"Did You Find It?" "Did You Mine It?" Discourse Moves in a Prototyping Activity

• In Event: Moscone Center North Roundtable Session 11
  In Roundtable Session: Negotiations of Meaning, Authority, and Agency in Language and Literacy

Abstract

This study mobilizes conversation analysis as a methodological tool to examine affordances and constraints of teacher-student discourse interactions in negotiating meaning during a STEM prototyping activity. Discourse data focused on multimodality in communication through language, gestural cues, objects, and multiactivity that impacted the organization of action. As students gathered around a testing table, analyzing talk exchanges established that footing shifts signaled momentary departures from traditional authority structures, marked by student self-selection and topic change, or introduction by ratified bystanders. In activity identified by the teacher and students as authentically co-constructed, there existed substantial opportunity for students to make consequential contributions, make sense of phenomena together, freely initiate questions, and move beyond a rigid rule organization for student speaking.

Author

• Melita Morales, Boston College