Research Into Teacher Educators’ Discursive Moves: A Vygotskian Perspective

Introduction

Teaching how to teach is one of the most crucial aspects of teacher education. There are two actors within a teacher education program: prospective teachers (PTs) and teacher educators (TEs). If one of the locomotive forces of reform-based teaching is PTs as the practitioners of in-class instruction, then the other is the teachers of the PTs (Goodwin & Kosnik, 2013; Vanassche & Kelchtermans, 2016) as the practitioners of university-based teaching. Murray (2005), Darling-Hammond (2006), Murray and Kosnik (2011) reported that the cognition of TEs (theories/beliefs about teaching) and their practices (in-class teaching actions) remain an uncharted territory.

Teaching is a complex process, but teaching how to teach is a more sophisticated procedure. Unfortunately, it is believed that if one is good at teaching elementary/secondary-level students, then this expertise can be directly transferred to being good at training PTs (Berry, 2007; Goodwin & Kosnik, 2013; Murray, 2005; Vanassche & Kelchtermans, 2016; Zeichner, 2005). However, becoming a TE is not a simple process of pedagogical transition from teaching the subject matter knowledge of elementary science to teaching the subject matter knowledge of teaching how to teach elementary science to young students.

Several researchers have tried to shed light on university-level educators’ and TEs’ cognition in the form of their conceptions, perceptions or beliefs about teaching (e.g., Bullock & Christou, 2009; Dall’Alba, 1991; Dinkelman, Margolis, & Sikkenga, 2006; Donche & Petegem, 2011; Samuelowicz & Bain, 1992, 2001). Doubtless, these studies are worthwhile and have contributed to the scholarship of university-level teaching. However, the in-class practices of TEs have remained an underresearched area as their theories of teaching have been explored and clarified to a certain extent, but their in-class actions for fruitful teaching have never been probed in a systematic manner. Thus, in the current study, it was imperative to research into the in-class actions of the TEs in an analytical sense. The in-class actions of TEs are their discursive moves in managing and handling conversational exchanges and interactions occurring between PTs and TEs. The TEs’ discursive moves (TEDMs) are considered as their follow-up questioning, feedbacks, evaluations, or nonverbal actions (intonations, gestures, mimics) which are analytically sorted to demonstrate how the PTs and TEs coconstructed, meaning collectively, within the university classroom.

Theoretical Underpinnings

Method

In-Class Implementations

The PTs engaged in five in-class implementations lasting 10 weeks. The basic concepts of the implementations were teaching, learning, teacher, learner, and knowledge. Each implementation was conducted to negotiate the conceptual, epistemological, and ontological aspects of the teaching phenomenon. Brief descriptions of the implementation contents are given in Table 1. The problems (problematized cases) presented during implementations were challenging for the PTs as they tried to present solutions by considering and applying their theories, practices, and experiences of teaching. The implementations were maintained during 957 min and incorporated three intertwined negotiation cycles of initiating-developing, expanding, and finalizing-reviewing. All the implementations contained two interactional streams: posing-recognizing cognitive contradictions and negotiating-resolving cognitive contradictions.

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Table 1.

In-Class Discursive Implementations’ Brief Descriptions.

Weeks	Activities	Duration (min)	Brief descriptions
First-second	Knowledge, learning, teaching	196	The group interrogated the locus of knowledge as whether it is internal or external to learners. The group discussed whether knowledge is taught by teachers or acquired by students and relations between knowledge, teaching, and learning.
Third-fourth	Lily and dark room	213	A case was presented to the group. In the case, Lily, a superiorly successful secondary school student, responded to a teacher-led question, “Can we see in a fully dark room?” Even though it is impossible in scientific terms, Lily insists on it is possible through accommodation as she retrieved and externalized. Thus, the main pedagogical matter is that whether Lily acquired the vision phenomenon well or whether there was a fallacious reasoning as uttered by a very successful learner.
Fifth-sixth	Experience and learning	146	Do barbers know physics? A barber, working in front of the mirror for more than 20 years, is asked the following question: “As we get closer to the mirror, will our images grow?” and barber says “Yes” and to our knowledge it is impossible as there would be no change for the image size when anyone gets closer to or farther from mirrors. Thus, the main question is that why frequent rehearsals or experiences may not ensure learning.
Seventh-eighth	Teaching profession	253	Who teaches a subject better: A teacher who is equipped by substantial subject matter knowledge, or another teacher who is considerably equipped by knowledge of teaching methods, strategies, representations, and so on.
Ninth-10th	Mr. Star	149	Mr. Star was a victim of murder. Detective PTs have only an incomplete script about the case. Each individual completed the script and several mutually exclusive suggestions were presented. The main question was that why the PTs completed the story of Mr. Star in a different way. In a similar vein, within an instructional setting, whether same phenomenon can be conceived and externalized differently by prospective students of the PTs and their reactions were asked if they are in a situation similar to aforesaid one.

Note. PT = prospective teacher.

Initiating-developing

In this phase, the researchers (TEs) presented rigidly conflicting cases (Table 1) aiming to problematize the contents under consideration. The PTs were presented with cases that were mind-stretching and thought-provoking challenges (alternative thinking-talking). In the negotiation cycle, the PTs gradually accepted that their opinions could incorporate less explanatory power in shedding light on the injected contradictions and searched for alternative ways to account for the problems. The researchers’ purpose in this stage was to listen actively to the PTs’ utterances, reveal their thinking fallacies if they existed, and pose scaffolding questions to promote the PTs to adopt alternative ways of thinking.

