Kaanta2021

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Kaanta2021
BibType INCOLLECTION
Key Kaanta2021
Author(s) Leila Kääntä
Title Multimodal Perspective into Teachers’ Definitional Practices: Comparing Subject-Specific Language in Physics and History Lessons
Editor(s) Silvia Kunitz, Numa Markee, Olcay Sert
Tag(s) EMCA, Definitions, Physics Lessons, History Lessons, Classroom Interaction
Publisher Springer
Year 2021
Language English
City Cham
Month
Journal
Volume
Number
Pages 197–223
URL Link
DOI 10.1007/978-3-030-52193-6_10
ISBN
Organization
Institution
School
Type
Edition
Series
Howpublished
Book title Classroom-Based Conversation Analytic Research: Theoretical and Applied Perspectives on Pedagogy
Chapter

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Abstract

This chapter compares two teachers’ definitional practices in two Content-and-Language-Integrated-Learning (CLIL) lessons, i.e. physics and history, which are taught in English in Finland. It adopts Dalton-Puffer’s (Eur J Appl Linguistics 1(2):216–253, 2013; Cognitive discourse functions: specifying an integrative interdisciplinary construct. In: Nikula T, Dafouz E, Moore P, Smit U (eds) Conceptualising integration in CLIL and multilingual education. Bristol: Multilingual Matters, pp. 29–54, 2016) theoretical construct of cognitive discourse functions (CDF) and showcases how it can be operationalized with empirical grounding. Multimodal conversation analysis (CA) is used to trace and observe how the teachers employ various multimodal resources in performing definitions of key concepts in classroom interaction, whereby they make the conceptual field related to the lessons’ topic accessible to the students. The study has two aims. First, it describes the similarities and differences in the teachers’ definitional practices and thereby contributes to our emerging understanding of what subject-specific language comprises when approached from an interactional perspective. In doing so, it also provides new insights into the relationship between content and language not only in L2, but also in L1 teaching. Second, by proposing a ‘pedagogical reflection tool’ that is based on the repeated and comparative practice of viewing either videos or transcripts, it illustrates methods to help raise and broaden teachers’ awareness of the notion of subject-specific language and of the relevance of multimodal resources in teaching. The findings can thus serve as a stepping-stone for pre- and/or in-service teacher training, which is not meant to provide ‘recipes’ of how definitions ought to be done, but rather to demonstrate how locally situated, yet recognizable teachers’ definitional practices are. As such, they are also transportable and adaptable to different situations across different subjects.

Notes