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Talking About Teaching Episodes

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Abstract

This paper examines two types of discourse in which teachers engage when discussing case studies based on classroom episodes, and the ways in which the availability of video data of these episodes may motivate a shift in the mode of discourse used. We interviewed two pairs of secondary school mathematics teachers after they had read a case study based on a 16-minute mathematics classroom episode taped in a secondary school in the United States. During each interview, a multimedia version of the case study, including video of the original episode, was available to the participants. We identify two modes of discourse engaged in by the teachers during the interviews: Grounded Narrative and Evaluative Discourse. We examine and identify the characteristics of the two discourse forms, drawn from both video and textual analysis. These characteristics are self-reflective talk, perspective, ethics, and linguistic patterns. The identification of two modes of discourse is relevant for researchers and teacher educators using case studies or video recordings. In addition, the findings provide insight into how teachers are “seeing” classroom events in a video case study.

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Correspondence to Ricardo Nemirovsky.

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Nemirovsky, R., DiMattia, C., Ribeiro, B. et al. Talking About Teaching Episodes. J Math Teacher Educ 8, 363–392 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10857-005-3848-3

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