Learning Through Extended Talk

Learning Through Extended Talk Paul Thompson School of Education, University of Nottingham, UK This paper reports on developing research into the learning potential of extended talk, (i.e. either spoken monologue or an extended turn-in dialogue). Despite a widespread belief that the ability to speak at length is personally, socially and professionally empowering, relatively little research has been undertaken into ways in which extended forms of talk can be nurtured and sustained in the classroom. This is arguably because theorisation of the relationship between learning and discourse within the sociocultural paradigm has been overly preoccupied with internalisation. This paper will focus on the development of extended talk for learning and will report on the findings of a coordinated group of practitioner research projects, some of which aimed to develop more extended spoken pupil contributions in primary and secondary school classrooms. Transcripts will be analysed in terms of Lotman’s distinction between univocal and dialogic language functions in order to evaluate where particular examples of extended speech reflect productive learning. The paper aims to identify conditions through which extended forms of talk can transform knowledge and understanding and to draw conclusions about ways in which these conditions can be developed and sustained.

doi: 10.2167/le754.0 Keywords: extended talk, dialogic monologue, practitioner research, Lotman, functional dualism

Background There is an extensive research literature, dating back over several decades, which attests to the value of children engaging in spoken dialogue as a medium of learning (e.g. Barnes et al., 1969; Britton, 1970; Cazden, 1988; Mercer, 2000; Nystrand, 1997). Much of the inspiration for the shift towards more collaborative models of classroom learning in Western education in the 1960s and 1970s, (as reflected in this literature), came from the rediscovery of Vygotsky’s writing on the relationship between language and thinking within a social theory of mind (Vygotsky, 1962). The model of spoken discourse, which has consequently tended to predominate in classrooms in England, has promoted consensus and cooperation through collaborative small group talk. Considerable research evidence has shown how exploratory talk in small group settings can enhance learning and understanding (Barnes, 1976; Barnes & Todd, 1977; Mercer, 1995). This ‘sociocultural shift’ has certainly created many more opportunities for students to engage in classroom dialogue than were available in the 1950s and 1960s. However, there is a strong possibility that it has also decreased students’ opportunities to speak at length about their learning, either in small C

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group or whole class situations (Baxter, 2000: 27). Baxter suggests that the influence of the small group paradigm ‘has perhaps undervalued the . . . potentially life-enhancing skills of discourse in more formal contexts where students are required to make a public impact on a large group, or perhaps the whole class’. Although this paper will be more concerned with ‘extended talk for learning’ than ‘public talk’ per se, it is valuable to remember at the outset that the ability to speak at length can often be personally, socially and professionally empowering. Talk has an important cognitive function, but it also builds individual and collective identity, mediating social relationships; those who can speak most persuasively and fluently tend to be the most influential in the world of work. While classroom talk research over the past four decades has offered rich insights into the value of exploratory talk in small group settings, considerable attention has also been paid to the quality of teacher–pupil interaction during whole class discussion (e.g. Edwards & Mercer, 1987; Mehan, 1979; Wells, 1993; Young, 1991). There has arguably been a tendency within both traditions to foreground the dynamics of ‘internalisation’ through dialogue at the expense of specific analysis of the learning potential of ‘externalisation’ through more extended forms of spoken language. In his account of the impact of Vygotskian theory on education, Daniels comments that ‘so much effort has been expended attempting to clarify the movement from the social to the individual and yet relatively little attention has been paid to the reverse direction’ (Daniels, 2001: 44). Although Vygotsky explored ‘externalisation’ at some length, especially in his early works, such as The Psychology of Art (Vygotsky, 1925) and in the final chapter of Thought and Language (Vygotsky, 1986), educational researchers have tended to concentrate more on his ideas about the ways in which language mediates internalisation through social interaction in the zone of proximal development than on ‘the active role of the person in their own cognitive and emotional creation’ (Daniels, 2001: 44). My suggestion is that the relatively low level of educational interest in ‘extended talk’ as a category could well also, in some way, reflect this tendency. The argument that the production of extended talk is essential for advanced intellectual development was recognised in earlier centuries through a curriculum which included the teaching of spoken rhetoric and which examined students orally (Billig, 1987). Classical rhetoric was first formulated in 5th-century Athens and became an important part of the curriculum in English education during the medieval period, remaining prominent until the first quarter of the 19th century. It was a system of analysis concerned primarily with the art of persuasive discourse in public contexts. In his comparative study of primary education in five countries, Alexander finds much more contemporary evidence of public classroom discourse in Russian and French classrooms than English or American. He contrasts a much more collective and public approach to talk and learning with informal approaches to oracy in England and America (Alexander, 2001: 278–296). He presents data from Russian and French classrooms where pupils share their problems in sustained interaction within whole class debate in order to find collective solutions and argues that the main purpose of classroom talk in English and American classrooms is social, more to do with the development of confidence and levels of participation than with thinking or learning.

