Tabak2004 Scaffolding PDF

COGNITION AND INSTRUCTION, 22(4), 393–429
Copyright © 2004, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
The Teacher as Partner: Exploring

Participant Structures, Symmetry,
and Identity Work in Scaffolding
Iris Tabak
Ben Gurion University of the Negev
Eric Baumgartner
Inquirium
In this article, we examine the role that different participant structures can play in
supporting inquiry-based science learning. We frame mastering scientific inquiry as
mastering the “what,” “why,” and “how” of the cultural tools that scientists employ.
We present a participant structure we call the teacher as partner and show how it ren-
ders the what, why, and how visible while establishing symmetry between teachers
and students. We draw on Wertsch’s (1998) distinction between mastery, gaining
proficiency with a cultural tool, and appropriation, making a tool one’s own, to show
that the partner participant structure contributes to both. Thus, we propose that the
teacher as partner serve as a generative metaphor for inquiry teaching in responding
to current calls to consider identity formation as well as subject-matter learning in
formal schooling. We hope that it invites research on instructional moves that can de-
mystify the process of science and help students identify themselves as ratified par-
ticipants who can contend with scientific issues as citizens.
A: Cracking open and eating Tribulus [Reads from descriptive notes on a

computer screen]
B: By the time he got there they had already finished eating, so he was either
too slow or
A: Ooo or his beak wasn’t strong enough
Requests for reprints should be sent to Iris Tabak, Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Education
Department, P.O. Box 653, Beer Sheva, 84105 Israel. E-mail: itabak@bgumail.bgu.ac.il
394 TABAK & BAUMGARTNER
This type of dialogue is probably familiar to anyone who has observed a group
of students working collaboratively on an investigation. How often does such an
exchange occur between teachers and students? Do such peer-like interactions
hold promise for supporting student learning? We explore this question in the con-
text of teacher–student interactions amidst students’ first-hand investigations in in-
quiry-based science classrooms.
We approach subject matter learning from the perspective of mediated action
(Wertsch, 1991, 1998). Mediated action emphasizes activity as the unit of analysis
and conceives of all actions as mediated through the irreducible tension between
agents and cultural tools.1 From this perspective, we can think of disciplines as em-
ploying cultural tools and as using these tools in ways that are unique to the disci-
pline (Cole, 1996; Pea, 1992; Wertsch, 1991, 1998). Thus, science teaching in-
volves helping students develop familiarity with the cultural tools that typify
scientific practice and facility with the culturally appropriate ways of using these
tools, which includes ways of acting, valuing, and thinking (Hicks, 1996, p. 105).
UNDERSTANDING THE “WHAT,” “WHY,”

AND “HOW” OF CULTURAL TOOLS
We posit that to help students gain mastery over the cultural tools of science, teach-
ers need to help students understand the what, why, and how of these tools. First,
students need to know the what of scientific cultural tools—what cultural tools are
relevant. For example, in this article, we focus on students’ investigations of natu-
ral selection in the wild. Within this setting, an important cultural tool is struc-
ture–function reasoning,2 which involves identifying how structure determines or
constrains function. Second, students need to understand how a collection of cul-
tural tools, a tool kit (Bruner, 1986; Cole, 1996; Wertsch, 1991), can be used in the
course of an investigation to generate and defend knowledge claims. We refer to
this as the how of scientific cultural tools. In this study, this means that students
need to be able to orchestrate a series of observations to examine how animals’
physical characteristics enable them to perform actions that help them survive un-
der current environmental conditions.
1Cultural tools (referred to, interchangeably, as “mediational means” in Wertsch, 1998) are any and
all tangible and intangible objects such as visual representations, sign systems, or technical tools.
2Strictly speaking, behavior and function are not synonymous. For example, a more technically ac-
curate use of the term structure–function reasoning would be to state that the structure of the beak influ-
ences its function, its “seed cracking” efficacy. Our use of structure–function reasoning was a conve-
nient shorthand that was more accessible to students and was not found to be prohibitive by our
consulting biologists.
SYMMETRY AND IDENTITY WORK IN SCAFFOLDING 395
In addition, students need to understand what purpose employing a particular

tool at a particular juncture in an investigation serves. We call this the why of
cultural tools. This sense of purpose has both local and global meanings. In a lo-
cal sense, within a particular investigation, it expresses the rationale underlying a
particular move. In the global sense, it relates a particular move to the system of
norms and values that governs the discipline and explicates how this move fits
within this system. In the case of structure–function reasoning, students need to
understand that the type of explanations that are valued in the community are
causal explanations (and what that means). They also need to appreciate that part
of being an evolutionary biologist means that you aim to understand how differ-
ent organisms manifest different (physical or structural) solutions when faced
with the same environmental conditions. Unless students understand that being
an evolutionary biologist means that you value explaining how an organism’s
function depends on structure in a cause–effect relation, there is a danger that
“students will take form for substance and merely learn to behave in ways that
convince us that they see what we consider self-evident” (Cobb, Yackel, &
Wood, 1992, p. 9).
Helping students understand the what, why, and how of the cultural tools of sci-
ence and enabling them to effectively employ these tools in complex investigations
is not easy. The cultural tools of science are fairly distinct from the tools that peo-
ple typically employ in day-to-day experiences (Hawkins & Pea, 1987; Reif &
Larkin, 1991). The science education literature has been replete with examples
noting the disparity between students’ nascent attempts at inquiry and the practices
of professional scientists, even in the context of highly supportive learning envi-
ronments (e.g., Krajcik et al., 1998; Sandoval, 2003; Schauble, Glaser, Duschl,
Shulze, & John, 1995; Zimmerman, 2000).
Clearly, students are quite capable of critically analyzing and synthesizing in-
formation and of making and defending knowledge claims. Yet, their own ways
of explaining natural phenomena may not be well aligned with normative sci-
ence. For example, students may not spontaneously employ the scientific cul-
tural tool of structure–function reasoning. Students might, for instance, choose
to focus on an animal’s ability to survive based on its geographic proximity to
resources and relative isolation from pollutants rather than by explicating the
causal relation between the animal’s physical characteristics, behavior, and envi-
ronmental conditions. Note that the lay explanation and the scientific explana-
tion would likely share features or pieces of information (e.g., the availability of
resources), but the ways in which they would use this information would be dif-
ferent. This poses a challenge for educators because most current goals in sci-
ence education (e.g., National Research Council, 2000) call for students to not
only create personal meaning as part of their science learning but to construct
particular forms of knowledge in particular ways, mainly by using the cultural
tools of formal science.
AUTHORITATIVE AND PERSUASIVE NATURE

OF SCIENCE LEARNING
Viewing science learning as being confronted with a new set of cultural tools and
as having to use these tools and use them in particular ways can seem like a coer-
cive process. If students are shepherded into particular ways of seeing and doing,
can they still be considered autonomous? Does taking up new tools necessarily de-
mand relinquishing authority and control?
In contending with these questions, it can be helpful to consider the distinction
that Bakhtin (1981) drew between authoritative and internally persuasive dis-
course. Authoritative discourse is discourse that must be taken in without negotia-
tion. Internally persuasive discourse is one that becomes one’s own only through
interaction with one’s own words. Authoritative and internally persuasive dis-
course might seem dichotomous, but they are never mutually exclusive; there is al-
ways an element of univocality and an element of dialogicality in every text
(Wertsch, 1991, p. 79). That is why the internally persuasive word is viewed as
Half-ours and half-someone else’s. … Such a word awakens new and independent
words. … It is not so much interpreted by us as it is further, that is, freely, developed
applied to new material, new conditions, it enters into interanimating relationships
with new contexts. (Bakhtin, 1981, pp. 345–346)
This interaction between univocality and dialogicality expresses the process

that we go through and would like our students to go through in investigating natu-
ral phenomena. We base our judgment of these phenomena on normative interpre-
tive frameworks (Kuhn et al., 1988; Smith, Maclin, Houghton, & Hennessey,
2000), but ultimately what comes to bear on the explanations that we articulate is
our own set of perceptions and interpretations of the specific situation with which
we are grappling. We use the cultural tools of science in particular ways, producing
knowledge in accordance with the set of values that characterize our domain of in-
quiry. Yet, we employ creativity and ascribe our own meaning to the tools as we
make use of them in new situations (Rogoff, 1993; Wertsch, 1998).
Therefore, adopting particular tools does not necessarily mean that students re-
linquish autonomy and control. The question that we need to ask ourselves as edu-
cators is how we can create learning environments that cultivate students that are
able to use the cultural tools of science in culturally appropriate ways without be-
ing overly constrained and stifled by these norms. As we noted in the previous sec-
tion, developing a command of the what, why, and how of cultural tools is neces-
sary for students to be able to use the tools. What measures do we need to take so
that students come to see themselves as agents who can creatively harness these
tools for their own purposes?
NURTURING A BALANCE BETWEEN AUTHORITATIVE