Expanding

Once the PTs acknowledged their cognitive dilemmas concerning the teaching phenomenon, they were given time to collect, analyze, and interpret data to produce and present more convincing and internally consistent arguments. Simply put, they were required to retrieve and re-ponder their school-based experiences and subject matter knowledge of university-based pedagogically oriented courses to resolve the contradictions. In addition, the PTs able to consider various data sources, such as undertaking computerized searches, asking a classmate, gaining experts’ opinions, and using information from seminal books in the field. These procedures were carried out in small group negotiations of meanings, in which the PTs worked in groups of four to six individuals. Then, the groups composed arguments to offer alternative evidence-based explanations for the contradiction(s) they had previously recognized. In this phase, the researchers supported the PTs in modifying, altering, or expanding their initial propositions.

Finalizing-reviewing

In this phase, the PTs presented their evidence-based clarifications for the cases they had worked on. During the whole group negotiations, the PTs tried to prove that their arguments were fruitful in resolving perceived dilemmas embedded in the cases. The major goal of the whole group negotiations was to boost the breadth of student–student intellectual exchanges by comparing/contrasting their final assertions. Thus, the PTs tried to resolve the same problem in different ways, and these were minutely compared/contrasted. These were the discursive times which yielded the most extensive fine-grained discursive interactions occurred. In this process, the researchers intentionally invited the PTs to criticize, evaluate, and judge their classmates’ suggestions. The groups appeared to criticize each other in terms of the relevancy and validity of the proposed arguments. This resulted in frequent exchanges among the PTs as each group tried to convince the other groups that they created a better solution to expel the recognized conflictions.

Data Analysis

The videotaped data were verbatim transcribed before the analysis. The transcriptions included verbal and nonverbal (gestures, intonation, mimics) interactions. The data were analyzed by systematic observation, a branch of discourse analysis (Mercer, 2004, 2010) within two phases: coding and counting. The coding process was devoted to sort the enacted TEDMs. Then, the collapsed categories of the enacted TEDMs were counted and quantitative proportions were compared to detect the more salient discursive moves. The coding process was a systematic observation of each codable discursive move. During the analysis process, the researchers determined the relative frequencies of talk turns which they abstracted from the types of the utterances given by them (the researchers) as previously established or emerged within the categories.

For a systematic observation, researchers can develop their own classification system or adopt an “off the shelf” system (Mercer, 2010, p. 4). Researchers should undertake systematic observations by specific coding catalogs that prepared by a data-driven (emerging, original codes) and/or a theory-based (existing within related studies regarding typology of discursive moves) manner. In this study, after an extensive exploration of related studies, the coding processes were initiated. Theory-based discursive moves were relatively adequate to assign codes to the discursive moves. Thus, over the course of the study, novel codes were derived from the conversational data. The higher-order categories, subcategories and their descriptions can be seen in Table 2 (given in the “Findings” section). This catalog allowed the researchers to train themselves to allocate any piece of teacher-led talk to a category that had been generated for the TEDMs. Led by the research questions, a set of categories was generated into which the whole teacher-led talks could be placed and classified.

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Table 2.

Detected Higher-Order Categories and Subcategories for the TEDMs.

Higher-order categories	Subcategories	Descriptions
Knowledge providing and evaluating (KPE)	Presenting logical expositions	Teacher educator presents an internally consistent assertion
	Soft evaluation	Teacher educator acknowledges student-led response
	Affirmation-cum-direct-instruction	Teacher educator affirms the answer, reinforces it, and then moves on to further expository talk by direct instruction
	Direct affirmation	Teacher educator legitimates the correctness of responses
	Rejecting	Teacher educator rejects a student before she or he finishes her or his response
	Giving information (by verbal cloze)	Teacher educator pauses in mid-sentence to allow students to verbally “fill-in-the-blanks” to complete the sentence
Observe-compare-predict (OCP)	Asking for simple comparison	Teacher educator requests from students to make comparison(s) between two cases, objects, ideas, and so on.
	Asking for making prediction	Teacher educator guides students to make guesses and predictions
	Asking for making observations	Teacher educator prompts students to make on-moment observations regarding happenings emerged during classroom discourse
Communicating (COM)	Probing	Teacher educator asks students to expand on their responses
	Requesting for clarification	Teacher educator asks for clarification of student-led utterances
	Reformulating	Teacher educator revoice responses to eliminate any clarity issue
	Embodying	Teacher educator provides analogies, examples, or cases to make more concrete abstract ideas
Monitoring and framing (MOF)	Enacting procedural/conceptual meta-discourse	Teacher educator guides students to think and talk about their previous thinking and talking as conceptions or procedures
	Focusing	Teacher educator gathers students’ attention to a particular response that is embedded in teacher educator’s teaching agenda
	Monitoring (Type 1: on-moment)	Teacher educator invites students to be aware of currently being discussed topics in classroom discourse (prompts students for monitoring what is happening in classroom discourse now)
	Monitoring (Type 2: prospective)	Teacher educator reminds students about further discussion contents or styles (prompts students for monitoring what will be happening in the discourse)
	Monitoring (Type 3: retrospective)	Teacher educator promotes students to reconsider previous conversations by referring past happenings (prompts students for monitoring what was happening in classroom discourse)
	Summarizing (consolidating)	Teacher educator summarizes consolidated ideas by emphasizing a few featured ideas
	Selecting (ignoring)	Teacher educator selects particular student ideas while ignoring others
	Asking about mind-change	Teachers educator asks students whether they have changed their meaning positions after discursive conversations
Evaluating-judging-critiquing (EJC)	Asking for evaluation (student-led)	Teacher educator asks students to evaluate, judge, or critique their classmates’ utterances
	Asking for evaluation (case-based)	Teacher educator promotes students to evaluate a pedagogical or instructional case
	Asking for evaluation (teacher-led)	Teacher educator guides students to evaluate, judge, or critique his utterances
Challenging (CHAL)	Challenging (by playing devil’s advocate role)	The teacher points out counterarguments, contradictions, and flaws in students’ arguments
	Praising student-led challenging	Teacher educator praises student-led utterances incorporating an argumentative manner
	Challenging (by monitoring)	Teacher educator compares and contrasts two contradictive ideas proposed by same student for internally consisting thinking
Seeking for evidence (SFE)	Praising use of evidence	Teacher educator motivates students to defend their positions by EBR
	Prompting for EBR	Teacher educator prompts students for EBR
	Referring in-text information (evidence)	Teacher educator guides students to use available evidences to support their arguments
	Asking for making attachment	Teacher educator requires students to link their propositions to main topical episodes
Checking student-led understanding about enacted TEDMs (CTDM)	Asking for the types of the enacted discursive moves	Teacher educator asks students to define which instructional moves are enacted by the teacher educator
	Asking for the discursive function of the enacted teacher-led move	Teacher educator asks student to predict the instructional services and functions of enacted instructional moves
	Reanimating a discursive move for the comprehension of the students	Teacher educator reenacts the previously being enacted instructional moves to be more tangible
	Asking for the reason of the enacted teacher-led move	Teacher educator asks students to reason about why the teacher educator enacted a specific instructional move at a particular context and timing of conversations
Concluding and naming (CONN)	Asking for assigning labels	Teacher educator requires students to find relevant labels or titles for contents their thinking
	Asking for drawing conclusions	Teacher educator promotes students to come an overarching conclusion
	Asks for using an everyday terminology	Teacher educator prompted students to use a less formalized social language
Infusing on-site negotiations into classrooms (INFU)	“What would you do in real classroom setting?” (responding diverse social languages)	Teacher educator leads students to think about real classroom circumstances in which whether being conducted instructional strategies may be transferred and successfully implemented