Learning Through Extended Talk

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He maintains that insufficient attention is paid by teachers in England and America to cognitive development through talk and concludes by recommending discursive forms which can help pupils to achieve ‘common understanding through structured and cumulative questioning and discussion which guide and prompt, reduce choices, minimise risk and error, and expedite “handover” of concepts and principles’ (2001: 527). According to Alexander, the teacher’s role should be to steer classroom discourse within a purposeful framework, offering cognitive challenge and opportunities for sustained thinking, so that children can be helped to build at length on their own and each others’ ideas. My argument in this paper is that forms of spoken monologue and extended turns in dialogue need to be more seriously considered as vehicles of sustained thinking. There are several examples of children building their ideas at length through talk in the ‘oracy assessment’ reports produced by the Assessment of Performance Unit in 1985 (APU, 1985a, 1985b), and many more in the archive of APU audiotapes (held currently at the University of Liverpool) upon which these reports are based. In a significant number of these recordings, there is evidence of sustained thinking through talk for a variety of purposes and at a range of levels. During 1982 and 1983, pupils within a large national sample of 11 and 15 year olds, each carried out a selection of three specific oral tasks whose purposes included describing, expounding, instructing, reporting, narrating, arguing, speculating and collaborating. Many of these tasks encouraged extended oral contributions in a collaborative context. The APU approach was highly influential in the development of the English talk curriculum in the 1980s, implementing an approach to oracy testing which was clearly much broader in scope than the individual tasks of CSE English assessment which it had aimed to supercede (Gorman & Brooks, 1986). Typical CSE assessment tasks, such as a speech in a debate or a five-minute talk on a subject of personal interest, reflected the curriculum of the declamatory and individualised classroom talk culture of the 1950s and 1960s. The range of tasks in the APU approach was cross-curricular and covered a much wider range of purposes for talk, ‘both cognitive and affective, and both monologue and interactive’ (Brooks, 1989: 93). However, the APU research team was criticised for its failure to grasp the dialogical nature of verbal interaction (MacLure, 1987). Maybin complained that APU testers, in deliberately constructing tests to elicit stretches of continuous discourse from individual speakers, misunderstood the collaborative nature of talk, ‘decontextualising talk from its social context, and from its integration with listening’ (Maybin, 1988: 8). She maintained that the APU’s individualistic and functional model of language use failed to recognise the dialectic between utterance and response. Brooks, responding on behalf of the APU (1989: 89), rejected definitions of the ‘interactive’, which only accept conversational forms of talk within their remit:

There are some perfectly valid monologue varieties of talk which pupils should have the opportunity to develop skill in: perhaps especially describing, informing and narrating . . . A contributory reason for not excluding monologue is the fact that too few pupils ever get the chance to engage

