Let the data speak for themselves, these scientists say.
The trouble with that argument is, of course, that data never do speak
for themselves.
- Evelyn Fox Keller (cited in Lenzo, 1995)
Keller points out an interesting possibility in the above
quotation. By suggesting that data cannot stand alone, isolated and independent,
to "speak for themselves," she is making problematic the claim
advanced by "these scientists." If we explore the problematic
further, we might also wonder just who is standing by to help these data
do their speaking. That is, who is poised to "listen" as the
data are being "spoken," and then to help others "hear"
the data in ways that will adequately represent the phenomenon observed.
Moreover, we wonder how the data are being transformed in this process,
so that they will be received as credible, authentic, robust, and parsimonious,
to name but a few of the concerns of those who will want to learn from
the data. The data analyst engaged in processes of qualitative inquiry
is, of course, implicated. To the investigator accrues the primary responsibility
for re-presenting what has been observed to those who are also seeking
understanding of a focal phenomena from their comparatively more remote
vantage points. Even more to our point, questions can be raised about just
how a bit of data functions as a tool for communicating and what sense
and shades of meaning it contributes to the construction and advancement
of understandings about the phenomena it is said to represent.
One way of joining with Keller to advance her argument is to illustrate
the transactions we see at play here. It is possible, we believe, to locate
the data analyst in relation to a particular point. This point, familiar
to many qualitative researchers, is one that encompasses the processes
of intersubjective communication. Situated within a model of inquiry, we
think about this point as residing somewhere along a continuum that connects
observers with the observed (cf. Weade & Evertson, 1991). Thus, in
graphic formulation of the observational and communicative processes in
which qualitative researchers engage, we might imagine the scene depicted
below:
The position taken up by the data analyst is one of self-as-instrument.
That is, functioning as agent for the inquiry, the data analyst acts as
filter, monitor, and mediator of what can be drawn from the phenomena demonstrated
in the observed setting in relation to the interests and needs of a particular,
distance audience. Although the dynamic properties of this relation can
seem frozen within the confines of a static, inanimate drawing, we can
nonetheless imagine the investigator's gaze as incorporating at least two
distinct, yet overlapping, frames of reference. First, as depicted in the
left-hand portion of the illustration, is the set of referential systems
located in the observed setting. These systems are associated with the
idea that members of a social group affiliate with one another over time
to develop patterned ways of interacting, that they define, refine and
elaborate meanings they hold in common, and that they construct norms and
establish expectations for how oral discourse and literate action is and
will be accomplished. These referential systems are continually expanding
and evolving as they are being constructed within and through the lived
experiences of members of the group (Dixon, de la Cruz, Green, Lin, Brandts,
1992; Lin, 1994). The data analyst then, whether a fully present and active
participant in the setting or adopting a more separate, detached presence
with the observed group, imposes an approach, a point of view, and a perspective
that both supports and constrains what will be made available for observing
what is eventually selected and collected from that availability, how it
will be understood, by whom, for what orders of purpose, and finally, what
can be constructed and preserved by the investigator as primary source
"data" (cf. Erickson & Wilson, 1982; Green & Allexsaht-Snider,
1990).
In contrast, as depicted at the opposite extreme in the right-hand portion
of the illustration, the data analyst is concerned with formulating some
sense of the referential systems that characterize a target audience. Made
up of other, more distant observers, this audience will eventually be invited
to examine and learn from the legacy of their distant counterparts in the
observed setting (cf. Hubbard & Power, 1993). Since they are also members
of groups that hold various referential systems of meaning, the presumed
audience stands ready to receive, interpret, and respond to what the data
reveal and to what the data analyst chooses as evidence for advancing certain
claims deemed relevant to their interests and needs, even though these
may vary and conflict with the interests of those in the observed setting.
In this paper we are entertaining a focal point for observing that is but
one within the wide range of phenomena that qualitative researchers observe.
Our eyes are trained on classrooms (cf. Weade & Evertson, 1991), and
we employ a generic question that is quintessentially interpretive and
ethnographic: "What is happening here?" At the same time, we
also couple this question with conscious awareness of the need to take
a studied and increasingly critical stance on how the responses to "what
is happening here?" will resonate with issues of audience interest
(e.g., narrative, equity, language and literacy learning, technology, social
justice, improving the human condition and the life of the mind, and so
forth).
