TALKING ABOUT SCIENCE - AN INTERPRETATION OF THE EFFECTS OF TEACHER TALK IN A HIGH-SCHOOL SCIENCE CLASSROOM

This paper builds on research in science education, secondary educatio n, and sociolinguistics by arguing that high school classrooms can be considered speech communities in which language may be selectively use d and imposed on students as a means of fostering academic speech comm unity identification. To demonstrate the ways in which a high school t eacher's language use may encourage subject area identification, the r esults of an interactionist analysis of data from a 2-year ethnographi c study of one high school chemistry classroom are presented. Findings indicate that this teacher's uses of language fell into three related categories. These uses of language served to foster identification wi th the academic speech community of science. As a result of the teache r's talk about science according to these three patterns, students dev eloped or reinforced particular views of science. In addition, talking about science in ways that fostered identity with the discipline prom oted the teacher as expert and built classroom solidarity or community . These results are discussed in light of sociolinguistic research on classroom competence and of the assertions of science educators regard ing social and ideologic implications of language use in science instr uction.