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Physical artifacts and ‘pre-enactment’ in team-teacher planning discussions

Lookup NU author(s): Dr Christopher Leyland

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Abstract

This study utilizes multimodal Conversation Analysis to examine a corpus of pre-class planning discussions between pairs of educators who team-teach English in Japanese schools, one a generalist Japanese Elementary School Teacher (EST) and the other a “native” English-speaking Assistant Language Teacher (ALT). Although such teachers have been working together since the inception of Japan’s JET Programme in 1987, there is little known about the interactional collaboration that goes on between ALTs and ESTs while they prepare for their team-taught classes. In this interactional environment, various physical artifacts are often used in the process of discussing an upcoming class. Our study tracks the role particular artifacts play in the interactional practice of ‘pre-enactment’. In reference to, for instance, a textbook or written lesson plans/notes, ESTs and ALTs frequently enact future classroom scenarios in the here-and-now. In these pre-class discussions, in which one of the participants is invariably using a second or additional language, pre-enacting successfully serves a variety of functions, such as indicating preference and clarification of future activities. As such, pre-enacting is an important and frequently relied-upon communicative tool used by ESTs and ALTs in the pre-class planning discussions. In addition to predicting potential student behavior, such as physical movements during activities or negative reactions to a textbook task, pre-enacting can indicate a view of how teachers should and should not use artifacts in class. This study adds to the small but growing body of interactional research considering the multimodal unfolding of “planning talk” (e.g. Yasui, 2013; Markee & Kunitz, 2013; Burch, 2014). Furthermore, this study adds insights into such research by uncovering the relationship between physical artifacts and the process of “fleshing out the imagined future experience in the here-and-now” (Murphy, 2011: 247). The use of a Conversation Analytic approach enables a view into how team-teachers collaborate in situ, manipulating physical artifacts to achieve mutual understanding and, ultimately, a lesson plan. The presentation will also consider ways such findings can inform pre-service training of ‘team-teachers’ and professional practice.


Publication metadata

Author(s): Leyland C, Greer T

Publication type: Conference Proceedings (inc. Abstract)

Publication status: Published

Conference Name: IIEMCA Conference 2015: Living the Material World

Year of Conference: 2015

Pages: 145-146

Acceptance date: 01/01/1900

Publisher: International Institute for Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis

URL: https://iiemca.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/Book-of-Abstracts-2015.pdf


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