In due course, our ethnographic perspectives also enable us to bring more
specific and precise questions to the fore. Our purpose is to render problematic
the decisions researchers make in producing transcripts of classroom discourse
for subsequent display in written accounts of their investigations. Essentially,
these decisions revolve around questions about how to best represent oral
speech in text-based (e.g., print) formats. Even as we organize our efforts
to this end, we are increasingly aware of technological advances all around
us that directly intersect this undertaking. As readers of this paper who
have accessed it via electronic devices, you are substantially greater
in number than your counterparts who are picking it up via conventional
print format only. One day, our display of classroom discourse data may
actually "speak" at some auditory level of technology that is
capable of being "heard" by distant audiences. These possibilities
provide all the more reason for us to investigate the communicative processes
in constructing "data" that generate meaning for those who will
"hear" their evidentiary force.
Questions guiding the investigation presented here are relevant to the
interests of qualitative researchers who choose to:
a) observe the conversational discourses of everyday life in classrooms;
b) construct data to represent what is happening in and through the talk
among members of a classroom; and
c) use transcriptions of classroom talk as evidence for advancing claims
about the nature of teaching/learning processes.
Theoretical Frameworks
Representing talk and the dynamic processes of communicating in classrooms
via conventional print media is a tricky undertaking. The data analyst
is faced with an attendant loss of auditory, paralinguistic, proxemic,
and other sociohistorical features of context that contribute to meaning-making
in the observed setting. The problem posed can be likened to the challenge
of fitting a square peg into a round hole. Issues that arise in the generation
and analysis of the "square pegs" of data (e.g., transcriptions,
interview protocols, "maps" of instructional conversations) are
variously documented in the literature on ethnography of conversation and
qualitative methodologies (Erickson & Wilson, 1982; Green & Wallat,
1979; Weade & Evertson, 1991; Zaharlick & Green, 1991). Further
down the inquiry path, however, "round holes" inevitably arise
in the process of writing up accounts of the investigation. The conditions
and limitations inherent in the traditional print formats of scholarly
publication outlets often appear to generate a new-found set of concerns.
That is, decisions are needed about how to convey interpretations of discourse
phenomena in ways that preserve the integrity and complexity of what is
observed, yet also invite intersubjective sense-making with our distant
and diverse audiences.
Thus, the investigator's stance cannot be static. Rather, it must be pivotal,
developing progressively in the course of the investigation. Heap (1985)
captures this progression in a step wise series of phases that characterize
an inquiry process. He suggests that our investigations take us through
a series of varying contexts -- from a context of purpose, into a context
of discovery, and eventually on to a context of presentation (e.g., to
audiences of outsiders who are distant form the observed setting, yet share
features of both similarity and difference in comparison to those in the
observed setting). Means of representing oral discourse in a non-oral,
visual form may vary according to the relevant context within the progression
of the investigation. That is, from the point of view of the data analyst,
new decisions are needed all along the way about the relevant features
of an oral text to be included in a written account, what must be excluded,
and how to arrange the graphic, visual display of data in ways that will
be interpreted and understood by readers. Unfortunately, treatment of these
issues in the literature on research methodologies, particularly in relation
to investigations of language, discourse, and classroom processes, is somewhat
obscure (for notable exceptions, see Mishler, 1991; Ochs, 1979; Tannen,
1993). By examining alternative ways of displaying transcriptions of classroom
discourse, we intend to demonstrate recovery of a set of fundamental assumptions
about the relationships between language and meaning that undergird researchers'
methodological decisions and, thereby, constitute the construction of a
generative theory-method relationship.
The approach demonstrated in what follows is grounded in theoretical constructs
derived from the fields of ethnography of communication, discourse processes,
and conversational analysis (Fairclough, 1993; Green, 1983; Zaharlick &
Green, 1991). Constructs that are particularly relevant to the data displayed
in what follows suggest, for instance, that
classrooms are differentiated communication environments in which participants
take on the social roles of students and teacher as they affiliate over
time to construct the events and activities (e.g., the contexts) that constitute
their lived experiences in and of schooling and the rights and obligations
for participating that support and constrain access and opportunity to
learn.
