The first stop occurred when researchers and teacher-researchers in the article seem to suggest that revoicing as "something that all teachers should do when they teach." Isn't this one of the things that we, as teachers, do with or without knowing much about research findings on revoicing? Isn't this what we do on a daily basis when we interact with one another? The renewed research interests in "the idea of revoicing as a potentially powerful discourse" appears to be led by university researchers. In this case, teachers were involved as participants in the research and so, approaching from Kilpatrick's point of view, findings from this research may positively influence school practice.
"Context" seems to be in the way of many research findings. May be this the beauty of qualitative research when studying the lived-experiences of the participants in their day-to-day lives. That is, any interpretation of a study's outcome "depends" on so many factors.
"Context" seems to be in the way of many research findings. May be this the beauty of qualitative research when studying the lived-experiences of the participants in their day-to-day lives. That is, any interpretation of a study's outcome "depends" on so many factors.
See, my stop occurred when reading your comment! My mathematics teachers (and certainly not university math professors) didn't use re-voicing in the classroom as part of their instruction... on one hand, this would have opened up a great deal of discussion and fluidity in the classroom instruction. On the other hand, I wonder if it is necessarily the job of the teacher to re-voice? Although I am sure re-voicing enriches discussion, is there a way for students re-voice, or at least, moderate each other's questions? It sounds as though the teacher would use the questions obtained in class discourse to further explain certain concepts, is there room for students to develop their questions to become more independent in discussions and conclusions?
ReplyDeleteWe, as educators, frequently revoice our students' ideas to motivate a particular concept in question and to maintain their interest in the topic. This technique allows teachers and students to co-construct knowledge and lets students evaluate their own mathematical understandings. The authors clearly point out that whether we revoice aptly through repeating, rephrasing and expanding students' ideas, we may sometimes be faced with unintended results of our revoicing.
ReplyDeleteI remember that last year I met a teacher in one of my courses at UBC. He is an experienced non-native English speaker who teaches ESL English in an education centre. When he first learned about revoicing, he used it to teach his ESL students in his English lessons. Unfortunately, his revoicing led his students to think that his English skills were not up to standard. They filed complaints about him to the principal which eventually cost his job. This story may suggest that we need to be very careful in using revoicing as a teaching technique.