Note. TEDM = teacher educators’ discursive moves; EBR = evidence-based reasoning.

Findings

This study had two purposes of identifying the types of the TEDMs and revealing how the TEs handled discursive journeys when there were alternating social languages. The TEs performed a wide genre of discursive moves (Table 2), in which 10 higher-order categories and 39 subcategories were observed. Table 3 contains a sample extract displaying discursive functions of the enacted moves, talk turns, and utterances which were taken from the “Lily and Dark Room” implementation in which the PTs negotiated meaningful learning (see also details in Table 1). As shown in Table 2, the TEs staged knowledge providing and evaluating (KPE) moves by presenting logical expositions or verbal cloze (“So, we concluded that_______”). The TEs also performed evaluations of the provided responses through direct affirmation, rejection or affirmation-cum-direct instruction. For instance, in Table 3, within Turn-86, the TE initially welcomed the previously provided response (Student 2; Turn-85).

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Table 3.

An Excerpt From the Implementation “Lily and Dark Room.”

Turn	Speaker	Utterance and discursive function
80	T	Now, then let’s decide. With time, is it possible for Lily to see something in a pitch-darkness room? [Asking for draw a conclusion]
81	S1	No, she can’t see. It’s not possible. [Response]
82	TE	So, if I wait a few hours in the room, can I see something? [Embodying]
83	S1	No, it’s against the nature of humans. [Response]
84	TE	So, you’re saying that this is contrary to the nature of vision. [Reformulating]. // Then how about this: “Did Lily, the most successful student of the class, provide a logical answer to Tom, or was is irrational?” [Asking for simple comparison]
85	S2	Illogical. I mean, she can’t see at all. [Response]
86	TE	OK, illogical. [Evaluating (soft)] // Agreeing or disagreeing? Does anyone say, “Lily is right, I agree with her, and it is the same for me (I would see in a fully dark room with time like Lily).” [Asking for evaluation (case-based)]
87	S7	That’s what we said when we first read it (the case provided the PTs). But now, when we argue, I don’t think it is. [Response]
88	TE	In brief, did Lily know about it or not? Would you comment on this? [Asking for evaluation (case-based)] // Actually, we want to talk about this point. [Monitoring (on-moment)]
89	S5	Lily understood that her pupils are growing up in the dark, that’s true. This is taught in physics courses. In the first paragraph, it is stated that Lily is a very successful student. So, I guess, we thought that she was able to give the right answer. [Response]
90	TE	So, she has not learned? Or is there a true learning? [Asking for draw a conclusion]
91	S7	In fact, I’ve said that both learned and not learned. He learned because our pupils grow in the dark. So, this is learned. But she doesn’t realise she can’t see in the room. She is not aware of the accommodation. If there is a little light in the room, she would begin to see over time. Yet, in this case, it is impossible. [Response]
92	TE	But as you have noticed that she was able to explicate it scientifically. Great explanation. The description was excellent, but totally wrong as you had mentioned. So why? There are two possibilities: Lily didn’t learn or what did she learn if she acquired something? So, you can find what she said about vision phenomenon in any physics books. Why shouldn’t we call it learning? [Challenging (plays devil’s advocate role)]
93	S1	She learned a little. Because Lily enabled saying that her pupils are growing up in the dark. At least she acquired this. [Response]
94	TE	What do you say to your friend’s idea? Do you think it is reasonable? [Asking for evaluation (student-led)]
95	S4	“The growth of pupils,” yes. She’s learned something, but she hasn’t learned the result, but there’s something she learned. [Response]
96	TE	Agreeing, disagreeing? What’s the matter in the case of Lily’s learning? Let’s see your comments! [Asking for evaluation (student-led)]
97	S11	Staying in the dark room means you’re closing your eyes. The dark room is no different than closing my eyes for me. Thus, her inference is totally wrong! [Response]
98	S7	OK. We all know that the pupils grow in a reflexive way. But if there is little light in the environment, so there is something to see. We try to see in a dark room, but we can’t see due to absence of the light. [Response]
99	TE	Let’s think, then: “Let’s give 100 points to those who find the correct answer to this question. Then how many points would Lily get from this question? [Embodying]