Understanding the relationships between teaching and learning that are mediated in and through classroom discourse processes is a concern that each of the three authors of this piece share, even though we also acknowledge differences in the theoretical bases that characterize our training, the kinds of classrooms we observe, the specific purposes we pursue in our investigations, and the interests that bring us to the specific purposes addressed in this paper. The bits of data presented in what follows are drawn from different studies and different classrooms. We are not relating much about the specific, substantive features of those studies here (although those interests clearly play into our representations), in order to invoke attention to spatial and graphic dimensions of representing talk as text by displaying auditory data in print form. This activity provides for us an exercise in responding to the question raised in our title: Do you see what we see?
Research Methods
Data analysis and writing conducted for this project fall within the general
rubrics of conversational discourse analysis. The products of a transcription
and analysis phase of the investigation are working documents (not reproduced
here) that we refer to as "maps" of instructional conversations.
The first typescript is derived from verbatim audio transcription of a
discussion held in a high school English classroom (Townsend, 1991). The
second, collected in a fourth-grade classroom, is an example of "recovered"
talk -- talk and patterns of interaction that are "written down from
memory" in anecdotal records and field notes taken during and immediately
following classroom observation. These typescripts become useful to us
for identifying recurrent patterns in the talk, cycles of activity and
exchange, and patterns of similarity and difference, both within and across
classrooms. The larger maps of instructional conversation, on which we
assemble analytic notations about these patterns, are bulky and cumbersome;
they cannot be reproduced here. Employing Heap's classification of various
contexts for doing research investigations (1985), these maps are an artifact
of a context of discovery. They are "square pegs" that do not
always conform within a context of presentation (e.g., the "round
holes"). Here, in order to demonstrate two parts of our analytic process,
an excerpt drawn from verbatim transcription is presented first and then
each transcript segment is followed with interpretive commentary.
Making the Invisible Visible
We listen to discussion. We can watch the activities, facial expressions,
tonal inflections, physical stances and gestures of participants, but we
don't see the words and thoughts that form the substance of talk. In order
to make the ephemeral nature of classroom discussion available for inspection,
typed transcriptions are prepared -- to make visible what would otherwise
remain invisible. If a mental geography of the participants' points of
attention and areas of interest could be constructed, the excerpt would
look more like a hand-drawn map than an orderly transcription.
The excerpt that follows is drawn from a high school English class in which
students and teacher have been reading Hamlet. The discussion is about
Hamlet's first meeting with the ghost of his father. This is a point in
the play when the doubtfulness of the ghost's honesty first arises -- an
issue that runs throughout the whole play and, indeed, motivates Hamlet's
ambivalence toward revenge, leading to the famous, "To be or not to
be" speech. The transcribed excerpt provides a way to "listen
in" on the discussion, and to gain insight into the social and discursive
practices that are taking shape through the classroom conversation.
________________________________________________________________________
1. Teacher: . . . Um, and then later on regarding his, his [Hamlet's] attitude towards the ghost on 62, page 62? This is line 138. He [Hamlet] says to Horatio, "It is an honest ghost, that let me tell you." So he wants to believe the ghost's story, right? He wants to believe that/
2. Flenoy: He, yeah, he, he, he's kind of hoping that it's true because then he gets revenge?
3. Student: Where?
4. Student: Where is this?
5. Teacher: Well, he's already heard the ghost's story by this time so, but, but/
6. Students: Where is it? Where is it?
7. Teacher: One reason for him wanting or his wanting to believe the ghost's story would be true would be to justify his desire for vengeance, anyway, right?
8. Flenoy: Right, yeah.
9. Teacher: And if he wants to get back at his uncle, then what better way than to believe that he's guilty of murder? This, this is on page 62, but earlier, what did, um, the men who were the guards, what did they say about the ghost? That the ghost, there's a way in which the ghost might not be true; he might not be an honest ghost.
10. Flenoy: Oh, it was, it meant that . . oh, because of, uh, it goes away when the cock, when daylight comes/
11. Teacher: So it might be/
12. Flenoy: So it might be a bad ghost, whereas Jesus Christ stayed when the light came.
13. Teacher: Right. That's, that, yeah, that's good, that Jesus keeps the, keeps it light all the time, right?
14. Flenoy: Yeah.
15. Teacher: The whole idea of light being equated with goodness and evil with darkness, but here, here they suggest, or earlier they suggest that this might be a ghost from hell, some kind of demon from hell that's sent to tempt Hamlet into, um, something, something that would condemn his soul. I mean, we have to remember when we read Shakespeare that they really believed in fiery hell and, um, you know, losing one's soul, so regardless of, you know, how our beliefs may have changed or may not have changed, we should keep it in mind that this is a real possibility for Hamlet, and I wrote down something that Northrop Frye, who's a fairly reputable critic, said about the ghost business. He said, "If purgatory is a place of purification, why does the ghost come from it shrieking for vengeance? And why does purgatory as the ghost describes it, sound so much as though it were hell? The ghost's credentials are very doubtful by all Elizabethan tests for such things." So, so what he's saying there is that if this ghost is really an honest ghost, he's from purgatory instead of hell. He's from the place in between heaven and hell where you work off your sins.
