Abstract:
A teacher's classroom discourse is viewed as a system of actions through which the teacher creatively and thematically operates on meaning relations of concepts in various contexts with respect to the subject matter. The development of meaning may be analyzed with reference to the prominence of themes at various levels (unit, move, frame, and the discourse). Three independent but convergent approaches are illustrated by the analysis of a chemistry lesson: sequential analysis of the frequency of thematic elements, the analysis of teaching strategies in terms of moves and frames, and the analysis of the rhetorical organization of the lesson. Implication are d;awn for further research.