AND PERSUASIVE DISCOURSE
Our stance toward science teaching is not one of coercion but of a process of help-
ing students make the cultural tools of science their own by nurturing a balance be-
tween authoritative and persuasive discourse. This is not an obvious or straightfor-
ward process. Bakhtin (1981) spoke of the difficulty of making other’s words one’s
own, noting that some words resist, that they remain alien and sound foreign in the
mouth of the one who now tries to speak them, “as if they put themselves in quota-
tion marks against the will of the speaker” (pp. 293–294). Therefore, we need to
present the cultural tools of science in a way that privileges (Wertsch, 1991) them
so that they become candidates for students’ sense making in science but not in a
way that dispels access.
If science through its instruction is perceived as strictly authoritative, then stu-
dents will shy away from personal meaning making. Using Bakhtin’s (1981) meta-
phor, if students perceive that scientific texts (in the broad sense) should not and
cannot be altered at all or by them, they are likely to keep these texts in quotation
marks. Quoted texts, however, are not subject to much interpretation or revision.
Even when people use “quoted texts” for their own purposes, these texts remain in
their original form, unaltered by the words of the quoting authors, and the quoting
authors are limited in the ways in which they can repurpose these texts. In the case
of science learning, students will likely maintain, as many students unfortunately
do, that science is best learned and approached through memorization (Driver,
Leach, Millar, & Scott, 1996; Songer & Linn, 1991) and that the generation or crit-
ical evaluation of scientific knowledge is beyond them (Aikenhead, 1989).
In contrast, if there is no measure of authoritative perspectives, then normative
ways of knowing, doing, and talking will not come across as sources from which
students should draw on in an interanimating relation in crafting their own words.
As a result, the ways in which students interrogate data and construct explanations
will be based entirely on their own meanings and experiences. These, in turn, may
have little to do with the practices that science educators want them to adopt. Fur-
ther, students may need to perceive themselves as doing “real science,” the same
type of things that “real scientists” do rather than “school science,” a set of simpli-
fied tasks created for demonstrating competence, in order to feel empowered to
contend with scientific issues as citizens.
Nurturing a balance between authoritative and persuasive discourse and en-
abling students to experience interanimation between normative science and their
own perspectives may be a function of the ways in which scientific cultural tools
are presented and the processes through which their use is fostered. A teacher’s
voice does not necessarily have to be univocal by virtue of his or her institutional
authority. Teacher–student dialogues can reflect varying degrees of dialogicality
depending, in part, on the ways in which teachers position themselves in relation to
the students and their respective authority over the knowledge that is constructed
(Cornelius & Herrenkohl, 2004/this issue; Polman, 2004/this issue; Wertsch,
1998).
PARTICIPANT STRUCTURES AND THE BALANCING

OF AUTHORITATIVE AND PERSUASIVE DISCOURSE
Consider the ubiquitous pattern of teacher-student-teacher turns (Cazden, 2001;

Cazden & Beck, 2003), most commonly referred to as initiation–response–evalua-
tion or IRE. Lemke (1990) called such patterns triadic dialogue, which is a term
that is useful in pointing to the distinction that response types can make in deter-
mining the instructional consequences of the dialogue. In cases in which the third
turn takes the form of evaluation, as found by Mehan (1979), this structure is said
to foster a view of learning in general and of science in particular as the acquisition
of an authoritative canon. The teacher is the authority of this knowledge, and she or
he tests and evaluates whether students are successful in absorbing this informa-
tion. In contrast, when the third turn takes the form of feedback rather than evalua-
tion (Wells, 1993), new opportunities open for making the triadic dialogue a set-
ting for knowledge refinement. This suggests to students that there is more to
learning than rote memorization, that learning consists of analysis and the exten-
sion of ideas.
Similarly, Stone (1993) cautioned that teachers and researchers cannot assume
a simple relation between providing scaffolding and the eventual mastery of cul-
tural tools. Scaffolding is an instructional process that has become synonymous
with apprenticeship and inquiry-based learning. It is a process through which
teachers, peers, and materials (Palincsar, 1998; Tabak, 2004) provide students with
titrated support that enables them to use the cultural tools of science in their inves-
tigations even though they still do not have full command of these tools (Stone,
1993; Wood, Bruner, & Ross, 1976).
Scaffolding can take the form of the teacher regulating the learners’ tool use un-
til the use becomes self-regulated (cf. Wertsch & Stone, 1985) or of the teacher
taking over parts of the task, allowing the students to focus on the parts that are
more accessible to them (Greenfield, 1984; Wood et al., 1976). Scaffolding is also
accomplished through the semiotic affordances of various representations and of
discussions between teachers and learners (Stone, 1993). The teacher can begin a
statement and leave a slot at the end for the students to fill (cf. Cazden, 1979), or
she or he can speak as though an implicit assumption is shared between the stu-
dents and the teacher, thus implicitly challenging the students to construct her or
his supposition for themselves (Stone, 1993).
Successful scaffolding requires that participants form shared meanings. Stone
(1993) posited that this process hinges on issues of authority, expertise, trust, and
reciprocity engendered through the history of interactions between the partici-

pants. Such dynamics of interaction relate to the participant structures that are at
play: the configurations of interactional roles, rights, and responsibilities, the con-
ventions of “who can say what when and how” (e.g., Cazden & Beck, 2003). Con-
sistent with Stone’s claims, prior research on classroom participant structures has
converged on the idea that a powerful pedagogical effect seems to occur when the
social configurations are arranged so that students assume some of the roles asso-
ciated with generating and assessing information and with monitoring progress
that are typically held by teachers (Au & Mason, 1981; Cazden & Beck, 2003;
Herrenkohl & Guerra, 1998; Palincsar & Herrenkohl, 2002; Philips, 1972;
Wertsch, 1998).
Much of this research has further suggested that inclusion of more symmetry in
teacher–student interactions is key to pedagogical efficacy. For example, symme-
try is a feature of the participant structure “revoicing”3 (O’Connor & Michaels,
1993, 1996) that distinguishes it from other similar patterns in which teachers re-
peat and rephrase students’ remarks. In revoicing, the teacher not only rephrases
the student’s remarks to align them with academic texts, she or he does this in a
way that attributes the “revoiced” statement to the student and entitles him or her to
negotiate the teacher’s interpretation of his or her remarks, for example, by using
the discourse marker “so” (O’Connor & Michaels, 1993, 1996). Repetition alone
could have the opposite effect: communicating to the students that a statement is
only available to the class as a legitimate source of knowledge after it has been
sanctioned by the teacher’s restatement.
In revoicing, the teacher confers on students the authority over the knowledge
claims that are aligned with authoritative academic texts even though the students
did not themselves compose these aligned texts. In so doing, the teacher sets up
symmetry between teachers and students in terms of their respective authority over
knowledge construction (Forman & Ansell, 2002). Thus, the aligned text is shared;
it is half the teacher’s and half the students’. It can invite students to use these
aligned texts as “thinking devices” (Wertsch, 1998) to be repurposed, elaborated,
or modified in the future.
This suggests that participant structures that establish more symmetry between
teachers and students can achieve a balance between authoritative and persuasive
discourse. As we have noted, we expect that this balance is important in helping
students learn to use cultural tools in culturally appropriate but generative ways.
We believe that couching scaffolding within such participant structures can engen-
der the trust and reciprocity that Stone (1993) argued is key to successful scaffold-
ing. There is some support for this claim in a recent study (Strom, Kemeny, Lehrer,
3O’Connor and Michaels (1993) used the term participant framework to subsume what we refer to
in this article as participant structure as well as the ways in which speakers depict others.
& Forman, 2001) that showed that students took up mathematical cultural tools
when their teacher used revoicing in class discussions.
THIS STUDY
We have chosen to explore symmetry-fostering participant structures and their role

in helping students take up the cultural tools of science in the context of
teacher–student discussions amidst first-hand, student-directed investigations. In
these investigations, students work in groups of three at computers as part of an in-
quiry-based unit on evolution in an introductory high school biology course. The
teacher circulates among the groups and engages each group in discussion about
the process and progress of their inquiry.
This is an interesting site to explore because the physical and task configura-
tions create the potential to challenge traditional knowledge and authority struc-
tures in the classroom. In traditional recitation lessons, the teacher can be per-
ceived as the expert and authority over knowledge. In inquiry-based science
classrooms, the student-directed, first-hand investigations form the hub of activity
and the locus of knowledge construction. Teachers may be proficient in the prac-
tice of science, but the student groups are more versed in the content and details of
their specific projects or investigations. This twist has the potential to imbue stu-
dents with some of the power traditionally held by the teacher, which, as we have
noted, has been shown to carry positive pedagogical power.
Yet, this potential is not deterministic. The teachers’ “disadvantaged” status is
exposed each time they visit a group and have to ask the students to bring them up
to date on the state of the investigation. However, once this concession has been
made, the teacher can reclaim the traditional role or maintain a relationship of mu-
tual interdependence, similar to the dynamic of transformative communication de-
picted by Polman and Pea (2001). In these interactions, teachers design their
speech (Duranti, 1997, p. 299) and use various questioning and prompting strate-
gies (Hammer, 1997; Hogan, Nastasi, & Pressley, 1999; Minstrell, 2001; van Zee
& Minstrell, 1997) to steer their students toward particular knowledge goals (Roth,
1995; Spitulnik & Krajcik, 1998; Tabak & Reiser, 1999). Does this designed
speech establish symmetry or preserve traditional teacher–student asymmetry?
We have accrued a corpus of knowledge concerning effective discourse strate-
gies (e.g., Hogan et al., 1999; Roth, 1995; van Zee, Iwasyk, Kurose, Simpson, &
Wild, 2001) that are associated with modeling and scaffolding (Collins, Brown, &
Newman, 1989) student inquiry. Now, in light of emerging findings concerning the
ways in which participant structures can frame this discourse as authoritative or in-
ternally persuasive, it is important to examine how teachers position themselves in
these interactions. What consequences does this positioning set up for mastering
the what, why, and how of scientific cultural tools?
In this article, we present a telling case (Mitchell, 1984)—a case selected to illu-
minate and help us understand obscured theoretical relations—that depicts
microlongitudinal changes in a group of students’ take-up of a scientific cultural
tool, structure–function reasoning. We build on prior research (Baumgartner, 2000;
Tabak, 1999, 2002) in which we have identified different participant structures that
emerged in teacher–student interactions in inquiry-based science classrooms.
We show how the mastery or take-up of this cultural tool co-occurs with
teacher–student interactions in an enactment of a participant structure we call part-
ner. This structure is marked by a symmetrical relationship between teachers and
students and was rare relative to another structure we observed, the mentor partici-
pant structure. We use this case to explore how the inclusion of symmetrical struc-
tures such as the partner can introduce profitable opportunities for supporting the
what, why, and how of cultural tools. We further speculate on how the presence of
this structure in the classroom can permeate and color other forms of interaction
and on the effects that this might have on identity formation.
BACKGROUND AND PRIOR FINDINGS
Setting and Rationale