16. Flenoy: Limbo.
17. Teacher: Right.
18. Katia: That's what he [Hamlet] said, didn't he?
19. Fidel: Yeah, he said that he's working/
20. Sam: He's working it off.
21. Teacher: But he's also talking about all this fire, remember, that he spends his time in, in flames? And that seems kind of an odd description of purgatory. I think that's all that Frye's saying. That this is maybe, suspect. Somewhat suspect. What else is sort of odd if you put this drama in a Christian perspective, view it within a Christian context, about the ghost's demands? What would not seem to be very consonant with Christian/
22. Sam: To get revenge.
23. Teacher: Right.
24. Sam: You're supposed to forget it.
25. Teacher: Yeah. Turn the other cheek, right? Let him kill, you know, let somebody else kill Claudius, or something, I don't know. Give him your mother, too, um [general laughter].
26. Flenoy: Give him your coat as well.
27. Teacher: Right. So, so that's something that, that
within the context I think of Christianity is very odd about this revenge
play and puts Hamlet in a really tight spot. Um, if you think about, remember
Beowulf? From last year . . .
________________________________________________________________________
The transcript provides a "frozen record" of the oral speech
that preserves some of the salient features of its discursive production,
including identification of speakers, turn-taking, duration, time-ordered
sequence, topics, and content as these transpired in the real time and
real space of a classroom discussion. Once documented in print form, the
excerpt begins to function as primary source data that can be examined
again and again in search of cues, clues, and currents of meaning that
potentially explain some of its otherwise more ephemeral qualities. Thus,
preparation of the transcript constitutes the first part of the process
we employ to make the invisible visible and enables us to move the analysis
forward to its second part, the interpretive commentary, as follows.
At the beginning of this excerpt, the teacher is introducing the topic
of the ghost's honesty, and Flenoy, a vocal participant, wonders if Hamlet
is hoping the ghost's story is true so that he can justify his desire for
vengeance. The teacher reported later that this was a new perspective on
Hamlet for her, that Flenoy's comment made her wonder if perhaps Hamlet
wasn't, after all, the heroic figure she tended to take for granted. In
the follow-up interview she expressed keen interest in this new approach
to Hamlet's character (although none of the other informants noticed it),
but during the discussion, she moves on after several turns to focus the
discussion again on the honesty of the ghost. What seems to interrupt the
teacher's wondering about Hamlet is the students' clamor for the page number
(lines 3 - 6) so that presumably they can note it for an upcoming test
of major quotes from the play.
In the ninth turn, she asks again about the passage in the play where the
ghost reveals himself. Flenoy suggests that the ghost's leaving at daybreak
might make it a "bad" ghost (line 12). After this comment, the
teacher contrasts the symbolic images of light and darkness and introduces
a quote by Northrup Frye that she hopes will raise questions about the
character of the ghost. The teacher gets little response from the students,
and when asked later about what she thought of the exchange, she made the
following remarks:
When a quiet student in the class, Angela, was asked in a
follow-up interview what kind of response she thought the quote by Frye
had received, she said, "I think we were all kind of away, you know."
This student's attention had apparently drifted when the teacher read the
rather dry and academic quote by Frye. Nevertheless, Angela reported that
the idea about purgatory was "neat," and when asked to explain,
she said, "That it was between heaven and hell, because they were
saying that he was evil, or that he was good, but he was actually kind
of in between." When asked what had been going on in her head, she
explained, "Um, I was just trying to piece it together with the story,
number of little examples and stuff, like when she was talking about the
fire and stuff, I was going, yeah." When asked what she thought the
point of the comment was, she replied, "To show the hell, I guess,
as opposed to the heaven and, just to bring out the two different sides,
kind of, and to make you wonder about whether he was honest or he wasn't."
When asked if it had made her wonder, she said, "Yeah, um um, 'cause
at first I just thought, well, he said he's an honest ghost and, you know,
he knew the story so he must've been, you know."
