2025 Theses Doctoral

Developing a Discourse: How Pre-Service Science Teachers Make Sense of Student Discourse and Their Role as Teachers Within It

Pelliccio, Emelia

Student discourse is an essential component of learning and belonging within the science classroom and, as a result, the larger science community. When this discourse is productive and equitable, it can create spaces where all student voices are valued and heard in science. Yet facilitating this discourse continues to be a challenging practice, even for experienced teachers. For pre-service teachers, these challenges are magnified, as they navigate the terrain of their first teaching experiences while simultaneously grappling with the theoretical underpinnings of their teacher education coursework. These teacher education settings, however, are critical venues for the development of teacher practices related to facilitating productive and equitable classroom discourse.

This collective case study interrogates this complex phenomenon of student discourse in science by building an understanding of how a group of pre-service science teachers conceptualize productive and equitable student discourse and their roles within it as they navigate their teacher education experience. A theoretical lens of positioning theory is leveraged to make sense of the ways that both teachers and students are implicitly and explicitly positioned within the classroom discourse being interrogated.

The findings suggest that the pre-service teachers conceptualize discourse primarily through characterizations of the goals for the discourse and the nature of the interactions involved. They characterize their roles in three distinct yet interrelated and hierarchical ways: The Cheerleader, The Coordinator, and The Collaborator, with the third suggesting recognition of a role that expands the power in the discourse interactions amongst all participants involved. The findings point to how teacher education experiences and associated reflective practices supported how the pre-service teachers navigate and make sense of student discourse in dynamic and contextually situated ways, actively and continuously negotiating their roles as a result.

This study argues the utility of this three-tiered structure of the teacher role as a tool for supporting pre-service teachers in developing a model for productive science classroom discourse. Finally, the findings point to the ways that the pre-service teachers conceptualize care and relationship building as central components of classroom discourse facilitation. As a result, this study argues for the importance of a multilayered approach to conceptualizing science classroom discourse that is grounded in care and incorporates the lenses needed to understand this care and relationship building in inclusive ways.