CA Gibson

Will Gibson (2009)

Negotiating textual talk: conversation analysis, pedagogy and organisation of online asynchronous discourse.

British Educational Research Journal, 5,705-721

Offers CA as ‘ a useful addition to analytic concern’ ‘provides an insightful comparative frame for thinking about how conversation can be achieved in face-to-face environments as against online environments’

P706

Definition of pedagogy: ‘the development of plans for the organisation of educational activities and for the structure of learning and teaching materials, resources and technologies’ The enactment of pedagogy i.e. practice ‘ in situ-interactional work in which such plans pertain’. Study practice to inform design.

Conversation analysis

‘sister discipline to ethnomethodology (EM)’…. CA ‘shares the concern of the latter with the investigation of the methods by which societal ‘members’ locally assemble a sense of social order’ ‘both are interested in the ways that people’s activities create what they regard as observable phenomena of some kind’ – e.g a conversation between friends’, a job interview.

For CA this led to the question of how societal ‘members organise their talk and analyse each other’s conversations in the construction and negotiation of social practices’

The analysis for this article focuses on just 3 general areas of CA .i.e. 3 analytical frames (KRO – ? all ways of manipulating power relationships’) that have been identified from an extensive amount of empirical evidence using CA in face-to-face contexts. Looking specifically at multi party conversation.

a. Sequential organisation – how do people take turns. In multi-party conversations the negotiation of who speaks next ‘has been simplified into a 3 part rule, a) the current speaker may select the next speaker, b) the next speaker may self-select c) the current speaker may continue speaking (Sacks et al, 1994)

b. Adjacency pairs – important for ordering conversation stems from (a) p207 ‘ how turns in conversation s can be hearably linked as two-part sequences, such as question-answer, complaint-apology, greeting-greeting’ Sacks proposed the following characteristics that ‘the first part of a pair implies a preference, the second be produced and where it is not produced it will be heard as absent and may require some kind of repair work’

c. Topic organisation . uses (a) & (b) to study the way in which topics are ‘brought about, closed off or otherwise negotiated’ They might be solicited by others, or presented, accepted or rejected .

Face-to-face

P708 ‘ there is a preference that the person who’s turn constituted the trouble initiate its repair’ ( McHoul,1990) argued that in the classroom repair work was usually done by the teacher by using the Initiation-Reply-Evaluation (IRE) sequence with pupil conversational turn sandwiched in the middle so that repair work could be done on the Evaluation turn. Studies have shown that without a teacher doing I & E pupils on their own rarely get to E rather they start off a new topic.

Question arises ‘how to transfer these ideas to text?’

How do people make sense of text? Particular asynchronous text

P706 ‘ how are technologies put to use in the playing out of interaction’?

What’s missing in asynchronous text ?

• Discourse markers (KRO question this)
• Gesture ( KrO ?substitution)
• Direct reference to some aspect of the preceeding conversation ( reply with quote discussed later by Gibson)

But evaluation of the analysis of evidence presented makes reference to ‘built in characteristics of how a post will be represented!)’ i.e. whether text intentionally or technologically mediated.

Another question – how are new topics that often emerge out of existing ones, managed

Method

Post graduate reading group, 6 week duration. 12 registered students 8-10 active each week. One discussion board each week. Encouraged to use the discussion boards as a general forum. Range of experience with CMC. Ethics, written permission from students, text anonymised.

Analysis based on just 1 discussion thread (5 messages) involving 4 participants from discussion of week 3(58 messages in total , 8 discussion threads )( reasons for choosing this particular thread was not made explicit).

Findings

Author claims p711 ‘ strong similarities with findings regarding the organisation of talk in face-to-face settings’

Post 1-Jane – poses two questions, Titled accordingly, discursively orientated.

(note this was 5^th post on the discussion board so how do students know that it is the beginning of the thread? Have to track that down therefore contextual ambiguity ( but isn’t this given by the functionality of BB?) different students may access the messages in a different order therefore p712‘ absence of a shared experience of the discursive environment’

Post 2 tutor topic acceptance. In this case tutor has assumed discussion rights ie ‘part of the armoury of interactional strategies which include things like closing off discussions or nominating particular people’

Post 3 Sarah –uses terms contained in message one ( student design) and thread title (?intended design by student or automatic) and provides an answer to Jane and uses the answer position to pose a new question i.e. p715 ‘ Sarah replicates an observed preference in synchronous face-to-face talk that new topics are seen as coming from old topics’.

