Adam Lefstein
Biographic Data
| ID | 764574 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Adam Lefstein |
| GIVEN NAMES | Adam |
| FAMILY NAME | Lefstein |
| SIGNATURE | LEFSTEIN A |
| AFFILIATIONS | Ben-Gurion University of the Negev |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-9686-2662 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 35 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 193 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 35 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2005 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 8 |
Laughter and classroom boundaries
While once forbidden in classrooms, laughter is increasingly encouraged as contributing to a positive learning environment. However, analyses of laughter in conversation show that laughter performs multiple social functions, some of which are not necessarily positive. Applying this lens, this study investigates the interactional functions of laughter in Israeli upper-primary classrooms. Using micro-ethnographic, multimodal methods, we analyzed 2…
‘I don’t assess children this way’ – how do disagreements about assessment support (or limit) teacher on-the-job learning
This study investigates pedagogical disagreements about assessment in teacher team meetings. Combining quantitative and micro-ethnographic discourse analysis, we explore the characteristics of teachers’ disagreements about assessment and the conditions that afford or constrain their development as productive for teacher on-the-job learning. We analyse 149 disagreements from 46 team meetings and explore two contrasting case studies. We find that d…
Teacher collaborative inquiry into practice in school-based learning communities: The role of activity type
This study contributes to growing scholarly interest in teacher-led, school-based learning communities and the characteristics of teacher dialogue and social interaction that support professional learning in these settings. Based on existing conceptual distinctions proposed in the literature, we term this type of teacher dialogue “collaborative inquiry into practice” (CLIP) and propose a systematic and reliable tool to measure it. We then employ …
Reifying, Disorienting and Restoring Gender Binaries in Dialogic Literature Discussions
Dialogic pedagogy aims to bring multiple voices and perspectives into conversation, to create a classroom environment inclusive of multiple student identities, and to challenge hegemonic approaches to knowledge. As such, it seems particularly well‐suited for interrogating gender binaries and enhancing gender equity. Through micro‐ethnographic discourse analysis of video‐recorded literacy lessons, this study examines how traditional gender categor…
Blurring the boundaries: Opening and sustaining dialogic spaces
Dialogic educators have designed strategies to facilitate dialogic teaching, such as establishing ground rules, employing talk moves, and structuring discussions. Though productive, such strategies rarely open dialogic space, in which shared meaning is created through an interaction that blurs the boundaries between participating voices. Dialogic space is facilitated by tension between perspectives; openness to others, which is facilitated by ego…
Too old to learn? The ambivalence of teaching experience in an Israeli teacher leadership initiative
Above the law? The democratic implications of setting ground rules for dialogue
Dialogic pedagogy aims to promote deliberative democratic skills, virtues and practices within an equitable and empowering classroom environment. This article problematizes the practice of setting classroom ground rules in light of dialogic pedagogy’s democratic aspirations. Specifically, we explore the space for dissenting voices within the process of constituting ground rules and the extent to which ground rules regulate teacher (and not only s…
‘Bottom-up governance’: Discourse, practices and the duality of the state
This paper uses a case study of an Israeli teacher leadership initiative to explore a mode of educational governance that employs ‘bottom-up’ logic and discourse. The authors analyse the origins of this initiative, and – through a policy-making ethnography of the initiative’s enactment at the district level – show how it is sustained and governed through ‘top-down’ structures and strategies. The authors use the term ‘bottom-up governance’ to desc…
Opening Texts for Discussion: Developing Dialogic Reading Stances
Dialogic pedagogy, in which students and teachers voice thoughts, co‐construct meanings, and generate multiple interpretations of texts, can promote literacy skills and reasoning. Yet, such teaching is challenging and requires, among other changes, adopting dialogic stances. In the language arts, expressive and critical reading stances have been shown to encourage and support dialogic discussions. How can teachers develop such dialogic reading st…
He doesn’t deserve to be in the higher track: Teachers’ Justifications in Student Tracking Discussions
This study examines teachers’ justifications for their student sorting decisions in two Israeli secondary schools. Combining descriptive statistics and micro-ethnographic discourse analysis of 281 audio-recorded discussions, the study offers a new perspective on tracking’s multiple social and organizational functions: providing students’ needs, rewarding and punishing students, satisfying teachers’ emotional needs, and efficiently using school re…
