ON METHODOLOGY AND METHODS FOR ANALYSING CLASSROOM DISCURSIVE ‎INTERACTION:‎

A DISCUSSION ‎BETWEEN QUANTITATIVE AND QUALITATIVE ‎APPROACHES ‎

Abstract

This article presents a theoretical work whose objective is the discussion of methodologies and methods in educational research, in particular those that analyze classroom discursive interactions. The first part discusses the two main research paradigms and their ontological and epistemological bases: positivism and interpretivism. Next, two methods for analyzing discursive interactions are presented and discussed, one for each paradigm. Systematic coding - within the quantitative context - is indicated to treat data from large samples, to describe general patterns, and, by transforming the discourse into variables, to statistical comparisons or temporal analyses. The method is applied in a set of 42 episodes of group dialogue and the results are discussed in light of the nature of the research questions, showing what types of statistical tests can be performed. Within the interpretivist paradigm,  sociocultural discourse analysis is presented as an example of a qualitative method and it is applied to excerpts from classroom dialogues. The main finding is the identification of typologies that describe the ways in which teacher and students construct scientific explanations. In the final part, some possibilities and limits of each method are discussed and the conclusion defends that both can be seen as complementary for the advancement of knowledge in the educational field.