussion in
this interaction may be due to the realis quality of this hypothetical narrative, which
sequenced events that had already taken place rather than unrealized events that were
unlikely to happen. Another hypothetical narrative, about collective bargaining also failed
to produce discussion (and included flame-breaking behavior), perhaps because it, too,
used the realis factual conditional mood to sequence events that were unrealized but
likely to happen: Because students knew they did, in fact, “have a test next Thursday,”
they tried to use their roles in the hypothetical narrative as union negotiators who could
“strike” if they were not allowed to use their notes, in response to which the teacher
ended the narrative to avoid a conflontation. These examples suggested that hypothetical
narrative discussions were a discussion genre in Dave’s class that depended on the nature
of the juxtaposition of historical and hypothetical events and how it related to students’

present situation.

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In this section, I have addressed the nature of the pedagogical genre of
hypothetical narrative discussions that emerged in Dave’s class. The examples of this
genre had similar features with regard to how they brought students’ experiences into
relationship with historical events through hypothetical comparisons. They differed flom
other, similar genres in that they brought the past into the present rather than animating
students as historical figures. Moreover, while they had similar purposes, the discursive
features of these discussions varied, particularly with regard to how “close” the
hypothetical events were to students’ contemporary situation, an aspect which seemed to
affect subsequent discussion.

7.3.2 Relationship to other interactions. While some previous research on
dialogic discussions have described what might be called “genres” of discussion (Hess,
2002, 2004; Mercer, 1995; Parker, 2001, 2006; Parker & Hess, 2001; Wells, 1999), and
some studies have examined how discussions arise during different kinds of activities,
like small-group work (Nystrand et al., 1997), few studies have addressed whether and
how discussions are shaped by their relationship to other classroom interactions. The
hypothetical narrative discussions described above often appeared in Dave’s class during
review of textbook questions which had been assigned for homework. Teacher questions
that call for recall of facts, definitions, and textbook knowledge, in Social Studies
classrooms, have often been associated with recitations (Dillon, 1994; Hess, 2004;
Parker, 2001). However, because this kind of interaction in Dave’s class was often an
opportunity for discussion, what might have appeared to be recitation, because of the
presence of inauthentic, lower-order questions, and might not have produced discussion

in another context, was affected by the way that type of interaction had been flamed

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during previous lessons. But it was not only previous interactions which seemed to shape
discussion in Dave’s class. The hypothetical narrative discussion of trench warfare may
also have been affected by the fact that it preceded a “Letter Home from the Trenches”
assignment, which similarly asked students to imagine themselves into an historical
event. These examples suggest that lesson activities which precede and follow
discussions, in addition to other discussions of the same “genre,” can also shape the
nature of discussions.

Dave’s post-lesson interview commentary on the hypothetical narratives about the
stock market crash and the Berlin airlift also suggested that the framing of those
interactions was shaped by his participation in other, similar interactions with the classes
he taught earlier in the day. Prior research has called for study of how teaching the same
lesson to different students might affect the nature of instruction (N ystrand et al., 1997, p.
91; Sawyer, 2001a, p. 209). Of the two examples described here, one led to discussion
and the other did not. In one, a student’s question became an opportunity to insert an
explanation of the stock market which Dave thought was needed. This interaction did not
result in discussion, perhaps because the explanation was not as closely related to
students’ experiences (it was a realis narrative that re-enacted the relationship among
company, bank, and stockholder, of which students had little prior knowledge), or
perhaps because it was not as closely related to other utterances in the interaction (it did
not answer Victoria’s initial question). In the other example, previous classes’ difficulty
with hypothetical comparisons between the division of Berlin and other important cities
(like Vatican City and Washington, DC.) affected Dave’s eventual use of the state

capital, instead. That is, through his participation in the same type of interaction with

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other classes, Dave was able to bring the historical/hypothetical event closer to students’
experiences.

This analysis of the emergence of, and variations on, hypothetical narrative
discussions in Dave’s class did not address the issue raised by previous Social Studies
education research of how teachers and students prepare for discussions. Preparation by
students and teachers was identified as one of several elements which contribute to the
success of discussions of controversial public issues in secondary Social Studies (Hess,
2002); discussions often fail when students have not done the necessary reading or
research to prepare (Hess, 2004). In Dave’s class, discussions often followed review of
textbook homework questions, however, this reading does not seem to have served as
preparation for discussion: Indeed, discussions often appeared to be prompted by the
need to clarify what students had not understood about the Schlieffen plan, the stock
market crash, or the Berlin airlift. Perhaps what is important about preparation is that,
like the hypothetical narratives which brought historical events into familiar,
contemporary settings, it allows students to contribute to discussion by bringing them
closer to the past.

7.4 Chapter 7 Summary
1. The flaming of an interaction (like a homework review or a discussion) can shape
the flaming of subsequent, similar interactions.
2. The repeated reframing of similar interactions can result in recurring genres of

classroom interaction, like hypothetical narrative discussion.

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3. Hypothetical narratives which sequence unrealized events that are unlikely to
happen may encourage discussion more than those which sequence events which
were already realized and/or are likely to happen.

4. Lesson activities which precede and follow discussion can shape the flame for
that discussion.

5. The flaming of an interaction can be shaped by the teacher’s participation in the

flaming of a similar interaction with earlier class periods.

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8. Discussion and Implications

Below, I first summarize the preceding chapters of this dissertation and then
situate my findings about discussions and discursive relationships in light of prior
research before considering the theoretical, methodological, and practical limitations and
implications of this study. I close with a summary of claims made in this dissertation.
8.1 Summary

In chapter 1, I provided an overview of this dissertation on how the relationship
among utterances shapes and is shaped by the roles, relationships, and responses of
teachers and students during recitations and discussions. Chapter 2 reviewed the research
on these two types of pedagogical interactions: Much previous research has noted the
persistence of recitations. Fewer studies have described the nature of discussions: though
they have been correlated in several studies with higher student achievement in secondary
English classes, they remain comparatively rare in American classrooms. As such, they
are often defined as the opposite of recitations in terms of teacher/student control and the
nature of teacher questions posed during the interaction. In focusing on who controls the
interaction and what discursive moves individuals make, prior research has paid less
attention to the relationships among utterances and how they shape the interaction of
discussion. Based on that review of the literature, I identified several related problems for
study in this dissertation.

To address these problems, I articulated a theoretical flamework drawing on
interactional sociolinguistic assumptions and concepts: that discourse shapes and is
shaped by the frame, or definition of the roles, relationships, and responses possible

during interactions like recitations or discussions; that the flame is negotiated through

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strategies like animation, in which speakers attribute intentions, words, and actions to
others, and like double voicing, whereby participants take up others’ discourse in order to
express their own stances or alignments toward it; that such interactions are emergent
when discourse is continually reinterpreted and becomes irreducible to individual
intentions; and that repeated reflaming of similar interactions can lead to the emergence
of pedagogical genres.

I applied this theoretical flamework to discourse analysis of data collected or
generated primarily in three different research contexts: a rural 12th grade Composition
class at Marquette High School taught by Sami Ghanem, a Lebanese, non-native English
speaking female; an urban 10th grade Literature class at Magnum Appan High School
taught by Tamara Jefferson, an African American female; and a suburban 9th grade
Social Studies class at Talbott High School taught by Dave Weber, a European American
male. Data sources, including field notes, lesson videos, reflections, and interviews
associated with thirty lessons, were transcribed, coded, and analyzed with attention to
how the use of sociolinguistic elements like verb tense, pronouns, reported speech, tone,
laughter, and repetition signaled relationships among utterances and changes in the
interactional flame.

In chapter 4, I addressed the problem that, although prior studies have found
discussions often occurred during recitations, little research has described how one arises
from the other. In addition, prior work on recitations and discussions has tended to focus
on individuals and on stable patterns of discourse (like the Initiate-Respond-Evaluate
cycle), rather than on how these interactions are negotiated among teacher and students in

particular contexts, and how they might vary in form and purpose. How do recitations

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give rise to dialogic discourse? What kinds of discourse accompany these transitions? In
this chapter, I showed that recitation can become more dialogic when animation and
double voicing are used to propose and accept reflaming of the interaction, bringing
events and stances toward them into relationship.

The focus of chapter 5 was the problem of addressing classroom discourse in
terms of teacher/student control or in terms of whether questions allow multiple, possible
answers, and thus neglecting the relationship between speakers and the foci of their
discussion. How do discussions bring a topic into relationship with students’
experiences? How do these juxtapositions shape the interactions of discussions? In this
chapter, I illustrated how recitation can give rise to discussion when historical events are
brought into relationship with familiar, contemporary settings, allowing students to
contribute flom their own perspectives, making past events more present and personal,
and creating parallel narrative flames that index class members and thus affect their
interactions during discussion.

