This multicenter study analyzes the interactions between professors’ knowledge (both pedagogical and disciplinary) regarding students’ discourse and learning. For this purpose, its “internal dialogicity” or self-referential, that is, the representation (reconstruction) of that knowledge from professor’s story and its “external dialogicity”, that is, both the co-starring role of student contributions in its genesis and deployment, as well as its actual impact in student learning are studied.
More specifically, this oral presentation describes the disciplinary and pedagogical influence of female professors, members of a participating university, on interpreting and identifying recognition markers of students’ discourse.
Recognition markers are based on the way subjects treat or assign meaning to contents, elaborate various knowledge components, and mobilize experiences (Balsvev, Vanhulle & Tominska E, 2011). Answers that teachers give to student contributions (questions, answers, statements, arguments, reflections) during their interactions in the classroom are a complex process whereby teachers adjust and adapt their interventions to those just made by the student. This is a form of mental attuning that, from a sociolinguistic point of view, it occurs because the teacher identifies recognition markers in the student contributions. These are elements present in students’ enunciations, which show their processes of integrating the alien word, that is, their way of meaning the disciplinary content (Medina & Jarauta, 2013).
Objectives: To present how professors perceive student contributions, how they interpret, assess, and differentiate which of those contributions will be considered as relevant.
Describe how professors identify recognition markers in order to decipher the content meaning of the student’s discourse and influence it.
Methods:
The social, symbolic, and non-linear nature of the object of study required an onto-epistemic approach like Symbolic Interactionism. It was methodologically settled in an ethnography of communication (Hymes, 1962) based on sociolinguistics, specifically on its micro-social aspect (Gumperz, 1982). The aim of this approach was to comprehend the verbal and social interactions between professors and students, moment by moment, unraveling senses and meanings that the participants put into play when interacting, both verbally and non-verbally (DiSessa, 2014). Therefore, the most relevant data analysis for the proposed methodological approach was the Discourse flow analysis (DFA). It involves sense construction focused on temporal patterns of significance and analyzes intra and inter subjective meaning construction in order to go beyond the limits placed by semantic discourse analysis. The phases of this study were the following:
- Preliminary phase: Design of a communication and coordination system for the research team and a systematic review of scientific literature.
- Preparation phase: Selection of participants in each of the participating universities. Aside from being part of the area of knowledge, a second inclusion criterion was to be recognized as “a good professor” by the education community. A third inclusion criterion was the type of teaching methodology employed -participatory teaching methodologies-, and groups of no more than fifty students.
- Fieldwork phase: Collecting data combined non-participant observation, field notes, think-aloud interview, biographical interview, and parallel transcripts. This phase run from March 2017 until September 2017. Two professors and sixty students were observed in two subjects at the School of Nursing.
- Biographical-professional interviews. From them, information on professors’ disciplinary and pedagogical training as well as information on the curriculum context was obtained.
- Non-participant observation and video recording of classes. Eight observation sessions were held resulting in nineteen recorded hours. These sessions were caught on two video cameras: one focused on the professor, and the other on the students. Field notes taken by the researchers present in the classroom during the observation and video recording process accompanied the observations.
- Early video editing. The resulting video was immediately edited, and a time marker was placed to get a chronological reference of relevant episodes to be more elaborated on during the think-aloud interviews.
- Immediate analysis of the class, and selection of student-professor-student relevant units (SPS'). Within twenty-four hours, first analysis of the video and the field notes was conducted to identify key episodes to be deepened during the interviews. The main selection criterion was that the episodes had the SPS' unit of analysis and relevant discursive content during the interaction (verbal or non-verbal).
- Think-aloud interview (Erickson & Simón, 1993) provides a perspective on cognitive processes of participants, making their thoughts explicit when they perform their actions (Erickson & Simón, 1993). Given the material impossibility of doing this during a class, in our case as in most education research that has employed this strategy (Cotton & Gresty, 2005), the interview was conducted within forty-eight hours immediately following the recording of the class.
- Parallel transcriptions (Weston &McAlpine, 2002). Class interactions and think-aloud interviews were transcribed in a synchronous manner.
- Analysis phase:
- Microanalysis phase: The unit of analysis consisted of the student contribution to which the professor immediately responded to, and the student’s understanding. For this reason, three moments were differentiated during professor’s interventions (P), namely, identification, assessment, and response.
- Holistic analysis phase: Once microanalysis of all the data had been performed, a relational and contextual analysis that integrated processes of thinking and pedagogical action that effectively contribute to develop high quality leaning was carried out (Medina, 2014).
Results:
The categories that emerged from professor’s interpretation process of the student contributions were the following: 1) Perception of the student contributions complexity, which involves having professors’ disciplinary knowledge available to respond. 2) Acknowledgement of student’s experiential knowledge. 3) Perception of the importance of contextualizing and situating students in patients’ experience. 4) Acknowledgment of student’s educational need, and 5) Processes of reflection in action and dialogical reflection in professor-student interaction.
The categories that emerge regarding identification of recognition markers were the following: contextual markers, situational markers, referential markers, and communicative spaces in professor-student interaction.
Conclusions:
Professor’s capacity to diagnose student contributions, produce a significant and contextualized response to these contributions, and get the students to acquire significant learning by means of some sort of structural coupling in the dialogical interaction between students and professors is highlighted, which represents an actual evidence of Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK). In this structural attuning, the professor puts into play her theoretical and conceptual knowledge as well as her practical and experiential knowledge -or disciplinary knowledge- with her pedagogical knowledge and ethical knowledge, which allows her to welcome and respect the students in their learning processes.
Recognition markers in the classroom arise from the communicative relationship, both semantic and pragmatic, between professor and student. These markers make it possible to recognize students’ comprehension hypotheses, and at the same time orient professor’s discourse towards that knowledge or towards the educational needs identified, either to deepen, qualify, correct, or direct knowledge, and therefore, the learning. Interpretation of recognition markers by professors comprises their disciplinary, pedagogical, and practical-experiential knowledge. These recognition markers can be contextual, situational, and referential. Through contextual markers, professors identify those context aspects -time, space, and people- in the teaching process. Situational markers show subjects’ understanding of class contents, while referential markers consist of disciplinary knowledge acquired on which meanings are constructed.
During the professor-student interaction in the classroom, conflicts over the understanding of the content may happen and they widen the communication gap between what is taught, and what is understood. Students could form inappropriate comprehension hypotheses, which could happen because of their inexperience; therefore, it is important that professors identify those markers that allow them to recognize where a gap is and when misunderstanding arises to offer a timely solution and to redirect thought.