The teacher scheme for educational dialogue analysis (T-SEDA): developing a research-based observation tool for supporting teacher inquiry into pupils’ participation in classroom dialogue

ABSTRACT

In this paper we examine two systematic observation methods intended to be used by pre-service and in-service teachers to help increase their awareness of children's participation in productive classroom dialogue. We identify the affordances of these methods for supporting teachers’ reflective practice, focusing in this case on students’ equitable participation in science groupwork activities. This involves the use of Teacher-SEDA (T-SEDA), a sub-scheme of SEDA (Cam-UNAM Scheme for Educational Dialogue Analysis), which was empirically trialled by a mixed group of researchers and teachers, using video-recordings from primary science classrooms in the UK and Mexico. The T-SEDA trials reported in this paper compare a ‘simulated live’ approach based on time-sampling techniques, with a ‘follow-up analysis’ approach, which uses audio-recordings and transcripts. The findings suggest that using either technique regularly can aid teachers in noticing classroom events and adjusting teaching accordingly. The ‘live’ coding approach appears to be the more practical method that teachers could use to audit the development of classroom equitable participation. However, the follow-up analysis emerged as a more informative approach, shedding light on more ambiguous cases of relative participation.

KEYWORDS:

• Analytic tool
• classroom observation
• equitable participation
• educational dialogue
• teacher inquiry
• reflective practice

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to all of the originators of SEDA (listed along with a link to the full original scheme at http://tinyurl.com/BAdialogue) and to our sponsor, the British Academy. Thanks are also extended to the teachers who participated in our trials and to the anonymous peer reviewers who commented on an earlier draft of this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Maria Vrikki http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2748-4418

Ruth Kershner http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4083-7169

Elisa Calcagni http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1983-3278

Sara Hennessy http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9050-4995

Flora Hernández http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3858-6161

Farah Ahmed http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7667-6080

Notes

1 SEDA, pronounced ‘sedda’ as in Spanish.