APLNG 572 CCLA Project

Visual literacy, American Gothic, and Interaction Patterns: Discussion

practices in an American university classroom

Samantha HimlerLindsey KurtzPia Gomez Laich

Orientation

• L´s ESL 015 class

• Goal of this course: To equip international students with the

reading and writing skills required to participate successfully in the academic reading and writing tasks they will encounter in American universities.

Orientation

Students learn:i. common practices of American academic

writing (summarizing, paraphrasing, quoting, organizing, making claims, providing support, choosing research topics, and following American conventions for citing source material),

ii. a variety of techniques to improve their papers through prewriting, peer reviewing, revising, and editing.

Orientation

• Students had been asked to read a ten-page chapter on how to create Visual Communication as an introduction to a major assignment in the class which required them to produce a visual argument.

• The instructor and students use language to combine their intellectual resources and jointly try to create understanding of a painting projected on the screen.

Thesis

1) L´s language use and her pedagogic goals are aligned:

• Apprenticing Ss into a community of practice

• Setting up the learning activity (managerial mode)

• Promoting discussion (classroom context mode)

Data Analysis

• Entire 55 minute class was video recorded

• First 18 minutes of recording was transcribed using transcription system adapted from van Lier (1988) and Johnson (1995)

-accounts for simultaneous speech and inaudibility

• Extended interactions between teacher and students

Data Analysis

• Analyzed through two scopes:1) Lave and Wenger's (1991) legitimate peripheral participation (LPP)2) Walsh’s (2011) SETT (self-evaluation of teacher talk framework)

Legitimate Peripheral Participation

Learning: understood in terms of gradually fuller participation in a community of practice through activity and exposure to more skilled peers

Emphasizes whole person

Community of practice as mutually constitutive -- relationship between oldtimers and newcomers

Findings -- LPP

Old-timer (L) apprentices newcomers (Ss):

Curating, reformulating relevant portions of contributions; modeling acceptable responses

Eliciting additional reasoning or responses

Curation, Reformulation, & Modeling

22 L Ok, so what’s going on in this (.) visual? (3)

23 S1 Um, it’s a portrait of a father and daughter. (2)

24 L Okay, so one idea is we have a father and daughter (moves to write on board)

25 L Why do you think they’re a father and a daughter?

26 S1 ‘Cause I took an art history class and uh this was my uh, what’s his name uh Grant --

27 L Grant Wood yeah (writes Grant Wood on board)

28 S1 Yeah Grant Wood. And uh basically it depicts the story of farmers.

29 L Okay, alright, so we have, what we SEE is two people (.) on a farm. Okay, what else do we see? What else is going on? (7)

LPP: Eliciting additional responses

22 L Ok, so what’s going on in this (.) visual? (3)

23 S1 Um, it’s a portrait of a father and daughter. (2)

24 L Okay, so one idea is we have a father and daughter (moves to write on board)

25 L Why do you think they’re a father and a daughter?

26 S1 ‘Cause I took an art history class and uh this was my uh, what’s his name uh Grant --

27 L Grant Wood yeah (writes Grant Wood on board)

28 S1 Yeah Grant Wood. And uh basically it depicts the story of farmers.

29 L Okay, alright, so we have, what we see is two people (.) on a farm. Okay, what else do we see? What else is going on? (7)

Findings-- Modes

• L´s pedagogic goals are manifested in her talk-in-interaction.

• Walsh´s (2011) SETT (self-evaluation of teacher talk framework): Classroom Context Mode prevails in our dataset.

Findings-- Modes

In this mode:1. “opportunities for genuine

communication are frequent,” 2. “the principal role of the teacher is to

listen and support the interaction,” and3.“the only feedback given is content-

based, normally in the shape of a personal reaction” (Walsh, 2011, p. 121).

Findings-- Modes

• Considering L´s pedagogic objectives (i.e. to create understanding and promote discussion of a painting projected on the screen), it makes sense that the Classroom Context Mode should characterize the interaction in our data set.

Findings -- Modes

• Since L´s aim was also to promote discussion, the referential questions she posed were appropriate.

• L´s questions:a) encourage students to make their

thoughts explicit and to share them with the class, and

b) provide opportunities for learners to articulate their ideas and to express their current level of understanding.

