Speaking Care, Community, and Cultural Responsiveness into Being: Leveraging Instructional Conversations to Develop Thriving Learners

• In Event: Discourse, Semiosis, and Justice from Early Childhood to Adolescence

Abstract

This paper uses positive discourse analysis to investigate the discourse practices of three grade-level teachers at a diverse elementary school. It explores how teachers employed discourse to invite and nurture students’ willingness to share about and maximize the sociocultural and linguistic dimensions of their biographies. One episode of instructional conversation is highlighted to illustrate how formal text properties of instructional conversations and social practices of the classroom community influenced the discourse and instantiated biography-driven culturally responsive/sustaining pedagogy. Among findings, the discourse was found to cultivate relationships, position students as knowledgeable and capable, establish risk-free spaces for sharing, and promote equitable student participation. Teachers’ use of learning mediation tools, multiple grouping structures, and situational responsiveness emerged as transformative social practices.

Author

• Melissa Ann Holmes, Kansas State University