Chapter 6 also examined the problem of defining dialogic discussions in terms of
multiple speakers and multiple interpretations. But in this chapter, I addressed the lack of
attention in prior research to the relationships among turns in discussion, especially when
those relationships involve disagreement. How do discussions bring different alignments
toward events into relationship? How do these juxtapositions of alignments shape the
interactions of discussions? My analyses in this chapter suggested that disagreement does
not necessarily bring alignments into relationship and lead to discussions; on the other
hand, recitations can become discussions through double-voiced disagreement, whereby

participants use others’ words to indirectly criticize their alignments toward events,

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increasingly taking on each others’ language, and provoking further discussion through
narrative (re)framing of the interaction, itself.

In chapter 7, I addressed the problem that discussions have often been defined
separately flom their relationship to other classroom discourse interactions. How do other
activities during a lesson contribute to the nature of discussions? How do participants’
experiences with other, similar, recurring interactions shape discussions? In this chapter,
I showed that the flaming of prior and subsequent activities can shape the interactional
flame for discussions, leading to the repetition of relatively stable conventions for a type
of interaction, or genre. In particular, the emergence of and variations on the pedagogical
genre of hypothetical narrative discussions suggested that how close
hypothetical/historical events were to students’ contemporary experiences could affect
the nature of discussions.

Having summarized how I addressed my research questions in this dissertation
study, I now situate my findings in prior research, and explore their contributions and
implications for theorizing, investigating, and teaching about classroom discussions.

8.2 Reframing recitation and dialogic discussion

Below, I address each of my research questions, bringing my findings into
relationship with research in English education, classroom discourse, and interactional
sociolinguistics relevant to the study of recitations and discussions. In the first section, I
address the question of how classroom interactions like recitations and discussions are
established, maintained, and negotiated among teachers and students, including how

recitations become discussions and what kinds of discourse accompany these transitions.

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Specifically, I argue for attention to the interactional frame in research on dialogic
discussions (rather than questions, evaluations, or uptake).

8.2.1 Focusing on the frame. Previous research on discussions in English and
Social Studies education has tended to focus on questions as the primary means by which
dialogic discourse is engendered. This focus is in keeping with over a century of research
on recitations which has influenced study of discussions: whereas questions associated
with recitations are inauthentic and require little thinking, questions associated with
discussions are authentic and encourage hi gher-order analysis and evaluation (Applebee
et al., 2003; Basmadjian, 2005; Billings & Fitzgerald, 2002; Chinn et al., 2001; Marshall
et al., 1995; McCann, 2006; Nystrand et al., 1997; Nystrand et al., 2003; Wolf, Meiras, &
Cary, 1996). However, my research suggests that attention to the nature of questions may
not always explain how discussions are established, maintained, and negotiated among
teacher and students. In chapters 4, 5, and 6, inauthentic, lower—order thinking questions
were followed by dialogic discourse. In chapter 4, although Sami ostensibly asked her
students only to identify what grammatical clause had been used, they engaged in
evaluation and negotiation of the journal entry activity, using grammar for rhetorical, as
well as mechanical, purposes; likewise, a “quick review” question about defining verbal
irony led not only to struggle over the nature of the activity, but also to sophisticated uses
of that very concept, as Colby and Tamara parodied each others’ responses. In chapters 5
and 6, questions that seemed to require recall of textbook answers or previous classwork
preceded discussions in Dave’s and Tamara’s classes of the impact and ethics. of wartime
decisions in which students built on each other’s contributions, disagreed with each other

and the teacher, and even changed their alignments toward those events. Furthermore, in

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chapter 6, what seemed like an authentic, higher-order question about another ethical
decision in Tamara’s 4th hour class was not followed by conversation in which turns
were related and students built on each other’s contributions. Finally, in chapter 7, what
appeared to be recitation questions that required only recall from the textbook, in Dave’s
class, often led to discussion because of repeated reflaming of such homework reviews as
opportunities for firrther discussion; and an “authentic” student question was not followed
by discussion in part because that particular lesson activity was shaped by the teacher’s
previous participation in similar interactions during other class periods. Thus the
authenticity and order of thinking apparent in questions in these data did not always
correspond with the dialogic relationships among utterances evident in the subsequent
discourse. Rather, the nature of those questions, and their relationships to the discourse
that followed, seemed to depend on the frame for the interaction in each lesson activity.
Mine is not the only study to note that authentic or inauthentic questions do not
always accompany dialogic discussion. Kachur and Prendergast (1997) described how
the discourse in one classroom, though it contained a high proportion of questions coded
as authentic, in the end seemed more like recitation than discussion because of the
“pattern of interruptions and hasty evaluations that characterize[d] the exchange. . .. Given
this classroom context, students were hard pressed to consider any question the teacher
asked as genuinely ‘authentic’” Q3. 76-77). Similarly, these researchers found few
authentic questions (or questions of any kind) in another classroom which was
nevertheless characterized by an “atmosphere” of “mutual respect” and “positive

classroom culture” (p. 80). These two examples led the authors to suggest that “even

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inauthentic questions. . .can foster a dialogic atmosphere” depending on “how teachers

negotiate this larger classroom context” (p. 83—84):
ultimately, then, understanding how Ms. Jansen’s ostensibly ‘authentic’ class talk
could be stifling and Mr. Kramer’s seemingly ‘inauthentic’ class talk could be
invigorating required examining not just teacher talk or student talk per se, but the
interactions between teachers and students. . .. In these two classrooms it was the
context of each class session, built by the interactions. . .that determined the
authenticity of the teacher’s questions in students’ eyes (p. 84, emphasis in
original).

Read in light of my dissertation study, this analysis of the nature of questions, and how

they related to the subsequent discourse, suggests that the interactional frame may be a

more appropriate focus for defining and distinguishing recitations and dialogic

discussions.

Addressing the interactional flame, instead of the nature of questions posed, as a
means of defining and distinguishing recitations and dialogic discussions is also in
keeping with current understandings of dialogism. First, an understanding of the
interactional flame as discursively constructed is in keeping with dialogism’s focus on
discourse, rather than individuals (Bakhtin, 1984, 1981, l986a; Lawrence & Fendler,
2009; Morson & Emerson, 1990). In this respect, the interactional flame helps to define
what Nystrand et al. (1997) has called “the social logic of reciprocity” (p. 10, 81) or “the
organized interrelationships of. . .the speakers [and]. . .what the. . .social logic of their
interrelationships demands of them” (Medvedev & Bakhtin, 1978, p. 153). Those

interrelationships were organized by discourse. The dialogic interactions described in

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chapters 4—7 were flamed by the relationships among utterances, not by the teacher’s
intentions, alone. For example, the accounts of Germany’s invasion of Belgium and of
trench warfare in Dave’s class were unexpected and complexly composed of conflicting
details and alignments toward the event——irreducible to individual, precedent intentions.
Likewise, the increasing regularities in the discourse of the debate during Tamara’s 6th
hour class seemed to take on a life of their own, shaping subsequent responses beyond
what any single speaker had contributed. The whole was greater than the sum of its parts:
Teacher and student participation was enabled and constrained by its relationship to prior
and subsequent discourse. In short, dialogic discussion depends not on who controls the
discussion but on what is being said in the context of a particular, emergent interactional
flame.

Second, an understanding of the interactional flame as the dynamic result of
collective negotiation is in keeping with dialogism’s focus on “a word about a word to a
word” (Bakhtin, 1984, 1986a, p. 266), or the way discourse is shaped by prior uses and
addressed to a particular audience. This understanding of the interactional flame as “more
or less predetermined” (Chinn et al., 2001, p. 381) helps to explain the way in which
accumulation of experiences produces regularities in discourse that nevertheless remain
open to new possibilities (Bakhtin, 1984, p. 166; Morson & Emerson, 1990). For
example, in Dave’s class, textbook review questions which might otherwise have led to
recitation were flamed as an opportunity for further discussion; on the other hand,
hypothetical narrative did not always lead to discussion in Dave’s class. That is, dialogic

discussion depends not on the presence (or absence) of patterns like I-R-E, but on how

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such patterns of discourse are conditioned (not determined) by the (re)flaming of
classroom interactions.

Third, an understanding of the interactional flame as related to animation and
' alignment is in keeping with dialogism’s focus on how a speaker makes “use of someone
else’s words for his [sic] own purposes” (Bakhtin, 1984, p. 189). These aspects of the
interactional flame, and the way speakers propose and accept changes in it, help to
distinguish between two senses of dialogism (Morson & Emerson, 1990, p. 150). In one
sense, all discourse has dialogic potential, since it always involves taking up and
responding to other uses of language for particular purposes. But double voicing, a
second sense of dialogism, may be most applicable to discussions in which speakers take
up a passage flom the class text, identify with an historical/literary figure (like Dave’s 9th
graders), or take issue with what someone else has just said (like Tamara’s 6th hour
class). That is, dialogic discussion depends not on the presence of multiple voices in
discussion, but on the relationships among turns in conversation.

