Examinations of Interactions among Teacher-Training Students through Discussions in Teacher Training

Based on J. P. Gee’s Discourse Theory

Abstract

 In this article, I clarified how interacted between students and affect their thinking and learning in class; particularly, students make value judgments regarding educational issues.  Specifically, I analyzed the discussion on corporal punishment and usage of violent language from the perspective of “discourse”.

 It was found that the past experience of corporal punishment from parents and teachers was an important linguistic resource for students who advocated corporal punishment; hence, the family logic of corporal punishment has been introduced within school education.  Second, the interaction between students was dominated by the image of a dedicated teacher, which functions similarly to discipline at home for children and a view of education similar to paternalism.  Third, a certain student’s resistance to discourse may be as a strategy to justify corporal punishment by parents when a student resists a different discourse.

 These results indicate that new interpretative frameworks can be constructed when students are confronted by the reality of educational issues; these ideas can contribute to the development of research methodologies for the study of students in the future teacher training stages.  Moreover, this paper also provides the opportunity to reconsider the role of classes in teacher training courses in relation to actual circumstances of the learners.