A linguistic ethnography of an adult vocational class: constructing identities and mediating educational discourses

Normand, Miranda Jane (2014). A linguistic ethnography of an adult vocational class: constructing identities and mediating educational discourses. University of Birmingham. Ph.D.

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Abstract

The aim of the study was to investigate linguistic interaction in a vocational classroom based in a Further Education college in the UK. The course was designed for adults wishing to become qualified primary teaching assistants.

The study was ethnographically grounded and, in keeping with a Linguistic Ethnography approach, it also incorporated close linguistic and narrative-in-interaction analysis. This enabled me to show how educational discourses shape local interactions and how, in particular types of classroom interaction, participants appropriate wider discourses creatively for their own goals.

Through detailed analysis of whole class discursive interactions, I show how the tutor appropriated and mediated the curriculum content and discourses for and with her class. She did this by constantly shifting identities and relationships along clines of power, social solidarity and social distance, by drawing on funds of knowledge from her own lived experience and those of her class, and by creating spaces to talk about the different domains of social life: further education, primary school and local life worlds. In their turn, the learners drew on their previous experiences of education, their work experience and their own local life worlds, to make sense of the content with the tutor and their classmates.

Type of Work:

Thesis (Doctorates > Ph.D.)

Award Type:

Doctorates > Ph.D.

Supervisor(s):