Pedagogic Discourse in the Post-Compulsory Years: Pedagogic Subject Positioning

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Abstract

In this article, Christie adopts the position that classroom teaching–learning activity may be thought of as staged and purposeful, leading to the creation of classroom genres. She argues key findings regarding the general principles for the operation of a pedagogic discourse, the features distinctive to the instructional register being drawn upon, the pedagogic subject position in each school curriculum area included in the dataset, and the kind of oral and written language used in the classroom. Additionally, Christie examines the data within what she describes as a cline that highlights remarkable shifts in language and literacy use and in the use of associated semiotic systems across the studies subjects.

Section snippets

Background Data

In this study, I was given data that were collected in an Australian rural high school. I was asked to focus on a student I shall call “Stephen,” in the course of lessons in English, biological science, agricultural science, and the Certificate in Rural Skills. Classroom episodes were recorded in October 1996 when Simon was in Year 11, and again in May 1997 when he was in Year 12. These episodes featured Stephen's class in interaction with eight different teachers. Apart from video clips from

Some Methodological Constraints

I commenced my study with several assumptions and approaches in mind, drawn from classroom discourse analysis in both the primary and the secondary school Christie, 1989, Christie, 1991a, Christie, 1991b, Christie, 1994, Christie, 1995a, Christie, 1995b, Christie, 1995c, Christie, 1996, Christie, 1997, Christie, 1998, Christie, 1999. These are explained below, though I abandoned several aspects of the planned methodology because of difficulties I encountered.

One difficulty concerned the concept

Some Methodological Considerations

The methodology I would normally use provided the theoretical framework adopted. This methodology draws partly on Halliday's (1994) systemic functional (SF) grammar, theories of genre as proposed by Martin and others (see, e.g., Christie & Martin, 1997) and Bernstein, 1990, Bernstein, 1996 sociological theories regarding the operation of a pedagogic discourse. I propose that teaching–learning activity, like other complex social activity, may be thought of as staged and purposeful, leading to

The Teaching Episodes in Year 11

In Year 11, the teaching episodes involved teaching and learning (1) building a farm fence (from rural science), (2) horse reproduction (from agricultural science), (3) the reproductive cycle of the kangaroo (from biological science), and (4) talking about the influence of popular films and TV programs on children's socialization, and preparing to write an essay about it (from English).

If we arrange the four episodes thus, there is a cline, showing a remarkable series of shifts in language and

The Teaching Episodes in Year 12

Many of the observations I would want to make about Year 12 are not very different from those for Year 11 and I shall not discuss them in comparable detail. In the rural science episode, Stephen and three other students are in a farm shed, where they have completed a welding project. Stephen is asked to ring firms to find one willing to repair the hoses on some oxy-acetylene equipment. The agricultural science activity involves a male teacher and the students in a classroom; they are asked to

Some Concluding Observations

The discussion has shown that there are significant differences across the four disciplines sampled, though whether the differences identified relate uniquely to the post-compulsory years, rather than the years of secondary education generally, is doubtful.

Rural science, at least on the evidence of the small sample examined, is most practical in its orientations, involving students in a range of “hands-on” tasks, necessitating some considerable skill, demanding appropriate patterns of oral

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