Bringing disciplinarity to dialogic discussions: Imaginative entry and disciplinary discourse in a ninth-grade history classroom

ABSTRACT

Education researchers have established the value of dialogic, whole-class discussions across content areas. However, such discussions have been defined primarily in terms of questions that enable or constrain interactions among multiple students. Research remains to be done on whether and how the subject matter with which teacher and students interact during whole-class discussions can also enable or constrain the dialogic quality of their talk. In this article, I begin to explore the possibility that whole-class discussions may manifest in particular ways within a discipline. Based on sociolinguistic discourse analysis of three transcripts from a suburban, ninth-grade history classroom, I suggest that “imaginative-entry activities,” which invite students to imagine themselves into hypothetical scenarios based on historical events, can promote or discourage whole-class discussions. Specifically, I demonstrate how the narratives co-told by a teacher and his students during these imaginative-entry activities discursively construct students' relationships to past events in ways that affect their participation in present classroom interactions. I call for further research into dialogic, whole-class discussions whose content and form differ from those in other disciplines.

KEYWORDS:

• Discussion, dialogism
• educational practices
• subjects and disciplines
• narrative methods

Acknowledgment

Thanks to Dr Ann Lawrence for reading many, many drafts of this work.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. This definition of Bakhtinian dialogism is the second of three in Bakhtin's work: the first concerns the fact that all discourse contains multiple voices in the traces of prior use; the second concerns whether and how speakers intend for those other voices to be heard when they reuse discourse; and the third applies to the constant redefinition, through discourse, of social constructs like identity and truth (Morson & Emerson, 1990). The second is most specifically relevant to the present study because it applies to how speakers intentionally take up others' words.

2. All names of people and places are pseudonyms except for those mentioned in the actual historical events referenced during discussion.

3. Since the Wagner Act actually exists, I have used Mary's 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.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Michael B. Sherry

Michael B. Sherry is assistant professor of English Education at University of South Florida. His research addresses how classroom discourse genres enable and constrain participation from students, especially those often marginalized by traditional classroom discourse practices. His work has appeared in American Educational Research Journal and Teachers College Record.