Flenoy, on the other hand, saw a different import to the Frye quote. When
asked what he had thought the point was, he made the following comment:
When asked if the interchange had brought any ideas or questions
to his mind, Flenoy responded, "Um, no questions. Uh, it, it, I guess
it broadened my mind into what maybe the ghost was." Nevertheless,
he gave no indication that he had wondered if the ghost was honest. When
asked about his comment in turn 26, "Give him your coat as well,"
Flenoy reported that the idea came from the play Godspell in which he had
recently performed, and that his comment was directed to Miranda, who had
been in the play with him. Apparently his attention wasn't entirely on
the teacher's question about the ghost's honesty. Although consonant with
the teacher's joke, "Give him your mother too" (line 25), and
directed toward a classmate's shared experience with him in another play,
Flenoy's comment didn't make sense (to the interviewer) in the context
of their discussion of Hamlet.
Another quiet student, Anne, reported that her first response to the Frye
quote was simply to appreciate that her teacher had "brought something
from the outside in to share with us." She paid attention to what
the teacher was saying because, as she said, "I thought that, that
was interesting how, you know, what another person had written on what
we were reading." She apparently gave the quote little more thought
until later, when talking about it during the interview. As she hashed
over the ideas, Anne became quite animated about the issue. After a suggestion
about some different ways of looking at the question, she offered the following:
Anne went on to say "that shows me something I hadn't
even thought. I mean, I just assumed he was an, an honest ghost or whatever."
She expressed her wondering this way: "So maybe he, uh, so there's
still the question of whether or not the ghost is even, if he's a demon,
or, I mean, if that's really the ghost of [Hamlet's father]." She
said, "I would have got pretty excited over the quote [laughs], you
know, if I had known what was going on." When asked if she'd wondered
about the honesty of the ghost before, she said not before expounding on
it during the interview. One could almost see the wheels turning in her
head as she added, "I wonder, I still don't really understand why
it's in the Christian context or why, I mean does it, does it have to be?"
Clearly, Anne's wondering mechanism had been activated by the conversation
about the class discussion, if not by the discussion itself. The reasons
for this change may have to do with the greater amount of time available
to talk about only a few of the issues raised during a class discussion
that had covered a much larger range of material. In this case, perhaps
we can see an example of something that-- on a map of mental responses--
might be labeled "an untriggered point of attention," a place
for a wondering to become, as it clearly had with Anne during her interview.
For Rex, a student who was confused by Hamlet, the quote by Frye got a
much simpler response. When asked what he had remembered, he made the following
remark:
When asked if it was about the ghost, he said, "I have
no idea, but I remember they said something about a critic, some, somebody,
they, I don't know, something else about it." When Rex was asked what
the point of the quote was, and whether it had helped his understanding,
he replied, "I don't think I was listening, to tell the truth. I don't
know. I heard the critic part; I told you about that."
From these five perspectives on this 27-turn excerpt, we can begin to make
visible in written form the invisible thinking, purpose-setting, and mental
reconfiguring that participants' reported in the interviews. We can see
the teacher's purpose in reading the quote by Frye coming to fruition at
a later time for Anne (in her follow-up interview), and for Angela, in
unspoken ways during the discussion. Of course, those kinds of unseen responses
did nothing to allay the teacher's frustration at what she perceived to
be a lack of understanding. We can also see that Rex was too confused in
general to focus on the specific issue of the ghost's doubtfulness, and
perhaps that Flenoy was too sure of his own understanding to entertain
any uncertainty about the issue, or if he did, to tell about it. In any
case, all the students talked about responses to the discussion that suggest
currents of meaning and experience that were invisible to other participants
in the discussion. Thought and language were intertwined in ways that make
the transcript itself an incomplete rendering of the interaction.
Closing Down the Conversation: A Case of "Constructing
Each Other"
In the next excerpt, drawn from a fourth grade classroom, we see an example
of a teacher's differential treatment of some students, particularly Panos,
a ten-year-old boy. We also see his resistance. While some members of the
class are able to construct opportunity, others experience frustration
and failure. This episode lasts five minutes.
________________________________________________________________________
1. T: 5! 4! 3!
IT'S TIME TO GET BACK TO WORK
2!, 1!
PANOS, ENOUGH!
[The exercise segment is over, but Panos is still exercising. The children
are full of energy; some find it hard to settle down.]