But why the interactional flame, rather than another unit of analysis? For instance,
a different possibility suggested by previous research might be evaluations (i.e., the “E”
in the I-R-E sequence of teacher Initiates, student Responds, teacher Evaluates). Indeed,
a focus on evaluative follow-ups helped to explain the function of the ironic responses to
others’ contributions made by Tamara and her 10th grade literature students at Magnum
Appan during their discussion of Hiroshima. In that chapter 6 example, evaluative
follow-ups by teacher and students, like “So you’re saying. . .,” “Wait, but Kevin said. . .,”
and “You see how Brian said. . .,” juxtaposed a speaker’s contribution with a counter-

example, double voicing and thus indirectly criticizing another’s alignment in ways that

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provoked further debate. In short, evaluations turned inauthentic questions into
opportunities for discussion.

In fact, some research has already addressed how such “follow-ups” can make a
difference to the value and purposes of recitation (Mercer, 1995; Wells, 1999, 1993), and
can promote or sustain discussion by encouraging students to theorize (O'Connor &
Michaels, 1993) or to debate a common definition or principle (Wells, 1999, pp. 200-
202). However, in chapter 6, a focus on the evaluative follow—ups, alone, does not
account for how the irony of those follow-ups allowed teacher and students to understand
that what appeared to be recitation was more like “playing devil’s advocate”: that is, both
parties understood the teacher’s criticism of student responses, within the particular flame
of the interaction, to be an ironic attempt to encourage further discussion. As with
addressing questions as a unit of analysis, a focus on evaluative follow-ups would not
account for how “the context for each class session, built by the interactions” (Nystrand
et al., 1997, p. 84) shaped and was shaped by that evaluative follow-up, which might
serve to close down or encourage further discussion, depending on the interactional
flame.

Why not focus on uptake? Previous research has identified “uptake” (Collins,
1982; Nystrand et al., 1997, pp. 38-39) as a discursive feature associated with dialogic
discussions in which a student or the teacher “picks up on a student’s response” by asking
another person a question about what s/he has just said (for example “What makes you
say that?”). Unlike authentic/inauthentic questions, which focus on the relationships
between individuals, this discursive feature matches my dissertation’s focus on the

relationships among utterances. Like animation, it is often “marked by the use of

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pronouns” (Collins, 1982; Nystrand etal., 1997, pp. 38-39); like double voicing, it
involves “use of someone else’s words for [one’s] own purposes” (Bakhtin, 1984, p.
189). However, uptake, by the definition above, did not often appear in my data. For this
reason, and based on the recurrence in Tamara’s 6th hour discussion of discursive
elements like rhetorical questions, I argued in chapter 6 for including in the definition of
“uptake” the repetition of phrases and sentence structures used by previous speakers; this
repetition of others’ words, in the context of debate, has been called “format tying,” and
has been shown to promote and sustain out-of-classroom discussions characterized by
disagreement (M. Goodwin, 1990, pp. 177-185); likewise, in chapter 4, I argued that
“uptake” in research on dialogic discussions should be expanded to include not only
others’ words and ideas, but also the kind of uptake practiced by Andy and Sami when
they imitated Nathan’s use of the journal entry activity to comment indirectly on
classroom events. The definition of uptake currently used in research on dialogic
discussions does not account for these dialogic relationships among utterances.
However, these exammes might be in keeping with a broader definition of uptake
as the relationships established by illocutionary acts and responses to them (Austin,
1962). By this definition, answering a question might be considered uptake because it
accepts the relationship implied by the asking. As such, this broader definition, though it
would account for the examples of dialogic discourse mentioned above, would also
include the l-R-E exchange often associated with recitation as an example of uptake. This
early definition of uptake is therefore too broad to be useful as a unit of analysis in

defining and distinguishing recitations and discussions.

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Moreover, a focus on a unit of analysis at the level of the utterance, like questions,
evaluative follow-ups, or uptake would not account for the relationships among
discussions and other, similar interactions flamed by classroom discourse. For example,
in chapter 5, a recitation of textbook answers concerning WWI events like Schlieffen
plan, in Dave Weber’s 9th grade Social Studies classroom, was followed by discussion of
the German invaders’ impact on Belgium. What explains the fact that student responses
to the seemingly inauthentic question “What was the Schlieffen plan?” could include not
only the textbook answer, “It called for holding action against Russia,” but also
evaluations flom students like “I didn’t understand that at all” that seemed to implicitly
request further clarification? Chapter 7 suggested that a textbook homework review, in
Dave’s class, could become an opportunity for discussion because of what preceded or
followed that review, like the discussion of trench warfare and the “Letter Home flom the
Trenches” homework activity, or because of Dave’s students’ participation in other,
similar review sessions in his class in which textbook answers were often a jumping-off
point for discussion. That is, a focus on the interactional frame—rather than utterances,
like questions, responses, and evaluations—in defining dialogic discussions, may account
for the way an interaction is flamed by its place in a sequence of activities, as well as by
the repeated reflaming of other, similar lesson activities.

In this first section, I have situated my findings concerning the negotiation of
classroom interactions among teachers and students. My data suggested that a focus on
the discursive interactional flame, and the relationship among utterances, rather than a

focus on teacher/ student control and individual questions, may be a way to theorize

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dialogic discussions that extends and challenges definitions of this type of interaction in
previous English education research.

8.2.2 From recitation to discussion. A focus on the interactional flame as a
means of establishing, maintaining, and negotiating classroom interactions allowed me to
further address my research question about the relationship between recitation and
discussion. Prior research has suggested that recitations and discussions often co-occur
(e. g., Nystrand et al., 1997), but little research has described how one becomes the other,
or what kinds of discourse accompany the transition. In chapter 4-7, I showed that what
began as recitation could become more dialogic through the proposal and acceptance of
revisions to the interactional flame. These proposals were made through the use of
animation and double voicing, whereby speakers brought events and different alignments
toward them into relationship. For example, in chapter 4, Nathan’s, Andy’s, and Sami’s
readings of their “journal entries” proposed and reflamed revision of an activity flom one
in which students shared their writing in order to demonstrate knowledge of grammatical
clauses to one in which class members could comment indirectly on classroom events.
The readings did this by animating class members and describing their behavior in ways
that double voiced, or indirectly criticized, that behavior, prompting firrther responses. In
chapter 5, Shirin’s question and Dave’s imagination exercise proposed and accepted a
reflaming of a textbook question review activity as one in which teacher and students
elaborated a hypothetical narrative together based on a historical event under study. In
that narrative, students were animated as figures, allowing them to comment from a first-
person perspective on a hypothetical/historical event. In chapter 6, what began with a

review of what the class had said about the maxim “All’s fair in love and war” was

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reflamed as a debate over the ethics of the WWII bombing of Hiroshima; in that debate,
animating and double voicing previous speakers resulted in their rejoining the
conversation to defend their alignments toward the topic. Chapter 7 showed that not all
reflaming proposals are accepted: Victoria’s question about stockbrokers seemed like one
which might allow a reflaming of review as hypothetical narrative discussion, as had
previously been the case in Dave’s class, but this did not occur even after another
attempt, by Jon, to challenge the flame for the interaction. Animation and double voicing
were thus important strategies for making and accepting reflaming proposals.

These reframing proposals depended in part on discursive features often
marginalized by other methodologies, such as word choice, tone, syntax, gestures,
laughter, and other methods of signaling situation and relationship (Gumperz, 1982).
Attention to these discursive features was thus useful in describing the emergence of the
interactional flame and particularly how discussions arose flom recitations. Such features
were also important to identifying and describing “flame-breakin g” behavior associated
with resistance to recitation and variations on discussion genres.

For instance, chapters 5 and 7 suggested that the reflaming proposals made by
animating other speakers, and thereby bringing events into relationship, were associated
with changes in verb tense and pronoun use. As Dave and his students animated
themselves and others as figures in hypothetical narrative discussions, they shifted flom
using past tense and “they” to describe the historical figures to using present tense and
“I/you.” These shifts occurred emergently, without explicit direction flom any one

participant.

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In chapter 6, as Tamara and her students double voiced what others had just said
in order to indirectly criticize their alignments toward the bombing of Hiroshima, tone
and syntax played an important role in communicating the ironic use of reported speech.
In addition to adopting this playfully ironic, double-voiced means of disagreement,
speakers increasingly used the same phrases and sentence structures as the emergent
flame exerted an influence on their subsequent responses.

