lable at ScienceDirect

Teaching and Teacher Education 28 (2012) 101e110

Contents lists avai

Teaching and Teacher Education

journal homepage: www.elsevier .com/locate/ tate

Classroom talk, conceptual change and teacher reflection in bilingualscience teaching

Tom Morton*

Department of English Studies, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Edif. Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, Módulo IV bis/Despacho 202, Campus de Cantoblanco,c/Fco. Tomás y Valiente 2, 28049 Madrid, Spain

a r t i c l e i n f o

Article history:Received 6 March 2011Received in revised form20 July 2011Accepted 25 July 2011

Keywords:Classroom communicationScience teachingConceptual changeReflectionBilingual educationConversation analysis

* Tel.: þ34 914972059.E-mail address: tom.morton@uam.es.

0742-051X/$ e see front matter � 2011 Elsevier Ltd.doi:10.1016/j.tate.2011.07.006

a b s t r a c t

This article examines a science teacher’s use of and reflections on classroom talk in teaching a unit ongenetics on a bilingual education programme. Constructivist, sociocultural and discursive psychologicalperspectives on conceptual change and classroom talk are reviewed. Data are drawn from three sources:preactive interview, video-recording of classroom interaction, and video-based postactive reflections.Detailed analyses of transcripts show that even when the teacher oriented to the constructivist strategyof eliciting students’ views, there were missed opportunities to use a more dialogic approach. Implica-tions for teacher education of science teachers in first and second language contexts are discussed.

� 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction

In constructivist approaches to science education, a key learningoutcome is the achievement of conceptual change in learners.Students come to science lessons with everyday conceptions thatdiffer from the scientific ones that they are expected to acquire(Lewis & Kattmann, 2004). Teachers need to explore their students’existing conceptions and use these to build new understandingsthat students find intelligible, plausible and fruitful (Posner, Strike,Hewson, & Gertzog, 1982; Treagust & Duit, 2008). Classroom talkhas a key role in this, as it is by entering into dialogic interactionwith students that science teachers can ascertain their alreadyexisting conceptions and attempt to move them towards scientificunderstandings. However, as Treagust and Duit (2008) point out,science teachers do not necessarily see the need to work withstudents’ conceptions, as they may “hold views of teaching andlearning that are predominantly transmissive and not construc-tivist” (p. 322). And, even if they do attempt to implementconstructivist ideas, their use of talk and interaction in the class-room may not be conducive to meeting their stated aims.

Science teachers need not only to be aware of and able to use arange of instructional strategies, suchas thosebasedon constructivist

All rights reserved.

ideas, but they also need to be able to use classroom talk effectively tomeet the learning objectives they establish for their students. AsMortimer and Scott (2003, p. 1) point out, the “key feature of anyscience lesson (.) is the way in which the teacher orchestrates thetalk of the lesson, in interacting with students, to develop the scien-tific story being taught” (italics in original). However, Mortimer andScott observe that talk in science classrooms has been ‘somewhatneglected’ (p. 2), and this is the case when research on teachingfocuses on teachers’ views and instructional practices withoutexploring the main tool by which these practices are implemented:classroom talk. This paper aims to contribute to correcting thisneglect, by examining the relationships between classroom talkdirected at learner conceptual change and a teacher’s reflections onher use of talk, in one educational context that is growing inimportance around the world, bilingual science education.

The setting of the study is a Bilingual Education Project in Spain,in which forty per cent of classroom instruction is carried out inEnglish. This type of bilingual education initiative is related to thewider European and global movement towards the implementa-tion of Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL), “a dual-focused educational approach in which an additional language isused for the learning and teaching of both content and language”(Coyle, Hood, &Marsh, 2010, p.1). Many countries around theworldare either implementing or exploring the possibilities of intro-ducing CLIL-type initiatives. This is linked to the role of English asa global language, and a shift from English being taught as a subject

T. Morton / Teaching and Teacher Education 28 (2012) 101e110102

to being used as a medium of instruction for other subjects(Graddol, 2006). The physical sciences (physics, chemistry andbiology) are popular subjects in CLIL programmes, and recentstudies in Europe show the complexity of interaction whencommunication in other modes is combined with the use ofa foreign language in bilingual science classrooms (Evnitskaya &Morton, 2011; Pekarek Doehler & Ziegler, 2007). These studiessuggest that it is not realistic to separate language instruction fromtalk’s embeddedness in the ongoing activity of doing classroomscience. They also suggest, and this study provides further supportfor this, that the issues surrounding conceptual change andteachers’ use of talk emerge in very similar ways in bilingualscience classrooms to those in which the first language is usedexclusively.

2. Theoretical perspectives on conceptual change, classroomtalk and teachers’ practices

In a constructivist perspective, one of the main aims of scienceteaching, whether in a first or additional language, is to bring aboutconceptual change in learners. According to Treagust and Duit(2008, p. 301), conceptual change approaches “are explicitlybased on constructivist epistemological views which claim that thelearners have to construct knowledge for themselves”. Thus, thelearners are seen as active participants in the process, as ultimately,it is they who must construct new understandings based on theevidence made available to them. In a constructivist view, learnersare seen as coming to science education with pre-existing‘everyday’ conceptions which differ in significant ways from thekinds of scientific understandings of natural phenomena they areexpected to gain through learning science. As Lewis and Kattmann(2004) put it, in order to move towards an understanding ofscientific explanations, learners will have to ‘reconsider’ theireveryday models. However, these alternative frameworks shouldnot be seen as an impediment to learning, for, as Lewis and Katt-mann point out, they are “an essential starting point from whichscientific understanding can be developed” (2004, p. 202).

