Content area
Abstract
This dissertation study was set within a collaborative, discussion-based classroom intervention called Collaborative Social Reasoning (CSR). In this study, I aim to examine teacher scaffolding moves, or strategies used to support students’ learning, in relationship with student equity in CSR discussions. Equity indicators analyzed include uptake, or use of a peer’s idea in a subsequent turn of talk; relational invitations, a construct derived from the data and consisting of students inviting a peer to share; and conflicts for the floor, which occurred when one student prevented another from sharing their idea. This last factor indicates lower levels of equity, while the initial two indicate higher equity. Teacher scaffolding was analyzed with equity indicators at the turn-by-turn level using statistical discourse analysis and more holistically by examining the proportion of turns containing the variables of interest in repeated measures logistic regression analysis. The results showed that teacher scaffolding was negatively or not related to all equity indicators. This suggested that, in this context, teacher scaffolding was associated with reduced uptake and relational invitations, but also with reductions in conflicts for the floor. In turn, this suggests that teacher scaffolding improved participatory equity by reducing conflicts for the floor but was associated with reduced relational equity via uptake and relational invitations. The relationship with uptake was stronger and more consistent than the relationship with conflicts for the floor, suggesting that teachers’ largest influence on equity is on relational, rather than participatory, equity.
