An exploratory study on secondary teachers’ conceptualisation of the cognitive discourse function ‘define’ and its scaffolding in classroom interaction

This exploratory study examines how content and language teachers conceptualise the cognitive discourse function (CDF) define, and presents the scaffolding strategies they propose to overcome potential challenges encountered by students in classroom interactions. To this end, we analysed a science teacher’s classroom interactions and a collective reflection involving 14 teachers from different disciplines and 2 researchers. The analysis showed that teachers tended to prioritise and justify working on the complete form of the definition. Teachers also identified both conceptual and linguistic challenges that students face when trying to produce definitions. The use of videotaped practice facilitated the teachers’ reflection and the formulation of scaffolding strategies to enhance students’ definitions, including multimodality, the use of closed-ended questions, the provision of clarifications and examples, and conceptual and linguistic modelling. This study contributes to the accessibility of the CDF construct from the teacher’s perspective, which could facilitate both the design and the implementation of classroom interventions. Furthermore, the process used in the study highlights the value of reflective teacher training in developing collaboration between teachers in different disciplines and researchers.