28.2764, Review: Applied Linguistics; Discourse Analysis; Sociolinguistics: Murakami, Skidmore (2016)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-28-2764. Tue Jun 20 2017. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 28.2764, Review: Applied Linguistics; Discourse Analysis; Sociolinguistics: Murakami, Skidmore (2016)

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Date: Tue, 20 Jun 2017 14:11:44
From: Jose Aguilar [jose.aguilarrio at univ-paris3.fr]
Subject: Dialogic Pedagogy

 
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Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/27/27-3381.html

EDITOR: David  Skidmore
EDITOR: Kyoko  Murakami
TITLE: Dialogic Pedagogy
SUBTITLE: The Importance of Dialogue in Teaching and Learning
SERIES TITLE: New Perspectives on Language and Education
PUBLISHER: Multilingual Matters
YEAR: 2016

REVIEWER: Jose Aguilar, Université de la Sorbonne Nouvelle - Paris III

SUMMARY
 
David Skidmore & Kyoko Murakamis’ ''Dialogic Pedagogy'' is a 253 pages long
edited volume that “provides a wide-ranging and in-depth theoretical
perspective on dialogue in teaching” (Skidmore & Murakami, 2016: back cover).
The volume counts thirteen articles, one of which was previously published, as
well as academic and personal information about each of the seven
contributors. David Skidmore and Kyoko Murakami appear as the chief
contributors with 9 and 4 (co-)signed chapters respectively. There is no
unified references section at the end; each article contains its own. The
volume presents a synthetic, useful index.
 
Chapter 1, by David Skidmore, is entitled “Dialogic Pedagogy: An
introduction”. It sets two basic notions that run throughout the volume –
namely “dialogism” and “prosody” – and situates the authors’ dialogic approach
within Freire’s theory of dialogic pedagogy. Insofar as an introduction,
Chapter 1 presents an outline of the volume.
 
Chapter 2, authored by David Skidmore, is entitled “Dialogism and Education”.
It discusses Bakhtin’s dialogism as it stems from Yakubinsky and Voloshinov.
Central to this chapter are the notions of creativity, speech and
consciousness (which lead the author to compare Bakhtin and Vygotsky’s
standpoints), heteroglossia and polyphony. This discussion allows Skidmore to
justify the appropriateness of dialogism as far as education is concerned.
 
Harry Daniels signs Chapter 3, which is entitled “Vygotsky and Dialogic
Pedagogy”. The comparison between Bakhtin and Vygotsky is once again brought
to the fore. The focus here is on the practice of teaching, and more precisely
on the extent to which one teacher’s acted decisions may, or may not, allow
for learning opportunities that originate from instances of shared
co-construction rather than unilateral transmission.
 
Chapter 4, by Michelle Brinn, is “The Conceptions of ‘Dialogue’ Offered by
Bohm and Buber: A Critical Review”. It closes a series of theoretical, rather
than empirical, chapters. Brinn explores the aforementioned authors’ work on
dialogue, namely its relevance to educational practice and theory.
 
Chapter 5, by David Skidmore, is entitled “Classroom Discourse: A Survey of
Research”. It presents the type of interaction that may be found in classrooms
all over the world as a discourse genre. In order to do that, the author draws
on and comments on scholars such as Barnes, Cazden, Mehan and Sinclair and
Coulthard. The “IR(E/F)” sequence is discussed alongside Bakhtinian dialogic
principles.
 
The title of chapter 6 is “Pedagogy and Dialogue”, by David Skidmore. Similar
to the previous chapter, the author presents a state of the art of sorts on
the pair dialogue and teaching. Skidmore draws on Nystrand, Wells and
Alexander, who appears as a major reference throughout the volume. Following
this discussion, the author draws the affective conditions for learning, as
well as their link with teaching practice that adheres to a dialogical
pedagogy.
 
Chapter 7, by Julie Margaret Esiyok, is entitled “The Small Group Writing
Conference as a Dialogic Model of Feedback”. It is the first empirical chapter
presenting research questions, fieldwork and data analyses. A model of written
feedback, gradually co-constructed by the teacher and each of the learners -
“dialogic writing conference” - is presented and discussed. The author
concludes that the teacher’s willingness to remain silent may allow for
students to engage “themselves more in exploratory talk and jointly [develop]
the solutions to the revision of the writing” (Esiyok, 2016: 128). The chapter
contains transcripts of the classroom discourse data, as well as an appendix
presenting indicators of active and dialogic teaching.
 
The title of Chapter 8, by Jean Baptiste Kremer, is “Giving Learners a Voice:
A Study of the Dialogic ‘Quality’ of Three Episodes of Teacher-Learner
Talk-in-interaction in a Language Classroom”. It is the second empirical
chapter of the volume;; it presents research questions, details of research
methodology as well as data analyses. In this chapter, basic tenets of
dialogic theory and methodological practices originating from conversation
analysis (CA henceforth) are brought together in order to illustrate the
analysis of the construct “lesson tone”. In his conclusion, the author points
at the difficulty for the teacher to promote a “multi-voice classroom”
(Kremer, 2016: 150), which calls for specific measures with respect to teacher
education. This chapter contains several classroom interaction transcripts in
the fashion of CA.
 
David Skidmore signs Chapter 9, which is entitled “Authoritative Versus
Internally Persuasive Discourse”. It is a partly empirical chapter, which
draws on previously produced data in order to discuss the types of verbal
interaction which may foster the learners’ development of autonomous, specific
literacy practices. Ultimately, the author’s reading of the two presented
classroom transcripts allows him to suggest a transformation from “pedagogical
dialogue” - taken here as rather artificial and constraining – towards
“dialogic pedagogy” - presented as appropriate and desirable as far as
learning opportunities go.
 
