Example Session

This example aims to give you a flavour of how CD discourse provides support in helping a Speaker develop ideas about practice. The transcript of the full session can be found at http://www.education.bham.ac.uk/staff/profiles/mann_s_thesis_vol2_transcripts.doc

In this session Vince is preparing for a conference presentation. The relationship between planning and communication is being explored. In this first extract from early in the session, Vince introduces the topic:

Nick's Understander move (032) is doing two things. It is clarifying the emerging focus ('where we are now.the first area of topic focus') and it is Reflecting back key elements and giving the Speaker a chance to 'hear back' a version.

Vince goes on from this early exchange to more fully explore his ideas and preference for ways of working with a group that are not planned but prepared. He arrived at this distinction by working through a number of related issues and stages:

• He opened by articulating a feeling that when he is very planned then he feels stress (see extract above)
• He realized that his preference for improvisation may be connected to his teaching because he feels that the students are more involved (i.e. they help to direct the process).

The following is an extract where the Understanders (Ellie and Helen) help him to articulate an understanding of how planning can make him less responsive as a teacher. It builds on the idea of involvement, noticing and responding to, signals from the students:

Ellie and Helen's Reflecting moves help Vince to move to the next stage in his thinking:

• He thinks this 'connection' with the students helps facilitate a more 'in the moment' communicative event.
• He make a distinction between planning time for students (in order to help facilitate on-task communication) and planning done by the teacher before the session.

In the next extract you can see how stage 5 (above) leads him to consider the relationship between planning and communicative events. Here, he makes a clear distinction between the way his preferred classroom methodology has evolved and the role within a task-based methodology for planning time for students:

• He remembers a distinction he has heard of between (task) tension which can help and tenseness which does not. There is a helpful amount of 'tension' for him in not over-planning a session. There is 'tenseness' if he does plan to high degree.
• There is an outcome for him in that he clarifies a distinction between being prepared (i.e. having things I could do) and being planned, which directs and often inhibits a communicative event.

Through similar stages, the Speaker shapes experiential knowledge by making distinctions, connections, extensions and clarifications. The extracts above provide examples of how Understanders support the Speaker's articulation. The motivation for this kind of Understander move is twofold:

• It is a chance for the Understander to confirm that she is on the same wavelength. This motivation is to enable the Speaker to hear a version of what has been said.
• The Understander may not be sure that she is on the same wavelength. Here the motivation is to enable the Understander to carry on properly understanding.

Vince develops a distinction between prepared and planned. A few moments later, Nick is able to 'understand' this distinction:

This gets an enthusiastic endorsement in line 186 and, once this distinction is resolved, it leads immediately to a related idea and this movement is explicitly signalled by 'another thought hits me'. This kind of explicit signalling is common when Speakers feel that they are having 'new' thoughts. There is a sense of momentum which builds up and often a sense of excitement.

The above description gives some idea of how Understanders use CD moves to keep the focus directed on the Speaker's emerging focus.