ABSTRACT
The role of classroom interaction has taken on increased importance in studies addressing both the linguistic development and academic development of students, especially linguistic minority students. This chapter describes the interaction pattern of one highly dialogic middle school science teacher in the United States. The teacher was one of three teachers I observed as part of a larger study looking at teacher input and interaction opportunities for mainstreamed limited English-proficient (LEP) students. All three teachers had been selected for the earlier study because of their reputations for being highly interactive, but this teacher’s classes appeared to be exceptionally interactive. The students seemed actively engaged and curious, the teacher’s questions seemed to be of high cognitive quality, and the topics appeared to be academically rigorous. I decided to look more closely (quantitatively and qualitatively) at the specific strategies used by this teacher to create what I thought to be exceptionally high-quality class involvement.