Reform ripples: The role of recontextualization in scaling up
This paper explores how educational interventions impact the districts they are implemented in above and beyond their intended outcomes. We argue that such unplanned “ripple effects”, in which program elements are recontextualized into other settings, are an important aspect of bringing educational interventions to scale. We analyze these phenomena in one Israeli district in which a teacher leadership and professional learning community initiativ…
Status and inquiry in teacher communities
Teaching as a Clinical Profession: Adapting the Medical Model
One influential way of thinking about teaching is to conceive of it as a clinical profession, similar in important ways to medicine. However, fundamental differences between doctors' and teachers' practice limit the usefulness of the medical model. How can we adapt our understandings of clinical practice in light of the unique aspects of teaching and the context of teachers' work? In this article, we explore the requirements of the central clinic…
Dilemmas of Leadership and Capacity Building in a Research–Practice Partnership
Background Research–practice partnerships (RPPs) are proliferating in education, generating increasing interest and posing many challenges. In this study, we shed light on the challenge of supporting practitioners> leadership and building capacity in an RPP. In the RPP literature, practitioner leadership is often highlighted as both a way to improve design development and enactment and as imperative for capacity building and sustainability. Howev…
Développer la pédagogie par le dialogue: Répondre à la contestation d’un élève
En écho à la notion de best practice largement répandue dans le monde de laformation professionnelle, la contribution illustre les apports et les limites d’uneapproche dialogique de l’apprentissage de la litéracie et l’applique à la formation desenseignants. Elle prend pour exemple une séquence dans laquelle une enseignanteenvisage avec ses élèves les différentes manières de commencer un récit. Dans unesprit dialogique, la contribution relaie de …
Relocating Research on Teacher Learning: Toward Pedagogically Productive Talk
Most research and practice in teacher in-service learning focuses on formal professional development activities. This article calls for paying greater attention to the informal conversations that are embedded in teachers’ day-to-day work and through which they learn from one another what it means to be a teacher and how to perform their duties. The authors build on theory and research in teacher on-the-job discourse and learning in order to (a) a…
Compelling student voice: Dialogic Practices of Public Confession
Encouraging and developing voice in the classroom is a key aim of dialogic pedagogy, but teachers’ elicitation of student voices is not always experienced as empowering. This case study investigates a sixth grade literacy lesson discussion about responding to peer group social ostracism. The teacher pressed students to adopt and articulate a stance on this socially and morally charged issue, resulting in a series of student public confessions. Us…
Taking stock of research on teacher collaborative discourse: Theory and method in a nascent field
Teacher Face-Work in Discussions of Video-Recorded Classroom Practice: Constraining or Catalyzing Opportunities to Learn
Classroom videos can make instructional practice public, cultivating collaborative, critical teacher discussions. However, video-based learning also involves a risk—the risk of hurting one’s own or a colleague’s public image, or face. In this study, we investigate the role of face threat and face management in teacher professional learning in 16 cases of video-based discussions in six school-based teacher teams. We present findings about the prev…
Low Ability,” Participation, and Identity in Dialogic Pedagogy
Teachers are increasingly called on to use dialogic teaching practices to engage active pupil participation in academically challenging classroom discourse. Such practices are in tension with commonly held beliefs about pupil ability as fixed and/or context independent. Moreover, teaching practices that seek to make pupil thinking visible can also make perceived pupil “inarticulateness” and/or “low ability” visible, with important implications fo…
Breaking out of the grips of dichotomous discourse in teacher post-observation debrief conversations
Appropriating protocols for the regulation of teacher professional conversations
Dialogic teaching to the high-stakes standardised test
Within current educational discourse, dialogic pedagogy is diametrically opposed to teaching to the test, especially the high-stakes standardised test. While dialogic pedagogy is about critical thinking, authenticity and freedom, test preparation evokes all that is narrow, instrumental and cynical in education. In this paper, we argue that such positioning of dialogic pedagogy as antithetical to testing is detrimental to attempts both to foster d…
A cross-cultural analysis of disagreements in classroom discourse: Comparative case studies from England, the United States, and Israel
