......
The focus of his interest is akin to Marty's emphasis on the 'genre
context' of teacher questions: he looks at longer sequences to see to what
extent teachers follow-up on student answers and contributions in ways that
make the dialogue more truly reciprocal and not simply alternating. That
is, students would have a greater degree of thematic control of the
discussion than is typical in normal IRF known-answer triadic patterns.
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Gordon: What is the implications of using the phrase IRF versus
IRE (Initiation-Response-Feedback) vs (Initiation-Response-
Evaluation) that comes from Mehan et al work?
Jay: In light of all the difficulties identified with arguing
that any practice is good in any non-local sense, who cares
if greater thematic control occurs? Any warrants for claims that
a practice is good beyond local cultural norms (where means
a given community I guess, although use of the term community
is frought, afterall, what is a community? Right?
(What I am asking for here is clarifaction of what is at issue
in talking about values attached to educational forms and functions)
mike