RESEARCH METHOD COHEN ok

498 CONTENT ANALYSIS AND GROUNDED THEORY
Let us explore the levels of analysis here. If
we ask ‘What is being learned here by the
children’ there are several kinds of response.
At a formal level, first, there is a curricular
response: the children are learning a little
bit of language (reading, speaking, listening,
vocabulary, spelling, letter orientation (e.g. ‘bog’
and ‘dog’), science (condensation, hot and cold,
hot air rising, hot air and gas-filled balloons)
and soil (a muddy swamp). That concerns the
academic curriculum, as it were. However, at
a second level the children are learning other
aspects of development, not just academic but
personal, social, emotional and interpersonal,
for example turn-taking, cooperation, shared
enjoyment, listening to each other, contributing
to a collective activity, taking risks with language
(the risqué joke about the word ‘bog’ with its
double-entendre of a swamp and an impolite term
for a toilet).
At a third level one can notice language rights
in the classroom. Here the text usefully provides
numbered lines to assist analysis and to preserve
the chronology of events. One can observe the
following, using a closer textual analysis:
A great deal of the conversation follows
the sequence of teacher→student→teacher→
student and so on (e.g. lines 28–48).
It is rare for the sequence to be broken, for
instance teacher→student→student (e.g. lines
3–7 and 14–16).
Where the sequence is broken, it is at the
teacher’s behest, and with individual children
only (lines 48–52, 64–9, 84–8, 94–8).
Where the conventional sequence is broken
without the teacher’s blessing the teacher
intervenes to restore the sequence or to control
the proceedings (lines 54–6, 70–1, 103–4).
It appears that many of the 27 children are not
joining in very much – the teacher only talks
directly to, or encourages to talk, a few named
children individually: Vicky, Luke, Ben, Paul,
James and Olga.
There are almost no instances of children
initiating conversations (e.g. lines 43, 65, 101);
most of the conversations are in response to the
teacher’s initiation (e.g. lines 3, 11, 20, 25, 28,
32, 34, 36 etc.).
The teacher follows up on a child’s initiation
only when it suits her purposes (lines 43–6).
Nearly everything goes through, or comes from
the teacher who mediates everything.
Where a child says something that the teacher
likes or is in the teacher’s agenda for the lesson
then that child is praised (e.g. lines 34, 42, 54,
58, 76 and 96, 98 (the word ‘yes’), 102) and
the teacher repeats the child’s correct answer
(e.g. lines 16–17, 20–1, 29–30, 35–6, 41–2).
The teacher feeds the children with clues as
to the expected answer (lines 10–11, 40–1,
76–7, 82–3).
Where the conversation risks being out of the
teacher’s control the teacher becomes much
more explicit in the classroom rules (e.g. lines
56, 71, 104).
When the teacher decides that it is time to
move on to get through her agenda she closes
off further discussion and moves on (line 76).
The teacher is prepared to share a joke (lines
90–93) to maintain a good relationship but
then moves the conversation on (line 94).
Most of the conversation, in speech act terms,
is perlocutionary (achieving the teacher’s
intended aim of the lesson) rather than
illocutionary (an open-ended and free-range,
multidirectional discussion where the outcome
is unpredictable).
The teacher talks a lot more than the children.
At a fourth level, one can begin to theorize
from the materials here. It could be argued, for
example, that the text discloses the overt and
covert operations of power, to suggest, in fact, that
what the children are learning very effectively is
the hidden curriculum in which power is a major
feature, for instance:
The teacher has the power to decide who
will talk, when they will talk, what they will
talk about and how well they have talked
(cf. Edwards 1980).
The teacher has the power to control a mass of
children (27 children sitting on the floor while