Post 4 Anne – topicalises the final section of the preceeding post p715 ‘ relicates the preference found in face-to-face talk that next turns are functionally orientated to directly preceeding utterances’ in this case by using quote – not readily available in face-to-face. Another topic shift with the same title. P716 ‘ this observation perhaps adds weight to the concern over the ways in which built in preferences of representation (i.e. message headings) may create ambiguities about interactional purposes’

Post 5 tutor addresses Ann by name ( first time names have been used) topicalises by selecting bit of text to quote but doesn’t mark where in the text that quote is coming from

P713 ‘two party f-to-f conversation operates with a preference that names are used minimally’ ‘ multiparty are often characterised by an increased use of names’

Conclusions

Author talks in terms of participation rights (KRO critique this view from a CoP approach)

P717 the similarity with face-to-face as to how topic development occurs is the interesting part of this analysis ‘the general rule of‘ use only appropriate places to make a new topic’ and ‘use existing talk as a resource for those topics’ are all visible.

P718 another similarity strictly sequential organisation of talk ( KRO but doesn’t make reference to the cognitive load from all the other threads that are taking place), the use of adjacency (question-answer pairs, differential interactional rights for students and tutors.

Overall the author sees this group of students as using the asynchronous environment in a synchronous way (KRO I would have like to see more detailed proof of this by seeing what the students were doing for the rest of the time)

Link to multi-modal

P717 “There are a number of distinctive writing strategies present in all the above posts: the use of italics, bold and colour to emphasise particular words; brackets to segment off sections of sentences; quotations to reference in detail the reading that is being discussed; paragraphs to visually represent separation; question marks, commas, dashes, quotation marks and full stops – all these visual devices serve as medium-specific resources for demonstrating the intentions of the authors’

Argumenation Andrews

The importance of argument in education

Richard Andrews (2009)

Types of argument

1. Everyday tiffs, spats rows
2. ‘Mostly highly prized of academic discourse’
3. working out a third point from two given points
4. a synopsis – e.g. for a plot, it begins the next stage i.e. it chronicles, it has the bare bones of narrative and narrative signifies the argument.

Two meta-genres operating in different ways

Argument 1-3 above

Narrative 4 above

Argumentation – the process of argument. This definition puts distance between type 1 and the rest. Type 1 is often triggered by something that is not the real cause of the difference

P4 ‘ a way of exploring an idea to its logical conclusion, a means by which a range of views can be expressed’ It allows you to make a contribution therefore can limit power and authority of significant others’

P5 ‘functions of argument -clarification, cathartis, defence etc, persuasion.

P5 ‘ argument, whilst properly associated with rationality, is often thought to be opposed to passion and feelings.’ …..’Rather than accept such an easy polarity, argument and rationality can be seen as deeply implicated in passion and feeling’ Andrews suggests the idea of intuition as high speed rationality.

Persuasion is not the same as argument (argumentation)

Argumentation and Education

Refers to Habermas ( philosopher) and Vygotsky

Vygotsky

Conceptualised reflection as inner argumentation – ‘ why all that is internal in higher mental functions was at one time external’ – the relations between people.

P7 ‘reflection is more than a miasmic , static read-off from experience’ rather it is seen as sociogenetic’

P7 ‘ dynamic mental space informed by social argument ‘ the dialogue is both with experience/the outside world on the one hand, and with ideas themselves, the internal process of reflecting/thinking.

P8 ‘Part of the underlying justification for the statement is that the development of disciplinary practices historically, is the result of ‘real relations between people’ e.g. WEAs, particularly women English as an alternative to classics at Oxbridge

P8 ‘ Gradually ‘patterns of expectation and convention establish’ “ This, the lines and conduits along which thought and argumentation take place are determined’ ( KRO formative role of teacher, norms)

Arguments can be tacit or explicit. In education a role of the teacher is to make arguments explicit.

P11 in order to develop learners ‘have to be amenable’ to the process of argumentation

However p14 ‘ the term argumentation can be threatening, it can disrup and destabilise’ therefore why the term discussion ids often preferred.

Uses three examples primary children , undergraduate essay, masters engineering student, to demonstrate that argument can manifest in different ways

Right of everyone to have mastery of the art of argument.

Claims - Habermas – we constantly make claims, claims require eviedence or a degree of validation – they are an element of argumentation in that they invite counter-claim.

Can you argue without words – multimodal?

Claims that other modes can be more visceral ( KRO assumption because didn’t back up the claim) Shrimpton example at the Melbourne races p19 ‘still image can embody an argument through the tension between two elements in the image’ ie counterpoint.

Dissociable identity/expression Winstonetal

fMRI- Adaptation reveals dissociable neural representations of identity and expression in face perception.

Winston, J.S., Henson, R.N.A., Fine-Goulden, & Dolan, R.J. (2004).

J. Neurophysiol. 92(3) 1830-1839.

Distributed model of face processing

‘Distributed model of face processing (Haxby JV, Hoffman EA, and Gobbini MI. The distributed human neural system for face perception. Trends Cogn Sci 4: 223–233, 2000) propose an anatomical dissociation between brain regions that encode invariant aspects of faces, such as identity, and those that encode changeable aspects of faces, such as expression’, p1 (KRO – but how can face be described as invariant there differences in profile perspective etc). Fits with Bruce & Young model.

Anatomical detail

Fusiform gyrus – identity of perceived face

Superior temporal sulcus (STS) represents ‘changeable aspects’ eg expression, gaze.

