Abstract
In this article, we narrow our investigation to the talk provided by one teacher in the exploration phase of a primary school science project. The exploration phase warrants attention given its role in providing students with a common base of science activities that draws on their prior knowledge. We examine lesson excerpts from a grant-winning primary years science teacher who sets up her Year 3 students to explore garden ecosystems. The study’s analytic framework is derived from Systemic Functional Linguistics and focuses on the way the teacher uses certain aspects of ideational, interpersonal and textual functions to mediate between the instructional and regulative discourses. Our findings show that the teacher orientated to the regulative discourse to provide students with access to an instructional discourse. Additionally, the teacher used a significant number of pronouns for signalling, and sequencing connectives that flowed on to a significant number of complex noun groups. We draw attention to the range of speech functions and comment on their role in school science lessons.
About the authors
Megan Oats is an experienced early years and primary school classroom teacher and sessional lecturer in literacies education with the School of Education and Professional Studies at Griffith University, Australia. She completed a Master of Education degree at the Queensland University of Technology, specialising in language and literacy practices in the primary school disciplinary fields. She is currently a learning support teacher in a suburban primary school in regional Toowoomba.
Beryl Exley is an experienced early and middle years classroom teacher and now a professor in literacies education with the School of Education and Professional Studies at Griffith University, Australia. She is an experienced higher degree research supervisor and has published over 100 articles on literacy learning and teaching in the primary school years and on initial teacher education in Australia. She is the immediate past National President of the Australian Literacy Educators’ Association (ALEA).
Transcription Conventions
? – indicates voice inflection
! – indicates voice is raised
(….) – notations provided by the researchers
bold – indicates head noun in functional analysis
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