100	S6	Zero unfortunately. [Response]
101	TE	But not! Lily explained the vision phenomenon perfectly by using technical language, as we had read in the text. Just because she did make a wrong inference, would we give her a zero? [Challenging (plays devil’s advocate role)] // Then where is the problem with Lily’s learning? [Asking for making prediction]
102	S6	Actually, it’s like learning. But it is both incomplete, incorrect and unstructured. [Response]
103	TE	But as you have discovered, her inference is a huge mistake. You said it. So, he’s learned? [Challenging (plays devil’s advocate role)]
103	S1	Lily acquired something, but she can’t reason. [Response]
104	S2	I think Lily has a misconception that is certain. [Response]
105	TE	What do you think of that? Can something like that happen? [Asking for evaluation (student-led)]
106	S1	I think she has learned, but she just misinterpreted the case. [Response]
107	TE	How could it be? I think that learning and reasoning are very related. The two support each other very much. In fact, I think we’re learning when we’re reasoning [Challenging (plays devil’s advocate role)]
108	S7	In other words, her pupils reached a sufficient size after a while in the dark room, but she could not learn as she would never see something in the dark room. [Response]
109	TE	Could you explain that a lot? [Requesting for clarification]
110	S7	So, this also suggests that she made wrong comments over the question. Yes, she does have some scientific explanations, but then she gets the wrong answer. [Response]
111	TE	What do you think on her saying? [Asking for evaluation (student-led)] // Actually, I am trying to ask about previously provided instructional process that might cause that mistake of Lily? [Monitoring (on-moment)]
112	S2	[Response]
113	TE	Let’s ask like this: If there is a problem with Lily’s learning, what is the source of this problem? [Probing]
114	S3	I think the problem is the Lily’s teacher. Her teacher had to teach this subject by prompting Lily to close her eyes. When Lily closed his eyes, she would know she didn’t see anything. [Response]
115	S8	Lily’s teacher was able to teach the information about pupils and their accommodation. But s/he (Lily’s teacher) cannot teach the terms practically. Because if she had really learned, she would think in a very simple way, and say, “I can’t see.” [Response]
116	TE	Now, there is a novel idea . . . Are your aware of this? [Monitoring (on-moment)] // What do you want to say this? Do you have a response to this new idea? [Asking for evaluation (student-led)]

Note. S1 = Student 1; TE = teacher educator.

By observe-compare-predict (OCP) moves (Table 2), the TEs directed the PTs to make simple or theory-laden observations or looked for their guesses and guided them to make simple comparisons for the proposed cases, claims, events, assertions. For example, within Turn-84 (Table 3), the TE prompted the PTs to decide whether Lily was able to provide a logical response to Tom (the classmate of Lily in the given case) or her response was unreasonable. Within Turn-101, the TE prompted the PTs to make a prediction regarding problem in the Lily’s reasoning on the vision phenomenon.

It was observed that the TEs also used communicating (COM) moves to probe, clarify, embody, and reformulate the provided responses. The main discursive purpose of the COM moves was to discern, understand, and expand the underlying conceptual intentions embedded in the PTs’ externalizations (Table 2). Within Turn-82, for the PTs to achieve a more concrete and comprehensible understanding, the TE proposed an example event to determine whether Tom (Student 1) would see something if he waited for a long time in a fully dark room. In this context, the discursive purpose was to materialize an abstract phenomenon by an embodying move (see also Turn-99, Table 3). There were times in which the TEs made reformulations of the provided responses to modify them into more intelligible utterances (Turn-84, first part of the utterance; Table 3). Furthermore, the TEs requested clarifications of the provided responses to make the background meaning clearer. As shown in Table 3, S7 uttered a response concerning why Lily was unsuccessful in learning vision phenomenon (Turn-108); then, the TE intentionally asked for further explanation for the previous response (Turn-109). The TEs tended to expand upon the PTs’ responses using probing moves. Within Turn-112, S2 provided an enlarged explication why Lily had a misinterpretation on the vision phenomenon, but the TE tried to attach this response to the teaching phenomenon with a probing move into the provided responses (Turn-113; Table 3).

