Dialogicity and narrativity in pedagogical interaction in the classroom. A proposal for analysing teacher discourse in the teaching process

Abstract

Given that pedagogical activity is eminently discursive, this article seeks to provide conceptual elements that help to describe teachers’ pedagogical discourse when teaching curricular contents. Working from the constructivist tradition and the cultural psychology approach, which uphold the social and cultural origin of human cognition, a discursive model is proposed that involves two dimensions: the dialogic-monologic and the narrative-paradigmatic. From the dialogic pole, teaching maintains the naturalness of a spontaneous conversation, intentionally including pedagogical elements that inquire into the students’ comprehension of the information and promoting argumentation, participation and the extension of group discussion. From the narrative pole, teaching seeks to contextualize the thematic contents to help students to gain perspective and understand the course and intentionality of actions. Considering both perspectives of analysis, we propose a conceptual schema for studying the phenomenon of teaching in which we theoretically characterize the different types of pedagogical discourses that emerge when articulating these two dimensions. Finally, we point to future lines of research that could emerge from this proposal.