Conversation Analysis and a Cultural-Historical Approach: Comparing Research Perspectives on Children?s Storytellings

This book explores the distinct approaches of conversation analysis (CA) and cultural-historical theory to investigations of childhood storytelling with children aged 15 months to nine years. The authors draw on a rich set of data that depict children’s interactions with parents, teachers and peers as they talk together after having read stories, as they recount their experiences, as they enact stories through play, and as they participate in school activities in science and in literacy tasks. The book demonstrates the matters that concern CA and cultural-historical theory and explore in what ways comparisons can work to inform research design to understand how far the boundaries of approaches can be stretched, and the challenges in attempting to do so. In this process the authors focus on adding to knowledge about children’s rich interactional competencies and development as they tell stories, and on providing research-based evidence for parent, teacher and teacher educator practices.

Anna Filipi is Associate Professor in Education at Monash University, Australia. Her research is in conversation analysis and storytellings of young children (aged 12 to 36 months) and spatial interactions of older children (aged seven and 12). She has also researched language alternation practices in high-school and in higher education.

Christina Davidson is Associate Professor in Education at Charles Sturt University, Australia. Her  research focuses on conversation analysis of young children’s social interactions with adults and with other children. She has published extensively on social interactions in literacy lessons and during use of digital technologies in the home and at preschool.

Nikolay Veresov is Associate Professor in Education at Monash University, Australia. His area of interest is child development in the early years, cultural-historical theory and research methodology.