In chapters 4—7, laughter often accompanied moments when the flame was
“breaking (or cracking) up” (Gofflnan, 1986, p. 352). In chapter 4, nervous laughter
marked the moment when Nathan used his journal entry to animate and criticize his
teacher, subverting the purpose of the grammar activity as initially flamed; it also
appeared when Colby and Tamara parodied each other’s words, tone, and gestures
through double voicing. Laughter also accompanied Jon’s “mugging,” in chapter 7,
which may have been an attempt to disrupt a narrative that animated him in ways he did
not like. And Penny’s and Tom’s collective bargaining about next Thursday’s test also
produced laughter. That laughter accompanied these moments is not surprising, since
irony (which is sometimes produced by double-voiced criticism—or parody—like that
used by many of the participants in these examples) is integral to humor. However,
laughter has also been associated with the negotiation of the interactional flame, or how
participants in social interactions move between laughing at and laughing with (Glenn,
2003, pp. 112-122). These were all moments that strained, challenged, or broke the flame
because individuals were animated in a role with which they did not identify and thus

sought to reflame the situation.

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Indeed, attention to the interactional flame has allowed me to distinguish
recitation as a “fabrication,” in which either teachers or students appear to be “dupes” for
not realizing what the other already knows (Goffman, 1986, pp. 351-352), a situation
which participants in my study often resisted through “flame-breaking” behavior. The
idea of the fabricated flame explains the reactions of Nathan and Colby in chapter 4: they
answered questions that asked them to demonstrate knowledge of grammatical clauses or
to recall the definition of verbal irony in ways that fulfilled the teachers’ expectations
while also cleverly signaling that they were not “contained” (p. 352) within the
fabrication of what appeared to be recitation. In chapter 6, Tamara capitalized on that
same strategy, using irony to simultaneously flame and parody a fabrication in which she
pretended to misunderstand students’ answers in order to encourage further discussion.

Attention to interactional sociolinguistic features has thus allowed me to describe
how recitations can become discussions through emergence of the interactional flame. In
my study, reflaming proposals were made by teachers and students through animation
and double voicing. A methodology informed by interactional sociolinguistics allowed
me to identify the discourse that accompanied moments at which these proposals were
made and accepted, as well as moments of “frame-breaking” behavior associated with
fabrications, such as changes in word choice, syntax, tone, and laughter.

8.2.3 Relationships between who and what: juxtaposing events in discussion.
In chapter 2, I noted that previous definitions of discussion, such as a “flee exchange of
information among students and/or between at least two students and the teacher”

(N ystrand et al., 1997, p. 36) have suggested little about the object of discussion. In

focusing on dialogic discourse in terms of relationships among utterances (rather than

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among people), I asked whether and how discussions might depend on relationships
between speakers and the topic: Does what is being discussed matter, in addition to who?
How do discussions bring historical/literary figures and events into relationship with the
situation of the participants?

In my data, one type of juxtaposition of events that seemed to bring speakers and
the topic of discussion into relationship involved animating students as figures in
historical/literary events through narrative discourse. In chapters 5 and 7, Dave and his
students animated themselves and each other in ways that identified them with historical
figures like the WI inhabitants of Belgium, trench soldiers, stock market lenders and
investors, union negotiators, and post-WWII Berliners. In some cases, identifying with
these historical figures seemed to make the past more present and personal for
participants, as evidenced by discursive changes in their use of verb tense and personal
pronouns. This change may have been possible because of the way the narratives brought
historical events into relationship with contemporary settings more familiar to students in
a hypothetical narrative. Because students were both figures in and co-authors of that
narrative, they were able to participate flom their own perspectives and to take different
alignments toward the events, disagreeing with each other and even their teacher. In
chapter 6, Tamara similarly encouraged her students to imagine themselves into events
flom Hersey’s Hiroshima and to take different alignments toward those events in ways
that promoted discussion.

These findings are in keeping with other research in English and Social Studies
education on the relationships between students’ experiences and academic subject

matter. Prior research suggests that students—especially low achievers, poor students,

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and non-native English speakers—fare better when instruction connects to their previous
experiences (Freedman et al., 1999; G. Ladson-Billings, 1995; Gloria Ladson-Billings,
1995; J. Langer, 1992, 2001, 2002; J. Langer et al., 1990; C. Lee, 1993, 1995, 2001,
2006b, 2006a; Losey, I995; Rex, 2001). Further, envisioning the story world of a literary
text has been show to increase student comprehension and engagement (J. Langer, 1990,
1992; Wilhelm, 1997), and imagining themselves into the midst of an historical event
through narrative discourse may also increase students’ empathy and authority with
regard to those events (Husbands & Pendry, 2000; Juzwik, 2006). In particular, research
has suggested that students may be encouraged to explore alternative, “sideshadowing”
possibilities (Bernstein, 1994; Morson, 1994) by the hypothetical quality of narratives
which sequence unrealized events (Juzwik, 2006; Ochs & Capps, 2001).

However, this previous work has not focused on how such hypothetical narratives
can be elaborated by multiple tellers, promoting discussion. Moreover, in these prior
studies, students were often cast as figures in historical events, or hypothetical scenarios
that sequenced events which, though unrealized, were not unlikely. In chapter 7, Dave’s
use of such a realis hypothetical narrative about the stock market crash, though it may
have clarified the relationships among companies, lenders, and investors, did not result in
discussion. In fact, it produced “flame-breaking” resistance flom Jon to the constraints of
the interactional flame. Similarly, another realis hypothetical narrative about a future
event that was likely to happen—“a test next Thursday”—also resulted in flame-breakin g
behavior rather than discussion. In contrast, three irrealis hypothetical narrative
discussions that juxtaposed a past event and a familiar present setting in ways that were

not only unrealized but clearly unlikely (such as trench warfare with a rival class on the

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football field) each resulted in discussion. This dissertation extends prior research in this
area by suggesting that hypothetical narratives which do not “collapse narrative events”
(Juzwik, 2006, p. 511) into either the past or the future may be more likely to lead to
discussion.

Attention to the interactional flame in this dissertation has also allowed analysis
of the relationship in discussions between narrated events and the current interaction of
the discussion, itself. In chapters 4-7, and I showed that the way narrated events flamed
an interaction among figures in the narrative could affect the flaming of discussion
among teacher and students in the classroom. In chapter 4, both Nathan and Colby
referred to what their teachers had done during previous lessons; those comments, and the
way they animated Sami and Tamara, both enabled and required the teachers (in order to
avoid looking naive) to respond with their own narrative critiques. In chapter 6, Tamara
used this technique to provoke debate among students: For example, her juxtaposition of
similar events—the bombing of Hiroshima and the terrorist attacks of 9/11—toward
which Franklin seemingly had different alignments—one was fair, the other unfair——
flamed those events in ways that caused Franklin to re-enter the conversation in an
attempt to clarify his position. In chapter 5, being animated as figures in a hypothetical
narrative about the invasion of their hometown allowed students to speak with a first-
hand authority about that imagined event, and even to disagree with Dave; but chapter 7’s
analysis of realis hypothetical narratives suggested that when the narrated event was too
“far” flom the current interaction (like the re-enactment of the stock market crash) or too
“close” to the current interaction (like the collective bargaining about the test next

Thursday) flame-breaking behavior ensued and disrupted the possibility of discussion.

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In this section, I have situated my findings concerning how juxtaposing events
brought speakers and the topic of discussion into relationship in ways that affected
discussions. My data included examples of the juxtaposition of historical and
hypothetical events, as well as the juxtaposition of narrated events and the classroom
interactions in which they occurred. These findings may help English education
researchers interested in classroom discourse analysis to better understand how recitation
can be reflarned as discussion by bringing events into relationship. In the next section, I
address my research question about how the relationship among turns in conversation,
and among different alignments or stances, shaped discussions.

8.2.4 Relationships among turns: juxtaposing alignments in discussion. My
review of research on dialogic discussions suggested that previous definitions of
discussion, such as a “flee exchange of information among students and/or between at
least two students and the teacher” (N ystrand et al., 1997, p. 36), do not account for the
relationships among turns in discussion. Theoretically, prior research has followed
Bakhtin in affirming that “discourse is not dialogic because the speakers take turns, but
because it is continually structured by tension, even conflict...” (p. 8) and that “it is
conflict, not harmony, that fuels response” (p. 18); in practice, few studies have
addressed dialogic discussions characterized by disagreement or what kinds of “conflict
talk” (Grimshaw, 1990) might promote discussion.

