The integration of content and language in students’ task answer production in the bilingual classroom

The notion of content and language integration has recently become a key topic of inquiry in research on content and language integrated learning and other kinds of bilingual educational programmes. Understanding what integration is and how it happens is of fundamental importance not only for researchers interested in gauging the possibilities and limitations of bilingual programmes, but also for practitioners seeking optimal ways to support student development. This study investigates integration as it takes place in the context of collaborative writing in the classroom. Drawing on conversation analytic methodology, text production is investigated as a social and sequentially evolving phen…

Handling knowledge: Using classroom materials to construct and interpret information requests

Abstract This article contributes to the recent conversation analytic interest in exploring the mechanisms of action formation and ascription by investigating how embodied interactional practices involving material objects relate to the organization of social action. Using as data information request sequences in student–student interaction, the study highlights the material nature of an interactional context and examines how students orient in talk and by bodily-visual means to their and their co-conversants’ textual documents during individual task work. Sequential analyses illustrate how the manual handling of such everyday learning materials as handouts and tasks sheets is not only an i…

Multimodal conversation analysis and CLIL classroom practices

This chapter introduces multimodal Conversation Analysis (CA) as a research framework for CLIL classroom interaction. We begin by presenting key methodological principles of CA and discussing how CA has recently broadened its analytical focus to examine how modalities such as gestures and texts are used as resources for interaction. Following this, we review recent (multimodal) CA work that has investigated teaching and learning practices in classrooms involving second language users, such as in CLIL and immersion settings. To illustrate the described methodological orientation, we briefly analyse one video-recorded interaction and conclude by suggesting research areas related to CLIL class…

How secondary school pupils bring their informal learning experiences into a Content and Language Integrated (CLIL) classroom

This article explores how students’ informal language learning experiences with English find their way into the formal context of content-based language teaching (CLIL). The analysis is focused on stretches of classroom talk in which native Finnish-speaking students draw on their expertise of English-language popular culture, and use their knowledge as a semiotic resource for producing various types of actions. Based on the data, it is argued that the organisation of peer group talk in the language classroom provides students with affordances for participation that are characteristically different from whole-class interaction. In this environment, global popular culture and conversational h…

Kielen oppimisen virtauksia ja pedagogiikan pyörteitä : näkökulmia tutkimukseen ja laajeneviin oppimisympäristöihin

In this introduction to the Yearbook of the Finnish Association for Applied Linguistics (AFinLA), we outline current theoretical flows in research on language learning and teaching. Recently, phenomena such as multilingualism, increasing migration, multimodality and the emergence of technologically-mediated learning environments have led researchers of L2 learning and pedagogy to reconsider central notions in their fields. In current theorization of language learning, conceptualizations of language, learning, learners and the world they inhabit increasingly emphasize the dynamic and situated nature of the learning process. In outlining this changing theoretical landscape, we draw on the thr…

Tietäminen ja oppiminen vieraskielisen luokkahuoneen vuorovaikutuksellisina toimintoina

Rewilding Language Education: Emergent Assemblages and Entangled Actions

Integrating concepts and techniques from ethnomethodology and sociomaterialism, this article investigates the observable material processes involving human action and place‐based contexts of language use enabled by locative media. The focal pedagogical intervention utilized mobile augmented reality (AR) activities, the development of which was inspired by research on learning ‘in the wild.’ Applying the principle of reverse engineering, we introduce a pedagogical approach termed ‘rewilding’ for its emphasis on designing supportive conditions for goal‐directed interaction outside of classrooms. Three instances of AR materials use are presented from an out‐of‐class activity associated with un…

Interactional Approaches to the Study of Classroom Discourse and Student Learning

S2-oppijoiden tekstinymmärtämisen tukeminen lukutehtävillä : tehokkaista lukustrategioista eväitä oppikirjateksteistä opiskeluun

Epistemic Search Sequences in Peer Interaction in a Content-based Language Classroom

Epistemics in interaction refers to how participants display, manage, and orient to their own and others’ states of knowledge. This article applies recent conversation analytical work on epistemics to classrooms where language and content instruction are combined. It focuses on Epistemic Search Sequences (ESSs) through which students in peer interaction collectively resolve emerging knowledge gaps while working on pedagogic tasks. ESSs are initiated when a speaker displays an ‘unknowing’ epistemic stance by making an information request about some aspect of language or the content being worked on. We examine three different types of ESS: those in which a ‘knowing’ response is accepted by th…

Knowing matters : how students address lack of knowledge in bilingual classroom interaction

The environment of a bilingual classroom as an interactional resource

Both schoolscape studies and recent conversation analytic (CA) research on classroom interaction have demonstrated that material artefacts such as images, texts and different kinds of objects found in classrooms have a significant role in educational practice. This article turns the spotlight on social action within a bilingual classroom, exploring how participants visibly orient to the surrounding material environment during instructional interaction. The data consist of video-recorded lessons from secondary-level education. A multimodal conversation analytic investigation focuses on interactions during which participants attend to classroom texts and semiotic objects in ways that foregrou…

Retrospective Orientation to Learning Activities and Achievements as a Resource in Classroom Interaction

This article explores the temporal nature of language learning in classroom settings through the lens of Conversation Analysis (CA) by drawing on video‐recorded interactions from Content and Language Integrated (CLIL) classrooms. It outlines some methodological challenges that the task of documenting language learning in and as observable social interaction poses for CA studies of second language (L2) learning and proposes that learning has typically been described as either a situated activity (in cross‐sectional studies) or a series of intermediate achievements (in longitudinal studies). The empirical analysis focuses on interactional instances in which students observably invoke and desc…