This analysis draws on two science reform projects: the Biology Guided Inquiry
Learning Environments (BGuILE) project studying the support of inquiry-based
biological sciences in middle and high school classes, and the Material Worlds
Modules (MWM) project studying the support of inquiry-based material sciences
engineering in high school classes. These projects have taken the form of de-
sign-based research (Brown, 1992; Cobb, Confrey, diSessa, Lehrer, & Schauble,
2003; Design-Based Research Collective, 2003) as do many extant projects that
appreciate the complexity that is involved in achieving reform. Such an approach
starts with an idealized vision of classroom learning. In iterative cycles, research-
ers, in collaboration with teachers, craft ways to achieve this vision, enact it, and
study its associated developmental changes as well as the situated processes that
lead to these changes (e.g., Turner & Meyer, 2000).
Overall, through these projects we have tried to understand and express how
learning occurred through interactions between teachers, students, and materials
(Ball & Cohen, 1996) through different participant structures over time (e.g.,
Baumgartner, 2000; Tabak, 1999). In this article, for analytic purposes, we extract
one aspect of this holism of interactions, the contribution to learning that is af-
forded through the inclusion of the partner participant structure. In doing so, we
lose some of the veridicality of understanding how learning occurs in such class-
rooms, but we gain an opportunity to focus more closely on particular instructional
approaches to inform practice.
The studies on which our analysis is based were not conceived with particular
participant structures in mind and were not designed to test their ubiquity or effi-
cacy. However, we did observe changes in students’ performance as they adopted
more normative practices and found positive changes on subject matter pretests
and posttests (Baumgartner, 2000; Tabak, 1999). Thus, we consider the classrooms
that we have studied to be apt contexts within which to consider the pedagogical
implications of different participant structures.
Although these two research projects shared similar goals and approaches, the
original data collection and analyses were conducted in isolation. As part of this
process, we were participant observers, present in the classroom every day for the
duration of the instructional unit. Observations took place over repeated study iter-
ations in several classrooms in different schools. A total of five teachers in five
schools were observed across both projects (one teacher was observed by both of
us but at different times and in different curricular contexts). This immersion pro-
vided us with insights concerning the ways in which teachers and students try to
make sense of these novel materials, of each other, and of science and how this un-
folds in day-to-day classroom interactions.
The merging of our data and the meeting of analytic views enabled us to criti-
cally examine some of the conjectures and claims that we raised in earlier work
(e.g., Tabak, 2002). We could explore whether our findings were relevant to data
beyond the scope of our original studies (Baumgartner, 2000; Tabak, 1999). For
example, although both studies (Baumgartner, 2000; Tabak, 1999) articulated sim-
ilar descriptions of recurring classroom structures, we have found that the specific
dialogue examples stemming from each project were not fully aligned. This pro-
vided new insights and helped us refine how we define the boundaries between the
different participant structures (e.g., recognizing “insider–outsider” relationships
as an important factor).
In our corpus of five teachers in five schools (and two different curricula), only
one teacher enacted the partner participant structure. This teacher taught a regular
level class in a public high school in a large urban setting in the Midwest. Her stu-
dents were not representative of academically high achieving students. Their ini-
tial reactions to the student-directed inquiry projects included a sense of loss and
frustration. However, over the course of the unit, they took up the use of scientific
cultural tools and articulated explanations that reflected features of explanations
that are valued in the discipline.
The rarity of this structure juxtaposed with the learning that we observed mo-
tivated us to pursue this telling case analysis. Before we present the case and its
analysis, we provide an overview of the three main participant structures that we
identified. This overview is provided to enable us in our analyses to contrast
some of the features of the partner structure, on which we focus, with some of
the features of these other structures and to discuss their relative contributions to
learning.
Three Participant Structures That Support

Student-Directed Inquiry
In our prior research (Baumgartner, 2000; Tabak, 1999), we observed recurring
patterns of the teacher approaching student groups while they were working on
their investigations. As the students were working, the teacher circulated among
the groups and engaged them in conversation about their work. The teacher would
typically come up to a group, stand, sit, or lean beside them, opening with a query
aimed to assess the current state of the investigation, such as “you figuring it out?”
or “OK. So what do you guys think?” After spending some time with the group,
once the teacher appeared to conclude that the group was “on the right track,” the
teacher would start to move away from the group toward another group. This was
often accompanied by a comment on the students’ next actions such as “why don’t
you guys try something else” or “you can write down your predictions.” Within
these similar opening and closing interactions, different patterns emerged.
We named the patterns to reflect the different teacher roles we identified in
each: the monitor participant structure, the mentor participant structure, and the
partner participant structure (Tabak, 1999, 2002). These participant structures
were distinguished in terms of asymmetry or symmetry in teacher–student rela-
tionships, the discourse pattern, and the explicit or implicit nature of instruction as
summarized in Table 1. Occasionally, the teacher would shift between these differ-
ent patterns within a single episode of interaction with a group. We characterize
each of these participant structures following, although our analyses and discus-
sion focus on the mentor and partner structures.
TABLE 1
Summary of Participant Structure Types and Their Characteristics
Participant Structure
Characteristic Monitor Mentor Partner
Teacher–student relationship Asymmetric Asymmetric Symmetric

Teacher as insider or outsider Outsider Outsider Insider
Discourse pattern I (T) – R (S) I (T) – R (S) R (T, S)
Nature of prompts Explicit Explicit Implicit
Teacher interaction Supervising, executive Strategic prompting and Investigating with
feedback feedback students
Student interaction Report progress, ask for Report progress, justify Justify rationale,
clarification rationale challenge
Articulate rationale Not applicable Students Teacher and students
(less)
Benefits Ensure flow Strategy learning Strategy learning
Note. I = initiation; T = by teacher; R = response; S = by students.

The monitor participant structure. This structure tends to be a brief en-

counter that functions mainly to sustain the flow of classroom activity. It is charac-
terized by an asymmetry in the teacher–student relationship associated with an ini-
tiation (I) by the teacher and a response (R) by the student, which is occasionally
followed by feedback (F) from the teacher, an I–R–[F] discourse pattern. The
teacher’s role is one of setting up the tasks and procedures and making sure that
they are carried out; the students’ role is to execute the actions and provide infor-
mation on progress. Teachers might ask students about appropriate procedures of a
task or the completion of task-related milestones. Students respond by reporting on
their progress or asking for clarification. The teacher either briefly acknowledges
the students’ progress, for example, by saying “OK” and moving on to another
group, or in cases in which procedures or expectations are not clear, she might pro-
vide feedback and explain these procedures.
The mentor participant structure. Interactions in the mentor participant

structure focus on supporting the substance of the inquiry process. The mentor par-
ticipant structure is characterized by an asymmetrical teacher–student relationship
and by an I–R–[F] discourse pattern. The I–R sequences that appear in the mentor
structure make way for more persuasive discourse by leaving room for interpreta-
tion, negotiation, and adaptation of ideas rather than the testing and evaluation (E)
found in typical recitation I–R–E patterns. Sometimes the pattern also includes
teacher feedback following a student’s response. This occurs when the students’
response is actually a bid for clarification or when the teacher asks about next steps
and offers suggestions following the students’ response.
In the mentor participant structure, the teacher tries to help the students align
their thinking and actions with scientific norms without dictating actions or expla-
nations. This is achieved through the initiation turns, which are similar to the
slot-like turns of scaffolding we described earlier (Cazden, 1979). Just as parents
supporting the process of puzzle construction can ask “what pieces should we look
at first?” to help children regulate puzzle construction by first forming the border,
similarly, in the mentor participant structure, the teacher can phrase her questions
in terms that reify scientific norms such as comparison and control. For example, a
teacher can ask “Why don’t you look at them at a normal season?” to encourage
students to make systematic comparisons across time.
Partner participant structure. The partner participant structure is similar to

