3. INSTITUCIONES PRESENTES EN EL DEPARTAMENTO DE CAJAMARCA
3.1. GOBIERNO REGIONAL CAJAMARCA
3.1.9. DIRECCIÓN REGIONAL DE TRANSPORTE Y COMUNICACIÓN
A total of 1541 uptake codes were applied to the transcript data, accounting for 7% of all codes used. Across the sample, the range of uptake questions used by teachers was fairly
consistent. Most teachers posed much less than one uptake question per minute of instruction, with an average rate of 0.32 questions per minute (SD = 0.19), or about 19 uptake questions per hour of instruction. Teacher 73 was the one outlier that used almost one uptake question per minute of instruction (M = 0.99, SD = 0.42), or about 59 uptake questions per hour. The next highest rate was Teacher 26 at an average of 0.64 uptake questions per minute (SD = 0.27). To get a sense of the range of average uptake rates across the 31 classrooms, a visual of the distribution of average rates of uptake across the classrooms is presented in Figure 5.1.
172 Figure 5.1 Distribution of Average Rates of Uptake Questions across Teachers
Fourth-grade teachers showed more variability and a higher median of uptake questions (median = 0.39) than third- and fifth-grade teachers in the sample (medians = 0.21 and 0.25, respectively). Differences between fourth- and fifth-grade teacher questioning were statistically significant: fourth-grade teachers used significantly higher rates of uptake questions (t(142) = 5.05, p < .001) than fifth-grade teachers across the sample. There were no significant differences in the rate of uptake between third- and fourth-grade classrooms, or between third- and fifth- grade classrooms, and there were no significant differences between the two school districts.
In the literature, uptake questions are defined as questions that focus instructional
attention on a previous comment or contribution to press for more information (McElhone, 2012; Nystrand et al., 2003), contingent on preceding utterances (Boyd & Rubin, 2006). In the current study, uptake questions demonstrated a reciprocity in talk between the teacher and one or more
0 .2 .4 .6 .8 1 Ave ra ge R at es of U pt ake Q ue st io ns / Mi nu te 4 6 9 10 16 18 22 23 25 26 27 30 50 53 54 62 63 64 65 66 70 73 75 79 81 82 83 84 85 86 88 Teacher
173 students, and this reciprocity tended to be controlled by the teacher, as it was s/he who chose which student contribution to focus on. In doing so, s/he also let the student(s) know that their contributions warranted further attention. This attention varied in the quality of the uptake question. Multiple reads and coding of transcripts with a focus on this talk move and the surrounding discourse were done, and four themes were refined from the inductive coding. Uptake questions functioned in four ways to encourage and manage this reciprocity of instructional talk. Listed in descending order by the frequency of usage, teachers used uptake questions to 1) press students for explanations of their thinking, 2) encourage students to provide more known information, 3) extend the focus of the lesson by using uptake as a base or
foundation to move the lesson forward , and 4) elicit participation from more students. Each theme is discussed in turn below.
Uptake as a press for explanations.
The most frequently used uptake question picked up a student’s contribution, usually in answer to a previous teacher question, and extended this by using questions like ‘what’ and ‘why’. These questions pushed students to explain their thinking behind their previous
contribution in more detail. Table 5.8 presents some typical examples of uptake questions that pressed students to explain their thinking.
Table 5.8 Typical Examples of Uptake Questions that Press for Explanations Teacher Speaker Discourse and Uptake (in bold)
81 Student:
Teacher: He was a great athlete. What do you mean by great athlete? What made him great? You’re right, he is a great athlete, but what made him great? You know this Iman, you talked to me about him all last week. You know this. You can do this. What did you learn about him?
(P108:207, 3/3/11)
83 Teacher: Okay, what else did we say about Mr. Yeager? What other attribute or characteristic did we give him?
174 Student: Teacher: Student: Teacher: Intelligent.
He was intelligent. Why did you say that, that he was intelligent? Because he knew that he was hurt so he just took like a broomstick so he could flip the switch because he knew that his ribs were hurting and he just lean forward.