Chapter 10, by David Skidmore, is entitled “Once More With Feeling: Utterance
and Social Structure”. It is a theoretical chapter illustrated by one
transcript. This chapter seems to set the theoretical foundation required in
order to develop more empirical readings of intonation as a construct, in
subsequent chapters of the volume. This is the only non original article of
the volume.
 
Chapter 11, co-signed by the volume editors, David Skidmore and Kyoko
Murakami, is “How Prosody Marks Shifts in Footing in Classroom Discourse”. It
is an empirical chapter that contains research questions, fieldwork,
classroom-transcript analyses and a data discussion. The focus is on how
participants in a classroom situation used prosody to negotiate the
distribution of turns. Ultimately, the authors suggest that their analyses may
broaden the understanding of learners’ experience and involvement in classroom
interaction, which is taken here as a necessary condition for learning to
occur.
 
The title of Chapter 3 is “Prosodic Chopping: A Pedagogic Tool to Signal
Shifts in Academic Task Structure”. It is authored by Xin Zhao, David Skidmore
and Kyoko Murakami and is the final one in a series of four chapters
discussing aspects prosody and classroom discourse. This also is an empirical
chapter presenting visual data that allow the researcher to relate prosody and
gesture. Ultimately, the authors suggest the pedagogical function of prosody,
which is taken as a tool that the participants in the classroom interaction
may use in order to structure their context and participation.
 
The final chapter of the volume, Chapter 13, by David Skidmore and Kyoko
Murakami, is entitled “Claiming Our Own Space: Polyphony in Teacher-Student
Dialogue”. It is a partly empirical chapter, which presents transcripts and
other classroom-originated data in order to illustrate aspects of dialogical
classroom discourse. The focus here is on the adequateness of polyphonic,
dialogic, interactive spaces in the classroom as potentially conducive to more
sustainable, learning situations. Ultimately, in this chapter, the authors
insist on the validity of CA methods in order to fathom aspects of the
teaching practice.
 
EVALUATION
 
Skidmore and Muramaki’s edited volume is an interesting work on the necessity
for teachers to move towards more dialogical pedagogies, which allow for a
redistribution of the shared responsibilities within institutional learning
situations. This stance is defended by implicitly adhering to the following
hypothesis: learning in general will be more likely if the teaching conditions
allow for diversity and polyphony. As far as language learning and teaching
are concerned, no major SLA references seem to support the editors’ position.
Notwithstanding this, this reviewer found Skidmore and Murakami’s standpoint
both appealing and convincing. Although there is no clear subdivision within
the volume, this reviewer did feel a certain progression. Chapters 1 through 6
read as rather theoretical. They present a very thorough and solid
epistemological evolution of dialogical pedagogy. Some passages proved
difficult to get through for this reviewer. Chapters 7 through 13 came through
as more empirical and data-driven, and yet coherent and adequately connected
with aspects that were developed in the previous ones. This reviewer found
particularly appealing the authors’ recurring characterisation of prosody as a
pedagogical tool (chapters 9 through 13), as well as their application of
dialogical principles to the writing conference (chapter 7). This reviewer was
left wanting more hard evidence on the causality between forms of dialogical
pedagogy and actual learning. In effect, the authors repeatedly advise
thatmore research be conducted in order to fathom this hypothetical link. As
for “classroom discourse”, this reviewer felt at times the construct to be too
a constraining one, since it left out other instances of institutional
learning that may not take place within an actual “classroom” (Narcy-Combes,
2005). This reviewer felt more comfortable with a more inclusive construct
like “didactic interaction” (Cicurel, 2011) to refer to what may go on among a
teacher and learners, and among learners. This work certainly reads as a
coherent volume, almost repetitive at times. The fact that either, or both, 
of| the editors have co-signed most of the chapters gave this reviewer a
certain impression of deja vu. All in all, the theories reviewed, the data
analysed and the practices presented, will certainly appeal to|  scholars,
curriculum developers, language teaching practitioners, teachers’ educators
and pre-service language teachers.
 
REFERENCES

Cicurel, F. (2011). Les interactions dans l’enseignement des langues : Agir
professoral et pratiques de classe. Paris: Didier.
 
Esiyok, J. (2016). The Small Group Writing Conference as a Dialogic Model of
Feedback. In D. Skidmore & K. Murakami (Eds.), Dialogic Pedagogy: The
Importance of Dialogue in Teaching and Learning (pp. 111–134). Buffalo;
Bristol: Multilingual Matters Ltd.
 
Kremer, J. B. (2016). Giving Learners a Voice: A Study of the Dialogic
‘Quality’ of Three Episodes of Teacher-Learner Talk-in-interaction in a
Language Classroom. In D. Skidmore & K. Murakami (Eds.), Dialogic Pedagogy:
The Importance of Dialogue in Teaching and Learning (pp. 135–152). Buffalo;
Bristol: Multilingual Matters Ltd.
 
Narcy-Combes, J.-P. (2005). Didactique des langues et TIC : vers une
recherche-action responsable. Paris: Ophrys.
 
Skidmore, D., & Murakami, K. (Eds.). (2016). Dialogic pedagogy: the importance
of dialogue in teaching and learning. Bristol; Buffalo: Multilingual Matters.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Jose Ignacio Aguilar Río (https://cv.archives-ouvertes.fr/jose-aguilar) is a
Senior Lecturer at Sorbonne Nouvelle-Paris 3 University in France. He teaches
undergraduate and post-graduate courses in education and applied linguistics.
His research interests are in classroom interaction, foreign language teacher
education and research methodology. He has presented papers at international
conferences in Europe. His works have been published in international reviews.





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