When and How Students Take the Reins: Specifying Learner Initiatives in Tutoring Sessions with Preschool-Aged Children
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Catherine DiFelice Box
Catherine DiFelice Box is a doctoral student in Applied Linguistics at Teachers College, Columbia University. Her research focuses on talk in educational settings, particularly in multilingual, cross-cultural contexts. A central tenet of her work is the conversation analytic framework to study naturally-occurring unfolding interaction between teachers and students, and between teacher trainers and pre-service teachers.
Abstract
For decades, scholars across disciplines have lauded educational settings in which students have the interactional space to take initiative (e.g. Dyson 1987; Manke 1997; Renne 1996; Shah et al. 2002). As such, initiatives of this kind are considered an important part of student-centered activities, which in turn lead to greater learning opportunities (Waring 2011). While much research has been devoted to examining contexts in which learner’s voices may be heard, scant attention has been paid to the particular kinds of talk that encourage them to initiate contribution or the ways in which such initiatives, when they do occur, serve to shape the pedagogical trajectory. By utilizing conversation analysis (CA) to study interactions in one-on-one mathematics tutoring sessions between an experienced teacher and preschool-aged children, this study extends the small but growing body of microanalytic work on learner initiatives. It aims to further specify the discursive practices that foster rich environments for learner-led contributions. It also considers how the contributions shape the ensuing lesson, and what such contributions relay to teachers about the learner’s understanding of a concept.
About the author
Catherine DiFelice Box is a doctoral student in Applied Linguistics at Teachers College, Columbia University. Her research focuses on talk in educational settings, particularly in multilingual, cross-cultural contexts. A central tenet of her work is the conversation analytic framework to study naturally-occurring unfolding interaction between teachers and students, and between teacher trainers and pre-service teachers.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the Language and Social Interaction Working Group (LANSI) at Teachers College, Columbia University, for the many productive sessions studying these excerpts. Special thanks to Sarah Creider for working with me to collect and transcribe our data set, and to Hansun Zhang Waring, for being a trusted, unwavering mentor throughout the process. Finally, I extend my appreciation to the anonymous reviewers of the manuscript for their helpful feedback. All remaining errors are mine.
Appendix
CA Transcription Notations
- (.)
Untimed perceptible pause within a turn
- underline
Stress
- CAPS
Very emphatic stress
- ↑
High pitch on word
- .
Sentence-final falling intonation
- ?
Yes/no question rising intonation
- ,
Phrase-final intonation (more to come)
- -
A glottal stop, or abrupt cutting off of sound
- :
Lengthened vowel sound (extra colons indicate greater lengthening)
- =
Latch
- →
Highlights point of analysis
- [ ]
Overlapped talk
- °soft°
Spoken softly/decreased volume
- > <
Increased speed
- (words)
Uncertain transcription
- .hhh
Inbreath
- $words$
Spoken in a smiley voice
- (( ))
Comments on nonverbal behavior
- {((words))-words}
Dash to indicate co-occurrence of nonverbal behavior and verbal elements; curly brackets to mark the beginning and ending of such co-occurrence if necessary.
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©2015 by De Gruyter Mouton
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Note from the Editors
- Rethinking Reader and Writer Responsibility in Academic English
- When and How Students Take the Reins: Specifying Learner Initiatives in Tutoring Sessions with Preschool-Aged Children
- Intercultural Communication Systems and Discourses of Cultural Identity
- Nine Types of Turn-taking in Interpreter-mediated GP Consultations
- River-Crabbed Shitizens and Missing Knives: A Sociolinguistic Analysis of Trends in Chinese Language Use Online as a Result of Censorship
- Towards a Model of Advanced Learners’ Vocabulary Acquisition: An Investigation of L2 Vocabulary Acquisition and Retention by Taiwanese English Majors
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Note from the Editors
- Rethinking Reader and Writer Responsibility in Academic English
- When and How Students Take the Reins: Specifying Learner Initiatives in Tutoring Sessions with Preschool-Aged Children
- Intercultural Communication Systems and Discourses of Cultural Identity
- Nine Types of Turn-taking in Interpreter-mediated GP Consultations
- River-Crabbed Shitizens and Missing Knives: A Sociolinguistic Analysis of Trends in Chinese Language Use Online as a Result of Censorship
- Towards a Model of Advanced Learners’ Vocabulary Acquisition: An Investigation of L2 Vocabulary Acquisition and Retention by Taiwanese English Majors
