Effective Task Instruction in the First Year of School: What Teachers and Children Do

It is well recognised that classroom teaching is highly complex and that teachers must navigate and negotiate myriad interactions just within a lesson in order to manage the learning opportunities of their students. What is less well recognised is precisely how these interactions are managed in real time during actual classroom interactions. This book is designed as an original, close-up account of processes by which children learn to become school learners in their first year of school, unpacking some of the recognised complexity of busy classrooms to hone in on what teachers and children do and how learning takes place.

Using the tools of conversation analysis, the authors unpack a range of pedagogical interactions between teachers and children during normal class, focusing on procedural instructions and the outcomes of instructed activities. By including transcripts of recordings of classes in schools located in diverse communities, it is possible to see which aspects of classroom interaction may be impacted by external factors, such as children’s language or cultural background, and which aspects are applicable regardless of such factors. The chapters examine teacher instructions and children’s behaviour during instructions and during task performance in whole-class and small-group interactions.

Effective Task Instruction in the First Year of School brings forward a much-needed wealth of knowledge into how to teach children in the first year of schooling and beyond in a way that is accessible for practising teachers, student teachers as well as education researchers.

Ilana Mushin, Associate Professor, is a reader in linguistics at the University of Queensland. She has published widely on knowledge management in language use, including in early childhood education and Australian First Nations languages.

Rod Gardner, Associate Professor is an honourary academic at the University of Queensland. He has published in a number of areas within conversation analysis, including in classroom interactions in a range of educational contexts.

Claire Gourlay is a graduate of the University of Queensland linguistics program with a long-standing interest in young childrens’ use of language in school.