Talk and knowledge construction

The label of discourse as a ‘social mode of thinking’ (Mercer, 1997) reinforces the concepts and relationship between intermental and intramental activity, in constructing and reconstructing knowledge and meaning. The idea of knowledge construction as a communicative and social act further indicates how knowledge or coming to know can take different routes, and have different outcomes dependent on the situation and conditions in which interaction occurs, as well as any other psychological or technical tools mediating negotiation of meaning:

Knowledge is not merely stored in our minds, it circulates between us when we communicate with each other in concrete activities. Even more importantly, to a

significant extent it is created in such interactions when we convert our experiences and reflections into language and make them public. (Säljö, 1999, p. 150)

Thus talk in classrooms, and particularly pupil talk, offers a potentially valuable window onto the process of knowledge construction.

The relationship between spoken language and the creation of concrete tools, in particular written language, identifies how the form of a mediational device can greatly impact on how knowledge is constructed and presented. Construction of such a device, for instance a book, can offer new mediational means for others to interact with in negotiating their own meanings. Thus the written word opens access to a wider audience through text distribution. However, whilst a book can be said to have some dialogic quality, in being addressed to a reader and mindful of the targeted audience, by being written down it shifts from being a discursive version of events which can be queried and built upon in interaction, to a concrete tool whose author cannot defend or rectify their argument. Thus any knowledge constructed through use of such mediational means will depend on how these technical tools are reinstantiated in use.

Considering the complexity of meaning making, Furberg (2010) highlights how ‘meaning is dialogically constituted in specific practices, and meaning making involves complex interactions

43

between people, resources, and the organisation of the setting’ (p. 9). This is one point where a sociocultural approach deviates from a cognitive approach, whereby:

Conceptual constructions are not seen as residing inside individuals as abstract copies of an outside reality... Rather, concepts form parts of discourses and have meaning through their insertion into systematic modes of construing and manipulating the world in social practices. Reference is established by means of the integration of words and concepts into situated practices that include a particular way of using language. (Säljö, 1996, p. 9) Throughout these statements we see how the notion of meaning, and specifically meaning making, is intertwined with the discursive nature of knowledge construction in the sociocultural view, and how knowledge construction is perceived as an interactional accomplishment through interactions with present other people and prior experiences. Both Furberg (2010) and Maybin (2006) reiterate the point that contributions are always a response to what has gone before, and in anticipation of future contributions, drawing on the work of Bakhtin (1981). Thus current actions and interactions become resources and tools for future interactions, to be reinstantiated as required or as deemed appropriate.

In considering how someone responds in verbal interactions, Solomon and Black (2008) highlight the difference in the nature of classroom talk when a teacher ‘replies’, rather than ‘assesses’ a pupil’s comment:

It is the dialogic quality of... interactions – questioning to invite surmise and the reorganisation of ideas, and (most importantly) collaborative discussion which picks up what is said and extends, modifies or even challenges it – that enables genuine

construction of knowledge. (p. 75)

It is worth noting that participation in talk in itself does not make the talk dialogic. However there is a collaborative element in the inviting of contributions. Where each contribution is equally valued within ongoing discussion there can be scope for a more distributed view of the knowledge constructed in any given learning experience.

44

This ties in with a conceptualisation of any subject-specific activity, verbal or otherwise, being appropriated in use, rather than acquired through observation. In explaining this view, Furberg (2010) proposes that ‘scientific concepts only contain what can be seen as “meaning potentials”, implying that their potential meaning must be negotiated and made sense of by participants in social interaction (Lemke, 1990; Linell, 1998; Rommetveit, 1985; 1992)’ (p. 8). I argue that this statement is not restricted to the subject of science, and through such negotiation we are necessarily led to consider the sociocultural commitment to the importance of talk, in making meaning out of multiple potential meanings that may be present and brought into interaction.

Regarding the making of meaning, there is general consensus particularly in the multimodality literature that ‘meaning’ is something created by the receiver, reader or viewer, or constructed or negotiated in interaction, rather than something made by the author or speaker (Kress, 2000). I address the multimodality literature within section 2.8 below, but in the sense that all

communication can be considered multimodal (Gillen, et al., 2007; Johnson & Kress, 2003), this view is particularly relevant where meaning is regarded as constructed in interaction. Säljö (1996) for instance references the work of Bruner in this regard, who as ‘one of the founding fathers of the cognitive revolution, in his book Acts of Meaning (1990) gives an interesting account of why it was so difficult to accommodate notions of learning and development within the framework of cognitivism’ (author’s italic, p. 4). Säljö outlines how a focus on ‘meaning’ was not well-received within the dominant computational analogy of the cognitive paradigm, because ‘computers do not construct meaning or other cultural significations’ (p. 4). Within this approach, focus was on ‘processing’ of ‘information’ rather than ‘construction’ of ‘meaning’ (Säljö, 1996). In adopting the latter view and thinking about meaning as something that is made and re-made, I now turn to one of the key concepts that I extend in my work: the meaning-making trajectory.