What's the use of “triadic dialogue”?: Activity theory, conversation analysis, and analysis of pedagogical practices

Abstract

Developing research methodologies to both understand and describe instructional communication has been a major topic in educational research literature. A key area of study is classroom discourse analysis or classroom interactional analysis. This area covers a wide range of studies that focuses on different aspects of classroom phenomena, depending on the researcher's interest. Interesting as they are, the discourse analysis methods employed in these studies tend to focus more on microanalysis of teacher–student communication/student–student interactions and relationships than on the holistic description and understanding of pedagogical practices and why they are difficult to change. Other quantitative tools (e.g., various classroom-behaviour coding systems) also tend to be piecemeal or fragmented in nature and might not help teachers to capture the dynamics or a holistic view of their pedagogical practices. In this article the analytical tools offered by activity theory and conversation analysis will be drawn upon to develop some practical research tools for conducting analysis of pedagogical practices. I will discuss how some of the activity-theory and conversation-analysis analytical tools can help educational researchers and teachers to both gain a deeper understanding of their pedagogical practices and to analyse for any inherent contradictions and tensions in their practices that could serve as an entry point for initiating pedagogical change to better achieve the educational goals in specific contexts.