the mentor participant structure, but the main difference lies in the posture that the
teacher assumes. Here, the teacher presents herself as a peer in contrast to the men-
tor participant structure in which she presents herself in a role of authority (albeit
in the context of a persuasive discourse). In the partner participant structure, the
teacher joins the group for a few minutes and takes part in their investigation as a
genuine member of the group. Therefore, the teacher–student relationship is sym-
metrical, and the teacher and students share the same role of investigator. In the
partner participant structure, issues of effective inquiry are implicit within the rea-
soning and justifications voiced by the participants, whereas in the mentor partici-
pant structure, the teacher presents these issues explicitly.
This shift in roles also includes a shift in the mode of interaction. Unlike the
I–R, teacher–student couplets that appear in the mentor structure, in the partner
participant structure, there can be a sequence of a number of consecutive student
turns or teacher turns. In the partner structure, the teacher does not initiate slot-like
bids for information; rather, both students and teacher respond to and interpret the
data they are observing. For example, consider the similarity between a student re-
mark, “see they eat the seeds,” and a teacher remark, “it was successful in un-shell-
ing the seeds.”
METHOD
The microlongitudinal data we present are from the BGuILE project that used a de-
sign-based research methods approach to understand how to support inquiry-based
science in biology. In the design component of this study, we developed a 5-week
unit on evolution for introductory high school biology classrooms. Our design was
based on the instructional framework of cognitive apprenticeship (Collins et al.,
1989). The unit (Tabak, 1999) was composed of a combination of novel and exist-
ing activities that included first-hand investigations as well as activities that illus-
trate particular concepts (e.g., preexisting variation in a population).
Studies of classroom enactment included three iterations of design, enactment,
and reflection with three different teachers in three different schools (one of the
teachers only participated in the third enactment). The research design strategy in-
cluded a multifaceted analysis of one archetypical classroom and a comparison of
this archetype to two other classrooms in which a narrower analysis was con-
ducted. The comparison classes were chosen to form contrastive cases and in-
cluded an honors class from an affluent academically high achieving suburban
high school, a regular-level class from a financially moderate and average achiev-
ing urban high school, and a low-track class from a financially comfortable but ac-
ademically moderate achieving suburban high school.
Data sources included field notes, video, and audio recordings of class sessions
as well as formal and informal interviews with teachers and students. Analyses be-
gan with a broad-stroke exploratory analysis of a wide set of data and became in-
creasingly more narrow and purposeful (Erickson, 1992). Patterns that seemed to
be present from reviews of the field notes and tapes drove a closer examination of
particular segments of classroom interaction, which were transcribed. A
turn-by-turn analysis using discourse analytic methods (e.g., Castanheira,
Crawford, Dixon, & Green, 2001; Duranti, 1997) was conducted to better charac-
terize these interaction styles and to discern the function that specific linguistic de-
vices served in the dialogue as well as how they relate to participants’ roles and
processes of knowledge construction.
The archetype class was Ms. Patrick’s (pseudonyms are used throughout the ar-
ticle) regular-level introductory biology class in City School. City is a public urban
high school in a large metropolitan area in the Midwest. Parents need to actively
enroll their children in the school, but there are no entrance exams. The school has
a diverse student population, for example, 30% White, 27% Black, 23% Hispanic,
and 20% other. Students in this school have achieved average performance in math
(68% at or above national norms) and reading (52.8%) relative to national norms
on the 1997 Tests of Achievement and Proficiency (based on School Report Card
published by the school district). This class was chosen as an archetype because it
represented a tractable target. Students in this class were not at a very high end of
achievement but were inclined to put forth some effort in academic tasks. Investi-
gative experiences were novel, but instruction was not limited to transmission
methods.
Ms. Patrick was not a typical teacher. Teaching was a second career for her after
spending several years working as a medical technician. At the time of the study,
she had less than 5 years of teaching experience. The dialogue examples that we
present were drawn from this class. Interestingly, this is the only class in which we
observed the partner participant structure.
The comparative analysis involved juxtaposing the inquiry processes of three
groups, one from each participating classroom, and relating differences in their
learning to differences in the classroom contexts. Comparing the participant struc-
tures that we identified in the archetype class to the interactions between the
teacher and contrastive-case groups in the comparison classrooms helped us con-
sider the pedagogical value of these structures. For example, we found that teacher
mediation in the archetype class enabled the students to achieve aspects of perfor-
mance similar to those exhibited by the honors students, even though the students’
initial and unassisted performance was not on par with that of the honors students
(Tabak, 1999).
The dialogue examples that we present feature groups of students who worked
at the computer on an investigation activity, The Galápagos Finches (Tabak,
Reiser, Sandoval, Leone, & Steinmuller, 2001). In this problem, students were
asked to explain why some members of a population of finches died and why oth-
ers survived during a bout of extreme and unusual mortality. This scenario is based
on a longitudinal study of finches in the Galápagos (Grant, 1986; Weiner, 1994).
Students could examine data on climate (e.g., rainfall) and plant life (e.g., amount
of a particular type of seed) as well as the finches’ physical characteristics (e.g., leg
length) and behavior (e.g., foraging patterns). This investigation represents natu-
ralistic research in which it is not possible to manipulate and control variables.
Rather, argument is based on conducting longitudinal and cross-sectional compar-
isons and on converging evidence. Like all investigation activities in this curricular
unit, this investigation spanned several class sessions and interleaved first-hand in-
vestigations in groups of three with whole-class discussions about the investiga-
tion. Table 2 shows the sequence and content of class sessions for the duration of
the Galápagos Finches investigation.
The software was designed using the approach of domain-specific strategic
support (Tabak, 1999; Tabak, Smith, Sandoval, & Reiser, 1996). This approach
scaffolds students’ data collection and analysis and guides students in using gen-
eral scientific conventions as they are reflected in the concerns of a particular disci-
pline. In other words, it tries to introduce students to the cultural tools of a scien-
tific discipline. For example, the general convention of controlled comparisons is
instantiated in the software by enabling students to construct comparisons between
survivors and casualties, which typifies the comparisons of concern in investigat-
ing natural selection in the wild. Another tool, ExplanationConstructor (Sandoval,
2003), is designed to guide students’ composition of an explanation that is sup-
ported by the data that is collected. It also takes a discipline-specific approach and
presents students with templates for different forms of explanations into which
they can enter their free text explanations and attach data from the investigation en-
vironment to support their claims.
The software includes data spanning eight time periods representing dry and
wet seasons during a baseline, noncrisis year, during crisis years, and during a
postcrisis year. Students typically collect and try to make sense of 30 to 60 differ-
ent quantitative and qualitative pieces of data. Negotiating this problem, trying to
interpret and synthesize all the information, is very challenging.
TABLE 2
Sequence of Class Sessions During the Galápagos Finches Investigation
Session Activity Type Purpose
1 Whole-class discussion Introduce the problem and brainstorm about

approaches
2 Groups investigating at the computers First-hand investigations
4 Whole-class discussion Sharing across groups, examining
investigation processes, and intermediate
explanations
6 Whole-class discussion Sharing across groups, examining
investigation processes, and intermediate
explanations
8 Whole-class discussion Culminating discussion, sharing and
critiquing final explanations, relating to
disciplinary principles
Note. Class sessions typically ran for 45 min. Session 6 was a half session.
FINDINGS
An important facet of biological thinking, an important way of conceiving of or-

ganisms, is in terms of structure–function relations. We present a sequence of three
temporally successive (though not consecutive) sessions (also presented in Tabak,
2004) that exhibited microlongitudinal changes in students’ mastery of the cultural
tool of structure–function reasoning.
These examples are taken from the interactions of a group of two girls, Tanya
and Cathy, and a boy, BK, as they grappled with the Galápagos Finches investiga-
tion. In the first episode, class Session 2 (see Table 2), the students considered both
behavior and physical characteristics but did not display proficient use of struc-
ture–function reasoning. In the second episode, also class Session 2, through a
partner participant structure, the teacher modeled the culturally appropriate use of
this tool. In the third and final episode, class Session 4, one sees that the students
took up this tool in a culturally appropriate way. This demonstrates the role that the
partner participant structure can play in fostering mastery of relevant cultural tools.
Episode 1: Nascent Use of Structure–Function Reasoning

The first episode took place during class Session 2. In this episode, the students
were trying to answer the question of what enabled the surviving finches to sur-
vive. Tanya raised the idea that their differential survival hinged on their differen-
tial food sources. Cathy responded that they should write down all that they know
about the surviving finches. Tanya concurred; she listed the physical characteris-
tics that they could observe in the software and further suggested that they compare
survivors and casualties:
1 a Tanya: But why would some of them survive?

b Because they are not all eating the same thing?
c Right?
Remember, some are eating spiders, some are eating seeds,
some are eating vegetables
2 a Cathy: Well lets write down what these that are alive and everything
b like all of them
3 a Tanya: We’re at 36,
b do you want to write that down,
c his leg length, his beak size and his wing length?
1 a Tanya: But why would some of them survive?
b Because they are not all eating the same thing?
c Right?
In this segment, it is hard to point to a proficient use of structure–function rea-

soning. The students did consider observing physical characteristics to understand
how they might relate to the behavior patterns they observed, but they did not try to
associate a particular behavior with a particular trait. They simply listed all of the
physical characteristics that were possible to measure.
Episode 2: Partnered Use of Structure–Function Reasoning

Episode 2 occurred later in the same class session as Episode 1. This episode ex-
hibits the fluidity with which the teacher moved between mentor and partner inter-
actions and the ways in which the cultural tool of structure–function reasoning was
modeled through the partner participant structure. Prior to the opening line in the
segment following, the teacher had been working with the group for a few minutes,
getting an update on what they had found so far, commenting on some observa-
tions they were making while she was present, and suggesting particular observa-
tions they might want to explore. These interactions were enacted through the
mentor participant structure.
We present the episode in three segments noting the shifts between a mentor
segment, a partner segment, and a final and third mentor segment. As part of our
analysis of symmetry and insider–outsider status, we examined the use of personal
pronouns (Duranti, 1997; Wortham, 1996) such as I, you, and we. These appear in
the transcripts in italics for emphasis. The first segment might appear a bit cryptic
because the content of the discussion conflates interface issues with sense making.
In this first segment, lines 1 through 5, the teacher was trying to encourage the stu-
dents to make comparisons between periods of copious and stressful conditions for
the finches by suggesting that they observe a normal or rainy (wet) season. The stu-
dents instead continued observing a dry season and were focused on observing in-
dividuals. The teacher supported the students’ current observations but continued
to encourage them to observe a wet season as a source of comparison:
1 a Ms. Patrick: Now

b Why don’t you look at them at a normal season?
c Oh, OK, I guess that doesn’t matter [reaction to interface]
d Oh none [no observations available in the chosen season]
e Look at a bunch of those
2 a Tanya: 5 do 5 [each finch is identified with a tag number]
b We know it’s a female
1 a Ms. Patrick: Now
b Why don’t you look at them at a normal season?
c Oh, OK, I guess that doesn’t matter [reaction to interface]
d Oh none [no observations available in the chosen season]
e Look at a bunch of those
2 a Tanya: 5 do 5 [each finch is identified with a tag number]
b We know it’s a female
c Go to 20
d Dry 77 [directing what season to observe]

