Furberg and Silseth present two main research questions for this paper: “In what ways do student resources become mediational means in whole-class conversations?” and “Which opportunities and challenges does the teacher face in whole-class conversations where students invoke resources from their everyday lives?” (p9)
The key constructs in these questions include student resources, mediational, whole-class conversations, conceptual and positional framing.
- student resources – anything brought by the student from their everyday lives into the classroom discussion
- mediational – a bridge between the resource and the process or concept being studied
- whole-class conversations – in this study it was discussion sequences involving both teacher and multiple students
- conceptual framing – (conceptual dimensions) how students are organizing information by what they bring to the foreground vs background when trying to understand a concept or problem in a group situation
- positional framing – how people position themselves with regard to others in a group situation; relative level of “expertness” for participants in class discussions (social dimensions), particularly how students are positioned as learners: in situation 1 & 2:teacher as source, student as learner, in situation 3 students were positioned as sources, i.e. accountable and authoritative.
In order to answer their research questions, they collected data from one class of 38 lower secondary school students (age 15-16, even distribution by sex) in a school in Oslo, Norway. The class was doing a science project focused on genetics, and the data was originally gathered as part of a larger project, but they realized they had a wealth of whole-class conversations that they could analyze to learn more about student-teacher interactions. This project used data collected from 60 min lessons over a period of 4 weeks. 11 of these lessons were spent on the science project, and the researchers were present during all of the lessons. Data was gathered from transcribed video recordings of 330 min of class. Classroom observations were also used. A coding scheme was used to break the discussion down by whole-class session, episodes, sequences, and either triadic or true discussion sequences. The transcripts were also coded for every time students introduced resources, or “empirical examples, analogies, stories, or references to something they had seen or heard in their everyday lives” (p12). Furberg and Silseth used 3 true-discussion, whole-class sequences where students introduced everyday life ideas for their analysis.
The authors conclude that including student resources in whole class discussion provide opportunities for students to test their conceptual understandings and use their scientific reasoning. The teacher’s involvement with the student resources provided the teacher the opportunity to better understand the student’s understanding and reasoning. These resources also engendered greater student engagement and participation in the discussion from many members of the class by sparking interest and increasing participation. The way the teacher positions themself in regard to the concepts being discussed also impacts the class discussion. In the first 2 sequences where the student’s conceptual framing differed from the canonical framing, the teacher positioned himself as source and student as learner. In the third sequence, where multiple conceptual framings could exist within the context of canonical science, the teacher positioned the students as sources instead of listeners, and this framing sparked more discussion and scientific reasoning from the class. Ultimately, the authors conclude that teachers need to be aware of both conceptual framing and positional framing, or the conceptual and social dimensions of the discussion, in their classrooms.