The TEs performed monitoring and framing (MOF) moves (Table 2) to guide the PTs to pursue classroom happenings. The TEs developed several ways of prompting the PTs to monitor or be aware of discursive happenings. The TEs used meta-discursive moves to prompt the PTs to rethink and retalk about the previously occurred discourse (“Why we were focusing on the rote learning in explicating the case of Lily?”). The TEs also tried to focus the PTs’ attention to specific responses to maintain their cognitive engagement (“Did you hear the response from Jack, it may be important for us”). Three types of monitoring moves (on-moment, prospective, and retrospective) were specifically observed in this study. The TEs asked the PTs to be aware of past discussions, on-moment discussions, and further discussions (Table 2). For instance, for Type 1 monitoring (on-moment), within Turn-88, the TE directed the students to negotiate the problem with Lily’s learning instead of presenting technical explanations on the vision phenomenon. With this move (Turn-88), the TE explicitly demonstrated that he wanted to talk more about the teaching phenomenon through the case of Lily. The same discursive purpose can be seen within Turn-111 (Table 3). In addition, within Turn-116, the TE encouraged the PTs to regard a newly emerged idea proposed by S8 (Turn-115). Through MOF moves, the TEs presented extended summaries of the proposed ideas to show the PTs the variability of the opinions for the teaching phenomenon. To do that, the TEs deliberately selected (featured) or eliminated (ignored) specific responses from the conversations (“Neurological determinants may be discussed within another lesson, please focus more on the instructional issues in illustrating the case of Lily.”). Finally, the TEs guided the PTs to ponder on whether their initially situated hypotheses had been modified, changed, or expanded while engaging in conversations. This allowed the PTs to become conscious regarding the heterogeneity between past and present meaning positions they adopted.

By evaluating-judging-critiquing (EJC) moves (Table 2), the TEs assigned the PTs the roles of evaluators and judgers of shared responses. The TEs invited the PTs to criticize and legitimate the proposals of their classmates or the TEs. Three types of the EJC moves were observed: student-led, teacher-led, and case-based. When a student-led move was enacted, the PTs were encouraged to make comments on the proposed responses. For instance, within Turn-94, the TE opened S1’s interpretation about Lily’s learning (Turn-93; Table 3) for negotiation. Other examples of this form of move (student-led) can be seen within Turns-96, 105, 111, and 116. This type of move linked the student-led ideas to each other as they had to build on the shared responses. The TEs also prompted the PTs to make comments on the cases proposed by the TEs. Within Turn-86, the TE guided the PTs to make sense of the Lily’s case by encouraging them to engage in evaluations on the case of Lily incorporating a contradictory situation. There was also a further interrogation of the case of Lily requested by the TE (Turn-88) in terms of whether Lily acquired the vision phenomenon while she was responding awkwardly. Finally, for the third purpose, the PTs were prompted to criticize the TEs’ propositions. There was more than one evaluator, judger, or legitimator. In other words, there were coevaluators, cojudgers, or colegitimators in addition to the TEs who were not the primary knowers of the class when they deliberately shared their epistemic authority through staging EJC moves.

There were discursive intervals in which the TEs used a challenged the PTs (CHAL move) using a group of discursive moves (Table 2). The TEs chiefly played devil’s advocate role eliciting public thinking flaws, irregularities, or deficiencies from the responses of the PTs. Within Turn-91 (Table 3), S7 proposed an assertion that Lily had acquired something from the physics lessons/textbooks, but her inference (having vision in a fully dark room) was incorrect. Based on this, the TE appeared to falsify the response by advocating the idea that Lily seemed to acquire something, but as commonly accepted by the group, Lily’s inference was wrong. However, as the TE emphasized, Lily was able to provide the technical details of the vision phenomenon in scientific terms. Thus, the challenging point in terms of learning was whether the PTs would refer to this (talking scientifically) as an instance of true learning (Turn-92; Table 3). Similar uses of that kind of CHAL move can be seen in talk turns: 101, 103, and 107 in Table 3. Moreover, in some cases, the TEs praised the PTs when they adopted an argumentative/evaluative role challenging their classmates. There were also discursive events in which the TEs challenged the PTs by displaying the contrasts between their past and previous assertions. This move (challenging by monitoring) disclosed the inconsistent opinions of the PTs and allowed them to adjust or fix their opinions to be internally consistent.

The TEs enacted other discursive moves in addition to those given above. For instance, the TEs sought evidence-based reasoning (Table 2; SFE moves) when the PTs provided an unjustified claim. Moreover, the TEs tried to examine the awareness of the PTs regarding the discursive moves they (TEs) staged. The TEs monitored the PTs’ understanding concerning the types and functions of the displayed discursive moves (Table 2; CTDM moves). The TEs also searched for the positions of the PTs in terms of whether they would implement the discursive moves as conversational strategies in real classroom settings (Table 2; INFU moves). The INFU move showed the TEs the positions of the PTs regarding whether they would manage discursive journeys (from one social language to another) with young students if they could perform the discursive moves/strategies they had experienced during the implementations. The TEs compelled the PTs to draw conclusions on the shared ideas (Table 2; CONN). The PTs were promoted to draw conclusions and create labels for the intellectual outcomes. For instance, within Turn-80 (Table 3), the TE prompted the PTs to decide whether Lily would be able to see in a fully dark room over time. The TE invited the PTs to make a conclusion about relation between vision and light as they tried to discuss whether Lily had acquired vision conception from lessons (Turn-90, Table 3).

