Textbook language, teacher mediation, classroom interaction and learning processes: the case of Natural and Social Science textbooks in Barranquilla, Colombia*/**

Gillian MOSS
( Universidad del Norte, Barranquilla, Colombia)

ABSTRACT: This paper will present a brief summary of the results of a long-term research programme in Barranquilla, Colombia, using SFL analyses of textbook and classroom discourse in conjunction with ethnographic techniques in investigating the complex relations between the language of school textbooks, the ways in which teachers act (or do not act) as mediators of this language for their students, patterns of classroom interaction and learning processes. The work I will comment on has been in two phases: the first concentrating on the identification of sources of difficulty in textbook language, the way teachers handle (or do not handle) these difficulties and the associated levels of learning discernible in students’ discourse as observed in classroom interaction and in interviews; the second concentrates on the ideology of the textbook discourse, the teachers’ mediation of it and its implications for citizenship education. I will first provide some background information about the context, sites and materials involved in the study and then go on to look at language features which have been found to cause difficulties in learning from texts and the related levels of learning which have been observed in students. I will make brief reference to the final stage of this first phase, which consisted in an intervention strategy at one of the research sites. The final section of the paper will focus on language features which we consider to be indicative of certain ideological positions and present some tentative conclusions as to their implications for citizenship education.

* The research reported here was carried out by Colectivo Urdimbre, a research collective made up of Diana Avila, Norma Barletta, Diana Chamorro, Jorge Mizuno, Gillian Moss and Carlina Tapia, with the support of Universidad del Norte and the Colombian Institute for the Development of Science and Technology, COLCIENCIAS.

** ROUND TABLE: Problems related to language in the school in different contexts and different areas of study