3 aMs. Patrick: That’s OK
b You never know what you might discover
4 Cathy: Because we looked at all this
5 a Ms. Patrick: What you might want to do is
b look at them in a nice wet season
Mentor Transcript. Galápagos Finches, Session No. 2, Group 3 at the computer.
This segment exhibited some of the features of a mentor interaction. First, one
sees that the turns consisted mostly of teacher–student, initiation–response couplets.
Second, teacher remarks consisted of directives (not in the forceful or negative sense
of the word) without explication of the rationale for taking the proposed actions as
seen in line 5 and in line1b: “Why don’t you look at them at a normal season?”
Moreover, the teacher continually stated these directives using exclusive pro-
nouns, mainly the pronoun you (see italics in lines 1b, 3b, and 5a). This served
to position the teacher as an outsider to the investigation and was in contrast to
the student–student interactions and to the teacher–student interactions that char-
acterize the partner participant structure. In student–student interactions, the stu-
dents simply stated the action that they suggested without using any personal
pronouns such as Tanya’s directive “5 do 5” in line 2a and similarly in lines 2c
and 2d. In line 1e, the teacher also made a directive without the use of pronouns,
but our observations beyond this specific segment led us to conclude that this
was the exception rather than the norm in these interactions. When the students
did use personal pronouns in referring to observations they had made, they used
inclusive pronouns, mainly we. In the discussion that follows, we argue that the
teacher’s use of exclusive versus inclusive pronouns has implications for estab-
lishing a persuasive discourse and for constraining or affording access to scien-
tific practices.
In the next segment, lines 6 through 17, one sees a shift to what we have catego-
rized as partner interactions. In this segment, the students and the teacher were
looking at field notes—excerpts of observations of the birds’ behavior. The field
notes described how the finches wander and look for food as well as descriptions of
their foraging behavior. The students and the teacher rephrased and commented
about the information they read in the field notes. At the end of the segment, the
teacher modeled structure–function reasoning by articulating how the description
of the foraging behaviors made her think of a particular trait or physical character-
istic that might enable this behavior. This also models how to coordinate a series of
observations based on prior observations:
6 Tanya: See they eat the seeds [reacting to the text of the field
note]
7 Cathy: Look at another one [asking to look at another field

note]
8 Ms. Patrick: It was successful in un-shelling the seeds
9 Cathy: Try another one
10 Tanya: The guys were eating the spiders, a guy, um 43
11 Cathy: They don’t have 43 [Each finch is identified by a num-
ber]
12 Tanya: 63, he’s alive, right there, ‘77 [the episode occurred in
1977]
13 Cathy: We already have ‘77
14 Tanya: He eats seeds too
15 BK: I don’t know which one was eating the Portulaca
16 Cathy: We checked that
17 a Ms. Patrick: But that guy goes farther than most other finches forage
b Oh,
c That tells me,
d Maybe his transportation is better,
e Since these are ground finches, they don’t fly
f So it might have something to do with their legs
Partner Transcript. Galápagos Finches, Session No. 2, Group 3 at the computer.
This segment illustrates the structural differences between the mentor and the
partner participant structures. Unlike the alternating turns between teachers and
students that was seen in the previous segment, here one sees a number of consecu-
tive student turns (lines 6–7 and 9–16) as well as an extended teacher turn (line 17,
which is a to f utterances long). The teacher was not stating directives to the stu-
dents (the “you” in mentor interactions); she was responding directly to the data
with her interpretations of the field notes (lines 8 and 17). The teacher used
first-person or inclusive pronouns: “That tells me” (line 17c). This is a shift in the
participant structure and not merely a result of changes in the set of actions that are
pursued, that is, not merely a result of shifting from deciding between interface op-
tions to reading field notes. We make this determination because in prior mentor
interactions in which the teacher and students were reading data, the teacher used
the exclusive pronoun you when interpreting the data: “You’re looking at ground
finch 5, 20, … Oh, you know what else that tells you? What does that tell you in
1977?” (Galápagos Finches, Session No. 1, Group 3 at the computer).
Line 17 demonstrates how the partner participant structure can make the what,
why, and how of scientific cultural tools visible to students. In line 17a, the teacher
pointed to a bit of information that is most salient in the field note they were read-
ing: “But that guy goes farther than most other finches forage.” This is followed by
“Oh” (line 17b), which marks a shift in the status of information (Schiffrin, 1987,
pp. 90–98) and also serves to mark this as a key piece of information for the stu-
dents. Next (line 17c), the teacher pointed to the fact that this piece of information
provided her with insights concerning the investigation, and she proceeded to de-
scribe this insight. She noted that this bird might have had an advantage, it might
have had better transportation (line 17d). In this series of utterances, lines 17a
through 17d, the teacher was modeling structure–function reasoning, thus present-
ing students with a valued cultural tool, the what of cultural tools.
In lines 17e through 17f, Ms. Patrick expressed how she used this intermedi-
ate conclusion to explore the next possible link in the causal chain, trying to
identify the trait that is responsible for this advantage. In these lines, the teacher
exhibited the difficult and delicate coordination that we had mentioned was one
of the central challenges in conducting productive investigations. She interpreted
a specific piece of data in terms of the goal of the investigation (i.e., explaining
differential survival) and in terms of disciplinary interpretive frameworks (i.e.,
advantage and structure–function relationships), and she used these intermediate
conclusions to drive subsequent observations (i.e., turning to examine leg
length). In modeling this coordination, Ms. Patrick was modeling the how of the
scientific cultural toolkit, and by voicing her reasoning, she was explicating the
why of cultural tools.
As the discussion continues and we move to the third segment in this episode,
one again sees the fluidity with which the teacher moved between the roles of mon-
itor, mentor, and partner and the subtle boundary that exists between these partici-
pant structures:
18 Tanya: We did leg length19

Ms. Patrick: Is there a significant difference
between dead ones and live ones in their leg length?
20 a Tanya: We did leg length,
b these are the live ones,
c and we checked on the ones that were dead
21 Ms. Patrick: Their legs weren’t much shorter?
22 Tanya: Their beak lengths changed
18 Tanya: We did leg length
19 Ms. Patrick: Is there a significant difference
between dead ones and live ones in their leg length?
20 a Tanya: We did leg length,
b these are the live ones,
c and we checked on the ones that were dead
21 Ms. Patrick: Their legs weren’t much shorter?
22 Tanya: Their beak lengths changed
Mentor Transcript. Galápagos Finches, Session No. 2, LP, Group 3 at the com-
puter.
Lines 18 through 22 represent a shift back to the mentor participant structure. In

line 18, one of the girls seemed to discount the conjecture the teacher had just made
(line 17) that leg length might play a role in survival by noting that they had already
studied leg length. The girl did not actually describe what they found about leg
length, only that they had observed leg length. Consonant with this move, the
teacher, in line 19, made a shift and presented a mentor-like initiation that not only
asked for the information that they had found but fashioned a particular template,
the slot-like prompts of scaffolding, that represented the type and form of informa-
tion that would be necessary to defend the student’s claim. That is, she communi-
cated that to consider or discount leg length as a factor in survival, there needs to be
a significant difference between survivors and casualties.
Episode 3: Mastery of Structure–Function Reasoning

The third episode took place three class sessions later after students had a
whole-class discussion about their inquiry processes and another day devoted to in-
vestigation. The third episode is fairly similar to the second episode. The teacher was
working with the same group as a partner, and they were reading field notes that de-
scribed the finches’ behavior and considered next steps. Here too, the students of-
fered their own interpretations alongside the teacher. However, in this case, it was
one of the students, BK, who exhibited proficient use of structure–function reason-
ing. Moreover, he used this cultural tool to challenge the teacher’s interpretation.
The students and the teacher were reading a field note describing a finch’s for-
aging behavior. It described how the finch was looking for food and had come
across a patch of seeds where some larger birds were feeding. The finch under ob-
servation walked up to the patch but by the time he got there, there were no more
seeds left on the ground. The segment opens with BK describing what the group is
reading in the field note:
1 BK: We got two things we can tell from this

this is gf20 right? [each finch is identified by a tag num-
ber]
He saw other finches eating it,
but by the time he got there,
they had already finished eating.
2 Ms. Patrick: Cracking open and eating tribulus [reads from field
notes]
3 a BK: By the time he got there.
b They had already finished eating [describing what is
written in the field notes]
c So he
d Was either too slow or
4 Ms. Patrick: Ooo or his beak wasn’t strong

enough
5 a BK: No, it’s not his beak,
b By the time he got
c The shells was already broken
d So he was too slow
6 Ms. Patrick: Maybe
7 BK: Maybe it’s his leg size
Partner Transcript. Galápagos Finches, Session No. 4, LP, Group 3 at the com-
puter.
The transitions between turns 1, 2, 3, and 4 are indicative of the insider and part-
ner status that the teacher held in the group. Although the segment consists of alter-
nating teacher–student turns, the student and the teacher were each raising conjec-
tures in response to the data they were observing. Turn allocation is symmetrical
and ungoverned, absent of exclusive pronoun use by the teacher. The teacher
seemed genuinely engaged and excited as exhibited by the latched speech between
turn 3 and 4 and the way she precedes her interpretation with the exclamation
“Ooo” (line 4).
In line 5, BK exhibited mastery over the cultural tool of structure–function rea-
soning. He interpreted that the disadvantageous behavior had to do with locomo-
tion, as he noted in lines 3b to 3c that by the time the finch arrived, all the seeds had
been cracked. Thus, he concluded that the finch must have been slow. Next, he re-
lated this behavior to a relevant physical characteristic: to leg size (line 7). BK not
only presented an interpretation but challenged a competing interpretation raised
by the teacher (line 5a). He used structure–function reasoning to defend this posi-
tion by specifying that the beak could not have been relevant because the shells
were already cracked (lines 5b–5c) and that the pertinent behavior was speed of lo-
comotion (line 5d), which is likely determined by its leg size (line 7). His challenge
was forceful by virtue of the scientific authority that he had been able to harness.
DISCUSSION
We have shown that there are structural differences between the mentor and part-
ner participant structures. Moreover, we have shown that students’ increasing com-
petence with the structure–function cultural tool co-occurred with a series of part-
ner interactions. We next explain why we think that the structural characteristics of
the partner structure, particularly as juxtaposed with the mentor structure, have im-
portant consequences for fostering this mastery of cultural tools and for nurturing a
balance between authoritative and persuasive discourse.
Mastering Cultural Tools

