Communicative approaches used by a science teacher in group discussions

This study examines the communicative approaches used by a science teacher in guiding group discussions, the reasons for using them, and the discourse moves the teacher uses for specific communicative approaches.The participantsof the study were a science teacher and 5th grade students in a public secondary school in Mardin province. A case study design was used in the study.A total of 17 students participated in the study and were divided into five groups of 3-4 students. Activities were developed within the scope of the 5th grade matter and change the unit to provide an environment for group discussions. The science teacher guided the groups while the group discussions were conducted within these activities. The data sources of the study consisted of the voice recordings of the groups recorded with voice recorders, the video recordings of the teacher recorded with an action camera during the activity, and a semi-structured interview with the teacher.What kind of communicative approaches the teacher used during the implementation process was analyzed by examining the video recordings and considering categories of communicative approaches. The teaching purpose of the communicative approach used by the teacher was determined through a semi-structured interview with the teacher. The discourse moves used by the teacher in relation to the specific communicative approach were analyzed according to the coding framework for inquiry-oriented discourse moves. The findings of the study revealed that the teacher used authoritative interactive and authoritative non-interactive communicative approaches in his dialogues with the students, but did not use dialogic interactive and dialogic non-interactive approaches. When analyzing the interview data with the teacher, the reasons for the dominance of authoritativerather than dialogic approaches included the fact that the purpose of guidance was mainly to provide students with the correct information, some topics had to be completed in a certain time, the inability to move away from traditional approaches, and the belief that students were not cognitively ready for such approaches. When the discourse moves used by the science teacher were analyzed in terms of specific communicative approaches, it was found that he used more diverse discourse moves in an interactive approach.Professional development can be provided for science teachers to better understand and use dialogic communication approaches effectively.