Examining how classroom talk shapes students’ identities as reflexive writers in elementary classrooms

ABSTRACT

This paper works on the premise that classroom talk conveys meaning about students as writers and asks how classroom talk facilitates the formation of students’ identities as writers. We present findings from an ethnographic investigation of elementary writing lessons across six participant schools in Australia. Our data analysis is informed by two theoretical constructs that of positioning and implied identity. First, we explore different ways that students are positioned as a result of classroom talk and discuss implied identities – what these positions imply about writer identities within a context. Second, using a micro-ethnographic case study approach, we highlight how participants of classroom talk orient to the acts of positioning within a classroom context. The first section of findings revealed how classroom talk positions students as either autonomous, communicative, metareflexive, or fractured writers. Furthermore, findings showed that the observed writing lessons position students as writers who are concerned with form and pay attention to function. In the second section, we share an in-depth investigation of a year six writing lesson to show how different types of positions are negotiated by teacher and students on a temporal basis. We discuss implications for research and practice related to the teaching of writing.

KEYWORDS:

• Classroom talk
• elementary classrooms
• implied identity
• positioning
• reflexive writer
• teaching writing

Acknowledgements

This research was funded by the Australian Research Council, Project ID DP190101033. The authors would like to thank all the anonymous participants in the research.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Australian Research Council [DP190101033].

Notes on contributors

Maryam Khosronejad

Maryam Khosronejad (Macquarie University): Maryam Khosronejad has a PhD in Education. Her research interests are two interrelated areas: professional development of teachers and students’ learning, predominantly concerned with the formation of their beliefs, and identities.

Mary Ryan

Mary Ryan (Macquarie University): Mary Ryan is a Professor and Dean of Education at Macquarie University. Her research is in the areas of writing pedagogy and assessment, reflective writing, teachers’ work and professional learning, the enabling and constraining conditions for graduating students to manage the demands of their profession, and reflexive learning and practice.

Georgina Barton

Georgina Barton (University of Southern Queensland): Georgina Barton is a Professor in Literacies and Pedagogy at the University of Southern Queensland. Her fields of interest are literacy, multiliteracies, multimodality, the arts and culturally and linguistically diverse contexts including internationalisation.

Debra Myhill

Debra Myhill (University of Exeter, [email protected]): Debra Myhill is a Professor of Education and the Director of the Centre for Research in Writing at the University of Exeter. Her research interests are principally in the field of language and literacy, with a particular focus upon the teaching of writing; gender and literacy; and talk.

Lisa Kervin

Lisa Kervin (University of Wollongong): Lisa Kervin is a Professor in Language and Literacy at the University of Wollongong, where she leads research on Play, Curriculum and Pedagogy in Early Start Research.