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in long communicative turns in the classroom, since too much classroom talk is dominated by the teacher. In my opinion, a synthesis of both positions could be productive. Although the APU’s approach to oracy testing did appear clinical, it is important to avoid any tendency to caricature monologue as ‘bad’ and dialogue as ‘good’. Monologue can be just as ‘internally persuasive’ as dialogue. Bakhtin explains that, whereas authoritative discourse ‘demands our unconditional allegiance’ and is inherently monological, internally persuasive discourse allows dialogical interaction and creative engagement because it is open and productive (Bakhtin, 1981: 345–346). There is no reason why extended pupil monologue should not be open, creative, interactive and, in a Bakhtinian sense, ‘internally persuasive’. Furthermore, monologue is inevitably a part of dialogue. Mukarovsky sees all linguistic activity on a cline from monologue to dialogue (Mukarovsky, 1977). Voloshinov argues that the concept of ‘monologue’ is essentially an abstraction because any monologic utterance ‘is but one link in a continuous chain of speech performances’ (Voloshinov, 1973: 72). Bakhtin also comments: ‘However monological the utterance may be . . . it cannot but be, in some measure, a response . . . ’ (Bakhtin, 1986: 82). Part of the theoretical problem in this respect lies in Bakhtin’s own tendency to conflate ‘monologue’ as a discursive form, with the ‘monologic’ as a philosophical principle. The Russian semiotician, Lotman, avoids this confusion by reconceptualising the distinction between monologue and dialogue in terms of a ‘functional dualism’ which, he maintains, is characteristic of all spoken, written and non-verbal texts (Lotman, 1988). For Lotman, all texts have both univocal and dialogic functions; their univocal function is to convey meaning as accurately as possible, ‘to convey meanings adequately’ (1988: 34), while their dialogic function is to generate new meanings. All texts serve both functions but, in different contexts and for different purposes, either can predominate. Unfortunately, however, the univocal function, with its exclusive emphasis on transmission and reception, has been regarded as a universal model of communication and language study and as a universal basis for teaching. Lotman rejects Saussurean accounts of language which only encompass the ‘univocal’ transmission of information (Lotman, 1990: 17). He maintains that language is more than a passive conduit between input and output: ‘the main structural attribute of a text in this second function is its internal heterogeneity’ (Lotman, 1988: 37). Internal heterogeneity is characterised by a dynamic, dialogical interaction of competing structures within an utterance, provoking new thoughts and meanings. In this function, ‘a text is not a passive receptacle, or bearer of some content placed in it from without, but a generator’. It is a ‘thinking device’, which stimulates alternative perspectives and rhetorically inter-animates contending voices. I wish to argue that there is a clarity and richness in Lotman’s formulation, which both accommodates and clarifies Bakhtin’s recognition that dialogue is our primary existential structure. My suggestion in coming sections will be that his understanding of text as ‘a semiotic space in which languages interact, interfere and organize themselves hierarchically’ (Lotman, 1988: 37) can offer a


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productive theoretical framework for analysis of extended spoken contributions in the classroom.

The Research Project The starting point for this analysis was a two-year practitioner research project in 10 primary and secondary schools in an ex-mining town in the north of England. The primary aim of the project was to develop students’ oral abilities (Thompson, 2007). Speaking and listening had been identified by school inspectors in these predominantly working class schools as a generic weakness across the 5–16 age range. As a result, the Education Development Plan committed the schools to a programme of classroom research which would improve the quality of ‘talk and learning’: ‘We believe that improving communication and especially oracy will help remove many of the barriers that stand in the way of engaging pupils in learning and lead to higher attainment and more confident young people’. Funding was provided by the Education Action Zone (EAZ) to enable one teacher from each of the six primary and four secondary schools to participate in a programme of termly whole-day workshops which aimed to develop a deeper theoretical and practical understanding of the relationship between talk, thinking and learning. A particularly strong influence upon workshop discussion at the project’s outset was the work of Mercer (1995, 2000), whose own ideas about the learning potential of talk have been developed through action research with classroom teachers in local education authorities (Mercer et al., 1999). His distinction between disputational, cumulative and exploratory talk and his recognition that exploratory talk is best nurtured in small groups on the basis of clearly negotiated ground rules was an important starting point for each of our projects. Several teachers began their work by using materials from the ‘Thinking Together’ project to improve pupils’ skills in arguing and reasoning (Dawes et al., 2000). Each school was visited on a termly basis by the project coordinator. The volunteer teachers ranged in experience from members of senior management to the newly qualified. Their brief in the project’s first year was to develop research which would serve to enrich the quality of speaking and listening in their classrooms; in the second year, there was an expectation that collective findings would be disseminated as a basis for whole school policy development and broader, sustainable improvements in the quality of whole school speaking and listening. The primary teachers were often literacy coordinators and the secondary teachers all worked in English departments. Some had extensive previous training in classroom oracy and others were novices. Each teacher was supplied by the EAZ with digital audio-recording equipment, so that classroom discourse could be easily recorded. Some of the schools also used video cameras to record important lessons. Financial support was offered for transcription. Recordings and transcripts were regularly shared and studied during workshops and school visits. The aim of the project was to break down barriers to learning and build confidence through the development of skills in oral communication. A particular