The TEDMs were diverse serving monologic and dialogic discursive purposes, or both. Using KPE moves (Table 2), being more monologically oriented, the TEs primarily revised the provided answers based on canonical science knowledge. The TEs delivered logical expositions and gave technical information or rejected some of the PTs responses. These were monologic sides of the discursive interactions; however, when the TEs made space for the PTs to contribute to the classroom discourse, there were more dialogic occurrences. In the presence of EJC moves (Table 2), the PTs contributed to the shared meanings by evaluating, judging, and critiquing the ideas of others. By assigning cojudgers, the TEs included the voices of the PTs as an indicator of multivocality that promoted dialogicness. Moreover, the CHAL moves (Table 2) were staged both monologic and dialogic purposes. These CHAL moves showed that there might be alternative thinking systems in addition to the PTs’ pretheories of teaching. Once alternative thinking-talking systems (the TEs’ views as scientific point of view) are presented, this implies the dialogicness of a conversation (Bakhtin, 1934; Mortimer & Scott, 2003), but the TEs also enacted CHAL moves to direct the PTs to adopt a more formalized conceptualization of the teaching phenomenon and novel world view may include more elucidatory power than the alternating ideas of the PTs.

There were varying proportional occurrences of the enacted TEDMs (see Table 4). First, the mean scores show that COM moves were performed more consistently (32.3%) than other moves. The TEs seemed to ensure that the members first captured underlying meanings embedded in the provided responses before taking a step further in the discursive progression. Second, on average, almost one out of four moves of the TEs (22.4%) were devoted to prompting the PTs to make a judgment, evaluation, or criticism on the responses provided or the cases presented by the TEs. Third, by MOF moves (15%), the TEs permitted the PTs to be metacognitively aware about the discursive happenings in an on-moment, retrospective, or prospective manner. The other remaining TEDMs (KPE, OCP, CHAL, SFE, CTDM, INFU, CONN; Table 4) were displayed at descending levels. Discursive journeys from a social language to another were chiefly managed by three pervasive discursive moves (M_COM + M_MOF + M_EJC = 69.7%) in the presence of the other complementary and compensatory seven TEDMs.

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Table 4.

Frequencies of the Enacted TEDMs During In-Class Implementations.

Activity	KPE	OCP	COM	MOF	EJC	CHAL	SFE	CTDM	INFU	CONN	Total
Knowledge-learning-teaching	10.2	8.6	36.84	16.88	20.83	4.72	0.83	1.1	0	2.21	100
Lily and dark room	14.42	9.84	32.78	14.76	17.04	4.27	4.27	2.29	0.33	0.33	100
Experience and learning	8.19	9.43	35.62	10.29	30.19	3.14	3.14	0	0	0	100
Teaching profession	5.84	4.16	29.16	17.5	30	9.17	3.33	0	0	0.84	100
Mr. Star	11	8	28	16	14.5	8.4	4.2	3.8	1.5	4.6	100
M	9.9	8	32.3	15	22.4	5.9	3.1	1.4	0.4	1.6	100

Note. KPE = knowledge providing and evaluating; OCP = observe-compare-predict; COM = communicating; MOF = monitoring and framing; EJC = evaluating-judging-critiquing; CHAL = challenging; SFE = seeking for evidence; CTDM = checking student-led understanding about enacted TEDMs; INFU = infusing on-site negotiations into classroom; CONN = concluding and naming. Bold and shaded values display the mostly enacted discursive moves.

Discussion and Conclusion

This study raised several salient points to be interpreted in the context of university-based classroom discourse. To manage in-class social negotiations of meanings, the TEs enacted diversifying qualities of the discursive moves. Both more monologically oriented and dialogically oriented TEDMs were observed. Indeed, there was a pragmatist combination or coexistence of the TEDMs. In this study, the implementations were planned and conducted as open-ended and close-ended discursive processes. Open-endedness signifies that the TEs were responsible for acknowledging and making apparent the PTs’ (respectively) alternating conceptions of teaching that might differ from the scientific point view. Close-endedness implies that the TEs held university-based scholarly accountabilities and, if needed, the PTs needed to be convinced that there might be alternative explanations to the teaching phenomenon and the alternatives being introduced might be more illustrating in shedding light on the phenomenon within appropriate contexts.

In this study, each activity can be considered as a discursive journey in which there were several back-and-forth processes requiring specific combinations of the monologically oriented and dialogically oriented TEDMs. There were discursive events similar to a brainstorming activity as the TEs were in pursuit of determining the variance in the provided responses. These times were more visible during the initial negotiation cycles (initiating-developing phase) and incorporated cumulative talk (Mercer, 2000). Indeed, there was low interanimation (Mortimer & Scott, 2003) of the ideas as the TEs did not tend to rigorously interrogate the student-proposed ideas. Within initiating-developing phase, there was a propagation of the PTs’ ideas and there was less space for the jargons of university science. In searching the diversification of the ideas, the TEs staged COM moves by probing, clarifying, and embodying the responses observed also in other studies (e.g., Tytler & Aranda, 2015). These were more open-ended discursive events, but the TEs had to introduce new ways of thinking-talking regarding teaching phenomenon.

For instance, the TEs first gathered, then collapsed, and finally summarized the PTs’ ideas through MOF moves. The TEs utilized the MOF moves as a semipermeable filtration system. The TEs consolidated the proposed ideas by emphasizing a few ideas or selecting specific opinions while ignoring/excluding others. The excluded ideas of the PTs were either out-of-scope propositions or those that were less explanatory. Thus, the TEs kept in mind that they had to enrich the PTs’ conceptions of teaching by introducing alternative ways of thinking-talking, or if needed, by challenging the PTs’ existing presuppositions.