In order for learners to accept new understandings of naturalphenomena, the new conceptions need to meet certain conditions.Learners are more likely to accept new conceptions if they aredissatisfiedwith theoldones, andfind thenewones intelligible (theymake sense), plausible (they offer solutions to other problems andfitinwith other knowledge), and fruitful (they potentially open up newareas of inquiry) (Posner et al., 1982). Treagust and Duit (2008) pointout that, apart from these epistemological considerations, concep-tual change involves ontological and affective dimensions. Concep-tual change may involve taking on a new ontological orientation, ineffect changing beliefs about the fundamental nature of reality. Forexample, many learners have difficulty in shifting from a materialconception to a process one. In the area of interest to this paper,genetics, learnersmay have problems in changing from seeing genesas small, trait-bearing particles, to the scientific understandingof theprocesses such as transcription and translation by which genes areexpressed in the phenotype (Lewis & Kattmann, 2004; Venville &Treagust, 1998). In terms of the affective dimension, Pintrich, Marx,and Boyle (1993) pointed out the need to go beyond a ‘cold’ oroverly rational approach to conceptual change, taking into accountmotivational factors such as learners’ beliefs about themselves andtheir roles in classroom learning communities.

Treagust and colleagues (Treagust & Duit, 2008; Venville &Treagust, 1998) argue that conceptual change research needs tocombine epistemological, ontological and social/affective factors ina ‘multidimensional’ perspective. Such a multidimensional perspec-tive, insofar as it takes into account such socio-affective consider-ationsas the classroomcommunicative climate, is extremelypositive.

It broadens theviewofwhat canbe investigated inconceptual changeresearch, opening up new research questions and areas of investi-gation. However, as it stands, it tends to leave out one importantdimension: that is, the roles of discourse and dialogue in bringingabout changes in learners’ understandings. For this, it is necessary tointroduce a sociocultural perspective such as that found in the workof Mercer and colleagues (Mercer, 2008; Mercer & Littleton, 2007),Mortimer and Scott (2003) and Sohmer, Michaels, O’Connor, andResnick (2009). Mercer (2008) makes the point that, despite theirextensive use of discourse data, conceptual change researchers suchas Treagust and Duit “maintain a conception of conceptual changewhich does not recognise the dynamic motor of dialogue” (p. 354).Mercer highlights the crucial role of ‘talkwith a teacher’ inmediatingshifts in students’ understandings of natural phenomena frommore‘everyday’ to more scientific conceptions. He uses the example ofa transcript of an interviewwith a student inwhich Treagust andDuitclaim that there is evidence of conceptual change. In Mercer’s ownanalysis of this transcript, he shows the importance of the Socraticdialogue between the interviewer and the student in bringing aboutthe conceptual changesdescribed.Mercer argues that it isnot enoughto present examples of students’ discourse as evidence of shifts intheir conceptual understandings, but that it is necessary to show therole of both participants in the joint construction of new knowledge,or ‘thinking together’ (Mercer, 2000).

Mercer’s work highlights the importance for science teachers ofunderstanding the role of classroom talk in relation to possibleconceptual change. Indeed, he sees this kind of research ascontributing to the practical aim of raising teachers’ awareness of,and ability to use, dialogue in the classroom. Teachers can be helpedto becomemore aware of the communicative options open to themin the classroom, and how they can be used tomeet their pedagogicobjectives. For example, they need to knowwhen it is appropriate toenter into dialogic interaction with students, asking them to artic-ulate their views and not treating them in a judgementalmanner. Totake an example from genetics, Lewis and Kattmann (2004) suggestthat teachers can begin the teaching of heredity by discussingobserved phenomena, thus providing students with the opportu-nity to articulate their everyday experience and understandings.Once a range of views has been elicited anddiscussed, teachers needto know when it is appropriate to move beyond these everydayexperiences and understandings and introduce the ‘scientific story’.

Mortimer and Scott (2003) provide a framework which allowsscience teachers to better understand, and plan for, the role of talk inmeeting their pedagogic goals. This framework contains five relatedareas that need to be taken into consideration when planning for,and analysing, talk in science classrooms. These areas are teachingpurposes, content, communicative approach, patterns of discourseand teacher interventions. They are organised in three groups,according to focus, approach and action. At the level of focus, we areconcerned with the content topic, and the teacher’s pedagogicpurposes in dealing with it. The content can be categorised indifferentways: as dealingwithmoreeverydayor scientific concepts,as being grounded in empirical observation or theoretically derivedconcepts, and as being expressed in terms of description, explana-tion or generalisation. As for teaching purposes, these can includeopening up an issue in a way that engages students, probing theirviews on the topic, introducing the scientific version of thephenomenon, and getting students to workwith and apply the newscientific meanings (Mortimer & Scott, 2003, pp. 28e33).

In terms of approach, Mortimer and Scott describe the differentways in which the content and pedagogical purposes are realised inclassroom talk. They describe two axes along which talk betweenteachers and students (and indeed between students) can vary:interactive/non-interactive anddialogic/authoritative. The interactive/non-interactive dimension refers to participation in talkewho gets to

T. Morton / Teaching and Teacher Education 28 (2012) 101e110 103

speak. In interactive talk, more than one person contributes, but innon-interactive talk one person dominates the floor. The dialogic/authoritative dimension relates to whose ideas get to be discussed. Indialogic talk, a range of different points of view is encouraged andaccepted, while in authoritative talk, only the ‘official’ point of view(normally the teacher’s) is heard. Thus we get four types of ‘commu-nicative approach’ in the science classroom: interactive/dialogic;non-interactive/dialogic; interactive/authoritative; non-interactive/authoritative(see Table 1). As Mortimer and Scott point out, none ofthese types of classroom talk is intrinsically better or worse than theothers. All have their moments and purposes, and can be usedproductively together to build teaching sequences in which there isa ‘tension’ between more dialogic and authoritative phases (Scott,Mortimer, & Aguiar, 2006).

