The Turn of the Page: teacher education and researching classroom talk around literature

John Gordon

This webinar, recorded on the 16th of September, 2020, has been organized by SOLD Research environment at Mälardalen University (Sweden), Department of Language and Literature. The webinar is part of a seminar series organized by SOLD.

The title of the webinar is "The Turn of the Page: teacher education and researching classroom talk around literature". The talk attracted researchers and university teachers from around the world (14 different countries), as well as local teachers from Sweden, mainly from Västerås and Eskilstuna.
John's talk partly drew on his article published in Classroom Discourse journal (Routledge). The article can be downloaded at https://doi.org/10.1080/19463014.2019.1665562 .


Abstract
This presentation shares research investigating the interplay of texts and talk in literary studies. Skilful presentation of novels by teachers creates unique reading experiences, bridging shared exploration of texts and individual response. Teachers shape a dual experience for students, managing students’ public encounter with novels and guiding their growth as ‘embryonic critics’. The presentation a) describes research methods adapting conversation analysis to account for the ‘turn of the page’ in discussion and teacher exposition; b) shares classroom data; and c) outlines recent activity at five UK universities using transcripts to inform teacher education.

Bio
Dr John Gordon is Reader in English Education at the University of East Anglia. His research focusses on oral narration, literature and their relationship with interaction, learning and pedagogy. He is a teacher and teacher-educator of over twenty-five years’ experience, and currently leads a Master’s course in Shared Literary Reading. His book Researching Interpretive Talk around Literary Narrative Texts: Shared Novel Reading (Routledge), published in autumn 2020, follows A Pedagogy of Poetry: through the poems of W.B.Yeats (IoE/Trentham) and Teaching English in Secondary Schools (Sage). https://people.uea.ac.uk/john_gordon