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focus in several classrooms was the development of the ‘extended oral contribution’, since most of the teachers involved felt that the length, detail or thoughtfulness of their pupils’ contributions was often too limited. Through preliminary discussion and planning in the project workshops and subsequent experimentation in their own classrooms, several teachers began to develop techniques to encourage their pupils to speak at greater length in a range of contexts; digital recordings were made both of extended dialogic turns and individual monologues during paired, small group and whole class discussion. Several teachers reported in evaluation interviews at the end of the two-year project that collective analysis of recordings had deepened their theoretical understanding of ways in which children can learn through more extended forms of classroom talk (Thompson, 2007). This was a qualitative study based on small scale practitioner research whose ultimate aim was curriculum development mediated through the enhancement of professional understanding and knowledge (see Goswami & Stillman, 1987). Some research approaches were quantitative: for example, the average length of spoken pupil and teacher contributions was quantified in a range of lessons and a statistical evaluation of questionnaire surveys of pupil and teacher attitudes to classroom oracy was also undertaken. Initial audits of literacy lessons in three of the primary schools confirmed the findings of Mroz et al. (2000), Hargreaves et al. (2002) and Hardman et al. (2003), that too few opportunities are offered to pupils in normal classroom interaction to question or explore ideas at length. In the first three months of the project, eight KS1 lessons were recorded and transcribed; whereas the average length of teacher contribution was 18 words, the average length of pupil contribution was a mere 2.8. Vygotsky observed that ‘monologue is a higher more complicated form of speech than dialogue’ (Vygotsky, 1962). Teachers at the start of this project tended to agree; to generate the right conditions for either pupil monologue or extended turns was regarded as a considerable challenge because it seemed that the composition of extended spoken contributions about learning required higher levels of linguistic and cognitive ability than were evident in their classrooms.

Findings A view crystallised during early workshop discussion to the effect that children were more likely to engage in extended talk when whole class questioning sought to build on prior knowledge and pupils’ own experiences and this was corroborated during the subsequent collective analysis of transcripts. There was also consensus around the belief that lessons grounded in out-of-school contexts were most likely to generate extended spoken contributions. By situating questions in children’s own experiences and positioning them as experts, teachers felt that they were able to encourage greater pupil confidence, especially where the questioning either related to or invoked a narrative speech genre. In the following transcript from a Year 7 lesson based on a playscript, The Terrible Fate of Humpty Dumpty by David Calcutt (1999), Ryan is being ‘hot seated’ in role as one of the members of a deadly gang, who hound a new pupil to death at their school. The bullies in the play are ultimately divided between pity, guilt and deceit.


(1) Ryan:

(2) David: (3) Ryan: (4) Rachel: (5) Ryan: (6) Natasha: (7) Ryan:

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Don’t ask me one question if I bullied him. It were just how he looked. He were too geekified. He looked a bit like – I can’t say ‘cos I might get done but – he looked too geeky. His trousers were way up his legs. I tried to stop Terry from going up pylon even though I did want him to go up but I didn’t want him to die because I liked picking on him. His nickname were Humpty Dumpty. I know I’m saying I bullied him but some bullied him even more and he didn’t really like ‘Humpty Dumpty’ . . . we just said that he didn’t mind so we wouldn’t get done. If he didn’t like it why did yer call him it? Because I bullied him. Did yer know he were going up the pylon on that day and yer didn’t want him to die, so why did yer let him? ‘Cos it looked funny how he were climbing. How come your stuff is different from what everybody else has said? Because I’m not a liar like rest of ‘em.

Ryan presents a short monologue in role as a gang member and is then questioned by other members of his group. Language functions univocally here, in the sense that all of the pupils are aiming to transmit accurate information about the play. Simultaneously, there is a richer dialogic inter-animation of voices as the pupils infer new meanings about character and plot. The dialogic function of language predominates, as classmates challenge Ryan’s assertions and subvert his authoritarian ‘bully voice’ at (2), (4) and (6). He also questions his own preconceptions within (1). Bakhtin argues that the tension between authoritative and internally persuasive discourse exists at every level of language, right down to the individual utterance (Bakhtin, 1981: 342). It is exemplified here in Ryan’s attempt to rationalise ‘his’ earlier authoritarian behaviour by reprocessing concepts in the playscript in terms of personal schemata, such as ‘he were too geekified’ and ‘we just said that he didn’t mind so we wouldn’t get done.’ ‘Hot seating’ offers the pupils a range of semantic and rhetorical possibilities as their social language interacts with the language of the text. In Lotman’s (1988: 40) terms, they are being given the opportunity to create their own text within the dramatist’s text: Introduction of an external text into the immanent world of a particular text plays a tremendous role. On the one hand, the external text is transformed, forms a new message, in the structural semantic field of the text . . . But not only is the text transformed: the entire semiotic situation within the textual world into which it has been introduced changes. Introduction of an alien semiosis that is untranslatable into the ‘maternal’ text puts the latter in a state of excitation . . . . I would suggest that this heteroglossic ‘state of excitation’ can form the basis for more extended and thoughtful spoken contributions. Classroom role play is capable of activating dynamic semiotic systems, which have the potential to support rich and productive learning. In this extract, Ryan is able to speak at greater