How do cultural and institutional factors interact in shaping preference structures? This paper presents a cross-cultural analysis of disagreements in three different classroom settings: (1) a year 6 (ages 11–12) mainstream class in England, (2) a fifth-grade class of gifted students in the United States, and (3) a fourth-grade mainstream class in Israel. The aim of the study is to investigate how disagreements are enacted in these settings, expl…
Narrative representations of practice: What and how can student teachers learn from them
Relocating Research on Teacher Learning: Toward Pedagogically Productive Talk
Most research and practice in teacher in-service learning focuses on formal professional development activities. This article calls for paying greater attention to the informal conversations that are embedded in teachers’ day-to-day work and through which they learn from one another what it means to be a teacher and how to perform their duties. The authors build on theory and research in teacher on-the-job discourse and learning in order to (a) a…
Taking stock of research on teacher collaborative discourse: Theory and method in a nascent field
Professional vision and the politics of teacher learning
Appropriating protocols for the regulation of teacher professional conversations
Changing Classroom Practice Through the English National Literacy Strategy: A Micro-Interactional Perspective
How and why is national policy translated into interactions between teachers and pupils? This article examines the enactment of the English National Literacy Strategy (NLS) in a case study of two literacy lessons, which are drawn from a yearlong ethnographic study of the NLS in one school. Although the teacher taught directly from and adhered closely to the prescribed materials, curricular contents were recontextualized into habitual classroom in…
Blurring the boundaries: Opening and sustaining dialogic spaces
Dialogic educators have designed strategies to facilitate dialogic teaching, such as establishing ground rules, employing talk moves, and structuring discussions. Though productive, such strategies rarely open dialogic space, in which shared meaning is created through an interaction that blurs the boundaries between participating voices. Dialogic space is facilitated by tension between perspectives; openness to others, which is facilitated by ego…
Teacher Face-Work in Discussions of Video-Recorded Classroom Practice: Constraining or Catalyzing Opportunities to Learn
Classroom videos can make instructional practice public, cultivating collaborative, critical teacher discussions. However, video-based learning also involves a risk—the risk of hurting one’s own or a colleague’s public image, or face. In this study, we investigate the role of face threat and face management in teacher professional learning in 16 cases of video-based discussions in six school-based teacher teams. We present findings about the prev…
The regulation of teaching as symbolic politics: Rituals of Order, Blame and Redemption
This article explores the school inspection as a political ritual for the management of tensions between competition and equality inherent in neo-liberal educational regulatory regimes. At the centre of the article is a case study of how teachers in an allegedly failing working-class English primary school coped with issues of social class, educational success-and-failure and an Office of Standards in Education (OFSTED) inspection and related acc…
Low Ability,” Participation, and Identity in Dialogic Pedagogy
Teachers are increasingly called on to use dialogic teaching practices to engage active pupil participation in academically challenging classroom discourse. Such practices are in tension with commonly held beliefs about pupil ability as fixed and/or context independent. Moreover, teaching practices that seek to make pupil thinking visible can also make perceived pupil “inarticulateness” and/or “low ability” visible, with important implications fo…
From moves to sequences: Expanding the unit of analysis in the study of classroom discourse
What is the appropriate unit of analysis for the study of classroom discourse? One common analytic strategy employs individual discourse moves, which are coded, counted and used as indicators of the quality of classroom talk. In this article we question this practice, arguing that discourse moves are positioned within sequences that critically shape their meaning and effect. We illustrate this theoretical claim through exploration of a corpus of …
How not to reason with Pisa data: An ironic investigation
International comparative testing, such as the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), has considerable impact on policy-makers, the media and the general public. A central assumption underlying PISA is that global variation in students' academic performance is attributable to national educational structures and policies. The aim of this article is to demonstrate the problematic nature of this assumption. Rather than critiquin…
Promises and Problems of Teaching With Popular Culture: A Linguistic Ethnographic Analysis of Discourse Genre Mixing in a Literacy Lesson
This article problematises a broad consensus in favour of importing popular culture into classrooms as a means of engaging pupils, transforming interactional norms and facilitating pupil understanding. A literacy lesson in which an English primary school teacher invoked the televised talent show, X‐factor, in organising the class to provide feedback on pupil writing, was video‐recorded and subjected to detailed linguistic ethnographic analyses. T…
