Seeking educational quality in the unfolding of classroom discourse: a focus on microtransitions

Abstract

In this paper, we argue the importance of conceptualizing educational quality as located in everyday talk, and to search for it in the unfolding of classroom discourse and interactions. More specifically, we argue that for the discursive classroom process to be qualitatively effective it should be open and accessible by a series of microtransitions, corresponding to local transformations producing a re-directing of the unfolding of interactions. In this perspective, a classroom system may undertake instructional and relational tasks by grasping, through discursive moves, the emergent occasions that allow teacher and pupils to reciprocally adapt in terms of purposes, needs and requests. The corpus of data comprises a series of lessons that were video-recorded in Italian primary schools. The unit of analysis is the thematic interactive sequence, coded in terms of goals and orientation. A detailed analysis of three lessons, chosen as representatives of recitative, open and flexible lessons, respectively, is presented. The article concludes that a good indicator of educational quality corresponds to the participants’ capacity to engage in microtransitions fostering teaching-and-learning as intertwined processes.

Keywords:

• educational quality
• classroom discourse
• interactive sequences
• teaching-and-learning process
• microtransitions

Notes

¹1. In some of the classes, the researcher only used the camera positioned behind the rows of children and directed towards the teacher. This happened when she felt that the front camera would have disturbed the children.

²2. We did not analyze the parts of the lessons that did not correspond to the interactive exchanges as defined here. These parts comprise, for example, readings and dictations, individual tasks, or the time spent in taking out a book or other material.