The TEs held also university-based disciplinary norms. Thus, there were discursive events in which a more authoritatively oriented stance was taken by the TEs. This was needed as the PTs seemed to be comfortable with their existing perceptions for the teaching phenomenon. The TEs adopted the roles of a discussant and negotiator through CHAL moves (Simon et al., 2006) to demonstrate to the PTs that there might be shallow or fallacious points in their utterances that should be revised, enriched, or altered. Moreover, by EJC moves, the TEs pushed the PTs to be accountable to others (the TEs, the classmates) and to disciplinary norms (Engle & Conant, 2002). In addition, the TEs sought evidence in the given responses to encourage the PTs to be more credible to the others as evaluators, judgers, and legitimators of the negotiations. Furthermore, the TEs intentionally prompted the PTs to produce relevant labels/titles for the contents of their thinking (Table 2; CONN moves). Simply put, in the latest cycles of the negotiations (finalizing-reviewing), the TEs allowed for the jargon of university science to be included.

The observed diversity in the TEDMs appeared to be a core requirement of the negotiations. In the discursive journeys, there was a tangible discursive tension that

exists between authoritative and dialogic approaches as dialogic exchanges are followed by authoritative interventions (to develop the canonical scientific view), and the authoritative introduction of new ideas is followed by the opportunity for dialogic application and exploration of those ideas. In these ways, one communicative approach follows from the other, authoritativeness acting as a seed for dialogicity and vice versa. (Scott, Mortimer, & Aguiar 2006, p. 605)

In responding to the discursive tensions, the TEs seemed to consider both student-led preconceptions and social languages of university science within different times of the classroom discourse. This demanded a diversity in the TEDMs, proving a pragmatic value for teaching how to teach. There was dialectical teaching when the TEs enacted various qualities of the discursive moves. To some extent, the TEs seemed to make room for the PTs who spoke up more in the presence of timely enacted moves; for instance, COM moves. Moreover, there was greater epistemic weight on the side of the PTs when the TEs enacted; for instance, EJC moves. However, this was not the case when the TEs stepped back into the role of a facilitator as there were both engagements of the PTs and the TEs’ authoritative interventions (Alexander, 2005, 2006).

As mentioned, three discursive moves (COM, MOF, EJC; Table 4) occurred pervasively. Figure 1 presents a diagram to demonstrate how the TEs staged these three prominent discursive moves to promote the PTs to coconstruct the alternative meanings.

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 1.

Individual-based transformation of socially shared verbalizations for internalization.

In Figure 1, the teaching phenomenon symbolized as a metaphorical shape of a triangle, representing the formalized teaching conceptualization of the TEs (social language of university science). This figure shows there may be different understandings (the PTs’ alternative conceptions) of the teaching phenomenon. By considering alternating thinking-talking, the TEs had tried to introduce an alternative thinking-talking system to the PTs. In other words, within the teaching agenda of the TEs, the teaching phenomenon resembles a smooth triangle. However, the PTs engaged in some alternative thinking-talking (Figure 1). For instance, in terms of Student 1’s understanding, there are parts that are compatible with the TEs’ social languages. There are also incompatible parts in Student 1’s understanding when it is compared with the TEs’ understanding. Student 1’s understanding resembles a star instead of a triangle in the presence of incompatible parts. Student 2 developed an understanding for the teaching phenomenon, but it resembles an upside-down triangle (Figure 1). Student 3 has a different understanding of teaching phenomenon resembling a more formalized triangle (the TEs’ representation as a smooth triangle) more than other representations (Student 1, Student 2).

The representations of Students 1 to 3 are not completely wrong or cannot be considered as misconceptions. These only represent alternative thinking-talking about the teaching phenomenon but should be modified (Student 1), changed (Student 2), or expanded (Student 3). From the Vygotskian perspective, the alternating social language of the PTs, symbolized in Figure 1, should not be seen as misinterpretations regarding the teaching phenomenon. During the implementations, a more formalized social language regarding teaching phenomenon was introduced, but it was not the only acceptable way of talking about the phenomenon; the PTs also provided other acceptable modes of expressions.

The TEs possessed an awareness that the PTs might be immersed in everyday ways of thinking that may be alternating. Thus, at the outset, the PTs’ differentiating thinking had to be known and explicit for their thinking to be modified, shifted, or enlarged. To obtain broader information about the everyday social languages of the PTs, the TEs seemed to perform the COM moves that served understanding, comprehending, reillustrating, or discerning the provided utterances. The TEs were also aware that as Vygotsky (1934/1987) theorized, the PTs’ everyday social languages might be spontaneous in the sense that they might be stored without conscious reflection and thought. Thus, it was imperative to show the PTs that there may be alternative explanation systems of a phenomenon like teaching, but first their initial understanding of the existing everyday social languages had to be visible chiefly through COM moves. As mentioned above, the PTs provided scenarios (Table 1) through their everyday thinking-talking styles as the main intellectual resource that had to be uncovered and released by mainly COM moves for the classroom discourse to progress.

Once the class members apprehended each other’s meaning positions, they would be able to make evaluative comments on the provided responses in the presence of the EJC moves. In addition, in discursive journeys, there had to be a conscious tracking of the discursive happenings as possible for the PTs in the presence of the MOF moves.

From the Vygotskian perspective, from the beginning to the end of an instructional process, there should be a joint participation in the intellectual and practical actions (Rogoff, 1990; Wegerif, 2008). In the classroom, joint thinking/interthinking (Mercer, Wegerif, & Dawes, 1999) requires more student–student exchanges. In this study, this was visible in the presence of the frequently enacted EJC moves. By performing EJC moves, the TEs attached one utterance to others because the PTs were guided to evaluate, judge, criticize, or legitimate the previously uttered responses. Once the TEs increased the occurrences of the EJC moves, the PTs had to take increasing responsibility for their own learning as coevaluators or colegitimators (Lave & Wenger, 1991).