Single unit recoding in animals and data from patients with discrete lesions support both the concept of dissociation and the anatomical sites implicated. However studies have demonstrated enhanced fusiform activity to emotional faces. ‘This effect has been attributed to modulatory effects from amygdala, reflecting attentional processing associated with emotive stimuli’ (Dolan RJ. Emotion, cognition, and behavior. Science 298: 1191–1194, 2002).

Method

Using fMRI measures adaptation rather than difference. Adequately sampled regions of interest as follows fusiform, amygdala, STS, inferior frontal cortex, orbitofrontal cortex

5 male faces from Karolinski Directed Face database database contains two exemplars of each expression for each identity. Therefore could use different images of the same face for the adaption process. Stimuli were converted to grayscale and equated for mean luminance.

Expressions used – anger, disgust, fear, happiness and sadness

16 right handed healthy subjects, age 18-29, with normal vision. 2 rejected due to unacceptable level of fMRI artefact. Alongside the fMRI study a similar paradigm was used to test behavioral response in another cohort of 16 participants.

2x2 factorial design: Same identity (SI) Different identity (DI) Same expression (SE) Different expression (DE)

The effect of visual attention/arousal was monitored ‘there were no detectable differences in visual attention ( eye-gaze direction) or arousal (indexed by pupil diameter changes) between the different experimental conditions’ p8.

Stern 2005

Having acknowledged the social and economic value of education, modern societies are increasingly making concerted efforts to improve schooling at all age levels. Today, policy-makers and practitioners responsible for educational reform and improving classroom practice seek to base their decisions on empirical evidence rather than on opinions, fashions, and ideologies, as was too often the case in the past. This desire for "evidence-based" education has coincided with a period of tremendous progress in the field of neuroscience and enormous public interest in its findings, leading to an ongoing debate about the potential of neuroscience to inform education reform. Although the value of neuroscienceresearch on this front is seemingly promising, collaboration with educators is doomed to failure if the public is not correctly informed and if the research is not considered in an interdisciplinary context.

It has become dangerously fashionable to label general--even trivial--pedagogical advice that is not grounded in scientific fact as "brain-based learning." For instance, findings about rapid synaptic proliferation in young children's brains have nurtured hopes that cognitive capabilities can be increased by teaching infants vocabularies and basic facts with audiovisual material. But proponents of these early education programs have conveniently overlooked the lack of direct empirical evidence linking neurological and learning processes. It is far from clear whether children who are encouraged to memorize isolated facts early in life show better long-term retention than their peers.

As a scientist specializing in school-related learning, I am open to the educational implications ofneuroscience. However, we need to scale down unrealistic expectations. Otherwise, there is a danger that new efforts to incorporate research in this area into education could be stymied by falsely raising the hopes of the public and policy-makers. There is the further danger that people will ignore the importance of empirical research in the fields of educational and instructional science, psychology, and information technology--work that can continue to teach us about good schooling. Thanks to these more traditional areas of research, we understand a great deal about what has gone wrong in learning environments when otherwise competent students fail to learn. Research on learning and instruction has provided precise and applicable knowledge about how to design powerful learning environments in many content areas. What we now know about the conditions under which pictorial representations aid in teaching advanced concepts goes far beyond the recommendations of so-called brain-based learning.

Nevertheless, certain groups of learners do not benefit sufficiently from educational environments developed in accordance with state-of-the-art research on learning and instruction, and here is where collaboration among traditional research disciplines and neuroscience may be promising. Looking into the brain during problem solving might help to clarify what impedes learning. For instance, there is an ongoing debate on whether male students outperform female students in mathematics and science because of their greater ability to use visual-spatial representations as reasoning tools. As yet, however, the implications of achievement data and behavioral observations remain ambiguous in this respect. Neuroimaging techniques have elucidated areas of the brain that are especially involved in visual-spatial processing, so we may be able to find out whether differences in achievement can be traced back to the use of visual-spatial representations in reasoning. Similarly, neuroimaging may help to clarify whether visual or phonological processing is impaired in people with dyslexia.

Neuroscience may also be able to show how prior experiences can improve learning, going beyond psychological explanations. Although many studies have found evidence for the overwhelming impact of prior knowledge of skills, procedures, or concepts on learning, there may be other ways of improving learning besides such knowledge transfer. Cognitive activities can stimulate certain neuronal processes by triggering electrical impulses and the release of neurotransmitters in particular brain areas. Concurrently, other cognitive activities that are processed in similar brain areas may be enhanced, even if the two cognitive activities involve completely different knowledge structures.

Neuroscience alone cannot provide the specific knowledge required to design powerful learning environments in particular school content areas. But by providing insights into the abilities and constraints of the learning brain, neuroscience can help to explain why some learning environments work while others fail. As part of interdisciplinary collaborations, neuroscience is poised to help structure the future classroom. This would be "evidence-based" reform worth supporting.