Good. He broke his ribs. Did he show people, oh, I have a broomstick and I'm gonna break—no, what did he do? (P32:9, 1/2/11)
25 Student: What in the world is a tall tale?
Teacher: Why do you think they call it a tall tale? Kevin just said ‘what in the world is a tall tale?’
[Inaudible student responses]
Teacher: Why do you think [that], James? Think of the things that happen in the Heat Wave.
Student: Goes over the edge?
Teacher: Yeah, it goes over the edge. It makes things really, really exaggerated, like [references story] the geese flying through the clouds and coming out stuffed, plucked, and roasted. (P41:217, 2/10/11)
Note. Words in bold represent coded instances of uptake questions
In each of these examples, the teacher used the students’ words almost verbatim to affirm the students’ answers and then extended them into follow-up questions. Teachers 81 and 83 both used an uptake question to press their students to explain their previous answers about the texts they were reading, encouraging their students to justify their contributions by citing more facts from the texts. These questions indicated a pedagogical attention to student text comprehension by soliciting more depth to their previous answers. Teacher 83, reviewing previous work with her students, sought pre-specified answers with her test question (e.g. What other attribute or characteristic did we give him?), but within this Q & A pattern, which used many test questions like this, the teacher managed a brief reciprocity of ideas with her follow-up question, pressing the student to explain his evidence for his answer. Rather than answering a student’s question directly, Teacher 25 turned a student’s question back to the class to answer, eliciting
participation (Theme 4) and then pressed the student to explain his thinking. Teacher 25 then extended the student’s answer by providing the synonym ‘exaggerated’ and some textual
175 evidence. In three turns, Teacher 25 not only affirmed the student’s question, but elicited more participation by the class as a whole, elicited more talk from one student in particular by pressing him to explain his thinking, and then recasting the student’s answer with a synonym and
provided an example of the synonym from the story.
Despite the emphasis of these questions on eliciting explanations, very few of uptake questions elicited extended student talk, which, in this study, was coded as “student
explanations” spanning 2 or more lines of transcript or addressed 2 or more ideas (see Case 4 in this chapter). Using search queries in Atlas ti 6.2 software, only two percent of uptake codes were followed by student explanations. One reason for this may be in the kinds of explanations the teachers frequently sought. Each uptake question was coded for the quality of thinking it elicited from students, coded as either “high-cognitive quality” or “low quality” questions (see Appendix A coding scheme). High-quality uptake questions were those that asked student to infer/speculate, analyze, evaluate, or generalize information. Low-quality uptake questions were questions that had students recite or report information that was presumed knowledge. There were 498 uptake questions that were coded as high-quality questions out of a total of 1541 uptake questions (32%). The rest (1043) were coded as low-quality uptake questions (68%). Both kinds of uptake questions occurred in all lessons. It is noteworthy that uptake questions and high- and low-quality questions were strongly correlated with each other (r = .80, p < .001 and r = .75, p < .001, respectively). These relationships will be discussed in Chapter 6.
High-quality uptake questions tended to ask students to infer or speculate on important ideas from stories and to make predictions about plot lines. There were very few instances of uptake questions that had students analyze or evaluate information about texts or language arts
176 content, which may have elicited more extended turns of student talk. Some typical examples of high-quality uptake questions are included in Table 5.9.
Table 5.9 Examples of High-quality Uptake Questions
Teacher Speaker Discourse and Uptake (in bold)
27 Teacher: What does that mean? Put it in your language. It was more of a task than she had supposed. Mike.
Mike: It was more of something to do than she thought it was.
Teacher: Very good. It was more of something to do than she thought it was. Does that show that she’s adventurous? Thumbs up, thumbs down. If you’re not sure, put [unintelligible]. She could have said this is way more than I expected, no way am I going to try and put together this clock. I think that’s pretty good evidence.
Student: [unintelligible] willing to take risks.
Teacher: They are willing to take risks. Is there enough evidence showing that she’s willing to take a risk? [P1:81, 1/28/11]
73 Student: Oh!
Teacher: What? What's oh? Tell me what you're oh-ing.
Student: He's mentioning all the colors that you can have in your— Teacher: Why would he do that? Did you guys notice that?