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length than normal (according to his teacher), because he has been allowed to assume a first-person voice and because he is working with an emotional, narratively based content. One of the central feelings of several teachers by the end of the research project was that pupils would be in a better position to develop expertise in rhetorical and expository forms of extended speech if they had been given earlier opportunities to develop fluency in emotionally grounded monologue of the kind that we see here. Juzwik shows how rhetorical analysis of the ‘rhythmic architecture’ of narrative performance can assist our understanding of the dynamic of teachers’ classroom authority (Juzwik, 2004). It might be added that rhetorical analysis of parallelism and style in pupils’ ‘emotional narratives’ has the capacity to offer a significant part of the basis for a theory of progression which could move our approach to the evaluation of extended classroom talk beyond behavioural features, such as ‘confidence’ and ‘levels of participation’ towards a much more comprehensive socio-cognitive assessment framework which does greater justice to the rich possibilities in spoken discourse for the development of thinking, mediated through an understanding of impact upon audience (Thompson, 2006). This is not to deny the importance of confidence in the nurturing of classroom monologue. The confidence which two Year 8 pupils show in the following transcript of an expository presentation to the class where they compare the character, Zero, in novel and film versions of Holes by Louis Sachar (2000), is arguably grounded in their familiarity with a narrative form. They have made some written notes in advance, but they make direct eye contact with the class, only looking down at their pieces of paper very occasionally for a quotation, page reference or key headings. This is an extended presentational dialogue in which the pupils are arguably developing greater confidence in their capacity for monological expression. (1) Julie:

(2) Lisa:

(3) Julie:

(4) Lisa:

Our presentation’s about Zero. And we found out quite a lot about him. We found a quote from book and from film, from Mr Pendanski saying ‘You know why his name’s Zero? Because there’s nothing inside his head’. This tells you how he’s got his nickname. Zero’s a very reserved kid, and only ever talks to Stanley. He’s smallest kid in Group D, and his favourite thing to do is to dig holes. It states on page 81 that Zero doesn’t know how to read or write. His real name is Hector Zeroni. Zero adds suspense and excitement to story, because you don’t know what will happen next when he’s around. In film and novel, he makes you feel part o’ picture. And when he talks to Stanley and Stanley doe’n’t hear, he won’t repeat what he last said, and it creates mystery. I don’t think that there are many differences between the film and the novel, apart from in the film, Zero is much more open than in the novel. Zero is much the same in both. We can’t find many differences. Our opinion on Zero, is that he is an exciting character in the film and story. He’s mysterious because he doe’n’t talk much, and doesn’t leave any hints or clues to who he is. Zero is our most


(5) Julie:

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favourite character, because there’s lots of information to find out about him. And he makes you think that you want to find out more about him. He’s also our favourite ‘cos he’s little and quiet. Our prediction for Zero is that himself and Stanley uncover the truth about why they are digging holes, and uncover the warden’s secret. Also, we think that we will find out why Zero keeps himself to himself. And he could be related to Madame Zeroni.

The girls’ ability to speak at length here is firstly based on their enjoyment of the novel and the film. According to their teacher, they were fully engaged in the joint research that underpinned their presentation. The ability to collaborate also strengthened their confidence. Both were positioned as experts rather than novices. At a univocal level, they are communicating basic information about Zero’s character. At a dialogic level, there is an interaction between their own and a range of textual voices, such as the direct textual references in (1). They experience such references as ‘thinking devices’ which lead on to generate fairly routine understandings in (2) about the suspense, excitement, cohesion and mystery of Sachar’s novel, but they are new and significant in the girls’ own terms. The girls’ voices interact positively with novelistic elements which relate to Zero’s character in (3), (4) and (5) and manage to externalise certain insights and enthusiasm. Lotman explains that the primary structural characteristic of the dialogic dimension of a text is its ‘internal heterogeneity’. In the encounter between the girls, the film and the novel, this heterogeneity stimulates a rhetorical inter-animation of various perspectives. The coordinate positioning of a text with a series that is semiotically heterogeneous to it generates a rhetorical effect (Lotman, 1988: 43). I am suggesting therefore, that in order to be able to speak at length about their learning, pupils need semiotic spaces where they can create their own ‘heterogeneous texts’ within the texts that they are given. They also need to be offered speech genres which foreground the dialogic, rather than univocal function of language and structural conditions through which their voices can question, challenge and interact with each other and generate new ideas. Such opportunities would be arguably less available in the IRF speech genre (Mehan, 1979; Sinclair & Coulthard, 1975) than the two speech genres (hot seating and presentational dialogue), which have been exemplified so far. IRF is a ubiquitous classroom speech genre which tends to foreground the univocal. (1) Teacher: (2) Bethan: (3) Teacher: (4) Daniel: (5) Teacher: (6) Daniel: (7) Teacher: (8) Bethan: (9) Teacher:

