As mentioned in the introduction to this chapter, Fairclough (2003) proposes that analysis of social relations between participants also gives insight into the genre of
discursive events. Scollon (1999) asserts that “any social encounter … has as its ongoing highest priority to position the participants … in relationship to each other”. Drawing on Brown and Gilman (1960), Fairclough (2003) proposes that social relations vary in two dimensions; power and solidarity. Insight into the role of these dimensions within social relations is gained by looking at the degree of social hierarchy, and the degree of social intimacy or social distance, that pertains to these. Fairclough (2003) suggests that a good way to analyse these phenomena is to set the genre of particular texts against a “co- operative and egalitarian template” (Fairclough, 2003, p. 79) in which they are distributed equitably amongst discourse participants (Fairclough, 2003). Thus, the social relations of team-teaching meetings in which power is equitably distributed should allow discourse participants equal access to semiotic resources that allow them to:
1. Take turns.
2. Speak without interruption. 3. Select and change topics.
4. Use turns to act in various ways – question, make requests, complain, etc. 5. Offer interpretations or summaries of what has been said.
(Fairclough, 2003, p. 79)
This work used Fairclough’s heuristic to given insight into the social relations enacted within the team-teaching meetings studied. In terms of the number of turns taken by
discourse participants, the linguistic interactions of meetings generally took place within a dialogic structure, which tended to afford each teacher a roughly equal number of turns. In addition, teachers rarely interrupted each other, except to agree and support points made by their discourse partner. At times this resulted in overlapping speech that had the effect of increasing how they coalesced around issues, with concomitant effects for team solidarity. In terms of teachers’ ability to select, introduce and change topics, this has already been analysed in relation to genre structure. Analysis at that point suggested that topics to be introduced to a disproportionate degree by T1 teaches. This is further corroborated by data outlined in Table 6 below, which allow comparison of the number and proportion of topics introduced by each team member during each meeting.
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Table 6: Number of Topics Introduced or Changed by Each Participant in Each Meeting
School/Teacher Meeting 1 Meeting 2 Meeting 3 Totals Hazel Grove Denise (T1) 40 37 35 112 Saoirse (T2) 36 26 26 88 Maple Lodge Claire (T1) 45 50 44 138 Andrew (T2) 32 37 48 117 Willow Way Fiona (T1) 62 61 27 150 Meadhbh (T2) 27 26 14 67 Total 672
The tendency of T1 teachers, to dominate the introduction and changing of topics, was evident across all meetings at Hazel Park. In Willow Way, it was particularly
pronounced, with Fiona controlling will over twice as many topics as Meadhbh. At Maple Lodge however, control over the introduction of topics was much more evenly distributed. In this dyad both teachers concerned were equally qualified to teach the subject that was the focus of the team-teaching initiative, they had both completed recognised training in the inclusion of learners deemed to have disability and both worked closely together as part of the Special Educational Needs team in the school. This seemed to lead to a remarkable degree of equity in both teachers control over the introduction of topic and the discursive congruence with which this was done.
Using Turns in Variety of Ways (including offering interpretations or summaries).
The author coded for seven different uses to which turns are typically put by
discourse participants, based on Fairclough’s (2003) egalitarian template for this. The seven analytic categories used were: suggesting, confirming, clarifying, contradicting, interrupting, interpreting/offering opinions and summarising. The research was interested in whether or not each of these uses was available to each discourse participant. It was not interested, for example in the total number of instances of each use demonstrated by each participant. Thus, he simply looked for a minimum number of (three) instances of each type of use by
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each teacher in each meeting. Once he reached this number for each type of use in each meeting, he moved onto the text type of use or the next meeting. The maximum possible number of each type of use was fifty-four (three instances of each use, by each of two teachers over three meetings across three case study schools). A copy of the completed checklist used for this task can be found in Appendix K. A summary of this data is set out in Table 7 below.