At the level of action, the fourth category in the framework ispatterns of discourse. This refers to the ways in which stretches ofclassroom talk are built up from smaller patterns, such as the threepart IRF pattern, first described by the linguists Sinclair andCoulthard (1975). This consists of an initiating move (I), which isusually done by the teacher, a response (R), usually by a student,and a follow-up move (F), in which the response is evaluated orelaborated in some way (again, usually by the teacher). Thispattern, which is referred to in the sociocultural literature as ‘triadicdialogue’ (Lemke, 1990; Nassaji & Wells, 2000) has often beencriticised for its limiting effects on students’ contributions toclassroom talk, but researchers such as Nassaji and Wells (2000)and Christie (2002) have shown that the pattern itself may not bethe problem, and that its effective use depends on the purposes it isput to. Indeed, Mortimer and Scott identify a variant of the patternin which the teacher may give elaborative feedback in the thirdturn, which encourages a further response from the student, andwhich can build into a productive chain of dialogue. The fifthcategory in the framework is teacher interventions. These are waysinwhich the teacher uses classroom talk for very specific ends, suchas shaping ideas by introducing a new term, picking out ideas byhighlighting a particular student’s response, getting individualstudents to share ideas with the class, probing student under-standing, or reviewing and summarising key ideas.

Thework of Mercer, Mortimer and Scott, and other socioculturalresearchers is based on Vygotskian views of learning which high-light the role of social interaction in individuals’ conceptual devel-opment. However, the sociocultural account may not go far enoughin bringing out the interactional and rhetorical nature of classroomtalk. An alternative perspective on talk as social action is provided bydiscursive psychology, which has a distinctive take on the rela-tionships between communicative, or rhetorical processes, andindividual cognition. Edwards (1997) draws the distinction betweenthe sociocultural perspective and discursive psychology as thatbetween ‘ontological’ and ‘epistemic’ senses of social construction.Sociocultural approaches such as those underlying the work onclassroom talk and dialogue byMercer and Mortimer and Scott relyon an ontological conception in which “mind is real for the theoristand analyst, and the analytic task is to explain how it is built withina real world of cultural settings and practices” (Edwards, 1997,pp. 47e48). Discursive psychology, in contrast, takes a much moreradical epistemic approach in which “Mind and reality are treatedanalytically as discourse’s topics and business, the stuff the talk isabout” (Edwards,1997, p. 48). In other words, discursive psychology

Table 1Four classes of communicative approach (Mortimer & Scott, 2003, p. 35).

Interactive Non-interactive

Dialogic A Interactive/dialogic B Non-interactive/dialogicAuthoritative C Interactive/authoritative D Non-interactive/authoritative

does not make ontological commitments about the existence orotherwise of intramental phenomena, but is interested in how‘psychological’ matters are dealt with by people in their talk.

Roth (2008) provides an example of discursive psychology’sdistinctive take on the relationship between talk and scientificconceptions. He discusses an extract from an interview in whicha seven-year old child is asked to talk about the origin of night andday (transcription conventions are given in the Appendix):

Extract 1

Roth points out that conceptual change researchers would belikely to interpret the child’s talk as displaying mis or naïve concep-tions, whichwould be attributed to the child and possibly to a lack ofappropriate instruction. However, he argues that such an interpre-tation would ignore the nature of the data as a discursive phenom-enon, jointly produced by the interviewer and the child. For example,Roth points out in his alternative analysis that the interviewer, bysaying that the question is very simple (line 1), is not only asking thequestion, but formulatingwhat he is going to do. And not only that, healso formulates what kind of answer is expected, i.e. an explanation.The child responds by using ‘because’ (line 6) which, in turn,formulates the response as a reason (Roth, 2008, p. 32). The upshot ofRoth’s analysis is that together the interviewer and the child areorientating to the performance of what is going on as an interview,rather than as a display of pre-existing and stable conceptions. Rothpoints out that, in educational research, participants may be led byinterviewquestions or set tasks to think or talk about issues that theyhave never been called upon to articulate ideas about before. In suchcircumstances, it is difficult to imagine such research methods asinterviews ‘uncovering’ previously existing conceptions.

In order to provide detailed descriptions of talk as social action,discursive psychology draws on the analytic resources of conver-sation analysis (CA). Sidnell (2010, p. 1) defines CA as “an approachwithin the social sciences that aims to describe, analyse andunderstand talk as a basic and constitutive feature of human sociallife”. In this study, the focus is on the organisation of sequences ofclassroom talk in which the teacher works on students’ conceptualunderstandings. The major resource in analysing sequence orga-nisation is that of ‘adjacency pair’ (Schegloff, 2007). This refers tohow, in linked pairs of utterances spoken by different interlocutors,the ‘first pair part’ such as a question, sets up an expectation, or‘conditional relevance’ for a second pair part (an answer). Someadjacency pairs have ‘preferred’ second pair parts. For example, thepreferred second pair part for an offer is an acceptance, whilea rejection would be dispreferred. It is important to note that‘preference organisation’ is an interactional phenomenon andmakes no reference to participants’ psychological states, such asactually preferring one option over another. This is seen in the factthat preferred or dispreferred options are signalled by interactionalphenomena, such as hesitations, pauses or the use of discoursemarkers to delay dispreferred second pair parts. The concepts ofsequence organisation and adjacency pair are a much more flexibleanalytic tool than the rather rigid IRF pattern, and can thus provide

T. Morton / Teaching and Teacher Education 28 (2012) 101e110104

a more fine-grained account of classroom talk from the partici-pants’ perspective.

In sum, the overall theoretical perspective of this study combinesa sociocultural and discursive approach, as it sees the kinds ofepistemological, ontological and socio-affective issues identified inconceptual change research as not only mediated through, but in animportant sense, constituted in, classroom talk. The study is alsodiscursive in another sense, in that the teacher’s talk in reflecting onher classroom practices also mediates her own understandings ofthe practices and constructs her own intentions and the outcomesof her actions in specific ways. For these reasons, the main meth-odological approach in the study is the close analysis of talk ininteraction, both classroom talk and talk about classroom talk.

3. The study: research aims, design and methodology

The overall aim of the study was to investigate how a bilingualscience teacher used classroom talk to work on her students’conceptions regarding the topic of genetic variation in a biologyclass, and to explore the teacher’s reflections on the purposes andoutcomes of her use of classroom talk. The specific research ques-tions which drove forward the investigation were:

1. At the planning stage, how does the teacher describe theconceptual issues and problems the learners face in the topic ofgenetic variation?

