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Student use of narrative and paradigmatic forms of talk in elementary science conversations
Author(s) -
Kurth Lori A.,
Kidd Raymond,
Gardner Roberta,
Smith Edward L.
Publication year - 2002
Publication title -
journal of research in science teaching
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.067
H-Index - 131
eISSN - 1098-2736
pISSN - 0022-4308
DOI - 10.1002/tea.10046
Subject(s) - narrative , competence (human resources) , expression (computer science) , science education , narrative inquiry , qualitative research , psychology , population , sociology , pedagogy , mathematics education , linguistics , social psychology , social science , computer science , philosophy , demography , programming language
The purpose of this work was to examine and characterize student use of narrative and paradigmatic expression in elementary science discourse. This interpretive study occurred over a 2‐year period in a professional development school with a largely international population. This analysis focused on the narrative and paradigmatic modes of expression used by combined first–second‐ and second‐grade students in a semistructured, fairly autonomous, whole‐class conversational format. Students demonstrated competence with both modes of talk at the beginning of the year. Over time, students moved toward more paradigmatic talk, but narrative examples continued to be key components of the science conversations. Topically, students used narrative more often for life sciences and paradigmatic talk for physical sciences. For gender there were no qualitative differences in narrative or paradigmatic expression. However, boys obtained more opportunities to practice their use of both discourse forms by either receiving more speaking turns or expressing more language features per turn. These conversations show that narrative and paradigmatic modes in science need not be in opposition but can, in fact, be used together in complementary ways that are mutually enhancing. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 39: 793–818, 2002