Disagreement is not a synonym for dialogism. In chapter 6, students disagreed in
Tamara’s 4th hour class about the ethics of “pulling the plug” on a suffering, terminal
patient, but there was little relationship among the turns in conversation. Notably, this

conversation was prompted by an authentic question which invited students to share their

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personal perspectives without restriction on a controversial situation which the teacher’s
comments and the students’ contributions suggested was relevant to their experience.
While other research on discussion of controversial issues in English classrooms has
focused on creating opportunities for discussion of controversial issues (e.g., Alsup,
2003; Hurlbert & Totten, 1992), on how to prepare students to participate knowledgeably
in such discussions (e.g., Burron, 2006; Rogers, 2008), or on how to encourage students
to share their opinions (e.g., Gaughan, 2001), few studies have described how to help
students to use “others’ words for [their] own purposes” (Bakhtin, 1984, p. 166) in
dialogic discussions of controversial issues.

By contrast, disagreement brought turns into relationship in ways that shaped
discussions in chapters 4-7. One way was by simply bringing different alignments toward
a topic into relationship. In chapter 5, students in Dave’s class disagreed with each other
(and the teacher) about the hypothetical impact of an invasion of their hometown of
Talbott (which paralleled the WI German invasion of Belgium): while Penny imagined
that the army’s presence might inspire people to “follow them,” Amy thought the
inhabitants of Talbott would “fleak out”. So engaging was this debate over the positive or
negative impact of having an army in town that it continued even after the hypothetical
narrative in Talbott was ended by Dave’s reference back to the actual, historical event.
Some Social Studies education research has sought to describe how students can be
encouraged to participate in debate (Brice, 1998; Dillon, 1994; Hahn, 1991, 1996; Hess,
2002; Kahne, Rodriguez, & Thiedke, 2000; Singer, 2003); however, little research has
suggested how participation might be encouraged by bringing different alignments

toward a historical event into relationship in discussion.

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Another way disagreement brought turns into relationship and shaped discussions
was through double voicing. In chapter 6, as students repeated what others had already
said in order to indirectly criticize their alignments toward the bombing of Hiroshima,
they increasingly used similar phrases and sentence structures. This repetition of others’
words during disagreement has been shown in some cases to promote and sustain debate
(M. Goodwin, 1990, pp. 177-185). Moreover, these students used “if. . .then. . .”
propositions, citation of other speakers, juxtaposition of counter-examples, and ironic,
rhetorical questions—all patterns of language use that one might associate with academic,
persuasive discourse. Double-voiced disagreement may thus be a means by which to
encourage students to gain experience with the language of argumentation (C. Lee,
2006a; Rabinowitz, 1987; M. Smith, 1991) and to help students participate in disciplinary
discourses, especially those students for whom academic language may be less familiar,
or less welcoming (Gutierrez et al., 1999; C. Lee, 2006a; Morrell, 2008).

One final way that disagreement brought turns into relationship and shaped
discussions in my data was through the relationship between narrated events and
speakers’ alignments toward them. In chapters 4 and 6, narrative discourse sometimes
suggested certain stances toward events and people in ways that provoked further
discussion. In chapter 4, Nathan’s “journal entry” reading told a story about Sami’s
behavior in a way that indirectly communicated Nathan’s negative alignment toward that
behavior, and toward the journal entry activity; Colby’s imitation of Tamara’s “teacher
voice” accomplished a similar subtle criticism. For Sami and Tamara to not respond to
these criticisms might have been to seem naive or cowardly. As such they responded in

kind with their own narratives, which both demonstrated that they “got” the implicit

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criticisms and communicated opposing alignments. Further, in chapter 6, narratives
generated by Tamara and her students often referred to what a student had just said,
flaming that speaker’s participation in a way with which s/he did not agree, and thereby
influencing his/her subsequent participation in discussion. This repeated “realignment” of
the flame, employed by Tamara and her students, thus made use of the “flame-breaking”
behavior which participants often exhibit when they are cast .in or forced to play a social
role with which they do not identify (Goffinan, 1986, pp. 351-352) to provoke further
discussion.

Other classroom discourse analytic research has described similar “revoicing”
strategies (C. Lee, 2006a; O'Connor & Michaels, 1993) as means of fostering discussions
in Science and English classes. However, it has not addressed such strategies in terms of
the relationships among alignments. And while some research has examined the
relationships among narratives and dialogic discussion (Juzwik et al., 2008) and among
narratives and the negotiation of conflicting alignments (Juzwik, 2010; Ochs & Capps,
2001), these studies research have not addressed how narrated events can bring different
alignments into relationship in ways that foster dialogic discussion.

Above, I have addressed my research question about how the relationships among
turns in discussion, and particularly among speakers’ different alignments, can affect that
interaction. My data suggested that, while not all disagreement results in discussion,
disagreement can bring turns in discussion into relationship in three ways: by juxtaposing
different alignments, by juxtaposing events toward which a speaker has different

alignments, and by flaming a speaker in a way with which s/he does not agree. Before

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turning to my final research question, I consider one implication of comparing the
previous two sections.

In the preceding two sections, I addressed how the relationships between the
flame for narrated events and the flame for the current classroom interaction affected
discussion. In chapters 5 and 7, how students in Dave’s class were animated as figures in
a narrative affected their participation in discussion. In chapter 6, how narratives flamed
what students had just said in Tamara’s 6th hour often encouraged further participation.
And in chapters 4-7, narratives by students, as well as the teachers, were part of
reflaming proposals whereby recitation gave rise to dialogic discourse. It is no surprise
that narratives were an important part of the discourse in these English and Social Studies
classrooms, as these are disciplines in which narratives are often the focus, as well as the
means, of meaning making. Indeed, in some English classes, “story makes sense of story”
(Juzwik & Sherry, 2005) as students tell oral narratives in response to literary ones
(J uzwik et al., 2008); and in National Social Studies curriculum, which includes a strand
devoted to “Time, Continuity, and Change,” the word “narrative” appears 184 times in
state standards across the US, including the state in which this research took place
(Center for History and New Media, 2008; Singer, 2003). In these classes, narratives of
historical/literary events were not only the objects of discussion but also a means by
which students’ experiences and alignments were brought into relationship in ways that
fostered dialogic discourse. In this sense, narratives functioned as “boundary objects”
which occasioned discussion by creating “dialogic spaces” (Anagnostopolous et al.,
2008). That is, narratives in these classrooms created accounts of lived experiences,

practices, and thought which were poised on the boundary between past/present,

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real/imaginary, and fair/unfair to which students could respond. Moreover, when these
narratives indexed students and teachers (implicitly or explicitly), they were implicated,
and their participation in discussion was enabled and constrained. While previous studies
have shown that narrated events can overlap with storytelling events (J akobson, 1971;
Wortham, 1994, 2001), little research has described how narratives that index class
members can promote dialogic discussion.

8.2.5 Relationships with other classroom interactions: pedagogical genres.
Prior research on classroom discourse has applied the notion of genre, or recurring
conventions of social interaction (e. g., Bakhtin, 1984; Devitt, 1993; C. Miller, 1984;
Swales, 1990), not only to written discourse (e.g., Bazerman, 1997, 1988; Bazerman et
al., 2009; Freedman & Medway, 1994; Hicks, 1995) but also to talk and behavior in
classrooms. For example, previous classroom discourse research has identified as “speech
genres” (Bakhtin, 1986a) “the lesson” (Wertsch, 1991, p. 110), I-R-E or I-R-F sequences
(Lemke, 1990; Wells, 1993), authentic questions (Nystrand et al., 1997, p. 91), and
hypothetical narratives (J uzwik, 2006). And while some scholars have wondered whether
discussion can be discerned well enough to identify discussion genres (Mercer, 1995;
Wells, 1999), some that have been identified include “conversational narrative
discussion” in secondary English classes (Juzwik et al., 2008) and “seminars” and
“deliberations” in Social Studies classes (Parker, 2001, 2006; Parker & Hess, 2001). The
present study asked what other “pedagogical genres” of discussion might appear in
secondary English and Social Studies classes and how such genres might be shaped by
the repeated reflaming of discussion interactions among teacher and students in a

particular classroom.

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In chapter 7, I examined five excerpts from lessons in Dave’s class which
included a combination of discussion and “hypothetical narrative” (Juzwik, 2006). These
“hypothetical narrative discussions,” juxtaposed historical and hypothetical events in
which students were animated as figures and in which they participated as “coetellers”
(Ochs & Capps, 2001). For example, the German army’s invasion of Belgium in WI
was juxtaposed with a hypothetical invasion of students’ hometown of Talbott, and the
experience of soldiers in WW1 trenches was compared to a similar skirmish with a rival
class on the football field. In both of these examples, students elaborate the narrative with
multiple, conflicting details and consequences, imagining that the presence of the army
would inspire people to “follow them” and “freak out,” to flee and to “fight them,” and to
feel threatened and “safe”; likewise, life in the trenches was described as
"claustrophobic," "powerful," "safe," "cold," "hot," "with all your friends," "hungry,"
"tired," "trying to fight," " going to get sick," and "waiting." Moreover, verb tense and
pronoun use in the discourse of Dave and his students shifted from past to present and
from “they” to “you/I” over the course of these narratives. The repeated juxtaposition of
historical and hypothetical events in which students were animated as figures, in some
cases, allowed them to participate as co-tellers, taking perspectives on events which were
not only multiple and different, but also seemed to make the past more present and
personal, bringing it into relationship with students’ contemporary experiences.