Table 7: Use of Turns by Discourse Participants During Team-Teaching Meetings
Types of Use to Which Turns were Put Total Number of Uses for Analytic Purposes (Max. 54) Suggestions 54 Confirmation 54 Clarification 54 Contradiction 36 Interruption 54 Interpretation/Opinion 54 Summary 44
Data in Table 7 suggests that almost all types of turn, were available to all participants during meetings, except contradiction and, in the case of one specific team- teaching dyad, summary. This was irrespective of whether teachers occupied the T1 or T2, positions and regardless of their training or the gender composition of dyads. It was
suggestive of close, informal, collegiate and participative social relations within the dyads studied. The aversion to using turns to contradict colleagues seemed to corroborate findings presented earlier regarding that the pre-eminent communicative purpose of team-teaching meetings was to maintain team solidarity. The fact that the researcher could not find even three instances of contradiction in most meetings (see Appendix K) provided empirical evidence of the degree to which potential conflict was avoided by teachers. A failure to use turns to summarise discussions, seemed to occur only in two meetings at Willow Way. A facility in MAXQDA (VERBI SOFTWARE, 2019), allowed the researcher to recover the text of each instance of a code relating to each type of use. Analysis of this revealed that the meetings concerned were dominated by evaluation of the team-teaching initiative, which did not involve, nor was it enhanced by the use of summaries.
Overall, findings about the social relations of meetings, as indicated by teachers’ access to a variety of uses to which they put their turns, suggested that they enjoyed fairly
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equal access to semiotic resources for meaning-making, including meaning-making about disability and team-teaching to support the inclusion of those placed in this category. The use of turns also suggested relatively informal, deferent and collegiate social relations between teachers. However, access to various types of turn for various uses, did not offset the tendency of T1 teachers to dominate knowledge exchanges, especially the introduction of topics and the basis on which this was done. Nor did it diminish their ability to influence how the legitimisation of decisions was framed. It was within these genre features of team- teaching meetings, not any hierarchy of formality or social distance, that control over the semiotic variability available to teachers for meaning-making about disability was exercised.
6.5 Summary and Conclusion
This chapter looked at how ritualised and recurrent features of discourse use within team-teaching meetings enabled and constrained the range of semiotic resources available to teachers to assert particular truth claims about learners deemed to have disability. It suggested that these actional meanings had an important role to play. Initial observations suggested that teachers were new to these types of meetings, which was thought to affect both their awareness of their genre features and how these could be used to their
advantage. The fact that few organisational devices, such as agendas or minutes, were used seemed to attest to a fairly informal approach to the conduct of team-teaching meetings. Yet, it became clear during analysis that the participant structure of these meetings was far more rigid than they first appeared. This rigidity worked to limit significantly the semiotic variability available to participants to make meaning about learners deemed to have disability.
Analysis of the semiotic activity of team-teaching meetings suggested that their preeminent communicative purpose was to preserve team solidarity. Otherwise, activity focussed in the main on knowledge exchanges, which accounted for almost three-quarters (72.84%) of all exchanges recorded across all meetings. Knowledge exchanges mostly involved teachers exchanging information and opinions about student characteristics, including the characteristics of students deemed to have disability. They also focused on exchanging information about the curricula and programmes followed by all students. Teachers did not spend anything like the same amount of time discussing the practicalities and logistics of team-teaching per se, which was a surprise to the researcher.
Knowledge exchanges allowed teachers not only to share information and opinions about students and programmes, but to frame the discourses within which discussions about these things took place. As well as allowing them to assert particular truth claims, including claims about students deemed to have disability, it also allowed them to frame the discursive perspectives within which these claims were set. In other words, it gave them significant
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control over the deployment of discourse. For analytical purposes, knowledge exchanges were split into knower-initiated and other-initiated types. In all settings, T1 teachers initiated almost three times as many knower-initiated knowledge exchanges as T2 teachers. This meant that they dominated not only the introduction of topics to be addressed within team- teaching meetings, but also the discursive context within which these were discussed. Thus T1 teachers exerted a substantial influence over the deployment of discourse within team- teaching dyads, including discourse relating to learners deemed to have disability.
T1 teachers’ dominance over the deployment of discourse within knower-initiated knowledge exchanges was augmented by how other-initiated knowledge exchanges transpired. These latter types of exchange are initiated by a person who wishes to acquire knowledge from another. In two of the cases studied, other-initiated knowledge exchanges were initiated by T2 teacher three and four times as often (respectively) as T1 teachers, reflecting a disproportionate demand by T2 teachers for information from their T1
colleagues. In the third case, the T2 teacher’s (Meadhbh) close relationship with the school’s behavioural support team, and the specific knowledge about Phillip to which this gave her access, helped to mitigate the T1 teacher’s (Fiona) domination of other-initiated knowledge exchanges.