Teacher smiles as an interactional and pedagogical resource in the classroom

In classroom settings, laughter and smiles are resources for action that are available to both teachers and students. Recent interactional studies have documented how students use these resources to deal with trouble of various kind, but less is known about the sequential and activity contexts of teachers’ laughter-relevant practices, as well as their pedagogical functions. We use multimodal conversation analysis (CA) to investigate the interactional unfolding and pedagogical orientations of teacher smiles during instructional IRE (initiation-response-evaluation) sequences in a corpus of 37 bilingual lessons collected in schools in Finland and Spain. In analysing the focal smiles, we pay at…

Mediated learning materials: visibility checks in telepresence robot mediated classroom interaction

Videoconferencing is increasingly used in education as a way to support distance learning. This article contributes to the emerging interactional literature on video-mediated educational interaction by exploring how a telepresence robot is used to facilitate remote participation in university-level foreign language teaching. A telepresence robot differs from commonly used videoconferencing set-ups in that it allows mobility and remote camera control. A remote student can thus move a classroom-based robot from a distance in order to shift attention between people, objects and environmental structures during classroom activities. Using multimodal conversation analysis, we focus on how partici…

Oppimisympäristöt muutoksessa: sosiaalisen vuorovaikutuksen näkökulmia digitaalisiin oppimateriaaleihin

Viimeaikainen teknologinen kehitys on tuonut erilaiset digitaaliset laitteet ja näiden käyttämät sovellukset osaksi arkielämäämme. Samalla nuorten ’diginatiivien’ arjessa opitut taidot ja kiinnostuksen kohteet on valjastettu myös osaksi koulutuspoliittista muutostyötä. ’Uusi oppiminen’ (Eduskunnan tulevaisuusvaliokunta 2013) on nähty paitsi kohdistuvan näihin digitaalisiin lukutaitoihin myös rakentuvan niiden perustalle. Tässä artikkelissa pohdin meneillään olevaa oppimisympäristöjen muutosta arkisesti luokkahuoneiden sosiaalisen vuorovaikutuksen näkökulmasta. Millä tavoin uudet ympäristöt ja materiaalit kenties muuttavat luokkahuoneen käytänteitä vai muuttavatko lainkaan? Mikä on ihmisten …

Geometrinen hahmottaminen sosiaalisena, vuorovaikutteisena ja kehollisena toimintana

Matematiikan ja luonnontieteiden oppimista käsittelevässä tutkimuksessa on viime aikoina korostettu kehon, kognition ja vuorovaikutuksen läheistä yhteyttä. Tässä artikkelissa pohdimme, millä tavoin geometrinen hahmottaminen on sosiaalista, vuorovaikutteista ja materiaalien välittämää kehollista toimintaa. Tarkastelemme eräässä kouluajan ulkopuolella järjestetyssä STEAM-työpajassa kerättyä videoaineistoa keskustelunanalyysin menetelmin. Työpajassa alakouluikäiset oppilaat saivat tehtäväkseen koota pareittain jalkapallon geometrisen representaation 4DFrame-rakennussarjan muoviputkista ja -kiinnikkeistä. Tapaustutkimuksemme osoittaa, miten tämän kaltaisen ohjatun rakennustehtävän aikana katse,…

Assessing (for) Understanding in the CLIL Classroom

In this chapter, we conceptualise CLIL assessment as a dialogic activity in which teachers and learners share the responsibility for building learners’ understanding of subject-specific issues. We illustrate such a conceptualisation by first studying how secondary school CLIL teachers perceive classroom assessment in interviews collected in Finland and Austria. Then, by examining video data from a CLIL lesson, we show how opportunities for assessing to support learning can emerge in routine instructional interaction, and how a teacher can attend to learner talk both to develop his or her own understanding of the learner’s abilities and to promote these same abilities. Our data suggest that,…

Introduction: classroom discourse at the intersection of language education and materiality

This special issue provides a collection of research that examines the relationships between classroom materials and discourse in various second language education contexts. Together, these studies...

Professional Embodiment: Walking, Re-engagement of Desk Interactions, and Provision of Instruction during Classroom Rounds

Abstract Unlike continuous whole-class (plenary) interaction, independent task work involves incipient teacher–student talk, as the teacher typically ‘makes rounds’ to engage in brief desk interactions with students. This article draws on multimodal conversation analysis to investigate how teacher movement during tasks offers resources for re-engaging in desk interactions and offering task-related guidance. The focus is on teachers’ walking trajectories and ways of positioning the body, and students’ orientation to them, in (i) (pre-)opening moments of a desk interaction, and (ii) during a subsequent instructional turn that guides students with the ongoing task. The analysis shows how the p…

Translanguaging as Playful Subversion of a Monolingual Norm in the Classroom

A large part of the literature on translanguaging as a pedagogical theory has explored how an inclusive multilingual pedagogy can support students from diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds to actively participate in the classroom. While much of this literature approaches classroom translanguaging as an instructional strategy designed to promote multilingual interactional practices, we analyse how multilingual practices can also take place as subversive language play in an educational context that is driven by a monolingual norm. Our data are video-recorded lessons from secondary-level Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) classrooms in Finland in which students whose L1 is …

Mobilizing ‘context’: Vocabulary checks in ESL tutoring sessions

This study investigates the practice of unplanned and emergent vocabulary checks, i.e. turns through which a speaker explicitly checks whether the recipient knows a word, in small-group tutorial instruction. The data are video-recorded English as a second language (ESL) tutoring sessions between a native English speaker tutor and ESL students at an urban community college in the United States. By drawing on conversation analysis, we analyze how vocabulary checks emerge sequentially and with the help of contextual interactional resources. Findings suggest that vocabulary checks constitute a practice for managing both shared understanding and pedagogical concerns. By singling out a vocabulary…