Investigating Teacher Talk Moves in Lessons on Basic Genetics Concepts in a Teacher Education Classroom

Recent reforms in science education highlight the need for student-centred approaches to teaching in school curriculum policy in South Africa. Science teachers are required to move away from traditional teacher-centred practices which regard students as mere passive recipients of knowledge. In this study, we examine classroom talk for the type of student participation encouraging moves employed in lessons on basic genetics concepts and the related quality of instructional strategies employed by a university lecturer during a semester course on genetics. A key feature of the course was the lecturer's use of students' prior knowledge including alternative conceptions from a diagnostic assessment to facilitate the learning of pertinent genetics terminologies. Through a qualitative approach, we combine two recently published frameworks--the "Analysing Teacher Moves (ATM)" and the "Elaboration" frameworks--to analyse teacher talk from transcribed videoed lectures and explore the likely influence on student participation. The findings reveal two dominant student participation stimulating talk-related instructional strategies that seemed to elicit diverse and deeper responses from the students. These include higher-order "initiating" and "rejoinder" moves, supplemented by "other" moves, through which the lecturer provided students with factual information, often in a manner that enabled knowledge synthesis. The intentional use of open-ended questions, explanations and representations and probing students for further contributions signal deliberate pedagogic intentions to promote student interaction while navigating observed language proficiency challenges. The combined analysis framework is recommended for use in future studies on instructional practices which aim to promote fruitful classroom interaction.