Pulling the rope and letting it go: analyzing classroom dynamics that foster appropriation

This paper examines the relationship between classroom discourse and a particular kind of learning, termed appropriation, that encompasses both the mastery of disciplinary content as well as situating one’s learning in wide and personal projects of intellectual and emotional growth. Our analysis focuses on data collected during an extended teaching/learning path on thermodynamics that took place in a scientifically oriented high school in Italy. Previous analysis of this data corpus resulted in the generation of an operationalizable definition of appropriation. We build upon this work here in beginning to elaborate the relationship between classroom discourse and individual cases of appropriation. In interviews, the teacher of this class used a metaphor of “pulling the rope and letting it go” to describe: (1) How she managed the pace of collective construction of knowledge i.e., keeping the whole class tuned (pulling the rope) and (2) Introducing variations in the rhythm of the discussions so as to allow students with different styles of learning to engage (letting it go). This combination of “pulling the rope” and “letting it go” was conjectured to be instrumental in supporting appropriation. Here we investigate this conjecture by studying two contrasting lessons in which the teacher (A) “pulled the rope” and (B) “let it go.” We created maps of the structure and dynamics of each lesson to gain insight into particular macro features that distinguished the two lessons (e.g., patterns of turn-taking, fluctuations in pace of the discussions, etc.) Finally, we zoomed in on the way the participation of particular focal students was structured with an eye toward uncovering aspects particularly relevant for understanding individual processes of appropriation.