Can a fish swim?

Today in my tute groups (Monday) I started work that leads towards a final assignment for my first year students in my teaching unit TJ 511 Language and Literacies. We examined an excerpt from a transcript that I will call "Can a fish swim?" The transcript was taken from:

Freebody, P., Ludwig, C., & Gunn, S. (1995). Everyday literacy practices in and out of schools in low socio-economic urban communities: A summary of a descriptive and interpretive research program. Canberra: Commonwealth Department of Employment, Education and Training.

The tute activity required students to select, initially, a couple of interesting features from the transcript and to discuss these and note their comments (making reference to the transcript using line numbers). After twenty minutes students moved on to new groups and exchanged their analyses. Then students were asked to related their analyses to a reading that considered school talk.

In both groups there were some interesting comments and analyses. I'll just use one that I remember, and respond to it, to make some points about the analysis of transcripts.

"it's just what I think".

What you were thinking involved what you know about how we interact in a classroom. So you must have had some basis for thinking this. Look to the transcript to see if those in the classroom interpreted in the same way. Look to the turn before and the one that followed. What does the talk confirm, or not? Those turns will support your analysis and are your "evidence". After all, you know classrooms cos you have been in them for years. School students know classrooms cos they are operating in them (have to operate effectilvely). So, they are showing in the transcript, through their interaction, what they thought was required. How does it match up to your interpretation?

To illustrate ... A number of people in the tutes noticed that the teacher picked out one student to speak because his answer was different. However, was that really the reason? Good analytic work by some suggested that the teacher couldn't possibly have heard just that one student since all students replied together according to the transcript (imagine it, 25 students speaking at once and the teacher heard that one answer!).

Some good reasons were suggested for the teachers's utterance. The teacher (he or she, and that's another story!) wanted a right answer so named someone who might provide it (did he?). What point might it serve to pick out a student in your class who you will know will give the right answer? (well yes, it does get you out of mukky talk about questions and answers that MAYBE most students aren't getting, and you yourself have lost the plot!)

Others thought that maybe the student wasn't paying attention and so had been named as a way to draw him into the lesson (could we tell that from the transcript?). Others thought that when the teacher named someone it signalled to all the class that they were no longer able to speak out together as they had been doing (certainly they didn't all speak after this point).

All these interpretations illustrate some very important aspects of classroom talk and interaction. We (us teachers, pre-service teachers, and pupils) have vast amounts of knowledge about how classrooms "operate" And more importantly, in doing "the lesson" we draw on this knowledge, and make the lesson happen. The students in the transcript illustrated this elegantly. No-one spoke after the teacher named particular students, but everyone "seemed' to talk when the teacher just asked a question without naming a specific person. How do they know what is required? Isn't this part of their competence as school students?

I'll finish with a radical comment. Although current programs for literacy instruction give emphasis to teacher instruction (stages of development, approriate teaching approaches etc) perhaps they overlook the work that students do in classrooms in order to make lessons happen. That is, without the work of students in classroom we have no lessons. This is beautifully illustrated in "Can fish swim.?".