2. How does the teacher use classroom talk in dealing withlearners’ conceptions and introducing the ‘scientific story’?

3. In postactive reflection, how does the teacher describe her owninteractive instructional practices in dealing with conceptualissues relating to the genetics topic?

The design of the study was based around the three stages ofteaching identified in work on teacher cognition and decision-making: the preactive (planning), the interactive (classroomteaching) and the postactive (reflection) stages. Different dataelicitation and collection methods were used for each stage, as canbe seen in Table 2.

At the preactive stage, the teacher was interviewed about herapproach to planning and teaching the unit on genetics. Thisinterview was based on an instrument developed by Loughran,Mulhall, and Berry (2004) called a CoRe (content representation).This is a framework which allows teachers to produce descriptionsof the ways in which they would go about teaching a unit, partic-ularly in relation to how they would represent the content tostudents and what conceptual difficulties students might have. Assuch, it relates to the ‘focus’ level in Mortimer and Scott’s frame-work. This interview was audio-recorded and transcribed. For theinteractive stage, two lessons from the unit on genetics were video-recorded and transcribed. Using what Erickson (2006) describes asa ‘molar’ analysis, these lesson transcripts were ‘chunked’ into self-contained episodes in which there was a sustained focus on anaspect of the content topic, a specific pedagogic purpose appearedto be identifiable, and the broad outlines of the ‘communicativeapproach’ could be seen. Moving to the ‘action’ level, within

Table 2Stages in the teaching/research process and data collection techniques.

Stage Data elicitation and collection

Preactive CoRe task and semi-structured interviewInteractive Video-recording and transcription of classroom interactionPostactive Videoclip-based stimulated comment procedure

episodes, particular stretches of interaction relevant to the researchfocus of the study were subjected to a ‘molecular’ analysis(Erickson, 2006), based on fine-grained transcriptions, whichincluded non-verbal phenomena such as movement and gesture. Inthe postactive phase of the study, the teacher was played backselected stretches of interaction and asked to comment on whatwas happening. These clips were chosen based on the issuesrelating to students’ conceptual understandings that had emergedin the CoRe interviews and how these issues had emerged inclassroom talk. The objective of these sessions was not to have theteacher reproduce from memory her thoughts during the lessons,but to react to and produce reflections on what she was seeing(Lyle, 2003).

The use of videoclip playback is an important methodologicalelement in the study. Speer (2005) claims that it is a techniquewhich can help overcome some persistent problems in research onteacher cognition, such as different understandings of terminologybetween teachers and researchers, not relating aspects of teachercognition to specific instances of practice, and inaccurate attribu-tion of beliefs. The use of video-based comments in this study thus‘ties down’ the teacher’s comments, so that terms like ‘miscon-ceptions’ can be explored not only in the teacher’s preactive andpostactive descriptions of practice, but also in relation to specificinstances of classroom talk which seem to be directed at conceptualchange.

The teacher who took part in the study, who is given thepseudonym Isabel, had been teaching her subject in English for twoyears, but had altogether seven years’ experience as a scienceteacher. The class was a small group of nine fourth year students,four boys and five girls, all about 16 years old, most of whom hadbeen learning subject matter content in English since primaryschool. They were thus comfortable with using English asa medium of instruction, and had no linguistic problems infollowing the teacher’s instructions and explanations, respondingto her questions or initiating their own contributions. At timesduring the lessons they even entered into disputes with Isabel asthey exchanged evidence from their own experience about char-acteristics that could be inherited or environmental. The lessonstook place in a secondary school near Madrid, Spain, which waspart of a Bilingual Education Project, jointly implemented by theSpanish Ministry of Education and the British Council. In thisproject, which started in primary schools in 1996, and in secondaryschools in 2004, 40% of the curriculum is taught in English.Informed consent was obtained from the students and their parentsfor their participation in the study.

4. Analysis and discussion

The analysis of the data is organised around the three researchquestions, and thus according to the pre-, inter-, and postactivestages of teaching. It was during the process of data analysis fromthe three sources that the theme of ‘misconceptions’ clearlyemerged. The teacher herself mentioned student misconceptions inthe CoRe interview, and there were stretches of classroom inter-action in which she was clearly orienting to the conceptual contentof what students were saying. One particular instance stood out,a stretch of interaction around the question of whether theDoberman breed of dog could be considered to be a mutant, andthat is the central piece of classroom talk analysed here. In herpostactive videoclip reflections, Isabel again referred, withoutprompting, to student ‘misconceptions’ as a justification for herdecisions in using classroom talk. This provides a strong validationfor the study’s findings, as the notion of ‘misconceptions’ emergedat all three stages of the study in different types of data.

Extract 3

T. Morton / Teaching and Teacher Education 28 (2012) 101e110 105

4.1. Preactive stage: Isabel’s descriptions of the topic, her purposesin teaching it, and students’ conceptions

In the CoRe interview, Isabel was asked what were the mainideas she wanted to focus on in teaching the topic on genetics.

Extract 4

Isabel had filled in in some detail the CoRe sheet on the topic shewas going to teach and in this extract provides a clear description ofthe content she was going to focus on and her overall purposes indoing so. Her main focus was on variation, particularly the distinc-tion between inherited and environmental variation (lines 6e10).She also situated this topic within the biology curriculum, andemphasised that it was a key topic in understanding the bases ofbiology and evolution. As she put it succinctly in lines 34e36, if thestudents don’t understand the concept of variation, they will neverunderstand what evolution is. Isabel was clear that this was a diffi-cult topic:

Here, Isabel describes the nature of the topic of genetic variation asbeing quite different to the type of biology the students were used to.The topic is ‘geometrical’ and ‘abstract’ and involves phenomena at thecellular and molecular level which can’t be seen with the naked eye(line 13). It is significant that Isabel puts the students’ voices into herdiscourse by quoting the kind of questions they might ask themselvesat lines 12 and 13. It is likely that these do not refer to actual questionsthat shemight expect them to ask in class, but she is voicing what sheassumes to be their mental processes, as they wonder about thesestrange phenomena.