now what have we been reading today? a story a story that’s right . . . what’s the story about? three little pigs I wonder if you can help me write pig on the whiteboard . . . What is the first phoneme for pig? pa well done Daniel . . . what is the last phoneme in pig? ga ga good right pig

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The teacher initiates with a question at (1), the pupil briefly responds at (2), the teacher offers feedback at (3) before asking a new question and so on. In this example, the focus is on transmission of information. Teacher questioning here does not require creative thought or the generation of new ideas. Wells has warned against oversimplified accounts of IRF which fail to recognise the genre’s dialogic potential within certain activity settings when teachers are able to use the third stage in the triadic exchange to co-construct meaning as a step to the next cycle of learning-and-teaching (Wells, 1993). Despite this important qualification, our view in the project workshops was that IRF is problematic when used unimaginatively, extensively or exclusively. In the transcript above, IRF serves its purpose perfectly well, but the genre can be highly inhibiting when used constantly. During workshops, considerable attention was devoted to discussion of ways in which the constraints imposed on pupils’ spoken language by negative use of the IRF structure might be overcome. In the following extract, for example, a Year 2 teacher was consciously aiming to develop an I-R-R-R-R-I structure. This was not the first occasion upon which she had experimented with the pattern. Her pupils had been encouraged to respond in this way over a much longer sequence of lessons. (1) Teacher:

(2) Thomas: (3) Alan: (4) Teacher:

(5) Ian:

(6) Alan: (7) Becky: (8) Antony: (9) Thomas:

(10) Lily: (11) Layla: (12) Teacher:

Well we’re looking at this text ‘Wolf, Wolf’ and we are going to have a discussion about it. So who would like to start us off? Go on then Thomas. I think that he is playing tricks all the time. When you’re really telling the truth, they won’t come and help you . . . Is he get? Can his mam and dad really see him again? Does anyone want to carry on rather than me saying things? How about if you turn round and look at each other so it’s easy to see people. Ian would you like to speak up please? If you keep playing tricks on people, they believe you and when you’re not playing tricks they might believe you because they can’t see you running Why did he play the trick on the wolf? He’s the shepherd. Cos it was boring and he wanted to have excitement . . . When the wolf came in and he started shouting Wolf! and then next to his field were a man and he didn’t bother. He turned his head and looked round and said I was looking at him. He thought he was playing his old tricks with him again. He thought it were boring so he liked to play a game. He shouted Help! Wolf! He were bored because he were always tending sheep so then he gave up and started shouting because he got bored. Ok, what I want you to do is to think of a story based on that one. Someone plays a trick on someone. You’ve got to decide amongst yourselves why they play a trick? Who plays the trick? What happens in the end?


(13) James: (14) Lily: (15) Ryan:

(16) Antony: (17) Peter: (18) Kirsty: (19) Peter: (20) Ryan: (21) Alan:

(22) David: (23) Lily:

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Who wants to start first? (to Ryan) You When . . . when somebody phones the fire engine – the fire brigade when there isn’t a fire when they’re playing a trick ... When it really happen They don’t come They don’t come. Is that what you two think – suggested. That’s just like a false one A false alarm. When that boy was – once when it were talking about that boy who cried wolf it made a different story – he didn’t get eaten but the goats got eaten because they didn’t run away. Because he just tricked and tricked and tricked and they just got annoyed and that’s why they didn’t come. Everyone needs to have a go

