Translocating Classroom Discourse Practices during the Covid-19 Pandemic in China: A reflective Nexus Analysis Account

Abstract

The present study is a reflective nexus analysis of classroom discourse practices that emerged during the Covid-19 pandemic crisis induced online teaching and learning. Nexus analysis is an action focused approach to discourse analysis that incorporates aspects of ethnography to examine that actions that make up the discourse in complex social behavior. Through a series of case studies, we examine how teachers adapted to teaching and their reflections on the classroom discourse practices that emerged and their reflections on how students adapted to online learning. Using the initiation-response-evaluation sequence (IRE) as a means of comparison across the case studies we discuss how teachers developed novel practices in the online world where the IRE emerged in either flipped or blended practices. Both teachers and students had adapted to this new context in becoming online teachers and online learners navigating new subject positions that reflect Gee's big ‘D' Discourse. The study also illustrates how nexus analysis can be used as a reflective analysis through an examination of the discourses in place, interaction order, and historical body(ies) that were affected by the move to online teaching during the Covid-19 pandemic.