Abstract:

The aim of this paper is to demonstrate analytical potentialities of video data [2], [4], [5] for the study of joint classroom activities focusing on teaching practices. We will show how a fine-grained CA (conversation analysis) based video analysis [1], [3] of a situated ‘Sudoku’ activity in a preschool classroom can shed light on the dialogic relationship between the teacher’s instructional work and the children’s understanding of the task to be accomplished.

Video indeed provides a view on classroom activities as multimodally occurring in time and space in the participants’ mutually interwoven verbal and non-verbal utterances. Thus, in the presented case study, our video based analysis allows us to point out how the teacher’s and the children’s positioning in space contributes to configuring the (mis)understanding of the teacher’s instructions.

We can visualize that the children’s access to shared understanding is of particular relevance for a joint task accomplishment and that the access is strongly related to the spatial reality in which the activity takes place. We show how ‘the interchangeability of standpoints’ (if you were where I am, you would see what I see and vice versa) [6] becomes relevant when the teacher presents a Sudoku grid in terms of horizontally oriented rows and vertically oriented columns.

Our paper seeks to underline that the use of CA based video analysis is well suited to elicit and to develop reflection on teaching practices with regard to the concept of perspectival reciprocity as a condition for mutually shared understanding. A fine grained video analysis is a valuable tool to raise teachers’ awareness for both, spatial reality as mutually constituted and joint understanding as reciprocally co-constructed by the participants in the material design of the classroom [7].

References:
[1] B. Arend, C. Weis, “A multimodal conversation analytic approach to investigate a joint problem solving task accomplished by children in a Mathematics classroom”, ICERI Proceedings (9th Annual International Conference of Education, Research and Innovation, Seville), pp.703-713, 2016.
[2] B. Arend et al., “Perspectives do matter: Expanding Multimodal Interaction Analysis with Joint Screen”, Classroom Discourse, Special Issue Multimodality, vol. 5, no.1, pp.38-50, 2014.
[3] R. Gardner, “Conversation analysis in the classroom” in The Handbook of Conversation Analysis (J. Sidnell, T. Stivers eds.), pp. 593-611, West Sussex: Wiley Blackwell, 2013.
[4] L. Mondada, “Video recording as a reflexive preservation and configuration of phenomenal features for analysis” in Video Analysis: Methodology and Methods (H. Knoblauch, J. Raab, G. Soeffner eds), pp. 51-67, Frankfurt/Main: Peter Lang, 2009.
[5] L. Mondada, “The Conversation Analytic Approach to Data Collection” in The Handbook of Conversation Analysis (J. Sidnell, T. Stivers eds.), pp.32-56, West Sussex: Wiley Blackwell, 2013
[6] A. Schütz, T. Luckmann, Strukturen der Lebenswelt. Konstanz: UVK/UTB, 2003
[7] P. Seedhouse, The Interactional Architecture of the Language Classroom: A Conversation Analytic Perspective. Oxford: Blackwell, 2004.

Keywords:

Teaching practices, multimodal classroom interactions, space, video data, conversation analysis.