Taking risks, negotiating relationships: One teacher's transition toward adialogic classroom

Building on previous work that found that discussion is an important resour ce for teaching literature and that discussion in low-achieving high school English classes is particularly infrequent, this study investigated a low- achieving class that featured regular discussions to gain insights into how dialogically-organized instruction emerged within the context of a traditi onal recitation instructional setting, further complicated by settings of p overty and linguistic diversity. Using a combination of grounded theory and conversation analysis, we observed a 9th-grade English class in a largely Hispanic Midwestern inner-city high school for 18 weeks. Though the profile of classroom discourse was typical of that found in most American high sch ools, using a dominant Initiation/Response/Evaluation (IRE) pattern, the te acher sought to open up her classroom and characterized herself as a teache r in transition. To investigate the dimensions of this transition, we condu cted 51 observations during the spring semester, observing 14 discussions o r instructional conversations. We document three key strategies that the te acher used in her transitional efforts to make these discussions possible i n her classroom: developing an ethos of involvement and respect, using scaf folding and specific ways of phrasing questions to encourage discussion, an d, most importantly; acknowledging and making space for the presence of stu dents' interpersonal relationships. This study shows that dialogic discours e can happen when teachers are adept at linking and at enabling links betwe en academic objectives and student concerns that often, originate beyond bo th the classroom and the school.