Kristina Love

Literacy pedagogical content knowledge in the secondary curriculum

In this paper, I address the challenge of raising the consciousness of prospective secondary teachers about their roles in supporting their students in the advanced literacy demands of their subject specializations. I argue that to better equip them in supporting the conceptual development of diverse groups of students, prospective high school teachers need, as part of their pedagogical content knowledge, an understanding of the pervasive role of language and literacy in learning. I illustrate how, after even a short but intense input, one group of prospective teachers with no prior knowledge of language developed a capacity to plan content area learning with an informed consciousness of the role of language and literacy in the learning of diverse groups of their students. The continued development of literacy pedagogical content knowledge, I argue, will be crucial to the strength of those pillars of government reform related to lifting the academic achievement of adolescents in disadvantaged schools.

The negotiation of knowledge in an adult English as a second language classroom

Abstract This article examines how a linguistically based analysis of conversational structure can reveal the relationship between teachers and students in an adult English as a Second Language (ESL) classroom and how they negotiate their roles as knowers and knowledge providers at various stages of a teaching cycle. Recent research within an Interactional/Sociolinguistic paradigm (Gumperz, 1986) into the structure of classroom discourse has focussed on patterns of talk that challenge previous notions of student and teacher roles as unvarying across stages of the curriculum. Further work being done within an educational linguistic paradigm in Australia, as well as the United States, has identified that curriculum activity is structured into pedagogically distinct stages, each with characteristic discourse features. This study uses a functional linguistic analytical methodology, grounded within a social semiotic theory, in order to complement the perspectives of Interactional/Sociolinguistic studies into classroom discourse. In this article, a conversational structure analysis will be used to examine how knowledge is differentially negotiated between teachers and adult ESL students at various stages of a curriculum cycle.

The effect of the institution: Openings in talkback radio

This paper explores the opening routines oftelephone converbations in talkback radio. Given their accessibility to the researcher and the fact that anybody can potentially become a participant, talkback events are particularly well suited to examining the claim that people modify their normal behaviour in institutional contexts. The opening strategies in talkback radio are analyzed in terms of Scheglqffs (1968, 1986) description oftelephone opening sequences. Similarities to and variations front this description are discussed in terms of the necessities of establishing on-air interaction. This paper also considers ways in which the effectiveness of talkback opening sequences may be evaluated.

Voicing Resistance: Adolescent boys and the cultural practice of leisure reading

This article describes a theoretically informed methodology for eliciting the voices of adolescent boys identified by their teachers and parents as reluctant leisure time readers. Similar methods have also been used to draw out the voices of the boys’ parents to understand their efforts to guide and maintain their sons’ literacy practices, within the context of one middle class Australian school community. The concept of “voice” in our research of boys as capable but differently committed leisure time readers is informed by a socio-cultural theory that foregrounds the processes of enculturation, appropriation, and agency as fundamental to identity formation. In this regard the varied ways in which the boys in the study have taken up the reading practices valued in their families is illustrative of the mutuality of individual agency and cultural processes. In describing both the theoretical and conceptual framing of a methodology designed to investigate in particular those boys who have resisted their families’ reading dispositions we hope to highlight how individuals struggle to construct new values within patterns of cultural practice.

Presenting a point of view: Caller's contributions to talkback radio in Australia

Abstract This paper examines publicly available forms of oral argumentation in the form of talkback radio events in which callers present a point of view on a particular issue. Argumentation is examined as a structured phenomenon whose structuring is evident in conversational activity and which is influenced in talkback radio by its institutional context. The paper describes the complexes of speech acts used by callers to substantiate points of view and identifies the complexes of argumentation, complexes of evidence and complexes of concession, used by callers. The sequencing of these complexes of speech acts within the contribution is then examined and the placing and function of hosts challenges to points of view and their relationship to other components of the callers contribution is discussed.

APPRAISAL in online discussions of literary texts

Abstract Using the Appraisal framework developed by Martin (1996, 2000) and White (2005), this paper analyses the Appraisal resources drawn on by one group of senior secondary school students in Australia when responding online to teacher prompts about a postmodernist narrative. Appraisal analysis can reveal the extent to which affective, ethical, or critical stances are being negotiated in literature-based online discussions, and is used in this paper to examine how these evaluation resources are drawn on in a curriculum context where critical literary approaches are espoused. The analysis suggests that, while Australian students may be being provided with more postmodernist texts, and more flexible modes of negotiating meanings around those texts, they are still not yet able to take up those interpersonal positions that draw on knowledge of text construction either from a linguistic or a literary criticism perspective. The paper concludes by suggesting the value of Appraisal analysis as a diagnostic tool in English/Language Arts curriculum in Australian and other cultural contexts.

The Regulation of Argumentative Reasoning in Pedagogic Discourse

This article examines the discursive practices evident in Whole-Class Text-Response Discussion (WCTRD) as a pervasive curriculum activity in secondary English classrooms in Australia. This site was selected as an important one in the social construction of adolescents as apprentice citizens capable of reasoning from text in culturally valued ways. Bernsteins model of pedagogic discourse provides a sociologically principled framework within which the construction of particular forms of argumentative reasoning can be examined, as these forms are regulated either through visible or invisible pedagogies. Hallidays model of social semiotics provides the linguistic tools for the examination of how institutionally privileged values and ways of reasoning are realized in the micro-semantic exchanges of two such whole-class text-response discussions; one regulated through a highly visible pedagogy and the other through a relatively invisible pedagogy.

A Discourse Analytic Model for Developing Reflective Practice

Abstract In addition to the most common approaches identified by Zeichner (1987) to the preparation of reflective teachers during pre‐service teacher education, this paper recommends the use of a discourse analytic approach. A taxonomy of teacher initiations is presented as a manageable one for use with training teachers both in the field and on campus. The paper proposes that such a taxonomy, used in conjunction with lesson transcripts, provides opportunities for depth and systematicity which Zeichner suggests are absent from many inquiry‐oriented paradigms of teacher education. A case study based on the authors experience as a teacher educator illustrates how the system could be used to help training teachers identify features of their classroom behaviours and interactions. It is argued that such a discourse analytic system provides all those involved with teacher education with a powerful descriptive and diagnostic tool.