The genre of hypothetical narrative discussions in Dave’s class differed from
other, similar discourse genres in ways that seemed relevant to how dialogic discussions
shape and are shaped by the relationship among utterances. Instead of Ochs and Capps’s

(2001) irrealis sequencing of unrealized events in past, present, or future realms (like

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imagined alternative endings to sporting events), these narratives juxtaposed historical
events and contemporary contexts. And unlike Juzwik’s (2006) hypothetical narratives, in
which the teacher cast the present—day students as characters in a generic past event (p.
510), the hypothetical narrative discussions in Dave’s classroom brought the historical
event into the contexts of their state, town, and classroom, making the past part of
students’ present experience. Indeed, the familiarity of those contexts and the fantastical,
quality of the situations may have made it more possible for students to participate in
elaborating the scenario. The multiple, conflicting details supplied by students from the
point of view of the present/past inhabitants of an invaded city or a WWI trench also
resembled the “turn-by-tum co-authoring and negotiation of details in the taleworld”
characteristic of Georgakopolou’s (2007) “projections” (p. 47—48), another sub—genre of
the “what if. . .?” narrative. Morson (1994) and Bernstein (1994) call such intimations of
what else might have been “sideshadowing,” contrasting them with the “foreshadowing”
and “backshadowing” that portray events as coherent and inevitable predictors or
precursors. In Dave’s classroom, these multiple, conflicting perspectives may have
emphasized the uncertainty and ambiguity of the historical event, and thus created a more
complex account of it than might have been possible if the narrative had been told by a
single teller (Wertsch, 2002).

By contrast, there were other moments when hypothetical narratives appeared in
Dave’s class which were not accompanied by discussion. For example, the animation of
students as bank, company, and stockholder, during one lesson, resembled Juzwik’s
(2006) hypothetical narratives, because the teacher animated the present-day students as

figures in a past event (p. 510). In this narrative, associated with the 19203 stock market

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crash, there was little relationship between students’ experiences and the topic and few
opportunities to bring turns into conversation by disagreeing. As such, the interaction
resembled recitation more than dialogic discussion, and one student’s disruptive behavior
may have been a response to this framing of the interaction. The absence of discussion in
this interaction may be due to the realis quality of this hypothetical narrative, which
sequenced events that had already taken place rather than unrealized events that were
unlikely to happen. Another hypothetical narrative, about collective bargaining also failed
to produce discussion (and included frame-breaking behavior), perhaps because it, too,
used the realis factual conditional mood to sequence events that were unrealized but
likely to happen: Because students knew they did, in fact, “have a test next Thursday,”
they tried to use their roles in the hypothetical narrative as union negotiators who could
“strike” if they were not allowed to use their notes, in response to which the teacher
ended the narrative to avoid a confrontation. These examples suggested that hypothetical
narrative discussions were a discussion genre in Dave’s class that depended on the nature
of the juxtaposition of historical and hypothetical events and how it related to students’
present situation.

The fact that the genre of hypothetical narrative discussions included variations is
in keeping with notions of speech genres as “relatively stable” social conventions which
have accumulated over time, but which are nevertheless “flexible. . .and free” (Bakhtin et
al., 1986, p. 121-127). This finding follows other research that addresses genres
associated with recitation and discussion not as a stable set of rules, but as regularities of
discursive form and content connected to social relationships and to participation in

communities with shared practices (Freedman & Medway, 1994, p. 1). In relation to

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research on classroom discourse, more specifically, it adds the idea that pedagogical
genres may be discursively negotiated among teachers and students through repeated
reframing of interactions like recitation or discussion. That is, the nature of dialogic
discussions may vary according to their overlap with other, narrative genres (J uzwik et
al., 2008), according to their purposes (Parker, 2001, 2006; Parker & Hess, 2001), and
according to their relationship to other discussions.

In addition to how discussions might be related to other examples of and
variations on discussions, I also addressed in chapters 5, 6, and 7 how discussions might
be related to other, similar interactions, such as the lesson activities which preceded and
followed them. For instance, in chapters 5 and 7, I observed that in Dave’s class review
of textbook questions which had been assigned for homework was often an opportunity
for discussion. Thus what might have appeared to be recitation, because of the presence
of inauthentic, lower—order questions, and might not have produced discussion in another
context, was affected by the way that type of interaction had been framed during previous
lessons.

The framing of the same type of interaction during previous lessons was not the
only way that other lesson activities shaped discussions in my data. In chapter 6, the lack
of relationship among turns in conversation during Tamara’s 4th hour might have been
influenced by the fact that students were essentially reporting on journal entries they had
already written; by contrast, the frequent double voicing and juxtaposing of counter-
examples in her 6th hour’s discussion may have been due to the fact that it preceded a
position paper assignment which asked students to anticipate counter-arguments. ln

Dave’s class, too, the hypothetical narrative discussion of trench warfare may have been

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affected by the fact that it preceded a “Letter Home from the Trenches” assignment
which similarly asked students to imagine themselves into an historical event. These
examples suggest that lesson activities which immediately precede and follow
discussions, even if they are not the same type of interaction, can also shape the nature of
discussions.

Finally, Dave’s post-lesson interview commentary on the hypothetical narratives
about the stock market crash and the Berlin airlift suggested that the framing of those
interactions was shaped by his participation in other, similar interactions with the classes
he taught earlier in the day. In one case, a student’s question became an opportunity to
insert an explanation of the stock market which Dave thought was needed, but which did
not result in discussion. In the other, previous classes’ difficulty with hypothetical
comparisons between the division of Berlin and other important cities (like Vatican City
and Washington, DC.) affected Dave’s eventual use of the state capital, instead.

Other discourse analytic research has “traced” the conventions and variations of
genres in communities (e.g., Spinuzzi, 2003), including those related to academic
discourse (e. g., Bazerman, 1988; Swales, 1990), as well as how those genres are
(re)mediated by talk among teacher and students (Prior, 1998). And some studies have
even described the repeated recontextualization of a single, oral narrative genre (J uzwik,
2010; Ochs & Capps, 2001). However, these previous studies have not addressed how
dialogic discussions are shaped by their relationship to other classroom interactions,
including other discussions, other similar types of interaction, and other kinds of
activities which precede and follow those discussions during a lesson. On the other hand,

prior research has called for study of how teaching the same lesson to different students

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might affect the nature of instruction (N ystrand et al., 1997, p. 91; Sawyer, 2001a, p.
209), call answered by the present study with regard to how the flaming of similar
activities during earlier class periods seemed to affect the flaming of interactions with
later classes.

This final discussion section has addressed my research question about the
relationship between discussions and other classroom interactions. My data suggested
that other discussions, other similar types of interaction, and other kinds of activities
which precede and follow discussions during a lesson, including the teacher’s
participation in framing similar interactions during earlier class periods, can contribute to
the flaming of discussions. Having situated my findings across chapters in relation to
other research, I now consider the limitations and implications of these findings for
theorizing, studying, and teaching dialogic discussions.

8.3 Limitations and Implications: Reframing Discussions in Theory, Methodology,
and Practice

I now consider some of the limitations and implications of the conclusions I have
drawn so far, particularly with regard to my emergentist theoretical perspective, the
qualitative sociolinguistic methodology of my study, and the pedagogical implementation
of its findings.

In theorizing dialogic discourse in terms of the relationships among utterances
(rather than among individuals), I have applied an interpretivist, sociocultural,
emergentist perspective to my data. As such, it may seem counter-productive to take up
the categories of recitations and discussions which, in prior research, have become nearly

reified categories defined by the presence of certain kinds of discourse that appear to be

230

the same regardless of context. However, this dissertation study takes up the categories of
recitations and discussions not to reinscribe those categories but to describe how
discursive relationships are created in particular contexts. For this purpose, the labels
“recitations” and “discussions” have pragmatic value for identifying and addressing the
similarities and differences among certain interactions. However, it may be worth
considering whether and how attention to recitations and discussions as stable categories
has contributed to the apparent persistence of recitations and relative rarity of

discussions.