The domination by T1 teachers of both types of knowledge exchange, meant that many of the topics introduced by them for discussion tended to focus on issues of interest to them, which often reflected the specific responsibilities they had within their team-teaching initiatives. We will look further at the implications of this shortly. This domination also left those occupying the T2 position having to negotiate with their T1 counterparts to gain access to discursive power, an objective that, as we have already seen, had to be balanced with maintaining the solidarity of the teaching team. This balancing act meant that it was essential for them to secure the acquiescence of the T1 teacher in relation to any truth assertions they might make and remain mindful of signals from prior discussions about what types of
discourse would be acceptable or uncontroversial. This, in turn, introduced an element of social hierarchy into each team, which privileged the person in the T1 position. While power inequalities of this kind are seen as detrimental to the effectiveness of team-teaching as a support to inclusion (Department of Education and Science, 2017a), they were found to persist within two of the teams studied in this work, despite the apparently equal access to semiotic resources for meaning making, suggested by analysis of teachers use of turns.
Across all meetings, activity exchanges accounted for a little over a quarter of all linguistic exchanges (27.16%). Actor-initiated activity exchanges, that are initiated by a person offering to perform an action, comprised a quarter of these. It was the type of
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exchange least enumerated in each meeting. Other-initiated activity exchanges, that are initiated by a person requesting that an action be performed by another, amounted to about three quarters. The only time actor-initiated activity exchanges seemed to be deemed appropriate by teachers, was when they were offered as a sign of the commitment their team-teaching dyad. Otherwise they seemed to be discouraged within the genres of team- teaching meetings, as posing a threat to the solidarity of the team. Other-initiated activity exchanges, were recorded approximately three times as often as actor-initiated activity exchanges. These usually committed both teachers in a dyad to a particular courses of action. Attempts to commit others to unilateral action were very rare. Again these seemed to have been interpreted as a threat to the solidarity of teams.
Analysis of genre structure of team-teaching meetings showed that decisions and commitments in relation to activity exchanges were usually accompanied by some form of legitimation of these. These legitimisations tended to involve warrants and backing associated with particular discourse perspectives on disability to support them. Thus legitimisations provided a second key site for the deployment of disability discourse. Unlike knowledge exchanges, control over the legitimation of decisions seemed to be evenly distributed between team-teaching partners, which left overall control of the deployment of discourse largely in the hands T1 teachers.
Overall, the participant structure of team-teaching meetings seemed to conform to a rigid and predictable sequence that was characteristic of a high degree of social control over semiotic resources for meaning making and the reproduction of dominant discourses (Gee, 2012 p. 565). In other words, whatever the dominant use of discourse tended to be (as explored in Chapter 7), the generic structure of team-meetings, as outlined above, was likely to reproduce and reinforce this. Within this structure, instances of explicit disagreement were rare. Not only did listeners tend to engage with the vast majority of topics introduced by speakers, they also rarely questioned or controverted the discursive basis on which this was done. Only in two instances, out of a total of 830 topics introduced, did a listener fail to engage with topic introduced. Only in less than 6% of cases, was the premise on which a topic was introduced, challenged in any way. This was a crucial feature of the generic structure of team- teaching meetings. It allowed whoever controlled the introduction of topics, control over the agendas of team-teaching meetings and control over discursive basis on which issues raised were discussed.
Since it was the T1 teacher in each dyad that dominated knowledge exchanges, the topics of these exchanges tended to focus on issues of particular interest to them and congruent with responsibilities they exercised within their teaching-team dyad. As noted
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earlier, T1 teachers invariably exercised a lead or class teacher role within team-teaching dyads. This led them to assume primary responsibility for the engagement of the whole class in mainstream curricula, preparing students for assessment of this, preparing of materials and activities, and discussing group learning characteristics might be need to be responded to. This meant that a lesser focus was placed on issues related to the deployment of
inclusive approaches to instruction such as Universal Design for Learning and differentiating learning activities for individuals. The important thing to note here is a focus on general classroom issues tended to occupy the majority of both teaches’ attention. The genre of meetings tended promoted joint commitments to action and discourage unilateral ones. Thus, even at this early stage of analysis, there were signs that both teachers’
conceptualisations of team-teaching was being limited “to a narrowly circumscribed set of possibilities” (Hart, 1996) that focussed on whole class issues and engagement of all students, including those deemed to have disabilities, in mainstream instructional programmes, rather than facilitating increased participation of students deemed to have disabilities in learning that was appropriate to their abilities and needs. From a CDS
perspective, this propensity could have been construed as refocussing resources originally targeted as support the inclusion of students deemed to have disability towards ableist interests (Bagleri et al. 2011).
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