Part of the aim of the CoRe task and interview was to get theteacher to reflect onwhat conceptions the learners might have aboutthe topic. In this context, in extract 4, we can see how the term‘misconceptions’ first enters the discourse:

Extract 5

T. Morton / Teaching and Teacher Education 28 (2012) 101e110106

Throughout this extract, the researcher has some difficulty ingetting Isabel to say anything concrete about her students’thinking on the topic. He has to reformulate the questiona number of times (at lines 4, 11, 15e18) before Isabel comes upwith the idea that they don’t have any conceptions at all becausethe topic is so new to them. This may be an example of thephenomenon described by Roth (2008), in which participants inresearch may be positioned by questions to talk or think aboutthings they have not thought about before. This was part of theCoRe task, but in spite of filling it in, Isabel was not able to easilycome up with any specific examples of what students thoughtabout the topic. However, as we will see in the classroom data,Isabel did clearly orient to students having ideas about the topic,and she took discursive action in response. In this extract, it isalso useful to note the evolution of the terms used before‘misconception’ appears. The researcher begins by mentioning‘ideas’ the students might have (lines 1 and 4), and then, perhapsdue to the hesitant response, shifts to what students ‘say’ (lines15 and 16). At line 21, Isabel shifts the focus from the moreneutral ‘ideas’ or what they say to a term with a more negativeevaluative tone, ‘mistakes’, before using, for the first time,‘misconceptions’ at line 24.

This analysis suggests that, rather than claiming that Isabelhad the pre-existing belief that her students had ‘misconcep-tions’ about the genetics topic she was planning to teach, it ismore plausible that this description of the learners’ conceptualstatus was worked up in the talk between Isabel and theresearcher, with the researcher doing quite a lot of interactionalwork in pressing her to produce her description. In the workingup of this description, we have seen that there was use ofa range of category labels for describing conceptual attributes ofthe learners e ‘ideas’, ‘things they say’, ‘mistakes’, ‘misconcep-tions’ and ‘conceptions’. The discursive analysis shows that these‘conceptual’ matters can be, at least partially, respecified associo-interactive and discursive ones, and this can also be seenin the classroom talk in which students’ ‘conceptions’ wereoriented to.

4.2. The interactive stage: dealing with students’ conceptions inclassroom talk

In the two lessons, Isabel skillfully used a wide variety of‘communicative approaches’ in dealing with the topic ofgenetic variation. She shifted among dialogic phases in whichshe elicited students’ everyday experiences of the topic, tomuch more authoritative stretches of talk in which thescientific story was presented as ‘that’s the way it is’. She usednon-interactive dialogic talk in which she told anecdotes inwhich different perspectives were present, and interactiveauthoritative talk in which knowledge on genetic codes wasjointly built in brisk question-and-answer episodes. In linewith this study’s focus on conceptual change and classroomtalk, the analysis here focuses on Isabel’s use of dialogicinteractive talk in an episode in which she was getting thestudents’ ‘everyday’ views on the topic of mutation, and ona later, non-interactive authoritative phase when she gave the‘official’ version of how mutation occurs, using the example ofalbinism.

In opening up the problem of mutation, Isabel used theconstructivist strategy of attempting to find out what experiencesand ideas the students had on the topic:

It seems from this short stretch of interaction that Isabel’s claimin the preactive interview that the students don’t have anyconceptions about the topic is justified. Note the rather longsilences at lines 3, 6, 8 and 12, and the short responses by studentsat lines 4 and 10. However, this ‘lack’ of ideas about the topic mayalso have a discursive explanationwhenwe look at the way Isabel’squestions were positioning the learners. For this a close-up analysisusing the CA construct of adjacency pair is instructive. At line 1, thefirst pair part invites an opinion as the expected second part. But,before an appropriate second pair part can be delivered, Isabelproduces another first pair part, which positions the respondersrather differently, this time as experiencers, rather than someonewith an opinion. After a long pause at line 3, a student respondswith a second pair part to Isabel’s second first pair part e shementions ‘films’ as where she has seen mutants. After another long(2 s) pause at line 6, Isabel again changes the positioning of therespondents in a new first pair part, this time projecting asconditionally relevant a second pair part containing an example ofa member of the category ‘mutant’. However, after another longishpause (line 8), there is yet another shift in what is projected asa relevant answer e this time a definition (line 9). The student’sresponse at line 10 may be the beginning of such a definition, but itis cut off by Isabel’s turn at line 11, after which she again shifts thepositioning of the students to that of reporters of their experience,rather than as providers of a definition. Isabel’s actions here, then,construct the students’ conceptual states in different ways ashaving experience or knowledge of mutants. They are variouslypositioned as potentially having opinions about them, having seenthem, being able to give examples of something that might bea mutant, or defining what a mutant is.

At the level of ‘action’ in Mortimer and Scott’s framework, it isa teacher intervention inwhich she probes what the students’ priorconceptions of mutants might be. Although, as we have seen, in theCoRe interview she described the learners as having few or even noprevious conceptions about the topic, in her classroom practice shedoes attempt to elicit their prior conceptions. There thus may besome apparent conflict between her description of the learners ashaving few or even no prior conceptions about the topic, and theinstructional strategy of finding out what students already knowabout it. But it seems that the constructivist-oriented pedagogicstrategy overrides any such doubts as to what conceptions thestudents might have. This is seen clearly as the dialogue continueswith a student coming up with the idea of a Doberman dog, and itspossible ‘mutant’ status:

Extract 6

T. Morton / Teaching and Teacher Education 28 (2012) 101e110 107

At line 1, a student offers the word ‘Doberman’ as a try-markedexample of a mutant (note rising intonation). In her response,rather than orienting to the student’s contribution as a question andsupplying an answering second pair part, Isabel appears to open thetopic up for debate by asking if a Doberman is a mutant. However,after one inaudible response from the student, she accepts thata Doberman looksweird (thusmaking ‘weirdness’ possibly relevantto whatever a mutant might be thought to be), but then denies thatthe Doberman belongs to the ‘mutant’ category (line 6).