Through Teacher–Student Partnership
Effective inquiry is daunting because it demands coordinating multiple steps in
which each step relies on what one already knows and what has already been done
and found in the investigation. Aligning these actions with the interpretive frame-
works and norms of the discipline is what lies at the heart of mastering the disci-
pline. The mentor structure offers one way to help students form this alignment by
making the criteria for the type and forms of actions and expressions explicit. It
does this mainly through the slot-like scaffolding initiations that the teacher pres-
ents to the students. However, as illustrated in Episode 2, these interactions rarely
included the coordination of multiple steps or the explication of the rationale un-
derlying these steps. In contrast, in the partner structure, as the teacher investigated
alongside the students and voiced her thoughts, she made the utility and rationale
of the actions visible and exemplified how to coordinate disciplinary consider-
ations and a series of actions in the inquiry process.
In essence, what the teacher was doing was modeling expert inquiry as advo-
cated by a number of contemporary pedagogical approaches (e.g., Collins et al.,
1989). However, we believe that the pedagogical potential that the partner partici-
pant structure can offer has to do with the teacher–student relationships within
which this modeling is couched. In the introduction, we raised the question of
whether teachers establish symmetry as they design (Duranti, 1997, p. 299) their
speech in these small-group interactions. Our analyses have shown that these small
group interactions can yield both symmetric (partner structure) and asymmetric
(mentor structure) interactions. We believe that the symmetry that is fostered
through the partner participant structure has important pedagogical consequences
that extend beyond rendering the how and the why of cultural tools visible.
First, the partner structure frames the teacher as a co-inquirer as opposed to a
teacher with the “historical baggage of schooling” that the teacher label carries.
Comparing the way students defended their positions in a mentor structure and a
partner structure can illustrate the effect that this can have on the intellectual roles
and stances that the students assume. Episode 2 and Episode 3 both presented in-
stances in which one of the students disagreed with one of the teacher’s sugges-
tions. In Episode 2, as part of a mentor interaction, Tanya did not think that explor-
ing leg size was a profitable next step, and in Episode 3, as part of a partner
interaction, BK did not believe that the foraging behavior they observed was a re-
sult of the finch’s beak structure.
The two students defended their positions in very different ways. Tanya appealed
to a “proof of performance”: “We did leg length.” Even after the teacher prompted for
a more substantive and critical evaluation of the leg data by asking whether there
were significant differences in leg size between live and dead finches, Tanya again
responded with “we did leg length,” noting that they had completed an action rather
than providing support for her position by presenting the content of their observa-
tions. In contrast, BK appealed to a substantive argument; he supported his claim by
pointing to the data in the field note, articulating the connection between locomotion
and the time that it took the finch to arrive at the feeding site.
The fact that these different forms of argument were differentially embedded in
the mentor and partner structures leads us to suspect that the different structures
connote different intellectual values, the first predicated on the display of knowl-
edge or the completion of tasks and the other on the construction and evaluation of
knowledge. This lead students to engage in “doing school” or in “doing science”
(Jimenez-Aleixandre, Rodriguez, & Duschl, 2000), respectively. Although the
mentor structure is consistent with the set of values proffered by inquiry-based sci-
ence, such as systematically refining empirically derived knowledge claims, the
teacher as authority figure that is reflected through this participant structure is
likely associated, for students, with traditional images of schooling that emphasize
the display of performance. However, we cannot discount the possibility that BK
simply had a stronger command of scientific practices than Tanya or that both BK
and Tanya were more adept at employing scientific cultural tools at the time of Epi-
sode 3 than Episode 2.
Stronger support for the effects of symmetry on student roles and the stance that
they assume in relation to the cultural tools of science can be found by comparing
our data to findings reported by Lemke (1990) as instances of what he called a
“student challenge” and teacher–student debates. The examples that Lemke pre-
sented were in the context of triadic dialogue, so we have the opportunity to com-
pare how teacher–student debates are enacted and resolved via triadic dialogue
versus partner participant structures. We broach this comparison in the next sec-
tion. In particular, we look at differences in the force of the challenge, in the avail-
able resources for warrants, and in the basis for resolution. We use this comparison
to argue that one of the consequences of the partner participant structure is that it
fosters both mastery and appropriation. This is a distinction made by Wertsch
(1998) between gaining proficiency with the culturally appropriate use of a cul-
tural tool and making it one’s own, what has been described by Bakhtin (1981) as
the function or essence of internally persuasive discourse.
Appropriating Cultural Tools

Through Teacher–Student Partnership
In Episode 3, we saw that BK proposed that the finch’s inability to obtain food was
associated with its ability to move fast and hence with its leg size. Ms. Patrick em-
phatically interjected, raising the alternative that it was associated with the finch’s
beak. Against the backdrop of the teacher’s eager exclamation and the power rela-
tionships that typically preside over teacher!student debates (e.g., Lemke, 1990,
pp. 27–48), BK’s unabashed “No, it’s not his beak” signaled a forceful and fully
franchised challenge. As we noted previously, BK was not only able to challenge
and contradict the teacher, but he was able to defend his claim using the conven-
tions of science—pointing to evidence that supports his claim and utilizing the cul-
tural tool of structure–function reasoning.
BK’s interpretation was not consistent with the normative explanation of this
problem scenario (the published scientific explanation has implicated beak depth
and strength in the ability to feed off of the remaining seeds and survive, e.g.,
Grant, 1986). This hints at the tension that exists between authoritative and persua-
sive discourse. The teacher’s suggestion that the finch’s inability to obtain food
might be related to beak size may have been an attempt (intentional or inadvertent)
to steer the students toward the normative explanation. Nonetheless, as the investi-
gation continued (beyond the quoted transcripts), it was BK’s interpretation that
prevailed, and the group went on to observe leg-size data.
The pedagogical power that this episode holds can be better viewed when com-
pared to the episodes presented by Lemke (1990). In Lemke’s (1990) examples,
the student challenge is often presented in the form of a question, for example,
“How can it be the ground creates the heat energy, if the sun creates the heat en-
ergy?” (p. 28) or “Couldn’t the water go down?” (p. 43). The predominant activity
structure in the classrooms that Lemke studied was triadic dialogue. Within this
structure, student roles are typically limited to responding to teacher bids and to
raising clarifying questions. In this context, it is understandable why a student
challenge often appears couched in a question. However, couched in a question,
the challenge might also imply that the final authority for evaluating whether the
challenge is warranted lies in the hands of the teacher. In contrast, in the preceding
example, the student, BK, stated his challenge as an explicit claim, signaling his
right to directly refute the teacher.
In considering the means for supplying warrants and concluding the debate, we
turn to Lemke’s (1990) summary of teacher–student debates (p. 44). Lemke stated
that the authority of the teacher in the classroom and the authority of science get inex-
tricably linked. In these debates, the teacher usually has the last word and appeals to
institutional authority, for example, by cutting off the discussion and moving on to a
new task or to scientific authority, for example, by presenting a scientific principle.
At times, the principles that the teacher cites to close the debate are unfamiliar to the
students. When appealing to scientific authority, the principle is not explicated, and
the links to the present debate are not made clear so that the appeal to scientific au-
thority serves to overwhelm rather than persuade the students.
In the previous example, the appeal is to the data that the students and teacher
are viewing, and the last word can be either the students’ or the teacher’s, resulting
in a persuasive rather than univocal resolution. BK pointed to the text of the field
note to defend his position. The ability to appeal to shared sources of evidence is
made available through the task/talk amalgam (Michaels, 2002) in which features
of the task drive and constrain features of the talk and vice versa. The rules of the
game of this task, of first-hand investigations, are taken to be that claims are sup-
ported or refuted through the data collected in the computer environment. Both the
students and the teacher have equal access to these resources, which are necessary
for warranted and supported claims. When debates are resolved by appeals to
decontextualized scientific principles, as in the examples that Lemke (1990) pre-
sented, the teacher may have more access to the necessary resources.
We consider BK’s challenge a compelling example of the partner participant
structure because BK had not only mastered the cultural tool of structure–function
reasoning, he had also taken up the authority that was fused to this tool (Wertsch &
Rupert, 1993). He was able to effectively wield this tool to challenge someone of
higher institutional authority, the teacher, and cogently defend his position. Al-
though it may not be necessary to master a tool to exploit its authority (Wertsch &
Rupert, 1993), we believe that what BK had done in this episode is part of what
Wertsch (1998) meant when he talked about making a tool one’s own. In this sense,
the partner participant structure seems to support appropriation as well as mastery.
Access and Appropriation as Identity Formation

