Paths to Participation in Classroom Conversations

✍ Scribed by David Poveda

• Book ID: 104353915
• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 2003
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 551 KB
• Volume: 14
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0898-5898
• DOI: 10.1016/s0898-5898(03)00007-x

✦ Synopsis

This paper examines the trajectories of four children during la ronda, a common speech event in Spanish preschools in which children are invited to present a telling of their own personal experience to the rest of the class. The children were selected for analysis because they reflect the diversity in verbal performance (from reticence to verbosity) and cultural background (Spanish Gypsies, Spanish non-Gypsies and immigrant pupils) that teachers currently face in many Spanish schools. The analysis centers on the nature and development of the children's activity during la ronda, in light of the interpretation that the teacher built of their behavior. It is argued that the teacher used two basic interpretive frameworks: individual and cultural differences, and that these discourses had a differential effect on the trajectories of each child, even if the children's performance could be seen as initially similar in several aspects.