Social Organizational Factors in Learning to Read: The Balance of Rights Hypothesis

Abstract

of disadvantaged 7 year-old Hawaiian students, were analyzed. One teacher (LC) had had little contact with Hawaiian children, while the other (HC) had worked successfully with Hawaiian students for five years. Consistent with their backgrounds, it was found that the two teachers managed interaction in their lessons very differently. Teacher LC used participation structures which are commonly used with children from the mainstream culture; the major structure requires them to wait to be called on and to speak one at a time. On the other hand, Teacher HC conducted much of her lessons in a different participation structure, one which allowed the children to share turns in joint performance. This structure follows interactional rules much like those in talk story, a common nonclassroom speech event for Hawaiian children. The results supported a social organizational hypothesis. The lessons of Teacher HC displayed much higher levels of achievement-related student behavior than those of Teacher LC. Furthermore, student productivity appeared to vary as a function of specific characteristics of participation structures, within and across the lessons of the two teachers. A new construct, the balance of rights in speaking and turntaking between teacher and students, was formulated to explain the relationship between classroom social structure and student productivity.