How was BK able to appropriate scientific cultural tools? How was he able to not
only gain facility with the cultural tool of structure–function reasoning but also
muster the courage (Lampert, 1990) to maintain his position and use the tool to
stand up to an authority figure? Appropriation has to do with “who has access to
what knowledge.” We claim that the partner participant structure, by enacting sym-
metry, presents scientific practices as within these students’ reach. We view issues
of access to be central to the distinction between mastery and appropriation and to
the application of Bakhtin’s (1981) distinction between authoritative and persua-
sive discourse to science learning. The BK–teacher challenge suggests that the
symmetry in the partner participant structure serves to demystify the practice of
science and to help students conceive of themselves as ratified participants in au-
thentic scientific practice. This sways the discourse of science learning toward per-
suasive rather than authoritative discourse, achieving what we had argued was a
desirable balance between the two.
We focus on issues of access because of the obstacles that stand in the way of
appropriation in general and in appropriating scientific practices in particular. As
Bakhtin (1981) noted
The word does not exist in a neutral and impersonal language (it is not, after all, out
of a dictionary that the speaker gets his words!), but rather it exists in other people’s
mouths, in other people’s contexts, serving other people’s intentions: it is from there
that one must take the word, and make it one’s own. And not all words for just anyone
submit equally easily to this appropriation, to this seizure and transformation into pri-
vate property: many words stubbornly resist, others remain alien, sound foreign in
the mouth of the one who appropriates them and who now speaks them. … Expropri-
ating it [language], forcing it to submit to one’s own intentions and accents, is a diffi-
cult and complicated process. (pp. 293–294)
Science, in particular, as it is “spoken” in contemporary Western culture, is a

language that resists appropriation. Science is regarded as holding high status and
as a privileged form of knowledge over other forms of meaning making
(Aikenhead, 1989). In addition, many people treat science as difficult and perceive
scientists as intellectually superior (e.g., Brandes, 1996; Driver et al., 1996). That
is why it is important that science instruction do more than reveal and explicate the
workings of science, as the partner structure does by rendering the what, why, and
how of scientific cultural tools visible. It should also create circumstances that al-
low students to consider themselves on par with those that can engage in real sci-
ence and not just school science.
The partner participant structure accomplishes this by presenting a teacher per-
sona that is not typically displayed in classroom interactions. In the triadic dia-
logue, and to a large extent also in the mentor participant structure, the teacher per-
sona that the students see is one that sets the tone, controls the actions, and “knows
it all.” In contrast, the partner participant structure presents a teacher persona that
contemplates, hesitates, and is sometimes at a loss.
We had cautioned that the mentor participant structure is limited in its ability to
support the mastery of cultural tools because it did not make the how and the why
visible enough to students. This also has implications for the appropriation of cul-
tural tools. When reasoning processes are invisible, it not only precludes them
from being an object of observation, which is central to learning (Collins et al.,
1989), but also serves to mystify the process.
In the mentor structure, the teacher appeared as an outsider that walked up to the
group and was able to deliver suggestions on next steps. These suggestions were flu-
ently presented without much pause for contemplation or hesitation. The students,
on the other hand, were continually struggling to make sense of the data, constantly
debating inquiry steps. Raising an idea, considering its pros and cons, and eventu-
ally, not necessarily with much conviction, making a move. During class sessions,
the students openly expressed their confusion and difficulty and reported the same
during follow-up interviews. What is constituted through these interactions is a dif-
ferentiation between the insiders and the outsider, between “us the struggling stu-
dents” and “you the competent teacher.” This discrepancy could be perceived as be-
ing so profound that it is insurmountable, having immediate implications for the
extent to which students take authentic scientific practices to be within their reach.
This distinction between teacher persona and student persona is further accom-
plished through talk by the patterns of personal pronoun use depicted in our analy-
ses of the previous dialogue segments. Duranti (1997) described how one parent
can highlight and foreground their partner’s relationship to their child and back-
ground their own by referring to the child as “your son”; similarly, he described
how workers can express affiliation to their workplace by using “we” when talking
about the company. “The choice of a pronoun can thus have implications for the
ways in which actual and potential participants are defined, and authority or moral
stance established” (Duranti, 1997 p. 306).
The use of exclusive pronouns that dominated the mentor interactions differen-
tiates (Duranti, 1997, p. 313) two classes of participants, the teacher and the stu-
dents. When students juxtapose their tribulations with the apparent ease with
which the teacher proffers advice, a likely inference is that scientific reasoning re-
quires a certain skill that the teacher seems to possess but they do not. Science is
the dominion of the “other” not of the “I” or the “we.” Teachers are seen to repre-
sent not only themselves and the institution of schooling but also the institution of
science (Goffman, 1981). Hence, the next likely conclusion is that strategic deci-
sions involving scientific topics should be left to the experts. As we have noted,
prior research has shown that this is often the stance toward science that students
develop and assume (e.g., Brandes, 1996; Driver et al., 1996; Songer & Linn,
1991).
The partner participant structure did not make use of exclusive pronouns, and
the teacher engaged in the same form of talk as the students, positioning herself on
the same plane of participation as the students. Within this inclusive arrangement,
the students were privy to the teacher’s contemplation. They could see their
teacher hesitate, grapple, and even falter—just as they did—as she tried to make
sense of the data and push the investigation forward. Therefore, the partner struc-
ture has the potential to reframe the students’ difficulties in conducting an investi-
gation as a legitimate and typical part of expert practice and to help students iden-
tify themselves as people who can rightfully gain access to the practice of science.
These are some of the forces behind BK’s appropriation of structure–function rea-
soning, of his ability to wield this cultural tool to challenge and effectively contend
with the teacher’s opposition.
Many inquiry-based science classrooms incorporate students challenging sci-
entific claims and invoking empirical data as warrants. However, these usually in-
volve students challenging each other. If the only franchised debates that students
engage in involve challenging those without institutional power, students not
teachers, can we expect them to come to view science as subjective? Can they view
themselves as citizens empowered to critically evaluate the dictums presented by
experts when scientific issues impinge on policy decisions?
The conditions of the partner participant structure (as well as the task structure)
afford a different dynamic, enabling students to debate those with institutional
power and enabling them to do so on equal ground. Engaging in such debates can
also in turn promote the appropriation of scientific cultural tools. The sanctioning
of appeals to data as the necessary resources for warrants, the equal access to these
resources, combined with the symmetry in teacher–student relationships creates a
situation in which the authority of the classroom and the authority of science that
Lemke (1990) described as intertwined and belonging to the teacher are disentan-
gled, and some of the authority of science is conferred to the students.
In the context of the partner structure, once students appreciate the culturally
appropriate way of using the cultural tools, they can “try them on for fit.” Rather
than positioning students as differentiated from the teacher, partner interactions al-
low students to identify with the teacher and to conceive of themselves as sanc-
tioned users of scientific cultural tools. Consequently, they can explore whether,
when used in this particular way, these tools can serve their own goals and pur-
poses. This can affect the extent to which students see the use of these tools as
something that needs to be done to get by in school versus experiencing a transfor-
mation that opens opportunities to engage in the practices of other communities
outside of school (Rogoff, 1993), even those of high status.
In this way, interactions in the partner participant structure can be viewed as
processes of identity formation. As poignantly expressed in the following excerpt
from Duranti (1997)
To speak of participation means to speak of differentiation. It is through the different

ways in which different individuals (in families, workplaces, service encounters) are
allowed to be part of certain kinds of activities that social identities (including gender
identities) are created and reproduced. It is through specific and reproducible partici-
pant frameworks that authority, hierarchy, and subordination are constituted.
Whether or not someone’s voice will be expressed, someone’s accusation accepted or
rejected, someone’s point of view recognized depends in part on the interactional ar-
rangements that are possible and the choices that are favored by such arrangements.
(p. 313)
The partner participant structure creates an arrangement in which there is more

symmetry between teachers and students. Yet even in these supposedly symmetric
interactions, the teacher’s age and her institutional role (and the cultural meanings
associated with them), for example, are always part of the interaction and of the stu-
dents’perceptions of what she or he says. Thus, there is always a tension, even in the
partner structure, between authoritative and internally persuasive discourse. This
tension opens new possibilities for students’ways of being in relation to others, those
that represent the power of the institution of schooling and of science, but it also con-
strains their words and their actions by virtue of this power that they represent. Stu-
dents’identification with their teacher casts them as sanctioned users of real science;
their differentiation from their teacher mitigates this process and brings to the fore
their past and future trajectories (Wenger, 1998) that they carry in and out of the
classroom. It is these issues of differentiation and identification, alterity (otherness)
in Bakhtinian terms (Wertsch, 1998), that lie at the nexus of the two pairs of distinc-
tions that we have presented—authoritative and internally persuasive discourse and
mastery and appropriation—and their relation to processes of identity formation.
Hence, the partner participant structure makes room for students to not only
master the use of particular tools but to appropriate them. This distinction is impor-
tant because mastery does not necessarily connote appropriation and vice versa
(Herrenkohl & Wertsch, 1999; Polman, 2001; Wertsch, 1998; Wertsch & Polman,
2001). Moreover, other than unique programs such as reciprocal teaching in which
long-term use of the adopted cultural tools can suggest that students have appropri-
ated as well as mastered these tools (Wertsch, 1998, p. 127), there is not much evi-
dence that students appropriate what they learn in school (Resnick, 1987). In di-
recting more attention to the distinction between mastery and appropriation, we
may be better able to attend to the interplay between identity formation and sub-
ject-matter learning in contrast to the separation between the two that seems to per-
meate educational research.
Mastery and Appropriation

