Teacher Discourse and Students’ Participation

Despite the growing interest in teacher evaluation in Korea, not much is known about how teachers use classroom discourse to scaffold student learning during class. This study was designed to examine the interactional architecture of classroom discourse both quantitatively and qualitatively and present a possible evaluation model of teacher classroom discourse applicable to current Korean educational settings. Findings were summarized in three: (1) although there was no big difference between the numbers of teacher and student turns, the teacher produced much more words in each turn, (2) the primary pattern of teacher discourse was identified as questions, and (3) because most of teacher questions were at lower cognitive complexity levels, such questions seem to fail to provide students with opportunities to construct their thoughts for responding to the questions, and elicited less students’ participation. Through the analysis of the highly teacher-centered class, we found that teacher-centered discourse may negatively affect students’ ways of thinking and participation. Pedagogical implications and limitations are also presented in this paper.