Browsing by Subject "Vuorovaikutteisuus"

Objective of the study. In university pedagogy, research has traditionally concentrated more on students’ learning than on the university teacher’s activities and instructional processes. The aim of this study is to investigate interactive dialogues and the ways in which they perform during university lectures, from the point of view of the university teacher. The study uses Mercer’s theoretical approach, which is used in the analysis of the language used in teaching situations. The research questions of this study are: 1) what kind of teaching phases do the university lectures consist of? 2) what kind of interactive dialogues and modes of talk feature in these lectures? 3) how do these modes of interactive talk make themselves visible in the various teaching phases of the lectures? Methods. The research material of this study consists of video material, containing 4 lectures, each 90 minutes in length. The data were collected in the research project ”Interaction between Teaching and Learning in Higher Education” at the Helsinki University Centre for Research and Development of Higher Education. The data were transcribed and then analysed using theory-based content analysis. Results and conclusions. The analysis showed that all four lectures have an almost identical structure. The teaching phases of the lectures are: the opening phase, the roll-call, group work and its results, the teacher’s discourse and the closing phase. Sporadic talk was typical of the interactive dialogue in the opening phase. Episodes of sporadic talk could be found in the opening phases. In the activating group work of students and the discussions that followed them with the teacher, there occurred the most frequent episodes of exploratory talk, which deepened the interactive dialogue as far as the level of constructing knowledge. Virtually the same number of sporadic and cumulative talk were also present in this phase of the lecture. It was during the teacher’s discourse that the majority of the episodes of interactive dialogue occurred. A majority of them were sporadic talk, but also included episodes of cumulative and exploratory talk. It became clear that each phase of group work and the teacher’s discourse included interactive dialogue both as sporadic and cumulative as well as exploratory talk. Interactive dialogue increased substantially during the various phases of the group work, first within the groups and the discussions that followed, and then during the phases of the teacher’s discourse. The result of the study underlines the pedagogical importance of group work and other activating forms of teaching in higher education aiming at interactive teaching.