Through an Ensemble of Participant Structures
As we have noted earlier, it is for analytic purposes that we have extracted and fo-
cused on the partner participant structure. However, this does not connote a reductive
approach to learning in general or to the role of the partner participant structure in
particular. Rather, we believe that the learning that we observed in this classroom
was a result of a confluence of experiences and interactions mediated by material and
social means. For example, classroom interactions also included whole-class dis-
cussions that included forms of modeling and served additional pedagogical func-
tions. These discussions augmented the support provided through the teacher–stu-
dent interactions in the small groups (e.g., Tabak & Reiser, 1997).
In addition, in reflecting and reporting on her practice, Ms. Patrick related dis-
cussions with students that revealed some of the harshness of their personal lives.
She noted that she set out to make her classroom a place where someone would
“give these kids the time of day” and “listen to what they have to say” and let them
feel that “what they said had value.” No doubt, the partner structure that we have
described can only be fully understood within this context, and it would be overly
reductive to assume that the sense of symmetry and access that we have discussed
can be attributed solely to the partner interactions. Such a comprehensive descrip-
tion and analysis is beyond the scope of this article. However, we draw attention to
the mutuality that exists between the mentor and partner participant structures.
The mentor participant structure, characterized by “the teacher as outsider” and
the use of exclusive pronouns, sways the interaction toward authoritative dis-
course. This structure makes the requirements, conventions, and norms of the dis-
cipline explicit to students. Through this structure, the teacher scaffolds students in
aligning their discourse and actions with these norms. The partner participant
structure in which the teacher is an insider to the group and shares a reciprocal rela-
tionship with students sways the interaction toward persuasive discourse. This
structure gives students an opportunity to see how these conventions are coordi-
nated and applied. In Episode 2, it was seen that the teacher shifted fluidly between
mentor and partner interactions. The mentor structure refers to cultural tools more
explicitly through directives often naming the tool, whereas the partner structure
refers to cultural tools implicitly through their modeled use so that students are ex-
posed to continuous shifts between the use of a semiotic device and its absence in
reference to the same cultural practice. Such shifts between explicit and implicit,
the reappearance of a semiotic device on the background of a previous meaningful
absence, serves to create meaningful distinctions and to regulate social practice
(Valsiner, 1998, p. 48).
Rather than representing opposing or competing instructional forms, the men-
tor and partner are efficacious as an ensemble. It is possible that when the mentor
participant structure is part of an ensemble that includes the partner participant
structure that a balance is achieved between authoritative and persuasive dis-
course. What affects the degree of trust and reciprocity in interactions are not just
the content and structure of the dialogue in the here and now but the residual and
accruing effects of all past interactions that these participants share (Stone, 1993).
Thus, a history that includes partner interactions may color mentor interactions,
helping, through past interactions, form the trust and mutuality that is necessary
for successful scaffolding (Stone, 1993) within mentor interactions that occur in
the here and now. For example, Crawford’s (2000) case study of an exemplary in-
quiry teacher suggests that the momentary perception of the teacher as a peer or
learner is sufficient to promote an affective climate that is conducive to inquiry
learning. Similarly, the mentor structure can color the partner interactions marking
the measure of authority that is necessary for the teacher’s actions to be regarded as
valued resources to be taken up by the students. This combination of symmetry
colored by authority can make the partner participant structure an instructional de-
vice that combines some of the scaffolding benefits found in adult–child interac-
tions and the advantages of promoting extended narratives and grappling with new
and difficult concepts found in peer interactions (Rogoff, 1993; Ryokai, Vaucelle,
& Cassell, 2003).
CONCLUSION AND IMPLICATIONS
In recent informal discussion with Ms. Patrick, she stated, as she reflected on her
teaching, that with some of the groups, she felt they were struggling and just
needed to have her sit and work through part of the investigation with them. So the
partner structure seemed to emerge as the teacher’s in-action response to the stu-
dents’ struggles rather than a calculated consideration of issues of symmetry or the
visibility of cultural tools. However, in making different participant structures an
object of study, juxtaposing the mentor and the partner structures vis-à-vis dis-
course analytic approaches, we have been able to illuminate potential pedagogical
consequences (Duranti, 1997; Philips, 1972) of such interactions. Once identified,

this approach can become a purposeful addition to the inquiry teacher’s toolkit.
This instructional device is alluring because it comes at seemingly no cost. It
does not require expensive complex new materials. Teachers that currently enact
inquiry-based projects in their classrooms can begin to sit side by side with their
students and grapple with data together. Yet, we cannot assume that symmetric in-
teractions will be the direct result of working with students side by side. Effective
enactment of the partner structure will likely require prior close comparative read-
ings of mentor and partner dialogue sequences to develop a sensitive understand-
ing of the distinctions between these structures and of the nuances of symmetry.
This is essential for reaping the benefits of establishing trust and reciprocity and
for avoiding the pitfalls of usurping student work. Further, although the partner
structure seems to come at no cost in terms of material resources, it can come at a
high personal premium to teachers. It demands that teachers let down their guard
and expose vulnerability and fallibility.
The teacher as partner can serve as a generative metaphor for inquiry teaching.
Currently, inquiry teaching is associated with the notion of the teacher as guide.
This conjures images of a supportive coach who models and provides critiques and
suggestions along the way as students grapple with authentic problems. Yet, in for-
mal learning environments, it seldom conjures images of a fallible struggling mate
who is tackling the task alongside the students. Broadening our conceptions of in-
quiry teaching to include these images could hold pedagogical promise. The edu-
cational literature has presented some dichotomies between formal and informal
learning environments, between hierarchy and symmetry, and between specific
curricular programs and identity formation (Bekerman, Burbules, &
Silberman-Keller, in press; Bekerman & Silberman-Keller, in press). Our work
suggests that it is possible to promote rigorous subject-matter learning typically at-
tributed to formal learning environments as well as the symmetry and personal out-
comes typically attributed to informal learning environments.
We have been able to point to structural distinctions between two participant
structures and to demonstrate how one structure coincides with microlongitudinal
changes in students’ tool use. However, we did not test direct relations between the
partner participant structure and student outcomes, nor do we have good measures
of the range and typicality (Erickson, 1986) of the mentor and partner structures in
a wide set of classrooms. Our analyses focused on teacher moves; therefore, much
of what we present in terms of the contribution to identity formation is speculative
at this point.
We need to gain a deeper understanding of what forms of mastery and appropri-
ation the partner participant structure seems to foster, as well as stronger evidence
associating these processes with the partner interactions. We need studies that de-
pict a full contextual picture that shows how this structure is embedded in a con-
glomerate and history of interactions that together contribute to the affective cli-
mate and learning that occurs. We also need to learn more about what symmetry
means in educational contexts, what counts as symmetry, how it is constituted
through talk, and what contributions it offers for learning. We hope that our work
can inspire future research that is directed at considering teacher–student interac-
tions in terms of the ways in which they might foster symmetry, identification and
access, and in identifying how such dynamics might promote mastery, appropria-
tion, and identity formation.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This work was funded in part by Spencer Dissertation Fellowships to Iris Tabak and
Eric Baumgartner and by a Rashi Guastala Fellowship for the Advancement of Sci-
ence Education and a Mandel Fellowship for Research in Education to Iris Tabak.
The reported projects were funded by Grant 97!57 from the James S. McDonnell
Foundation to Brian J. Reiser (BGuILE) and by Grant ESI–9353833 from the Na-
tional Science Foundation to R. P. H. Chang (MWM). The opinions expressed here
are ours and do not necessarily represent the views of these foundations or projects.
We thank the participating students and teachers for welcoming us into their class-
rooms and for so generously sharing their thoughts and experiences. We thank
Lindsay Cornelius, Jackie Gray, Leslie Herrenkohl, Janet Kolodner, and Joseph
Polman for comments on earlier drafts. Thanks to Ayelet Dekel for her thoughts on
Bakhtin. We also thank Zvi Bekerman for helpful discussions and Linda Patton for
providing invaluable insights on teaching. The anonymous reviewers and the edi-
tors, Richard Lehrer and Annemarie Sullivan Palincsar, provided thoughtful com-
ments for which we are grateful. For further information concerning the BGuILE
and MWM projects, please consult their Web sites at http://www. letus.org/bguile/
and www.materialsworldmodules.org
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COGNITION AND INSTRUCTION, 22(4), 393–429

Copyright © 2004, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.

The Teacher as Partner: Exploring

A: Cracking open and eating Tribulus [Reads from descriptive notes on a

UNDERSTANDING THE “WHAT,” “WHY,”

In addition, students need to understand what purpose employing a particular

AUTHORITATIVE AND PERSUASIVE NATURE

This interaction between univocality and dialogicality expresses the process

NURTURING A BALANCE BETWEEN AUTHORITATIVE

PARTICIPANT STRUCTURES AND THE BALANCING

Consider the ubiquitous pattern of teacher-student-teacher turns (Cazden, 2001;

reciprocity engendered through the history of interactions between the partici-

We have chosen to explore symmetry-fostering participant structures and their role

BACKGROUND AND PRIOR FINDINGS

Setting and Rationale

Three Participant Structures That Support

Characteristic Monitor Mentor Partner

Teacher–student relationship Asymmetric Asymmetric Symmetric

Note. I = initiation; T = by teacher; R = response; S = by students.

The monitor participant structure. This structure tends to be a brief en-

The mentor participant structure. Interactions in the mentor participant

Partner participant structure. The partner participant structure is similar to

Session Activity Type Purpose

1 Whole-class discussion Introduce the problem and brainstorm about

An important facet of biological thinking, an important way of conceiving of or-

Episode 1: Nascent Use of Structure–Function Reasoning

1 a Tanya: But why would some of them survive?

In this segment, it is hard to point to a proficient use of structure–function rea-

Episode 2: Partnered Use of Structure–Function Reasoning

1 a Ms. Patrick: Now

d Dry 77 [directing what season to observe]

7 Cathy: Look at another one [asking to look at another field

18 Tanya: We did leg length19

Lines 18 through 22 represent a shift back to the mentor participant structure. In

Episode 3: Mastery of Structure–Function Reasoning

1 BK: We got two things we can tell from this

4 Ms. Patrick: Ooo or his beak wasn’t strong

Mastering Cultural Tools

Appropriating Cultural Tools

Access and Appropriation as Identity Formation

Science, in particular, as it is “spoken” in contemporary Western culture, is a

To speak of participation means to speak of differentiation. It is through the different

The partner participant structure creates an arrangement in which there is more

Mastery and Appropriation

CONCLUSION AND IMPLICATIONS

consequences (Duranti, 1997; Philips, 1972) of such interactions. Once identified,

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