This thesis reports on a research project investigating how a sample of eight teachers
of P2 children in Scotland encouraged dialogic interaction in their reading groups
while following prescriptive policy. The research is based on a detailed analysis of
the discourse of reading sessions conducted by the eight teachers, and is informed by
previous research on oral language development, the role of dialogue in children’s
learning, and the relationships between reading development and classroom
discussion.
The project uses mixed methods, applied to a framework derived from exchange
structure research. Patterns of interaction have been examined quantitatively and
qualitatively, with a particular focus on learners’ initiations, the making of text-life
links by learners and teachers, and the extent to which these are integrated into the
reading experience by the teachers’ use of contingent responses. The discourse
analysis section of the findings is preceded by a preliminary examination of the
teachers’ beliefs about classroom talk, and is followed by discussion of their views
on the usefulness and adaptability of the research process itself as a means for
enabling them to make their reading sessions more interactive.
The project finds that the interactivity of the reading sessions is shaped by the
teachers’ moment-by-moment decision-making about the control of centrifugal and
centripetal forces in discourse; in particular, how far to allow children’s personal
responses to the text to deflect group attention from the central goals of skill
development and text coverage laid down by reading policy. The teachers reported
their own experiences of teaching reading as being characterised by a tension
between encouraging children’s personal engagement with, and responses to, reading
material, and fulfilling the demands of a prescriptive curriculum within severe time
constraints