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Ecer10 Jenny
- 1. Identity Projects and Practice in a Science Classroom: A Case Study of Students’ Reflexive Positioning Jenny Arnold The University of Melbourne
- 8. Episode 1
- 9. Episode 1 Tasha Yeah(.) so how does it work? The air goes into the cup and (.) what? Kesar <um> Tasha >and the tissue somehow stops it< heh Kesar and lets- I want to do that again just to observe it Tasha Can we do that again ? º P leaseº . [Looks around the room, presumably to l locate the box of tissues.] Kesar Do we need- [pushes the cup upside down into the tub of water without the tissue] ºah yeah (.) we probably didn’t.º Angie does it work with the container ? Or does it have to be with a tissue? Tasha >I’ll get another tissue!< Kesar Its hard to see (.) ºcause of the waterº Angie Oh yeah there’s no water in there. Kesar There’s no water is there Angie Nup . Tasha So what happened ? Angie Can water be compressed? Tasha Kesar what happened (.) the wat- the air goes in and what- Kesar >You’re asking me!< hah hah
- 10. Episode 2
- 11. Episode 2
- 12. Episode 3
- 13. Episode 3
- 15. Episode 4 Post-lesson Interview
- 17. Your comments and Questions Arnold, J. (forthcoming) “Science students’ classroom discourse: Tasha’s Umwelt”. Research in Science Education
Editor's Notes
- Over the past twenty-five years researchers have been concerned with understanding the science student . The need for such research is still grounded in contemporary issues including providing opportunities for all students to develop scientific literacy and the failure of school science to connect with student’s lives, interests and personal identities . The research reported here is unusual in its use of discourse analysis in social psychology to contribute to an understanding of the way students make meaning in secondary school science.
- Discursive psychology was drawn upon for the study because there has been convincing theoretical and empirical work in the social sciences related to what has become known as the 電 i scursive turn � or the 都 e cond cognitive revolution � that calls into question many of the assumptions underlying some of this previous research, including: 1. Presupposing the existence of a culture of science as an attitudinal object. From a discursive perspective, the variability in the construction of ‘science’ and ‘the culture of science’ for different social purposes in different contexts is acknowledged and this variability becomes of central interest . 2. Assuming that student utterances are indicators of the presence of enduring, underlying attitudes. From the discursive perspective, attitudes are performatively constituted through action for specific local purposes. Instead of an underlying attitude, the function of attitudinal displays as a discursive practice in various contexts becomes the focus for research . 3. Making translations from un-explicated student discourse to un-explicated researcher’s discourse, for example the translation of ‘language used by students’ to the categorization of students according to ‘cultural affiliation’. From a discursive perspective, language has a social function entailing a shift in focus from the content of utterances to utterances as speech-acts. Utterances have a locutionary or referential sense, but also an illocutionary and perlocutionary force . In discourse analysis, the relevant categories are those used by participants . 4. Ignoring student agency to treat students as passive entities in the culture of the science classroom and holding the teacher as individually responsible for science classroom practices. From the discursive psychological perspective, science classroom practices are maintained or transformed relationally through interaction . The focus from the discursive perspective shifts from the role of students as passive receivers of curriculum imperatives and pedagogical moves to the discursive practices of students as they make meaning in context, including the way they position themselves and are positioned by others . The shifts to a discursive perspective: from a concern with what people are talking about to a concern with what they are doing in and with their talk; and from a concern with what happened to a concern with how events are discursively constructed, require major shifts in the specific kinds of research questions that are asked . Through the study of discourse as social action, the focus of this study was how students positioned themselves as participants in science. Rather than seeking to apply predetermined categories to student discourse, this research identified the ways in which participating students actively constructed and employed categories in their discourse whilst participating in and talking about science. The questions addressed by the research reported here include: How can discursive practices employed by students in their science classroom be described? How do students use psychological categories in their talk in and about their science classroom? How are students positioned, and how do they position themselves within science classroom discourses?