In this study, I have addressed nine in-depth examples of discursive interactions
among participants in three classroom communities, most of which resulted in the
emergence of the interactional flame and in dialogic discourse. Unlike the large-scale,
national studies (Applebee & Squire, 1968; Applebee etal., 2003; Nystrand et al., 1997),
with whose criteria for recitations and discussions I have somewhat taken issue, in this
project I have addressed what is possible, based on a small number of classroom
interactions, with regard to how discussions emerge from recitations; I have not
attempted to suggest what can be measured and abstracted as probable across classrooms.
Thus it may be that the interactional frame is not a useful unit of analysis for discerning
recitations and discussions as they appear in other classrooms (or even among these same
teachers and students during other lessons). It may also be that much could be learned
flom studying interactions which are not emergent, flom studying emergent interactions
which are not discussions, or from studying moments in which interactions that began
with dialogic discussion become more like recitations. For instance, in the chapter 7

example that included a hypothetical narrative about the stock market crash, Dave’s prior

231

participation in similar interactions during previous class periods resulted in his not
addressing Victoria’s question or Jon’s challenge to the frame for that interaction. The
flame, based on Dave’s experience and his perception of what students needed to know,
was not emergent. However, this interaction and Sami’s journal entry grammar activity in
chapter 4 (which was emergent), did not seem like recitations in the strictest sense
because they nevertheless encouraged students to bring prior events and utterances into
relationship. More discourse analytic English education research on recitations and
discussions may be necessary to describe this “gray area” between recitations and
discussions.

In chapter 2, my synthesis of previous research on dialogic discussions raised two
critiques of prior definitions of dialogic discussions: 1) that they had been formed
primarily in opposition to recitation; 2) that they had focused on the presence of multiple
speakers and multiple interpretations, rather than on relationships among utterances.
While my findings have to some degree addressed the issues raised by these two
critiques, in the context of the second one, I pointed out that defining discussion as a
“free exchange of information among students and/or between at least two students and
the teacher” (N ystrand et al., 1997, p. 36) could be applied equally to discussion in any
discipline of any t0pic. Although this dissertation included discourse data flom a
Composition class, a Social Studies class, and a Literature class, the examples I addressed
did not allow me to make distinctions among features of discussion, or “pedagogical
genres” of discussion, according to discipline and topic. Moreover, the examples flom the
Social Studies class and the Literature class in chapters 5-7 were quite similar: most were

discussions of historical wartime events. How might these teachers and their students

232

have fared at discussing other kinds of historical events? other literary events? other
genres, like drama or poetry? students’ own alphabetic/audio/video compositions, like
personal narratives or websites? If what is being discussed matters as much as who is
doing the talking, as my data suggest, then English education researchers interested in
dialogic discussions may wish to examine how the discipline and object of such
discussions affects the nature of those interactions.

In addition to these theoretical issues, I now consider methodological limitations
and implications. In attending to sociolinguistic discursive features that signal situation
and relationship, I did not focus in my analysis on how other contextual elements might
shape the interactional flame. However, comments flom the teachers I studied suggested
that proximity and classroom setup, for example, might also be a part of their reframing
proposals. In one lesson not addressed in the preceding chapters, Dave described stepping
in amongst the students, whose desks were configured in a Uvshape, to signal that “we’re
all in this together.” This proposed reflaming of his relationship to students in that
moment recalled Tamara’s use of irony to reframe what appeared to be recitation so that
neither students nor the teacher were “containe ” or “outside” a “fabrication” (Gofflnan,
1986, pp. 351-3 52). Moreover, some previous education research has already suggested
that classroom environment may play a role in shaping dialogic discussions
(Hadjioannou, 2007; Lindfors, 1999); future studies in this area might study the
relationships between classroom environment and discussions in terms of discursive
interactional flaming.

I noted in earlier chapters that my interactional sociolinguistic methodology may

be open to criticisms related to “disambiguation” (Grimshaw, 198 7, 1990). Such

233

criticisms point out that speakers’ interpretive practices should be not be conflated with
intentions attributed to them by the researcher. At times, I have made inferences about
teachers’ and students’ participation in classroom interactions based on what they said
without the secondary resource of interview data. While I believe that this is defensible
given that teachers and students, themselves, may not always fully understand the
interpretations or intentions behind their responses to each other, or what those utterances
might “mean” when taken together, future studies of the framing of classroom discourse
interactions might include more interviewing.

For instance, in chapter 7, analysis of the relationships among the hypothetical
narrative about the stock market crash and other, similar interactions suggested that
Dave’s participation in teaching the same lesson to other class periods earlier in the day
shaped the nature of that particular interaction (for better or for worse), a finding called
for by some previous research (Nystrand et al., 1997, p. 91; Sawyer, 2001a, p. 209). A
difficulty that might accompany this interview research concerns the perceived value of
routinization and spontaneity: in my interviews with teachers, I noted that they often
initially downplayed the emergent aspects of lesson interactions, perhaps believing that I,
as their “field instructor,” wanted to hear how they had “stuck to the plan”; in contrast,
the same teachers would sometimes respond to students in ways that gave the appearance
of spontaneity, but which I knew (flom having observed another lesson) to be rehearsed.
For instance, one of the teachers in my study said, “Let’s see. . .,” before providing
students with the same examples that had been generated during a preceding class period,
perhaps so that students would think the examples had been tailored specifically to them.

In Philips’ (1992) study of courtroom discourse, participants placed a similar value on

234

apparent spontaneity. Interviews about the way participation in similar activities during
previous class periods shape an interaction might thus be subject to these biases created
by the teacher’s relationships to the interviewer or to the students.

Interview data about the way participation in similar activities during previous
class periods shape an interaction might also be collected from students: How are
discussions shaped by students’ participation in similar interactions during other classes?
While I do not believe that the emergent flame for discussions can be reduced to
individual, mental conceptions, perhaps knowing more about students’ prior participation
in similar interactions would shed further light on the reflaming proposals or the
resistance to being framed in particular ways that have been documented in this
dissertation study.

The relationships among dialogic discussions and other, similar classroom
interactions points to two further limitation of this dissertation’s focus on the interactional
flame as a unit of analysis. The present study included only ten visits to each classroom
over the course of one year. Though this allowed me to note that textbook question
reviews were often an opportunity for discussion in Dave’s class, and that Tamara’s 6th
hour had more practice at (as she put it) “bui1d[ing] on one another’s conversation” than
her 4th hour, my analysis of how repeated reflaming led to recurring patterns of
discursive interaction, or pedagogical genres, was limited by the scope of my data set.
Moreover, while I knew Sami, Dave, and Tamara well because of my interactions with
them in- and outside the classroom as their instructor over two years, and though I
learned much about their students during my visits to Marquette, Talbott, and Magnum

Appan, my study did not involve in-depth ethnographic research into how the

235

participants’ communicative practices might have been conditioned by their prior
participation in other speech genres, or by institutional influences on the interactional
frame.

Lee’s English education research (1993, 1995, 2001, 2006a), including studies in
which she served as the full-time classroom teacher and thus had access to more
discourse and ethnographic data, has suggested that participation in cultural practices like
“Signifyin(g)” (Gates, 1988; Jordan, 1983; Mitchell-Kernan, 1972) may shape
participation in academic English Language Arts discussion. This limitation of my study
led me to wonder whether and how the double—voiced disagreement I observed in
Tamara’s class might relate to Si gnifyin(g), which similarly involves ironic, playful,
indirect criticism of a present other, often for the purposes of instruction (Smitherman,
1977, 2000, 2006); I had similar questions about the relationships between hypothetical
narrative discussions, 3 pedagogical genre that emerged in Dave’s classroom among
primarily suburban Midwestern European Americans, and the Midwestern narrative style
documented by Johnstone (1990). Other studies in conversational analysis have similarly
associated discussion or debate with the practices of particular cultural groups in both
academic and non-academic settings (Corsaro & Rizzo, 1990; Grimshaw, 1990; D. Lee &
Peck, 1995; Schiffrin, 1984). However, findings and conclusions for such questions
remain beyond the scope of my study. How do discussions affect and refract the
discursive practices of a classroom community? What other “pedagogical genres” of
discussion emerge and recur in that community? How are discussions shaped by the
participation of teachers and students in the discursive practices of other sociocultural

communities?

