Studies on Participation Structure in Classroom Communication

The purpose of this paper is to examine the characteristics, particularly the method of probing the characteristics, of the participation of teacher and students in classroom discourse.A class is not only a cognitive process but also a social process in which the participants build a relationship mediated by knowledge and words.The key concept is "participation structure" which was introduced by Erickson.The concept can be defined as the rights and obligations of participants concerning who can say what, when and to whom.The studies of participation structure so far have primarily explained that different expectations about communication patterns caused trouble in an interactive phase between the teacher and students.However, in this paper, I would like to search for new possibilities in the study of participation structure on the basis of the following two viewpoints.In the first place, the viewpoint and the method in the studies of participation structure are not limited to the elucidation of static communication patterns intermingling in a classroom.With a change in the context, as Erickson put it, the roles of participants are redistributed to produce a different configuration in a concerted action.Therefore, by paying attention to such points, the studies of participation structure lead us to the examination of the phase where classroom conversation develops through improvisation.A minute change in the participation structure in an individual classroom can be observed through such strategies as taking a turn at talk, timing and forming of the "conversational floor" (Shults, Erickson and Florio, 1982).By looking into the improvisational development in a classroom conversation, a complex process can be analyzed, in which children positively make up a situation and in which teachers use various strategies for organizing communication.In the second place, there is the problem of connecting participation structure to academic content.In the conventional studies of participation structure, the conversational rule was to be structured to simplify the task environment, so that a function was fulfilled enabling concentration on academic content.However, a relationship between a discourse in a classroom and academic content is more complex in actuality.In a "discussion" in a classroom as shown by Cazden, it was a foreseeable matter what is relevant to the topics increased weight in the improvisational conversation.In Lampert′s studies, participation structure is redefined to be the arrangement of rights and duties, in a discussion of determining "what is regarded as knowledge and how it is acquired".Through the formation of such participation structure, the authority for deciding valid knowledge is shifted from the teacher to the discourse community of children.Simultaneously, it reveals a complex part of a teacher′s role to form and maintain the discourse community.