Oracy in the Classroom: Policy, Pedagogy, and Group Oral Work

Autor: Moira Inghilleri, Roger Hewitt
Rok vydání: 1993
Předmět:
Zdroj: Anthropology Education Quarterly. 24:308-317
ISSN: 1548-1492
0161-7761
DOI: 10.1525/aeq.1993.24.4.04x0062j
Popis: Currently in the United States, researchers and educators are emphasizing the importance of classroom talk as a means to a particular instructional goal, while in the United Kingdom, speaking and listening skills in themselves are being foregrounded as a site of pedagogic activity. The effect of such legitimation has not been fully investigated however, and in the U.K. setting, it is not always clear what the aims and purposes of a particular oral activity are. Based on observations in six inner-London schools, we consider how such ambiguities of purpose are reflected in official oracy policy, in the design of classroom activities, and at the level of discourse organization. In the United States, attention is currently being given to the importance of talk and its relationship to thinking and learning in the classroom (Cazden 1988; Dyson 1989; Hynds and Rubin 1990). Of special concern is enculturating students from diverse cultural backgrounds into schoolbased discourse norms in particular content areas such as mathematics and science. Teachers here are being encouraged to include oral group work, discussion, and other forms of classroom talk which support higher-order thinking and collaborative learning. By and large, however, oral work activities in U.S. classrooms take place on an ad hoc basis and primarily in schools concerned with innovating within the curriculum. And it is primarily the instrumental role of talk that has been treated as important while little emphasis has been placed on talking skills as in themselves deserving attention. In the U.K., educational concerns for the development of communicative, expressive, and intellectual abilities have led to the conducting and assessment of oral work in English classrooms. There it has been determined that the communicative skills demanded by these activities should be specifically taught to students, and thus oral language itself is foregrounded as a site of pedagogic activity. And this interest in talk has
Databáze: OpenAIRE
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