The average length of pupil contribution here is 13.7 words. This is by no means monological expression, but it could again be argued that a growing capacity for extended turns in dialogue will eventually lead on to a greater capacity for spoken monologue. Nearly all of the pupils speak with confidence and enthusiasm. The teacher speaks three times at (1), (4) and (12), each time doing her best to hand over responsibility for discussion to the pupils. From the standpoint of functional dualism, the dialogic function clearly predominates. Within a very open semiotic space, pupils are encouraged to construct their own texts. Semantic possibilities proliferate as the children’s own social language is allowed to interact, at length and autonomously, with ‘Wolf! Wolf!’. Compared with the IRF genre, which univocally inhibits the inter-animation of voices in the discussion about the ‘Three Little Pigs’, the discourse pattern here is open and productive. At the root of this richness, is the way in which pupils have been taught to take their own responsibility for the discussion, expressed, for example, at (13), (14) and (23). The teacher specifically articulates important ground rules in her contribution at (4), where she redefines the classroom space and offers an expectation that pupils will ‘speak up’. This transcript was one of many which this particular teacher recorded in her classroom. In each, young pupils can be seen dialogically generating extended formulations of meaning at a variety of inter-related levels, cutting across utterance boundaries, constantly switching evaluative frames, echoing each other, speaking through each other’s voices and completing each others’ statements. In an interview towards the end of the project, this teacher explained that the quality and extensiveness of pupils’ spoken contributions in her classroom was based on her dedication over many months to the establishment of a culture of classroom talk. Through strategies, such as ‘talking partners’ (a structured oral language programme which engages small groups of pupils with trained partners who teach them to listen more actively and talk for a range of purposes), her pupils were able to bond very closely, as they tested out new ideas within informal and secure classroom relationships. She nurtured an environment in

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which pupils listened very carefully to each other and took turns to speak. They had internalised important ground rules and routinely built on each others’ ideas. Within an atmosphere of trust and mutual respect, all contributions were valued, particularly by the teacher who consciously worked to undermine any instinctive tendency towards negative IRF interaction, for example, through determined use of ‘wait time’. Teacher modelling was also important. With her teaching assistant, she regularly engaged in role play to show pupils the value of extending their spoken contributions. Pupils also regularly heard themselves talk on tape recorders, heightening their awareness of the quality of their own conversations and discussions and helping to develop their capacity to actively reflect upon their discourse. The research process itself also enhanced this teacher’s confidence in her approach. Through production and study of transcripts, she was able to generate concrete evidence of the validity of learning through extended talk. The highlighting of her own role in classroom dialogue, particularly when she tended to talk too much, enabled constructive reflection and self-validation: the research project enabled her to value herself more highly. Like members of the research group as a whole, this teacher relished the opportunities to share ideas about classroom talk with colleagues in other schools and phases. Data collection and analysis inspired several teachers within the project to reconceptualise their teaching and pupils’ learning. Lather (1991: 68) proposes the concept of ‘catalytic validity’ to justify such ‘illuminating research’ which inspires its proponents to understand the world in order to change it: Catalytic validity represents the degree to which the research process reorients, focuses and energizes participants toward knowing reality in order to transform it, a process Freire terms conscientization . . . The argument for catalytic validity lies not only within recognition of the reality-altering impact of the research process, but also in the desire to consciously channel this impact so that respondents gain self-understanding and, ultimately, self-determination through research participation. Although the overall quality of research outcomes during this project proved in the final analysis to be uneven, professional understanding and knowledge were certainly enhanced. At its best, the research process acted as a catalyst for improved theoretical understanding of the value of talk in learning and led to a consequent transformation of the talk curriculum. The project was less effective when teachers circumvented systematic data collection, either because they lacked confidence in its purpose or because they believed that that their managers would value curriculum resources more highly. Such problematic tension between the processes of research and curriculum development might be expected in small scale practitioner research projects, conducted within challenging school environments, where multiple priorities constrained available time (Thompson, 2007). Although it is not possible to offer the most rigorous kinds of methodological justification for each aspect of the research product, the participants themselves were able to draw constructive conclusions in relation to their own professional practices and I have suggested a range of ways within this section, primarily based on Lotman’s functional dualism, in which future


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transcript data might be analysed and theorised in order to support further research within this field.