This also means that the PTs’ initial understandings of teaching (Figure 1) were not only revised, altered, or enlarged by the TEs, but also the PTs were in action in grasping (Student 1’s initial understanding; Figure 1), fixing (Student 2’s initial understanding; Figure 1), or adding to (Student 3’s initial understanding; Figure 1) others’ opinions in the presence of the EJC moves. As reported by other studies (e.g., van der Veen, van Kruistum, & Michaels, 2015), the PTs exceeded the limits of their own social languages when they were able to consider each other’s contributions seriously and think together that was realistic in the presence of the EJC moves. When the TEs staged the EJC moves, as Bereiter (1994) described, the PTs were willing to understand each other, modify, or expand their own comprehensions, interrogate each other’s assertions. In Figure 1, the gray lines show that the alternating thinking of the PTs were continuously reshaped by the PTs when the TEs invited them to participate in a conversation that made possible the process of interthinking and elaboration on others’ predicates as confirmed in other studies (Mercer et al., 1999).

Wegerif (2008) defined this process as generating spaces for creative reflection. In the context of this study, the PTs were provided with a dialogic space in which they reflected on others’ meanings that were collectively attached to the phenomenon under negotiation. As presented in Figure 1, in the presence of the EJC moves, there were diversified meaning positions ensuring an intersubjective negotiation orientation that facilitated the PTs to stimulate, revise, modify, or shift others’ predicates to cross the boundaries of their initial everyday social languages (Wegerif, 2008) regarding the teaching phenomenon. The German philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer (2004) had a similar approach to this point, arguing that once creative reflection is ensured, one’s own situated prepositions (spontaneous concepts of teaching) and ideas that are shaped culturally and historically (social languages of the PTs about teaching) are negotiated in the reciprocal dialogues that are mediated by the EJC moves shown in this study. When the TEs assigned the PTs as co-authorities as evaluators, judgers, and legitimators, they sought not only to reflect upon others’ prepositions but also to capture the meaning of another (Gadamer, 2004). Thus, there was “an inclusive ‘space’ of dialogue within which self and others mutually construct and reconstruct each other” (Wegerif, 2008, p. 353; italics added) by virtue of the EJC moves as presented in Figure 1.

In Vygotskian terms, meaning-making operates in two planes: intermental and intramental (Vygotsky, 1978). In this study, on the intermental plane, the TEs tried to make overt the PTs’ alternating modes of thinking through mostly the COM moves. In addition, the EJC moves were enacted to provide the social sources of the meaning (re)formation. Following social negotiations of the meanings on the intermental plane, the PTs were internalizing the socially shared ideas. The development of the meanings was simultaneously individual and social (John-Steiner & Mahn, 1996) as proposed (Vygotsky, 1934/1987). Socially shared ideas about teaching phenomenon were appropriated by the PTs. The intellectual purpose of the PTs was to achieve awareness that there is a more formalized social language that may be alternative to their own social language. However, the internalization of a novel social language cannot be a transfer of factual knowledge. Instead, the PTs were required to internalize a version of the socially shared ideas for their own personalized aims. Thus, the products of internalized processes would vary in different PTs.

In the context of the current study, the MOF moves might be enacted in the internalizations of the PTs. As mentioned above, when the TEs performed the MOF moves, the PTs had to ponder about the following questions:

When the PTs responded to these questions using background reasoning, they were internalizing socially shared ideas transforming them into more purposeful and individualized mental structures. Through the MOF moves, the TEs provided the PTs with an (in)direct form of consciousness; then, over time, they gained their own consciousness and control (Bruner, 1985) about classroom happenings. For instance, once the PTs were asked about mind-change, they were guided to juxtapose their initial and novel meaning positions. Thus, not only were the PTs’ concepts of teaching revised, expanded, or modified, but also they created a version of internalized consciousness for controlling or monitoring the revisions, expansions, or changes they made to their initial ideas. As shown in Figure 1, each student’s internalization would be different:

The above examples of background reasoning were more expected with the aid of MON moves prompting the PTs to monitor and frame both classroom happenings and their mind-changes. In the Vygotskian manner, as Leontiev (1981) indicated that “the process of internalisation is not the transferral of an external activity to a preexisting, ‘internal plane of consciousness’: it is the process in which this plane is formed” (p. 57). To sum up, individual PTs had to make sense of the verbalizations that surrounded them. Then, the PTs were expected to relate the shared externalizations to their existing ways of thinking or their situated social languages. Finally, the PTs had to reorganize/reconstruct the shared ideas of the social plane in reoperating them for individualized purposes. This indicates that there was a discursive journey or interplay between alternating social languages and this kind of discursive journey may be managed by specific combinations of the TEDMs revealed and reported in this study.

Recommendations

The goal of the study was to exemplify how two TEs’ managed discursive journeys by staging specific TEDMs in a combined, systematic, and pragmatist manner. By collecting, analyzing, and interpreting video-based data, we tried to gain a different understanding and consciousness of the typologies and effects of our discursive moves. The same processes are considered to be valid for other TEs. To construct a tangible meta-awareness for the TEDMs, TEs should be involved in specifically designed and implemented professional development processes. Following Schon’s (1983; 1987) recommendations, during professional development processes, in improving their skills as self-reflective practitioners, TEs should engage in self-reflections on multilayered aspects of their discursive moves by systematic observations and theory-based evaluations as modeled in this study. Methodologically, this would be more attainable through stimulated-recall sessions as the core part of several self-reflective professional development attempts.