2. T: I DON'T WANT TO HEAR ANOTHER WORD OR I'M GONNA ADD SENTENCES.
[Students are still chatting.]
3. T: 5! 4! 3! 2! 1!
THIS IS YOUR LAST WARNING
THIS IS IT!!
[Panos does not look like he is in the mood for work; he's visiting a couple
of friends, chatting.]
4. T: PANOS! PANOS!
[She looks at him. She's looking for his name on her clipboard and says
-]
OH MY GOD
THIS IS A SHAME
IT'S YOUR FIRST ONE
5. T: OKAY
PASS YOUR TEST UP!
[ - to the whole class]
6. Katrina: what test?
7. T: OH, YOU'LL BE DOING THIS DURING ENRICHMENT TIME
8. Katrina: why are we going to do this during enrichment time?
9. T: ENOUGH!
[Katrina goes back to what she was doing. The teacher walks around the
room, collecting the children's tests.]
10. T: IT'S OKAY IF YOU DIDN'T FINISH
WE ARE GOING TO GET ANOTHER CHANCE
[ - to the class]
11. T: GET BUSY AT YOUR POETRY AND YOUR MATH TEST!
SOME OF YOU ARE INSISTING ON NOT DOING YOUR WORK.
12. T: I'M GOING TO GIVE YOU SIX MORE MINUTES TO COMPLETE
THE MATH CHALLENGE AND POETRY.
EVERYTHING IS ON THE BOARD
13. T: [ slowing walks around the room, making her first
stop at Panos's desk]
PANOS
WHY ISN'T THERE A SINGLE THING ON YOUR DESK?
14. Panos: [no response]
[the teacher moves on, checking children's work]
[ a 5th grade teacher enters]
15. Mr. C.:
I NEED THE 3-A STUDENTS
16. T: THE 3-A STUDENTS
YOU MAY GO
YOUR NAME IS ON THE BOARD
17. [5 girls and 5 boys quietly get out of their seats and follow the 5th grade teacher. The rest watch. The class is quiet. "3-A" stands for "attendance, attitude, achievement" for this week. Those students will join others and they will all get to see a clown who's visiting in the cafeteria.]
18. [some children begin whispering about who got to go, and why. some start asking about the grades.]
19. Teacher: I DON'T KNOW HOW THEY DETERMINE IT
IT CAME FROM THE OFFICE
[she holds up a letter to prove to them that it did indeed come from the
office]
20. Christos: how come they got to go?
21. Maria: yeah
why don't we get to go?
22. Teacher: YOU'RE GONNA LOSE THE 3 MORNING POINTS FOR
THIS CROWD THAT WALKED OUT.
[the children go back to work, except for Panos, who's still struggling
with this event]
23. Panos: why do some people get to go to see the clown?
how come?
24. Teacher: PANOS
I ADVISE YOU NOW TO STOP!
25. Panos: well, it's not fair
why do some people get to go?
26. Teacher: I DON'T WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT RIGHT NOW
27. [a couple more children start talking quietly]
28. Teacher: OKAY
DON'T TALK ANYMORE!
I'M GIVING CHECKS!
29. [the noise level drops]
________________________________________________________________________
Prior to the series of interactions represented above,
the children and the teacher had been part of a 10 minute televised sports
program. They were doing exercises in their classroom, by their desks.
The children were very excited and full of energy. The novelty of the program
and the exercise had made it difficult for them to get back to their usual
classroom activities. It was a transition between activities, but in the
above, we see the teacher quickly rising to a position of central authority.
We also see Panos, who doesn't seem quite ready for that. Although the
television has been turned off, he is still exercising (turn 1). He is
not responding to the teacher's backward counting, nor to the personalized
warning she issues. In turn 3, he is visiting with other students instead
of doing his work. In turn 4, neither the teacher nor the punishment he
is receiving seems to matter. Later, in turn 13, the teacher finds no work
on his desk. Panos shows no signs of interest (turn 14). As we see in turn
23, he is preoccupied with matters of differential treatment. Questions
can be raised about what kind of student Panos is becoming and what constitutes
his reality and the meanings he holds for this treatment. We wonder why
he appears to get negative attention from the teacher.
In a follow-up interview, Panos was asked to share what he thought of himself:
When asked to tell what he thought about his teacher, he
said:
In the follow-up interview, Panos presented himself as a
capable 4th grader who gets in trouble with the teacher sometimes. He is
a student who demands explanations and questions the teacher's decisions,
a student who seems to be clear on the reasons behind his getting punished
but refuses to abide by the teacher's requests. He is active in attempting
to shape his reality. Questions must be raised about the kind of reality
being constructed.
