Cazden 1988

Cazden, Courtney B. 1988.Classroom discourse: The language of teaching and learning. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. 230 pages. 0435084453. (Summary based on essay review by Bredo, Henry, and McDermott 1991.)

Deals with instructional and conversational language interchanges between teachers and students in classrooms in the United States. Discusses orientation in terms of minority students: the "cultural deficit" view and the "cultural difference" view.

Is divided into three main sections, centering on the propositional, social, and expressive functions of discourse:

• "Talk with the teacher" focuses on how cultural demands of the classroom differ from those students are familiar with at home, and how such differences affect learning.
• "Talk with peers" is about informal talk among students in the classroom and what they learn from each other.
• "Ways of talking" is about the expressive use of talk by teachers and students, and their use of different language "registers" and other means to convey their feelings and comment on their relationships.

Comments on a basic sequence: teacher initiative, then student response, followed by teacher evaluation (IRE). Calls this an instrumental learning pattern, in contrast with a rote learning pattern. States that teachers sacrifice meaning for mechanics in working with low-achieving students so "attention to understanding larger meaningful units of text is more neglected during instruction for the very children who may need it most" (page 89).

Argues that efficient reading for everyone involves coordinated use of both top-down (deductive or problem solving) and bottom-up (inductive or rote) processes, rather than exclusively one or the other.

In seeking ways to improve teaching, discusses "scaffolding" (Bruner) and "recontextualization." Scaffolding refers to adults changing their participation in interactive games so children may successfully participate.

Cazden contrasts approach (of teachers helping students) with the practice of blaming students for inability to play the game and assigning them to remediation.

Recontextualization refers to a shift which takes old moves and places them in new domains of activity. Adults respond to children's utterances by expanding them, giving additional meanings, placing them in new types of contexts, and pointing out additional possibilities.

Mentions the need to be sympathetic toward teachers who face many pressures. Does not give attention to how institutional pressures could be changed to make it easier to teach in culturally sensitive ways.

• Bibliography module: Cazden 1988
• In overview module: Bibliography (Literacy): C
• In modular book: Bibliography (Literacy), by Doris Gallemore, Trudi C. Hunt, Jeanne Swanson, and Stephen L. Walter
• In document collection: Reference materials
• In bookshelf: Literacy

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