Multimodal Perspective into Teachers’ Definitional Practices : Comparing Subject-Specific Language in Physics and History Lessons
Year of publication
2021
Authors
Kääntä, Leila
Abstract
This chapter compares two teachers’ definitional practices in two Content-and-Language-Integrated-Learning (CLIL) lessons, i.e. physics and history, which are taught in English in Finland. It adopts Dalton-Puffer’s (Eur J Appl Linguistics 1(2):216–253, 2013; Cognitive discourse functions: specifying an integrative interdisciplinary construct. In: Nikula T, Dafouz E, Moore P, Smit U (eds) Conceptualising integration in CLIL and multilingual education. Bristol: Multilingual Matters, pp. 29–54, 2016) theoretical construct of cognitive discourse functions (CDF) and showcases how it can be operationalized with empirical grounding. Multimodal conversation analysis (CA) is used to trace and observe how the teachers employ various multimodal resources in performing definitions of key concepts in classroom interaction, whereby they make the conceptual field related to the lessons’ topic accessible to the students. The study has two aims. First, it describes the similarities and differences in the teachers’ definitional practices and thereby contributes to our emerging understanding of what subject-specific language comprises when approached from an interactional perspective. In doing so, it also provides new insights into the relationship between content and language not only in L2, but also in L1 teaching. Second, by proposing a ‘pedagogical reflection tool’ that is based on the repeated and comparative practice of viewing either videos or transcripts, it illustrates methods to help raise and broaden teachers’ awareness of the notion of subject-specific language and of the relevance of multimodal resources in teaching. The findings can thus serve as a stepping-stone for pre- and/or in-service teacher training, which is not meant to provide ‘recipes’ of how definitions ought to be done, but rather to demonstrate how locally situated, yet recognizable teachers’ definitional practices are. As such, they are also transportable and adaptable to different situations across different subjects.
Show moreOrganizations and authors
Publication type
Publication format
Article
Parent publication type
Compendium
Article type
Other article
Audience
ScientificPeer-reviewed
Peer-ReviewedMINEDU's publication type classification code
A3 Book section, Chapters in research booksPublication channel information
Journal
Parent publication name
Classroom-based Conversation Analytic Research : Theoretical and Applied Perspectives on Pedagogy
Parent publication editors
Kunitz, Silvia; Markee, Numa; Sert, Olcay
Publisher
Pages
197-223
ISSN
ISBN
Publication forum
Publication forum level
2
Open access
Open access in the publisher’s service
No
Self-archived
No
Other information
Fields of science
Educational sciences; Languages
Keywords
[object Object],[object Object],[object Object],[object Object],[object Object],[object Object],[object Object],[object Object],[object Object]
Publication country
Switzerland
Internationality of the publisher
International
Language
English
International co-publication
No
Co-publication with a company
No
DOI
10.1007/978-3-030-52193-6_10
The publication is included in the Ministry of Education and Culture’s Publication data collection
Yes