- Words, grammar and phrases contribute to the locutionary meaning of an utterance. However the illocutionary force of the utterance (what the speaker does with it) also depends upon the standing of the speaker and the way in which the speaker is positioned within the ongoing interaction . Consideration of the speaker’s relative positioning also affects an utterance’s perlocutionary force (its effects on the hearer). Therefore in order to interpret the social meaning, the analyst needs to extend his or her gaze beyond the single utterance to at least those preceding and following it, and perhaps to a social episode . In summary, social meaning is made relatively determinate using three interdependent features of discourse: the conversational ‘storyline’; actors’ conversational locations, or ‘positions’; and the content of the ‘act/action’. These three constructs are referred to as the positioning triad . Discourse accomplishes social acts including the relative positioning of speakers and interlocutors and the context for further action (the ongoing storyline). Woods and Kroger refer to this as the scaffolding effect of speech acts; utterances both reflect and construct context . A position denotes a person’s psychological location in a conversation , and certain positions imbue speakers with a sense of responsibility or duty. The linguistic device used for indexing responsibility for action in the social world and speech-acts is pronoun use. In speaking and acting from a position, people are bringing to the particular situation their history as they themselves conceive it, that is, the history of one who has been in multiple positions and engaged indifferent forms of discursive practice (Davies and Harr � 1999, p37). This history is referred to as the person’s 填 m welt � (Harr � 1990). Discursive practices and the associated positions are seen to make up the human social Umwelt, the social world or life-space of the actor. The use of language or other techniques for positioning are often so well rehearsed that conscious thought is no longer required on the part of the actor in the context of moment-to-moment interaction, much like the development of a skill. Learning under this scheme is the expansion of an individual’s Umwelt to include new discursive practices. Any action in the social world is intentional, used by the actor for a purpose and presupposing a response from an 登 t her � . The actor draws upon his or her Umwelt at the moment of participation and exercises choice. This gives rise to the possibility of novel action in institutional contexts resulting in the transformation of practice. Novel action in any situation risks unintelligibility but could result in new storylines and changes in relative positioning if taken up by others at the site . In institutional settings it is rare that novel positioning is recognized because of the matrix of practices that make up “th e way we do things around here ” or “te aching as usual ” .
- The discourse analytic perspective emphasizes the need to work with recordings and records (not reports) of verbal and nonverbal aspects of discourse .
- The audio tracks from classroom and interview videos were fully transcribed using orthographic conventions. These transcripts were used for an initial reading , the result of which were colour-coded transcripts showing conversational contexts and all episodes in which topics of conversation were identified as relevant to the study. Three contexts for student talk in the classroom were identified: public whole-class conversations, private small-group student conversations and private conversations between students and the teacher. Content of interest that was identified included student talk about science and talk students engaged in whist doing science. In addition, episodes in which students used first person pronouns, emotive or epistemic verbs were highlighted.
- The girls were working in a small group of four on the practical task you have in Appendix B of the handout. They had been asked to record their observations and use these to distinguish between the properties of solids liquids and gases. The first activity involved putting a tissue into a cup as shown and submerging the cup in water. The point of the activity was to illustrate that air takes up space. The air in the cup, prevents the water entering and the tissue remains dry. In this part of the episode Tasha introduces the problem of explaining their observation that the tissue stays dry, specifically she is concerned with the function of the tissue. Kesar, in response, expresses the personal desire to repeat the experiment. She acts upon her desire, revealing her sense of personal agency, by immediately picking up the cup and placing it into the water without the tissue. She does this without waiting for approval from Tasha or the other group members. Her use of the first person is marked because of the sense of shared responsibility the girls usually display in their use of the collective fist person (we or us), as Kesar used at the beginning of this turn: lets. As in let us, and in Tasha’s display of collective responsibility in ‘can we do that again please?’
