COMMUNICATION, DISCOURSE AND LEARNING
led by Professor Yvette Solomon
and Dr Lesley Lancaster
The Centre for Communication, Discourse, and Learning (CDL) provides a forum for discussion and research about modes of communication within classrooms and educational settings, and their relationship to teaching and learning; about changing theories and realities of what constitutes text, and learning of text within teaching and learning situations; about social relationships and interaction within classrooms and educational settings; and about the discourses of teaching and learning themselves. The centre focuses on recent and current developments and innovation in theory and methodologies in these areas, and the work of members is both cross-disciplinary, and cross-curricular, and therefore includes an interestingly diverse group of ESRI members.
Current areas of research
- Classroom discourses and teacher-pupil interaction patterns.
- The use of discourse-informed methodologies – eg multimodal discourse analysis, critical discourse analysis, post-structuralism and ethnography - to explore interaction and learning in homes, pre-school, primary and secondary classrooms, and post-compulsory settings.
- Communicative and representational practice in early childhood.
- The impact of multimodal and multimedia texts, and new literacies on teaching and learning interactions.
- The communicative and representational affordances of the body in teaching and learning.
- The nature of school subject discourses and the challenges these present in classroom learning.
- The status, learning and teaching of languages other than English.