Analysis model of dialogue in educational activity in the classroom

Abstract

This article presents a model to analyze classroom dialogue between teachers and students as part of teaching and learning. The proposal is supported by sociocultural theory and aims to contribute to our understanding of the way productive dialogue leads to academic success in school settings. Teaching and learning are conceived as social practices enacted through dialogue between teachers and students, where teachers promote ways of thinking and problem solving by using tools as blackboard and notebooks and semiotic devices as tables and drawings. The model integrates activity theory originally proposed by Leont’ev with the concepts of genre and register in systemic-functional linguistics to analyze dialogue in the context of school activity. The functioning of the model is illustrated with the analysis of a sequence of turns in a lesson on evolutionary theory taking place in a secondary school in Mexico City.