In the excerpt, we see the teacher issue warnings to Panos repeatedly.
We wonder about the kind of knowledge she is sharing with Panos. We wonder
about what we are seeing and why. In a follow-up interview, she shares:
The picture that emerges in our rendering of the five-minute
transcription marks a sharp contrast with some of the perceptions shared
by Panos and by the teacher in their follow-up interviews. In the face-to-face
encounter represented in the transcript, they bring individually held meanings,
purposes, and realities. They are also sharing knowledge and frustrations
as they communicate information to each other about their rights and obligations
for participating in the classroom activities. They mutually engage in
a dynamic and evolving process of positioning themselves in relation to
each other, gradually sorting out a system of co-existence (cf. Bloome
& Egan-Robertson, 1993). As they act and interact, each is demonstrating
a construction of the other. They are acting as if they hold certain beliefs
about the other's interests, motives, intentions, knowledge, beliefs, and
so forth, that may or may not be appropriate or accurate. The construction
of this relation is, at root, a social process. They are constructing each
other in ways that define a relation of social roles (e.g., teacher and
student) as hierarchically distinct and oppositional. But what we see in
the transcript at first is only one layer of a multi-layered classroom
interaction. The follow-up interviews suggest different versions of what
was happening that do not appear on the surface of the observed classroom
activity.
Conclusion
The findings in our investigations suggest a need to revisit matters of
theory-method relation in investigations of language and social processes
in classroom settings and in the ways we represent these processes in written
accounts of research on classroom processes. It begins to appear that the
images revealed in the excerpts form sharp, striking contrasts in comparison
with the clarifications revealed in follow-up interviews. That is, what
we may see in the excerpts does not always match what the participants
themselves, as "insiders," are seeing at the point of their own
participation in a discourse community, or even later, when they step "outside"
to offer reflections in the process of reviewing videotaped versions of
the excerpt. Clearly, implications can be derived about the need for dialogue
that entertains alternative representations of the observed phenomena and
works toward an account of similarities and differences in ways of explaining
and understanding discursive phenomena.
In particular, with these data, there are concerns that rise to the surface
about the construction and representation of heirarchical and oppositional
status relations between students and teacher, how these social relations
"play out" in the ebb and flow of ordinary classroom activity,
how members of a classroom navigate this field of play, how they influence
the tenor and course of their interactions, how they construct each other,
how they "wonder," both socially and academically, and what is
being learned in and through these processes. To this end, and in the spirit
of continuing inquiry, our conclusions take the form of questions that
might assist others who share our interests in the presentation and re-presentation
of everyday life in classrooms. These questions include:
What is happening here?
From whose perspective shall we view this life?
How do these primary source "data" constitute evidence for advancing
any claims we wish to make about the nature of teaching/learning processes?
What are the consequences of living classroom life for those who reside
there?
What is being learned here?
Moreover, since questions about social and discursive practices
in classrooms are, at root, inherently qualitative and profoundly social,
we find that answers to questions are most useful when they derive from
multiple sources, multiple points-of-view, and multiple perspectives (Green,
1992; Townsend, Zygouris-Coe, & Weade, 1995). Singular responses cannot
suffice. Rather, pluralities of perception, interpretation, and understanding
are needed before we can address issues about what can and should happen
in classrooms, for whom, when, under what conditions, for what purposes,
and with what intended outcomes (Green, 1983). Our findings in this study
point to a need for gathering together a dialectic of responses, represented
here in schematic form by reassembling the questions itemized above, as
follows:
________________________________________________________________________
From whose perspective shall we view this life?
student(s)
Teacher(s)Researcher(s)other(s)
What is happening here?
How will it count?
How does it matter? -
for us? -
for others?
What is being learned?
In response to the question framed in the title of this piece,
"Do you see what we see?," an answer does emerge. For us, it
is: "not quite." We must conclude on the basis of our investigations
with display of transcripts of classroom interactions, that the data do
not, in fact, "speak for themselves." Rather, they must be talked
into meaning, both in the immediate, local contexts of face-to-face interaction
in classrooms and in follow-up interviews with participants, as well as
in our more distant and remote reflections on these processes at professional
meetings and qualitative inquiry conferences.
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