Pedagogical Stance: The Teacher's Position and Its Social Signals

Abstract

The work defines the notion of "pedagogical stance", viewed as the type of position taken, the role assumed, the image projected and the type of social behavior performed by a teacher in his/her teaching interaction with a pupil. At any moment while interacting with pupil(s), a teacher takes a "didactic" stance, concerning his/her cognitive work on the student, how s/he intends to bring about his/her learning, and an "affective -- relational" stance, the type of relationship s/he wants to entertain with the pupil and the type of emotions she tends to elicit in him/her or by which s/he colors interaction. Two types of "didactic" stance (maieutic and efficient) and four types of "affective -- relational" stance (friendly, dominating, warm dominating, and secure base) are distinguished, their typical verbal and multimodal social signals are singled out, and a study is presented to detect stances from these social signals in 21 teacher-pupil interactions.