236

In addition to the theoretical and methodological limitations and implications I
have detailed, there are pedagogical issues for English teachers, Social Studies teachers,
and teacher educators to consider. In focusing on what is being discussed, and on the
relationship among turns and alignments in discussion, rather than on who, I did not
examine in this dissertation whether the discussions I studied involved a majority of the
students in the class. However, other studies of dialogic discussions (and English or
Social Studies teachers’ attempts to foster and facilitate them) have noted that sometimes
outspoken students can dominate, stepping into the vacuum left by the teacher as s/he
tries to “step back” and let students do more talking (e. g., Aukerman, Belfatti, & Santori,
2008; Billings & Fitzgerald, 2002); some studies have also suggested that this may be
especially true in discussions characterized by disagreement and debate (of the kind I
often focused on), which can favor confident, articulate, competitive students (N ystrand
et al., 1997, p. 49). In Social Studies education research, the equity of student
participation, and the chance to hear multiple perspectives that are different flom one’s
own, have been described as important parts of participation in democratic, civic-minded
discussion (Parker, 2006) of controversial public issues (Hess, 2002). And my own
experience as an English educator has suggested that other teachers, including pre-service
English teacher candidates, also consider it important to monitor how many students have
had a chance to speak.

However, national studies (Applebee et al., 2003; Nystrand et al., 1997) which
suggested that students in discussion-based secondary English classrooms performed
better on various tests of literacy achievement did not specify if this applied even to

students who do not participate frequently in discussion. How much student participation

237

is “enough”? Why do some voices fall silent? What does “participation” in discussions
mean (is it speaking? is it listening? does nodding count?)? And what about the quiet
students who seem to draw more from discussion (as evidenced by their later
performance in other activities) than outspoken ones? Or those who seem more willing to
participate in small-groups than in whole-class discussion? Although these questions are
beyond the bounds of this dissertation, they may be addressed by attention to the flaming
of classroom interactions: how are the roles, relationships, and responses possible during
a discussion flamed by whether it is small-group or whole-group? How does the way
discussions are refrarned over time establish discussions in a particular classroom as a
pedagogical genre in which some peOple speak and others do not?

How might teachers and pre-service teachers learn to foster dialogic discussions
through attention to reframing? Authentic questions and uptake may seem like relatively
easy discursive moves for teachers to adopt in comparison with making and accepting
refraining proposals. However, previous English education research (e. g., Adler et al.,
2003; Commeyras & DeGroff, 1998; Smagorinsky, Cook, & Johnson, 2003) as well as
my own experiences as an English teacher educator and an English teacher suggest that
changing one’s questioning practices or picking up on students’ responses can be
difficult. A focus on the interactional frame, and the implied and double voiced
utterances by which it is negotiated with students, might seem to be even more difficult.
However, the pre-service teacher candidates in my study were able to make, recognize,
and accept reflaming proposals. While they may be exceptional, my subsequent work
with teacher candidates has suggested that others are also quite capable of understanding

these ideas. For example, they quickly grasped that l) certain kinds of talk and behavior

238

in the classroom propose roles, relationships, and possible responses, just as an extended
hand proposes a “handshake” greeting in some countries; those proposals can be
accepted, rejected, or (re/mis)interpreted in particular contexts; 2) if we use students’
words for our own purposes, they might return the favor; 3) if we can bring
historical/literary figures and events into relationship with students’ experiences, it may
encourage discussion; 4) if a topic is controversial, and brings different alignments into
relationship, it may encourage discussion; and 5) what other activities come before or
after a discussion, and how consistently discussions are conducted in one’s classroom,
may affect the way students participate.

These are heuristics, not formulas. Indeed, Bakhtin tells us that “real work is
always required... [by] a special attention to the particulars of the situation and a special
involvement with unique other pe0ple at a given moment of their lives” (Morson &
Emerson, 1990, p. 26). This dissertation has suggested that theorizing, studying, and
teaching discussions is collaborative, dynamic, complex work when addressed in terms of
relationships among utterances, and cannot be reduced to simple policies.

Above, I have addressed the limitations and implications of the present study.
How might flaming apply beyond this qualitative discourse analytic study of emergent
interactions in three classrooms? How might discussions be affected by differences in
discipline and topic? What other contextual factors (like classroom environment) might
shape the interactional frame for discussions? What might further interviews of teachers
and students suggest about how experience with other, similar interactions affects the
flame for discussions? How might other culturally-conditioned discourse practices

influence the flaming of discussions? How might attention to refrarning address the

239

equity of student participation? Table 2, below, summarizes the claims made in this

dissertation study:

8.4 Summary of Claims (Overarching and by Chapter)

 

Overarching claim

Chapter # - Claim

 

The authenticity and order of
thinking apparent in questions in
these data (a previous criterion for
dialogic discussions) did not
always correspond with the
dialogic relationships among
utterances evident in the
subsequent discourse. Rather, the
nature of those questions, and their
relationships to the discourse that
followed, seemed to depend on the
frame for the interaction in each
lesson activity. The interactional
frame, rather than utterance-level
indicators like questions,
evaluations, or uptake, may be an
appropriate unit of analysis for
defining and distinguishing
recitations and dialogic
discussions.

4 - Classroom conversations characterized by features
typically associated with recitation can become more
like dialogic discussion

4 - Neither recitation nor discussion can take place
without some degree of coordination of the frame
among the class members

4 - Even “inauthentic” questions may produce
“authentic” answers (and vice versa)

4 - An expanded definition of uptake might better
explain how participants in discussion use prior
discourse to collaboratively create new meaning

6 - Even activities which contain authentic, higher-order
questions, which juxtapose historical/literary events
with events relevant to students’ experiences, and which
provoke conflicting perspectives, may produce no more
than a sequential expression of opinions which exhibits
little dialogic relationship among turns in conversation.

 

 

Attention to interactional
sociolinguistic features allowed
description of how recitations can
become discussions through
emergence of the interactional
frame. Reframing proposals were
made by teachers and students
through animation and double
voicing. A methodology informed
by interactional sociolinguistics
allowed identification of the
discourse that accompanied
moments at which these proposals
were made and accepted, as well
as moments of “flame-breaking”
behavior associated with
“fabrications,” such as changes in
word choice, syntax, tone, and
laughter.

 

4 - Recitation as “fabricated” flame may explain the
resistance of students, as well as the efforts of teachers
to avoid appearing naive about students’ criticisms of
their recitation questions.

6 - Recitation frames interaction as a “fabrication” in
which either students or teacher are “duped” or
“contained by not knowing that the other already knows
the answers; ironic responses such as “playing devil’s
advocate,” may be one way to reframe the asking of
known-answer questions as an Opportunity for
discussion.

 

 

 

Table 2. Summary of overarching and chapter claims of this dissertation (cont’d on next
page).

240

 

Juxtaposing events brought
speakers and the topic of
discussion into relationship in
ways that affected discussions: by
juxtaposing historical and
hypothetical events and by
juxtaposing narrated events and
the classroom interactions in
which they occurred.

5 - What begins as recitation can be refrarned as
discussion through the juxtaposition of historical/literary
events and events relevant to students’ experiences,
which allow students to contribute from their own
perspectives.

5 - The juxtaposition of historical and contemporary
events may make the past more present and personal for
students, allowing them to participate as first-person

l

 

 

Disagreement brought turns in
discussion into relationship in
three ways: by juxtaposing
different alignments, by
juxtaposing events toward which a
speaker had different alignments,
and by framing a speaker in a way
with which s/he did not agree.

6 - evaluative follow-ups which invite others to disagree
and which double voice students’ contributions may
provoke further discussion.

6 - While previous research has focused on the “uptake”
of content, the use of previous speakers’ phrases and
sentence structures may also contribute to promoting
and sustaining discussions that involve disagreement.

6 - If true “argument,” in the negative sense, is
characterized by disagreement in which turns in
conversation have little relation to each other in terms of
content or form, increasing regularities of language use
during debate may suggest a productive coordination of
the interactional flame associated with discussion

6 - to help students participate in disciplinary discourse;
the increasing use of academic language (e.g., citation of
other speakers, juxtaposition of counter-examples)
during the debate suggests double-voiced disagreement
mg be one way to address thiSJoal

 

The relationships between the
frame for narrated events and the
frame for the current classroom
interaction affected discussion.

5 - The overlap between narrated events (especially
those which index class members) and classroom events
may shape discussion.

6- narratives that flame events/present speakers in ways
with which others disagree also flovokgparticipation

 

Other discussions, other similar
types of interaction, and other
kinds of activities which precede
and follow discussions during a
lesson, including the teacher’s
participation in framing similar
interactions during earlier class
periods, can contribute to the
framing of discussions.

 

Lg

 

7 - The framing of an interaction (like a homework
review or a discussion) can shape the framing of
subsequent, similar interactions

7 — The repeated reframing of similar interactions can
result in recurring genres of classroom interaction, like
hypothetical narrative discussion

7 — Hypothetical narratives which sequence unrealized
events that are unlikely to happen may encourage
discussion more than those which sequence events
which were already realized and/or are likely to happen
7 — Lesson activities which precede and follow
discussion can shape the frame for that discussion.

7 —— The framing of an interaction can be shaped by the
teacher’s participation in the framing of a similar
interaction with earlier class periods

 

 

Table 2. (cont’d).

241

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