Classroom Practices that Benefit Classroom Discourse Analysis

Discourse analysis is the study of spoken or written texts as a means of understanding their internal and external structure or logic (cf.McCarthy 1992; Gee 2005). One of the central concerns of discourse analysis in educational settings has been to uncover the ways in which talk at school is unique and thus what children must be able to do linguistically in order to succeed there. Discourse analytical ideas can be used in evaluating classroom interactions by shifting the focus from the main text to the collaborative analysis process itself, that is, examining how collaborative analysis in the learning phase actually works. In particular, discourse analysis in which language is a primary tool for knowledge negotiation and construction (Shum & Ferguson, 2012) allows for the systematic observation of patterns within discourse that can be used for teachers to identify productive behaviors and other features of classroom discussion data. In this article, I will provide some examples of classroom practices that will benefit classroom discourse analysis.