The Impact of Interaction and Language on Leading Learning in Indigenous Classrooms

Abstract

In this chapter we discuss some of the challenges facing teachers of Indigenous children in the early years of schooling, especially around providing opportunities for students to demonstrate existing knowledge. Our focus is on the ways in which teachers are able to show responsive decision making in leading their classes in learning, and the kinds of contexts that result in effective and less effective outcomes in finding out what their students do and do not know. Using Conversation Analytic methods we show here how this may be particularly challenging in a classroom environment where language differences between students and teachers appear to be a factor, but also that even inexperienced teachers can be highly sensitive to occasions for students’ demonstrations of what they know of curriculum content.