Understanding joint construction in the tertiary context

The importance of teacher-student collaboration in text production is well established in education literature (Cazden 1996; Green 1988; Mehan 1979). Teacher-student collaboration is a key feature of Sydney School Genre pedagogy, particularly in the Joint Construction stage of the Teaching Learning cycle. Joint Construction supports the literacy development of all students through dialogic exchanges that enable the co-creation of a target text (Rothery & Stenglin 1995). While this stage of the Teaching Learning cycle has been widely used across primary, secondary and tertiary contexts, teacher-student dialogue in text production has only been analysed in detail at a primary school level (see Hunt 1991 & 1994).

This paper examines three Joint Construction lessons from the tertiary context. Using phasal analysis (Gregory 1985, 1988), it examines how different stages of Joint Construction achieve their goals. Using exchange structure analysis (Sinclair & Coulthard 1975; Berry 1981; Ventola 1987 & 1988; Martin 2007; Author 2007), which is located within the discourse semantic system of NEGOTIATION (Martin & Rose 2007), the paper provides a principled linguistic analysis of the conversational moves taking place.