Student: [Inaudible]
Teacher: What does that mean? Student: It means—
Teacher: Why would it be colors? Student: --people can be any color.
Teacher: What? Say that again? [P20:106, 3/3/11]
81 Teacher: The main word inside the whole word. Okay. Not a prefix, not a suffix, the main word. So, in the word, "disappointment," what is the main word in that one? Yes?
Student: Appointment.
Teacher: Okay. You're saying, "appointment." Why do you say appointment? Student: Because the root or base word, most of the time ends in an N.
Teacher: So you knew that "dis" was what? Student: A prefix.
Teacher: A prefix. Dis is a prefix. Do you have a suffix in this word? Student: Yes.
Teacher: Yes. What's the suffix? Student: Ment.
Teacher: Ment, that's the last part of it. So what's my base or root word? Student Appoint [P106:16, 2/3/11 ]
177 Teacher 27 was intent on having her students back up their inferences with textual
evidence. As the class constructed a reading response paragraph together, the teacher took up two of her students’ contributions to make sure students agreed that there was enough textual evidence to support both inferences about the character. Teacher 73 asked her students to infer the meaning of a short poem, and to repeat a response for the whole class to hear. However, student contributions were interrupted twice, attenuating any elaborated student talk. Teacher 81 used one uptake question to solicit a student’s explanation of the root of the word
‘disappointment.’ When the student replied with a mistake in her reasoning, the teacher guided her to the correct answer by posing test questions in the form of fill-in-the-blank (“So you knew that "dis" was what?”) and yes/no questions (“Do you have a suffix in this word?”). In this example, the uptake question elicited only a sentence of explanation from the student, likely because of the content, and then Teacher 81 heavily scaffolded the student to reconsider her initial answer without explicitly evaluating the answer as incorrect.
There was some evidence that uptake questions during writing conferences (a rare
activity in these observations, and usually done one-on-one or in small groups) may have elicited some extended student talk in the form of writing. In the follow two exchanges, teachers tended to read student work and take up the student’s written ideas orally to press the student for more information or scaffold student ideas. The student with Teacher 23 does this orally, while the students of Teacher 66 presumably explain their ideas more fully in their written text.
Teacher 23: So it’s very interesting for me to hear [read] about this boys’ party. What makes it such a boys’ party?
Student: I told my mom that I want a boy’s only party and so I just invited all the boys to the party.
Teacher: What about your sister?
178 Teacher 66: I also want you two to think about, Natalia and Michelle 27:16, why was she
untruthful and why—how did we know that she was worried about [inaudible 27:25]? Was she untruthful because she was sneaky and a bad person? Why was she being untruthful?
Student: She said that she had no problem [inaudible 27:35] she was terrified of him. Teacher: Why? Why did she do that? (P68:80, 1/12/11).
In conclusion, uptake questions as presses for explanations indicates a pattern of
reciprocal discourse that was heavily guided by each teacher, so it would seem that this give and take is more constrained than a typical discussion by two adults, for instance. Despite a lack of extended student talk following these questions, teachers did work to centralize student ideas, which were not only a pedagogical focus during that moment of instruction, but also were opportunities for teachers to press students about their thinking or hold them accountable for further explanations, which provided some opportunities for extended talk and analytic skills like justifying reasons and providing evidence from text, a key skill on the reading comprehension measure used in this study.
Uptake as a press for more information.
A second theme identified in the analysis of uptake questions was the use of these questions to encourage students to provide more known information. The majority of these uptake questions occurred during instruction around text comprehension, and less frequently, during form-focused lessons on grammar worksheets. Table 5.10 presents some typical examples of uptake that elicited recalled or known information.
Table 5.10 Typical Examples of Uptake Questions that Press for Known Information Teacher Speaker Discourse & Uptake (in bold)
179 10 Teacher: Student: Teacher: Student: Teacher: Student: Teacher: Student: Teacher:
What word are you looking for? Tell me your idea, what do you think is going to happen?
The little girl goes to school.
Oh, the little girl might go to school. Well, he’s in Japan and the girl is old now.
Married?
Who’s going to get married? The daughter?
