ABSTRACT
This chapter describes how teachers employ “relational framing” of classroom spaces and time to create activities to foster growth in students’ use of languaging as actions in events. In relational framing of spaces and time, teachers are making explicit their intentions regarding the value of participating in certain events, intentions that often focus on ways to engage students in meaningful, unfolding events, often through “breaking” traditional ways of participating in school. This includes providing students with a sense of social agency through providing them with opportunities to co-plan activities and gain a sense of how participation in an activity will lead to change in the status quo, experiences that serve to bolster their self-confidence. Through participation in activities, students are exposed to others’ languaging actions, actions that they adopt in their thinking that they then use in interacting with others, resulting in development in languaging over time in ways that bolster relations with others. To engage in relational framing for planning activities as a journey with students, teachers consider how they will adopt certain ways of being with their students, reframe school time in less structured ways, work collaboratively with students, and foster students’ senses of capability through languaging.
