Abstract:
Learning can be conceptualised in terms of participation in forms of social practice, where discourses form key components of that practice. Language plays a central role in mediating and constituting this participation, which is performed as classroom discourse. Research undertaken in 22 mathematics classrooms in eight countries has revealed significant differences in both the public discourse practised in these classrooms and in the priority attached to different forms of student mathematical speech. In every case, the particular teacher was identified as competent by local criteria. This paper examines the substantial differences between particular forms of speech promoted in four of these classrooms: one in each of Tokyo, Shanghai, Seoul and San Diego. The particular classrooms were chosen for comparison because of the extreme contrast between the nature of the classroom discourse, despite the evident success of each classroom in achieving locally valued educational goals. Three video cameras were used in each classroom to record three types of oral classroom interactions: whole class interactions, teacher-student interactions, and student-student interactions. In the research leading to the selection of these classrooms, analysis was undertaken of the public and private classroom utterances of 220 focus students across 22 mathematics classrooms and the analysis of 191 post-lesson video-stimulated student interviews. No claims of national representativeness are intended, instead, the research design delivered privileged access to the language used in class by approximately 220 students and 22 teachers across 22 classrooms, situated in widely differing cultures and school systems. The four selected classrooms displayed coherent and consistent implementation of well-established pedagogies that enacted specific discourse patterns. In particular, the Shanghai classroom made extensive use of student choral response, the Tokyo classroom provided conditions conducive to frequent student-student interactive and collaborative speech, the Seoul classroom provided limited opportunity for any form of student speech, and discourse in the San Diego classroom was orchestrated through a distinctive teaching style in which narrative coherence was generated through continual teacher verbal annotation of classroom activity. Comparison of these substantially different discourse patterns, raises significant questions regarding conceptions (and prescriptions) of quality instructional practice. The comparison of apparently successful classrooms in different cultural settings provides an opportunity to search for structure within diversity, to identify commonalities that might explain successful learning achieved by contrasting methods, and to contest both culturally-situated assumptions about quality instruction and the generalization of research findings beyond the cultural setting in which they were generated.