Students' Discursive Identity Construction in Dialogic Science Teaching

• In Event: The Role of a Science Identity: Effects on Attitudes and Career Choices

Abstract

This study sought to understand how dialogic teaching as enacted in everyday classroom interaction affords students with opportunities and tensions for identity construction in the learning of science. In drawing on sociocultural and sociolinguistic accounts, the study focused on multiple time-scales that linked specific moments of classroom interaction to how students discursive identities were negotiated, managed and recognised in the moment and over time. The data were collected from an inquiry-learning project of an elementary classroom with eighteen third graders and their teacher in a Finnish elementary school. The findings highlight tensions and shifts in the students’ identity construction over the learning project, of which identification is argued to be pivotal for supporting every student’s engagement in science learning.

Authors

• Kristiina P. Kumpulainen, University of Helsinki

• Antti Juhani Rajala, University of Helsinki / Department of Teacher Education