Conclusion While all texts are in some way both univocal and dialogic, I have argued that it is important for teachers to ground classroom speech genres in the dialogic function of text, so that each voice can take other utterances as ‘thinking devices’ and so that, on this basis, other utterances can become the medium for the generation of richer meaning than would be the case when the function of texts is primarily univocal (cf. Wertsch & Smolka, 1993). However, our research showed that this is easier said than done. In terms of our data as a whole, one generally emerging precondition for success was that pupils should be allowed some freedom within discursive frames to create their own communicative contexts. The quality and form of any spoken language is highly sensitive to setting. If the setting is empowering and dynamic, extended discourse will become more likely. In the world beyond the classroom, communication is a practice through which particular contexts allow speakers to construct meaning freely and openendedly. As far as possible, teachers should try to create authentic contexts in which classroom language is not constrained by systems and rules, but enables ‘creative indeterminacy’ (Harris, 1998). Maybin shows in her recent ethnographic study of classroom discourse how children, during their informal interaction, can change frame and evaluative attitude from moment to moment and how, by constantly evaluating their experiences in and out of the classroom, they are able to nurture an ongoing sense of their own identities (Maybin, 2006). One conclusion which might be drawn is that pupils could be inspired to speak at greater length if teachers sometimes positioned them officially within their own evaluative frames. If you constrain children’s natural forms of expression through speech genres which foreground the univocal, then new ideas are only likely to emerge with difficulty. Maybin (2006: 31) argues that pupils’ language in the classroom is usually a hybrid of referential, interpersonal and emotive forms. Children’s talk is simultaneously referential (representing the world), interpersonal (creating relations with others) and emotive (expressing inner states in the speakers). It is also always evaluative, expressing a position and making some kind of value judgement, explicitly or implicitly, on its subject matter. She offers a range of transcript evidence to suggest that, when teachers direct classroom discussion, pupils switch evaluative frames far less frequently and easily than when they are talking informally within their own territory. When the teacher is in control, each speaker has a clear position, consistent with the pre-defined discourse setting: ‘Frames tend to be fairly consistent and sustained over time, knitted into institutional practice’ (Maybin, 2006: 34). We saw in the Year 2 ‘Wolf! Wolf!’ transcript, by comparison, that pupils were able to speak at length in a range of unusual evaluative frames, precisely because the teacher had modulated her control of the semiotic space in order to achieve particular learning purposes. Her realignment of classroom relationships empowered the

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pupils and offered them richer scope for learning. This approach would fit into the category of the ‘discourse classroom’, which Young counterposes to teacherdominated recitation in his account of critical theory and classroom talk, where the teacher is in authority rather than the authority, an equal participant in the pupils’ discourse with the responsibility to guide discussion as a pilot would guide a ship (Young, 1991: 103). My argument in this paper has been that pupils need many more opportunities to engage in ‘monologue varieties of talk’ (Brooks, 1989: 89). Our research preoccupation with ‘internalisation through dialogue’ has tended to undermine such opportunities. However, I have also emphasised that extended discourse is best generated within the context of classroom dialogue, suggesting that Lotman’s distinction between the univocal and dialogic can help us to supercede any tendency to polarise monologue and dialogue. In classroom terms, our aim should be to encourage ‘dialogic’ or ‘exploratory’ monologue. It is through externalising our ideas that we socio-cognitively and emotionally create ourselves. In my opinion, it would be productive for future classroom discourse research to engage more with talk as a medium for the reciprocal processes of both internalisation and externalisation. Within this more comprehensive framework, our understanding of the learning potential of ‘exploratory monologue’ might also be further developed. Correspondence Any correspondence should be directed to Dr Paul Thompson, School of Education, The University of Nottingham, The Dearing Building, Jubilee Campus, Nottingham NG8, 1BB, UK ([email protected]). References Alexander, R. (2001) Culture and Pedagogy: International Comparisons in Primary Education. Oxford: Blackwell. Assessment of Performance Unit (1985a) Practical Assessment in Oracy at Age 11. London: DES. Assessment of Performance Unit (1985b) Practical Assessment in Oracy at Age 15. London: DES. Bakhtin, M.M. (1981) The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays by M.M. Bakhtin. M. Holquist (ed.) (C. Emerson and M. Holquist, trans.). Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. Bakhtin, M.M. (1986) Speech Genres and Other Late Essays. C. Emerson and M. Holquist (eds) (V.W. McGee, trans.) Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. Barnes, D. (1976) From Communication to Curriculum. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Barnes, D., Britton, J. and Rosen, H. (1969) Language, the Learner and the School. London: Penguin. Barnes, D. and Todd, F. (1977) Communication and Learning in Small Groups: London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Baxter, J. (2000) Going public: Teaching students to speak out in public contexts. English in Education 34 (2), 26–34. Billig, M. (1987) Arguing and Thinking: A Rhetorical Approach to Social Psychology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Britton, J. (1970) Language and Learning. London: Penguin. Brooks, G. (1989) The value and purpose of APU oracy assessment. English in Education 23 (2), 87–93. Calcutt, D. (1999) The Terrible Fate of Humpty Dumpty. Cheltenham: Nelson Thornes.


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