How do you know that? The picture
The picture. Ok, let’s listen and find out. (P4:69-70, 12/20/10) 27 Student:
Teacher: Student: Teacher:
I think it’s supposed to be kind of like sum all the evidence and details and then [noise obscures] like an ending.
OK. So part of it, yes, it’s summing it up. What’s another way to say that?
[Unintelligible]
Your closing sentence, your conclusion, how are you going to conclude. Yes. (P1:12, 1/28/11) 25 Teacher: Student: Teacher: Student: Teacher: Student
Yep and what do you do when you go back to the story? Underline.
Underline the what? The information.
Okay, or the --? What's that information? What is Andrea talking about?
The answer. (P42:147, 2/15/11)
Note. Words in bold represent coded instances of uptake questions
In each example in Table 5.10, teachers took up student contributions to elicit
information that was presumed knowledge. Teacher 10 taught a Sheltered English Instruction (SEI) fourth-grade class of English learners who were mainly Spanish speakers (one Portuguese speaker is noted in the transcript). Her uptake questions in each of her three observed lessons were consistently used to clarify and assess students’ understanding of a text they were reading together. Uptake questions were focused on vocabulary and plot comprehension, picking up a student’s answer and scaffolding toward a more complete and correct answer. These took place in a whole-class, Q & A genre format that used a basal reader and a vocabulary graphic
organizer. In the above exchange, uptake questions acted to heavily scaffold the exchange between the teacher and one student, and, it seemed, to check for student comprehension
180 (“Who’s going to get married?”) and evidentiary support (“How do you know that?”). The
student’s verbal responses were quite attenuated, due in part by the closed question (“Who’s going to get married?”) but may also have been due to the student’s English speaking proficiency.
Teacher 27 used uptake in a similarly constrained fashion by seeking a vocabulary term that was assumed knowledge (“What’s another way to say that?”), as indicated by her evaluation of ‘yes’ when a student provided the term she was looking for. Teacher 27 accepted her student’s answer and took it up as a basis for her next question, a brief ‘spot check’ of students’ academic vocabulary. Teacher 25 was observed to use form-focused worksheets in all of her observations, and the questions were similar in quality. Students’ answers were taken up to extend the correct answer into another known answer, such as asking a further question about the grammatical concept or retelling a plot line with more accuracy than originally offered.
Uptake questions that acted to encourage more information from students, like those that pressed students for more explanations (Theme 1), did not generate elaborated student talk. In contrast to Theme 1 uptake questions, however, this pattern was predictable since most of these solicitations for more information were coded as low-quality questions that required students to recall assumed knowledge. Low-quality uptake questions tended to be factual questions about text comprehension during text talks that did not require student explanations, analysis, or inferences. The following examples (Table 5.11) clearly show the attenuated nature of student talk when uptake questions for information were posed, while still exemplifying the reciprocal nature of these talk moves.
Table 5.11 Examples of Low-quality Uptake Questions Teacher Speaker Discourse and Uptake (in bold)
181 Student: Teacher: Student: A citizen. A citizen of?
Of the United States. [P51:25, 12/14/10] 50 Teacher:
Student: Teacher: Student:
What next? He writes silly stories; he always uses his good luck pen. What happens next? Aaron?
He lost it.
He loses or he lost—what’s he lose? Loses it like goes crazy, loses it?
No. He lost his good luck pen. [9:114, 3/3/11]
63 Teacher: What are you writing? Polar bears and arctic what? Student: Foxes.
Teacher: What do they do? Student: I don’t remember
Teacher: You don’t remember? …You highlighted it. What do polar bears and arctic foxes have? [24:90, 1/13/11]
64 Teacher: Where does the story take place? Are we on the moon? Are we in the mall? Where are we, Katie? Where is the story taking place?
Student: Outside.
Teacher: It is outside. Can you give me a little bit more information, [another] Child’s Name?
Student: It’s at a pond or a river. Student: Or a shack.
Student: A pond or a river?
Teacher: A pond or a river, yes. So the setting we can say is –is a river… [34:35, 1/14/11]
Note. Words in bold represent coded instances of uptake questions