Findings -- Modes

22 L Ok, so what’s going on in this (.) visual? (3)

23 S1 Um, it’s a portrait of a father and daughter. (2)

24 L Okay, so one idea is we have a father and daughter (moves to write on board)

25 L Why do you think they’re a father and a daughter?

Findings -- Modes

29 L Okay, alright, so we have, what we see is two people (.) on a farm. Okay, what else do we see? What else is going on? (7)

37 L One looks sad. He’s VEry serious. (writes on board) Anything else that makes you think that they’re kind of unhappy?

56 L Yeah, there’s definite contrast there and does that affect how we think they feel?

99 L Oh, sorry. So…OK…Why did I write impressionism here? (5) OK, so did anyone else have a different interpretation? (.) as opposed to being stylistic and informational?

Findings -- Modes

L usually reacts to students´contributions by:

i. reiterating and paraphrasing what they have said (lines 30-35)

30 S3 They look unhappy

31 L They look unhappy, don’t they? (laughing)

32 Ss (laughing)

33 L (writes on chalkboard) And why do we think they look unhappy? (3) I mean we all kind of laughed. We all agree, right?

34 S3 The girl looks sad. The man looks kind of serious.

35 L Okay, so their facial expressions.

Findings -- Modes

ii. by extending learners´contributions (lines 77-80)

77 S4 Well, they look kind of poor (2) probably hard life.

78 L OK, it looks like they have a hard life, doesn´t it?

79 S4 Yeah

80 L Yeah, from the way they’re just standing (.) very (.) there’s no movement, they’re not engaged in any sort of task. They’re just standing there with these unhappy, somber faces. (.)

Findings -- Modes

iii. by using verbal backchannel signals or non-lexical utterances such as uh huh, hmm,

iv. by using non-verbal backchannel signals such as head movements (nods),

v. by using reactive expressions such as Okay, Yeah, Alright

68 L Mm hmm, yeah, so like we said earlier, the clothes are definitely in contrast with the good weather and you might expect a brighter color maybe or (.) better facial expressions. Okay. So we kind of have a sense of what’s going on. We have these two people, whether we think they’re father and daughter or a different relationship -- did anyone else have a different interpretation of their relationship?

Findings -- Modes

L´s teaching has features that characterize dialogic teaching:

a) questions are structured to provoke thoughtful thinking,

b) answers lead to further questions and are seen as the building blocks of dialogue,

and c) teacher-student exchanges follow coherent

lines of enquiry (Mercer & Littleton, 2007).

Findings -- Modes

Managerial Mode: L´s aim was to organize learning and to locate the learning temporally and pedagogically.

Findings -- Modes

Instances of extended teacher turns that consist mostly of directives and instructions. 1

8L So like [STUDENT NAME] said we did have a ten-page reading um: over visual

messages and visual considerations a:nd so what we’ll do today is talk about those messages in greater detail and the important concepts that we need to keep in mind when (0.1) we are crea:ting visual communication and then we’ll actual we’ll take a look at some posters a:nd talk about HOW the concepts that we’ve BEEN discussing a:re PREsent i:n these posters.

19

L We´ll start with thAt first, though, by taking a look at something where maybe we´re mo:re used to talking about visual communication in terms of a:rt (pointing at the projector) so proJECted on the screen here i:s a painting and just for a couple moments I want you: to think about this painting. What is going on in it? A:h how could you talk about it in terms of the visual concepts that we: that we read about for today ah how does it aFFECT you a:nd have you ever seen it before do you know what it is? Ok? So: I´ll give you a couple of minutes to do THAT and then we´ll disCUSS.

20

L So first we’re thinking and then we’ll talk.

21

L OK. If you had enough TIme to think about these questions for yourself, then you can turn to a partner a:nd talk about what you are seeing going on here before we open it up to the large class.

Conclusion

• Classroom interaction proceeds in line with the instructor´s pedagogic goals.

• Ss being apprenticed into classroom COP

Implications

From LPP perspective: additional, later data needed --> focus on changing participation of Ss in COP

Additional insight into student activity, participation

Thanks!

Questions? Comments?