- Kesar’s practice here included the use of the equipment for her own purposes revealing her sense of personal agency. Her evaluation that the tissue was not necessary was individually realised. Kesar also engaged in collective practices, but there was disjuncture between the way she positioned herself in collective practices and her individually realised practices. In conversation, Angie, Kesar and Gloria established the shared observation that there was no water in the cup even when the tissue was not there. However in this public, collective domain Kesar positioned herself as not able to make a reliable observation. She expressed agreement with the observation reported by Angie, but she did not position herself as independently capable of making it. Later Kesar did not engage in discussion about part A with Tasha. She did not offer an explanation for what they had observed when Tasha appealed to her to do so, and she did not take the responsibility to inform Tasha that there was no air in the cup even without the tissue. Instead she positioned herself as neither obligated to nor capable of providing an explanation. Kesar did not act as though she perceived it to be her responsibility to collectively deliberate over an explanation. Despite Tasha’s persistence, discussion did not eventuate
- In this episode, Kesar participated in the collectively realised acts of the whole-class conversation, by sitting in her seat and facing the teacher and the action behind him at the front of the room. She was positioned by the teacher along with the other students as responsible for completing the homework and attending to the topics of conversation introduced by the teacher. Not only did Kesar respond to the teachers’ cues and align herself with the teacher’s expectations by raising her hand but she also acted to ensure her friends had aligned themselves as well. Kesar’s acts of compliance were couched in the simultaneous maintenance of solidarity between herself and her friends. The conversation with Tasha revealed Kesar’s sense collective responsibility shared with Tasha for the graph she drew for homework and their shared concern as to whether or not their graphs were correct. Rather than attending to the whole-class conversation, and the official concern with what the graph represented, Kesar’s utterances in conversation with Tasha revealed her concern with determining whether their graph was right or wrong, the aesthetics of Sydney’s graph and her admiration of his skill in drawing on the board.
- In this episode, Kesar uses the first person to position herself as personally obligated to make predictions. Her sense of obligation is displayed in her use of 塗 a ve to � . This sense of personal obligation is honoured by the other students, whose actions include completing the task of making predictions themselves and responding to the social force of Kesar’s expressed obligation. Those actions orientated towards completing written predictions carried illocutionary force in shaping the episode. The normative storyline developed as students achieving expedient task completion. Within this storyline, the students were positioned as obligated to produce a written product (their predictions). The practice of making a prediction as the personal responsibility of the individual was maintained through the social acts in this episode. This is evidenced not only in Kesar’s use of the first person, but also in the lack of illocutionary force of the students’ actions orientated towards deliberating over what they expected to happen in the experiments, or for discussing scientific reasoning to support their expectations. Angie’s appeal to Kesar, � Do you think (.) what will the water do. Do you think it will ri:se? � was dismissed, and Kesar’s appeal to Tasha, 展 h at do you think would happen? � was ignored. The students displayed a lack of a sense of obligation to share or discuss their opinions, despite being positioned to do so. A storyline in which predictions were shared and discussed lacked the force to shape the ongoing interaction between the girls in this episode. The storyline that did shape the episode was one that gave precedence to the completion of set tasks in the correct order within the assigned time. Within this storyline, predictions were taken as the responsibility of individuals and the setting up of equipment was taken as a group responsibility. The positioning of individuals to take personal responsibility for their predictions was supported by the actions of the students as discussed above and also the actions of the teacher. The teacher checked that Angie and Kesar had written their individual predictions, instructed them to move on to the next task (setting up their equipment), but did not position them to defend or discuss their predictions publicly. In this way there was no collective realisation of scientific discourses, such as the effect of heat upon materials. Instead the meanings realised (positioning, storyline and act/actions) could be described as discourses of task completion and classroom management.
- Kesar’s logic in making her predictions is not necessarily scientific. Her use of you suggests speaking from a public persona and reveals what she sees as competent performance - student’s responsibility to monitor whether ones own thoughts are correct or incorrect. *when positioned as responsible for accounting for her predictions within a scientific discourse she draws upon an assumption of logic in the teacher’s pedagogy.