Status and inquiry in teacher communities
Thinking about the technical and the personal in teaching
This article is about current discourse regarding teaching and its regulation and reform. I argue that underlying most positions in current debates are two competing visions of teaching—one technical and the other personal. Technical teaching is manifested in recent developments in English education—for example, the National Curriculum, National Primary Strategy, accountability measures, and the drive for evidence‐based practice. Advocates of per…
Breaking out of the grips of dichotomous discourse in teacher post-observation debrief conversations
Empowering teacher voices in an education policy discussion: Paradoxes of representation
Opening Texts for Discussion: Developing Dialogic Reading Stances
Dialogic pedagogy, in which students and teachers voice thoughts, co‐construct meanings, and generate multiple interpretations of texts, can promote literacy skills and reasoning. Yet, such teaching is challenging and requires, among other changes, adopting dialogic stances. In the language arts, expressive and critical reading stances have been shown to encourage and support dialogic discussions. How can teachers develop such dialogic reading st…
Teaching as a Clinical Profession: Adapting the Medical Model
One influential way of thinking about teaching is to conceive of it as a clinical profession, similar in important ways to medicine. However, fundamental differences between doctors' and teachers' practice limit the usefulness of the medical model. How can we adapt our understandings of clinical practice in light of the unique aspects of teaching and the context of teachers' work? In this article, we explore the requirements of the central clinic…
Dialogic teaching to the high-stakes standardised test
Within current educational discourse, dialogic pedagogy is diametrically opposed to teaching to the test, especially the high-stakes standardised test. While dialogic pedagogy is about critical thinking, authenticity and freedom, test preparation evokes all that is narrow, instrumental and cynical in education. In this paper, we argue that such positioning of dialogic pedagogy as antithetical to testing is detrimental to attempts both to foster d…
Narrative representations of practice: What and how can student teachers learn from them
Problematising researcher–respondent relations through an exploration of communicative stance
To what extent and in what ways should researchers share their views with research participants during ethnographic fieldwork? This article discusses the author's experience of adopting different communicative stances with respondents in the context of an ethnographic study of the enactment of the English National Literacy Strategy in a ‘failing’ primary school. A commonly accepted communicative stance in ethnography, according to which the resea…
Compelling student voice: Dialogic Practices of Public Confession
Encouraging and developing voice in the classroom is a key aim of dialogic pedagogy, but teachers’ elicitation of student voices is not always experienced as empowering. This case study investigates a sixth grade literacy lesson discussion about responding to peer group social ostracism. The teacher pressed students to adopt and articulate a stance on this socially and morally charged issue, resulting in a series of student public confessions. Us…
A cross-cultural analysis of disagreements in classroom discourse: Comparative case studies from England, the United States, and Israel
How do cultural and institutional factors interact in shaping preference structures? This paper presents a cross-cultural analysis of disagreements in three different classroom settings: (1) a year 6 (ages 11–12) mainstream class in England, (2) a fifth-grade class of gifted students in the United States, and (3) a fourth-grade mainstream class in Israel. The aim of the study is to investigate how disagreements are enacted in these settings, expl…
Beyond a unitary conception of pedagogic pace: Quantitative measurement and ethnographic experience
English education policy‐makers have targeted classroom time as a key area for regulation and intervention, with ‘brisk pace’ widely accepted as a feature of good teaching practice. We problematise this conventional wisdom through an exploration of objective and subjective dimensions of lesson pace in a corpus of 30 Key Stage 2 literacy lessons from three classrooms in one London school. Systematic classroom observation produced an anomaly: the l…
Reifying, Disorienting and Restoring Gender Binaries in Dialogic Literature Discussions
Dialogic pedagogy aims to bring multiple voices and perspectives into conversation, to create a classroom environment inclusive of multiple student identities, and to challenge hegemonic approaches to knowledge. As such, it seems particularly well‐suited for interrogating gender binaries and enhancing gender equity. Through micro‐ethnographic discourse analysis of video‐recorded literacy lessons, this study examines how traditional gender categor…
Thinking about the technical and the personal in teaching
