Teacher turn-allocation and repair practices in classroom interaction : a multisemiotic perspective

Abstract

This study describes teacher turn-allocation and repair practices in classroom interaction. The primary aim is to investigate what kinds of embodied actions and other semiotic resources teachers draw on when allocating turns to next speakers and when projecting repair actions in activities structured according to the tripartite instructional sequence of Initiation-Response-Evaluation. The study combines the theoretical and methodological framework of Conversation Analysis and a Goodwinian view of interaction as dynamically and reflexively created through a myriad of semiotic resources. The data base consists of 24 video-recorded lessons, from which 376 turn-allocations and 34 repair sequences have been identified for analysis.

The findings show that teachers typically allocate turns to students by using the selected student’s name and by directing their gaze towards the student. However, teachers also employ head nods and pointing gestures either together with the student’s name, with different types of discourse particles, or on their own. The last construct functions as an embodied allocation and derives its interactional meaning through its sequential position. However, embodied allocations are successful only when the participants establish mutual gaze. In contrast, in address term turn-allocations only teachers’ gaze towards the class is essential; students’ gaze towards teachers is not. The embodied allocations are used in different sequential positions. When they are produced in overlap with initiations or evaluations, the two interactional tasks, the initiation/evaluation and the turn-allocation, constitute distinct turns-of-action.

The repair analysis reveals that teachers use a variety of semiotic resources in multifaceted ways in projecting dispreferred next actions: the initiation or enactment of repair. The particular resource employed depends on the overall activity framework and the types of evaluative actions teachers need to perform. Such resources include withholding the revealing of correct answers, cut-off body movements, motionless gaze and body orientation, or diverging gaze trajectories and body movements towards teaching materials or class. Interestingly, some of these embodied projection devices are produced in overlap with student response turns, thus manifesting the teacher’s orientation to the forthcoming evaluation, and its potential production already at that point.