The important thing to note, from a discursive perspective, isthat there were other interactional and rhetorical strategies opento Isabel here, which would have positioned the students andIsabel in quite different ways, and would have made public thereasoning by which a Doberman could be said to be or not bea member of the category ‘mutant’. For example, an interactionalalternative at lines 5 and 6, rather than describing the Dobermanas ‘weird’ and denying its mutant status, would have been to askthe student whether or why he thought a Doberman wasa mutant. As it turns out, the student seems to accept theDoberman’s non-mutant status by downgrading it simply toa ‘mixture’ of different breeds of dog (line 9). Thus, in this extract,the evidence points to the student offering the Doberman dogtentatively as a possible member of the category ‘mutant’. Thereis no interactional evidence that the claim was any stronger thanthat, i.e. that the student was claiming that a Doberman wasa mutant, something which would be necessary to ascribea ‘misconception’ about mutation to him. In any case, by adoptingan interactional strategy that brought out into the open on thesocial plane of the classroom, why a Doberman might be thoughtto be (or not be) a mutant, there would have been more oppor-tunity to rhetorically bring about the kind of dissatisfaction withexisting concepts, that is necessary for conceptual change. Thiswould also be more in line with an interactive/dialogic commu-nicative approach, in which the students’ ideas about theDoberman dog could be heard.

For reasons of space, it is not possible to provide a detailedanalysis of how this episode continues, so it will be summarisedhere. Having told the class that a Doberman is not a mutant, Isabelgoes on to use a short authoritative phase to explain the process ofcross-breeding and selection of traits. She then reverts to theinteractive dialogic approach to elicit more possible candidates formutant status. This is followed by a switch to an interactive/authoritative approach in which she introduces the topic of albi-nism, using leading questions to establish why this is an example ofmutation. This culminates in a very clear non-interactive/authoritative sequence in which she gives the ‘official’ scientificexplanation of why albinism is mutation. The beginning of thisexplanation is given here:

Extract 7

This sequence has all the characteristics of non-interactive/authoritative discourse. Only Isabel has significant turns at talk, andthe students are positioned as listeners. Even when Isabel asksquestions, there is no real expectation of an answer, and indeed sheeven answers her own question at line 16. The other questions Isabelasks are to check that the students are understanding, and thestudents provide displays of understanding at lines 19 and possibly30. Interestingly, Isabel uses ametadiscursive strategy to signal to thestudents precisely what kind of communicative context they are in,with her use of “this is/that’s the way it is” at lines 1 and 31.

To sum up, the analysis of the classroom talk shows Isabelmoving from an interactive/dialogic communicative approach inwhich a range of ideas was elicited from students about thephenomenon of mutation, through intervening stages of authori-tative and dialogic talk, culminating in a spate of clearly non-interactive/authoritative discourse. However, in the interactive/dialogic talk, there were alternative strategies which could havebeen taken, and which may have better fitted the purpose ofprobing the students’ conceptions and perhaps bringing aboutsome dissatisfaction with them. The analysis of classroom talkleaves open however, the question of the extent to which Isabelherself constructed her own purposes as having been moved bythese constructivist considerations, and the extent to which shesaw her interactive decisions as meeting her teaching purposes.These issues are addressed in the analysis of Isabel’s videoclip-based postactive comments.

T. Morton / Teaching and Teacher Education 28 (2012) 101e110108

4.3. The postactive stage: Isabel’s reflections on her use ofclassroom talk

On being asked why she asked the questions about mutants,Isabel clearly identifies her purpose as “finding out their concep-tions” (this in spite of her comments in the preactive interviewabout them not really having any):

Extract 8

Isabel’s stated purposes, then, neatly fit the interactive/dialogiccommunicative approach she was using. In her use of the words‘conception’ (line 7) and ‘knowledge’ (line 11), it is clear just whatshewas targetingwith her classroom talke shewanted to know justwhat their conceptions were about mutants, presumably in order tochange them. Evidence that this is the case comes when she statesthat she was not just targeting conceptions, but ‘misconceptions’:

Extract 9

Having re-introduced the idea of ‘misconceptions’ in her video-based comments, she then describes her purpose in using class-room talk in the ‘Doberman’ sequence as being ‘to deconstruct thatidea’, presumably the misconception that a Doberman was anexample of a mutant:

Extract 10

It is significant here, that in spite of the video and transcriptevidence that the student had not in fact claimed that a Dobermanwas a mutant, that seems to be the way that Isabel perceived it, atleast after viewing the clip. She constructs her own actions asresponding to students’ intentions (“he thought he wanted to talkabout that” e line 4) and discursive actions (“he put that as anexample of a mutant” e line 5). She builds the description of herinteractional strategy as an obligation (“I had to deconstruct thatidea”e line6, also line21), andas something that tookheraway fromher original plan (“I wasn’t meaning to talk about cross breeding” eline 11). So, rather than a possibly missed opportunity to probefurther into whether a Doberman was a mutant or not, Isabelconstructs her interactive decisions as responding to something shehad successfully uncovered e a student ‘misconception’. This thenbecomes the justification for the rest of the trajectory of the class-room talk in this sequence; it becomes a ‘deconstruction’ of thestudents’ misconception. Isabel positively evaluates the outcome ofthis deconstruction:

Extract 11

It is interesting, then, that Isabel constructs her own practice asthat of uncovering students’misconceptions and then directing themtowards the ‘right’ones. Inproceeding straight to the ‘deconstruction’it is a less dialogic strategy than the constructivist one of probingstudents’ conceptions, and encouraging open reflection on the socialplane of the classroom. Isabel, in her postactive reflections, seems tobe constructing classroom talk as having the purpose of uncoveringmisconceptions and then replacing them with the correct ones,without an intervening stage of open reflection and exploration ofthe students’ conceptions. In this case, using ‘misconceptions’ as aninteractional resource may be related to closing down opportunitiesfor exploring students’ ideas rather than opening them up, eventhough Isabel later skillfully used a range of communicativeapproaches as she moved the classroom talk towards the non-interactive/authoritative ‘that’s the way it is’ sequence.

