Developing Pedagogical Practices in Turkish Classrooms

Abstract

According to socio-cultural theory (Vygotsky, 1978), learning and cognitive development take place through a social interaction between the learner and a more knowledgeable other, in classroom, a teacher. This study is an attempt to deal with teacher-student interaction within the framework of Bloom’s Taxonomy of Cognitive Domain and to create some changes in teachers’ pedagogical practices in Turkish classrooms. Bloom’s Taxonomy was created to promote higher forms of thinking in education. In this study, first, teachers teaching Turkish to different grades at different schools were video-recorded in their classes with their students. After these observations, a teacher training course on Cognitive Domain and dialogicality was given to teachers in order to develop their awareness about their pedagogical practices and the cognitive level of the dialogue that takes place in the classrooms. Following the training, teachers were recorded in their classes in the same way again. Finally, after the discourse transcription, the cognitive levels of teachers’ utterances were classified with regard to Cognitive Domain, and a comparison of the data recorded before and after the training was designed to determine whether the training course had positive effects on teachers. Since language has the power to shape our consciousness, even a small change in the language of schooling may result in students’ participation, thus it can enhance their success. The results of this study indicated the benefit of training to carry out a more systematic and reflective pedagogical practice. The teachers who received training were able to produce utterances on the higher cognitive levels which also increased the cognitive levels of students’ utterances and the dialogue in classrooms.