Conference Agenda

In whole-class instruction, lessons are conducted primarily using an IRE structure of communication (Mehan, 1979), which involves an exchange consisting of the teacher’s “initiation,” the child’s “reply,” and further “evaluation” by the teacher. When a designated child speaks, other children acting as listeners are required to listen to the conversation. Children acting as listeners can also contribute significantly to the lesson’s progression by making various statements, offering opinions to the speaker, and guiding discussions (Nakata, 1996). Utterances from listeners deviating from the routine play a major role in lesson progression, and listener utterances influence both the lesson’s flow and learning (Yokoyama, 2023).

This study focused on listeners’ utterances directed at speakers outside the routine, and examined how these utterances refine and share the speaker’s ideas. When a speaker explains their thoughts or illustrates them using a diagram, listeners sometimes rephrase the speaker’s ideas. This study clarified how the speaker’s ideas become refined through this listener-initiated “rephrasing.” To achieve this, classroom observations of third-grade mathematics lessons were conducted, and case studies were analyzed to examine speakers’ and corresponding listeners’ opinions. Specifically, this study examined two points: 1. How are speakers’ opinions rephrased? and 2. How are speakers’ opinions shared with the class after being rephrased by the listener?

The results showed that when the speaker explained their devised solution to the whole class, the listeners verbalized the diagrams, named the solution method, and paraphrased the speaker’s opinion while supplementing it. By incorporating the listener’s “paraphrasing,” the speaker’s initially conceived idea became refined and clarified. It can be considered that aspects of the speaker'’ thinking are brought into relief through the listener adding various interpretations.