5. Implications and conclusion

The analyses presented here have implications at two relatedlevels: the relationship between classroom talk and studentconceptual change, and teachers’ understandings and construc-tions of their own practices. At the first level, the findings supportthe need for a ‘multiperspective’ approach to conceptual change inscience teaching to incorporate a greater understanding of the roleof classroom talk and dialogue in moving students from moreeveryday understandings to the more conceptually complex theo-retical ones required by school science at secondary level. To useSchegloff’s (2006) term, classroom talk is the ‘ecological niche’where the complex epistemological, ontological and affective

. A full stop indicates a falling, final tone.? A question mark indicates rising intonation, not necessarily

a question., A comma indicates continuing intonation.: Colons indicate the stretching or prolongation of the sound

preceding them.[ Square brackets indicate overlapping talk onset.¼ An equal sign at the end and beginning of a line spoken by the same

speaker indicates that it was a single, continuous utterance, whichwas broken up to fit in overlapping talk.

(0.5) Numbers in brackets indicate silence, represented in tenths ofa second.

(.) A dot in brackets indicates a ‘micro-pause’ in the talk of less than 0.2of a second.

word Underlining indicates stress or emphasis.> < ‘More than’ and ‘less than’ signs indicate that the talk between them

was speeded up.< > ‘Less than’ and ‘more than’ signs indicate that the talk was produced

noticeably more slowly than surrounding talk..hhh Aspiration is represented by the letter h. A row of hs with a dot

indicates an inbreath. Without the dot it indicates an outbreath.w(h)ord An h or row of h's in brackets within a word indicates aspiration,

which may be breathing or laughter.(()) Double parentheses contain transcriber's descriptions of events.(word) Words in parentheses indicate that the transcription is uncertain,

but is a likely possibility.() Empty parentheses indicate that something was said but it was not

possible to hear it clearly enough for transcription.

T. Morton / Teaching and Teacher Education 28 (2012) 101e110 109

dimensions are played out on the social plane. Conceptual changedoesn’t just happen, but, as Mercer suggests, and the findingsreported here support, it is in ‘talk with a teacher’ that opportu-nities for moving understandings forward arise, or can be thwarted.

At the second level, the study supports Mercer’s view that thepractical aims of this kind of work should move towards greaterteacher awareness of the impact of their uses of classroom talk, fromthe broader level of communicative approach to the more micro‘action’ level of specific interventions. They need to consciouslychoose the types of classroom talk that will best meet the purposesand content they identify at the ‘focus’ level, to use Mortimer andScott’s framework. It may not then be enough for teachers to switchfrom ‘transmissive’ to ‘constructivist’ views on teaching science.Even if a teacher does subscribe to a constructivist philosophy, andtakes steps to implement it, without a greater awareness of thecommunicative options open to them in using classroom talk, theymay still miss opportunities to activate the processes that conceptualchange frameworks have shown to be important. Teachers needopportunities to reflect on the talk in their classrooms, and a meta-language to describe it, so that they can becomemore effective usersof what Wells (1996) describes as the ‘discourse tool-kit’. The video-based reflective comment procedure used in this study could bereadily adapted to become a teacher professional developmentactivity. In fact, at a later stage in this study, which cannot bereported in detail here due to lack of space, Isabel and threecolleagues used an adapted version of Mortimer and Scott’s frame-work to analyse extracts of interaction from each other’s classes.

The findings also have implications for the kinds of bilingualprogrammes worldwide in which English is used as a medium ofinstruction. The focus of this paper has been on conceptual changeand teachers’ practices, and not specifically on second language useand development. However, it is clear that the wider the range ofcommunicative approaches used in the bilingual classroom, espe-cially the use of dialogic talk, the more opportunities there will be formoremeaningful language use, as well as concomitant challenges forboth learners’ and teachers’ linguistic and interactional competence.There are hints of this in the data presented here, for example in thediscussion on the Doberman, the student needed to use the word‘breeds’ and had his original try ‘races’ repaired by the teacher. Ifteachers in bilingual education use transmissive approaches, theclassroom talk is likely to be very limited as a context for languagedevelopment. Using a constructivist approach, especially if a widerange of rhetorical strategies is used in working with students’conceptual understandings, is more likely to provide the context formeaningful language use that proponents of bilingual and CLIL-typeinitiatives claim for this educational approach. However, this willrequire much increased attention to the relationships betweenpedagogic purposes, classroom talk and second language use anddevelopment in teacher educationprogrammes for bilingual teachers.

At a more theoretical and methodological level, it may be time topose some questions about the uses of discourse in research onlearners’ conceptions and teachers’ beliefs about practice. As Roth’sexample and Mercer’s comments on Treagust and Duit show, moreattention needs to be paid to the relationships between ‘conceptual’phenomena and talk. Talk has its own rules, purposes and organi-sation, as conversation analysis shows. And discursive psychologytells us that we should be careful about assuming that talk canstraightforwardly provide a window onto what learners or teachers‘think’. It is not necessary to accept the strong social constructionismor relativism of discursive psychology, or to deny that people(learners and teachers) can change their beliefs about reality. Thekinds of processes identified in conceptual change research, such asdissatisfaction with current beliefs, intelligibility, plausibility andfruitfulness of new ones, can all be approached as interactional anddiscursive matters. It is through dialogue, often of a Socratic kind (as

Mercer shows in his example) that peoplemay be led to change theirbeliefs, and throughpersuasion that theymay findother beliefsmoreconvincing. This means that whatever conceptual change may be atthe intrapsychological level, it is also clearly a discursive, andrhetorical, matter. Conceptual change work that does not pay dueattention to the details of talk, whether in the classroom or inresearch interviews, runs the risk of rushing to attributions of intra-psychological phenomena without first explicating the interactionaland rhetorical features of the talk. This goes for research withteachers too, for as Treagust and Duit point out, the work done onconceptual change of students could be usefully applied to teachers.As they put it, “Interestingly, the frameworks of student conceptualchange e being predominantly researched so faremay also providepowerful frameworks for teacher change towards employingconceptual change ideas” (2008, p. 324). The findings reported heresupport that assertion, but with the proviso that the roles of dialogueand discourse must be given due attention: not only in classroomtalk, but in teacher talk about classroom talk.

