This paper presents a data-led interdisciplinary action research project set in a multilingual second level mathematics classroom in Ireland. The implementation of pedagogical interventions saw classroom interaction diversify with CL/DA methodologies used to trace the changes. Moreover, post-lessons reflective meetings created space for further analysis of talk and interaction patterns.
Over the last decades, classroom discourse and interaction have come to the fore in educational research. For example, van Lier asserts that communication constitutes the most important element of the curriculum (1996:5) while the work of Walsh (2003, 2006, 2011) on the role of talk in the context of language teaching and language teacher training led to the formulation of Classroom Interactional Competence (Walsh 2013). This paper presents the results of a professional development action research project set in a multilingual second level mathematics classroom in Ireland. Working within linguistically diverse student populations is increasingly the norm and this presents subject specialists with the additional challenge of better responding to the language learning needs of those students (Mercer 2001, Barwell 2005, Adler and Ronda 2015, Farrell and Baumgart 2019). Moreover, with subject-specific literacy being identified as intrinsic to social and economic advancement throughout the knowledge society (Vollmer 2009, Beacco et al 2016), further emphasis has been placed on classroom discourse as an interactional space where learners are socialised into the discursive norms of the subject area. The main data set for this study consisted of five video recorded lessons and post-lessons’ reflective meetings. The effects of this interdisciplinary collaboration were twofold. First, through pedagogical interventions, classroom interaction evolved from predominantly teacher-led to more student-centred, with corpus-assisted discourse analysis methodology providing tools to trace the changes in the discursive and interactional patterns. Secondly, reflective meetings provided an opportunity not only to consider ways how best respond to the dual challenge of mathematics and language teaching but also created conditions for the class teacher to reflect on different aspects of her teacher talk. Finally, the study highlighted the benefits of data-led interdisciplinary approach to teacher development with view to informing classroom practice.