Appendix. Transcription conventions

The transcription conventions are summarised from Sidnell(2010, pp. ixex).

References

Christie, F. (2002). Classroom discourse analysis: A functional perspective. London:Continuum.

Coyle, D., Hood, P., & Marsh, D. (2010). CLIL: Content and language integratedlearning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Edwards, D. (1997). Discourse and cognition. London: SAGE.Erickson, F. (2006). Definition and analysis of data from videotape: some research

procedures and their rationales. In J. L. Green, G. Camilli, & P. B. Elmore (Eds.),Handbook of complementary methods in education research (pp. 177e192). Mah-wah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum for the American Educational Research Association.

Evnitskaya, N., & Morton, T. (2011). Knowledge construction, meaning-making andinteraction in CLIL science classroom communities of practice. Language andEducation, 25(2), 109e127.

Graddol, D. (2006). English next: Why global English may mean the end of “English asa foreign language”. London: British Council.

Lemke, J. L. (1990). Talking science: Language, learning, and values. Norwood, N.J.:Ablex Pub. Corp.

T. Morton / Teaching and Teacher Education 28 (2012) 101e110110

Lewis, J., & Kattmann, U. (2004). Traits, genes, particles and information: re-visitingstudents’ understandings of genetics. International Journal of Science Education,26(2), 195e206.

Loughran, J., Mulhall, P., & Berry, A. (2004). In search of pedagogical contentknowledge in science: developing ways of articulating and documentingprofessional practice. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 41(4), 370e391.

Lyle, J. (2003). Stimulated recall: a report on its use in naturalistic research. BritishEducational Research Journal, 29(6), 861e878.

Mercer, N. (2000). Words and minds: How we use language to think together. London:Routledge.

Mercer, N. (2008). Changing our minds: a commentary on “conceptual change:a discussion of theoretical, methodological and practical challenges for scienceeducation”. Cultural Studies of Science Education, 3(2), 351e362.

Mercer, N., & Littleton, K. (2007). Dialogue and the development of children’s thinking:A sociocultural approach. London and New York: Routledge.

Mortimer, E. F., & Scott, P. H. (2003). Meaning making in secondary science class-rooms. Maidenhead, UK: Open University Press.

Nassaji, H., & Wells, G. (2000). What’s the use of “triadic dialogue”?: an investi-gation of teacherestudent interaction. Applied Linguistics, 21(3), 376e406.

Pekarek Doehler, S., & Ziegler, G. (2007). Doing language, doing science and thesequential organization of the immersion classroom. In Z. Hua, P. Seedhouse,L. Wei, & V. Cook (Eds.), Language learning and teaching as social inter-action.Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Pintrich, P. R., Marx, R. W., & Boyle, R. A. (1993). Beyond cold conceptual change: therole of motivational beliefs and classroom contextual factors in the process ofconceptual change. Review of Educational Research, 63(2), 167e199.

Posner, G. J., Strike, K. A., Hewson, P. W., & Gertzog, W. A. (1982). Accommodation ofa scientific conception: toward a theory of conceptual change. Science Educa-tion, 66(2), 211e227.

Roth, W. M. (2008). The nature of scientific conceptions: a discursive psychologicalperspective. Educational Research Review, 3(1), 30e50.

Schegloff, E. A. (2006). Interaction: the infrastructure for social institutions, thenatural ecological niche for language, and the arena in which culture is enacted.In N. J. Enfield, & S. C. Levinson (Eds.), Roots of human sociality: Culture, cognitionand interaction (pp. 70e96). Oxford; New York: Berg.

Schegloff, E. A. (2007). Sequence organization in interaction: A primer in conversationanalysis. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press.

Scott, P. H., Mortimer, E. F., & Aguiar, O. G. (2006). The tension between authoritativeand dialogic discourse: a fundamental characteristic of meaning makinginteractions in high school science lessons. Science Education, 90(4), 605e631.

Sidnell, J. (2010). Conversation analysis: An introduction. Chichester, UK: John Wileyand Sons.

Sinclair, J. M., & Coulthard, R. M. (1975). Towards an analysis of discourse: Thelanguage of teachers and pupils. London: Oxford University Press.

Sohmer, R., Michaels, S., O’Connor, M. C., & Resnick, L. (2009). Guided constructionof knowledge in the classroom: teacher, talk, task, and tools. In B. Schwarz,T. Dreyfus, & R. Hershkowitz (Eds.), Transformation of knowledge through class-room interaction (pp. 105e129). Abingdon, UK: Routledge.

Speer, N.M. (2005). Issues ofmethods and theory in the studyofmathematics teachers’professedandattributedbeliefs.Educational Studies inMathematics, 58(3), 361e391.

Treagust, D., & Duit, R. (2008). Conceptual change: a discussion of theoretical,methodological and practical challenges for science education. Cultural Studiesof Science Education, 3(2), 297e328.

Venville, G. J., & Treagust, D. F. (1998). Exploring conceptual change in geneticsusing a multidimensional interpretive framework. Journal of Research in ScienceTeaching, 35(9), 1031e1055.

Wells, G. (1996). Using the tool-kit of discourse in the activity of learning andteaching. Mind, Culture, and Activity, 3(2), 74e101.