This article is about current discourse regarding teaching and its regulation and reform. I argue that underlying most positions in current debates are two competing visions of teaching—one technical and the other personal. Technical teaching is manifested in recent developments in English education—for example, the National Curriculum, National Primary Strategy, accountability measures, and the drive for evidence‐based practice. Advocates of per…
Changing Classroom Practice Through the English National Literacy Strategy: A Micro-Interactional Perspective
How and why is national policy translated into interactions between teachers and pupils? This article examines the enactment of the English National Literacy Strategy (NLS) in a case study of two literacy lessons, which are drawn from a yearlong ethnographic study of the NLS in one school. Although the teacher taught directly from and adhered closely to the prescribed materials, curricular contents were recontextualized into habitual classroom in…
Problematising researcher–respondent relations through an exploration of communicative stance
To what extent and in what ways should researchers share their views with research participants during ethnographic fieldwork? This article discusses the author's experience of adopting different communicative stances with respondents in the context of an ethnographic study of the enactment of the English National Literacy Strategy in a ‘failing’ primary school. A commonly accepted communicative stance in ethnography, according to which the resea…
Professional vision and the politics of teacher learning
Promises and Problems of Teaching With Popular Culture: A Linguistic Ethnographic Analysis of Discourse Genre Mixing in a Literacy Lesson
This article problematises a broad consensus in favour of importing popular culture into classrooms as a means of engaging pupils, transforming interactional norms and facilitating pupil understanding. A literacy lesson in which an English primary school teacher invoked the televised talent show, X‐factor, in organising the class to provide feedback on pupil writing, was video‐recorded and subjected to detailed linguistic ethnographic analyses. T…
Empowering teacher voices in an education policy discussion: Paradoxes of representation
Beyond a unitary conception of pedagogic pace: Quantitative measurement and ethnographic experience
English education policy‐makers have targeted classroom time as a key area for regulation and intervention, with ‘brisk pace’ widely accepted as a feature of good teaching practice. We problematise this conventional wisdom through an exploration of objective and subjective dimensions of lesson pace in a corpus of 30 Key Stage 2 literacy lessons from three classrooms in one London school. Systematic classroom observation produced an anomaly: the l…
The regulation of teaching as symbolic politics: Rituals of Order, Blame and Redemption
This article explores the school inspection as a political ritual for the management of tensions between competition and equality inherent in neo-liberal educational regulatory regimes. At the centre of the article is a case study of how teachers in an allegedly failing working-class English primary school coped with issues of social class, educational success-and-failure and an Office of Standards in Education (OFSTED) inspection and related acc…
How not to reason with Pisa data: An ironic investigation
International comparative testing, such as the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), has considerable impact on policy-makers, the media and the general public. A central assumption underlying PISA is that global variation in students' academic performance is attributable to national educational structures and policies. The aim of this article is to demonstrate the problematic nature of this assumption. Rather than critiquin…
From moves to sequences: Expanding the unit of analysis in the study of classroom discourse
What is the appropriate unit of analysis for the study of classroom discourse? One common analytic strategy employs individual discourse moves, which are coded, counted and used as indicators of the quality of classroom talk. In this article we question this practice, arguing that discourse moves are positioned within sequences that critically shape their meaning and effect. We illustrate this theoretical claim through exploration of a corpus of …
A cross-cultural analysis of disagreements in classroom discourse: Comparative case studies from England, the United States, and Israel
How do cultural and institutional factors interact in shaping preference structures? This paper presents a cross-cultural analysis of disagreements in three different classroom settings: (1) a year 6 (ages 11–12) mainstream class in England, (2) a fifth-grade class of gifted students in the United States, and (3) a fourth-grade mainstream class in Israel. The aim of the study is to investigate how disagreements are enacted in these settings, expl…
Narrative representations of practice: What and how can student teachers learn from them
Breaking out of the grips of dichotomous discourse in teacher post-observation debrief conversations
Appropriating protocols for the regulation of teacher professional conversations
Dialogic teaching to the high-stakes standardised test
Within current educational discourse, dialogic pedagogy is diametrically opposed to teaching to the test, especially the high-stakes standardised test. While dialogic pedagogy is about critical thinking, authenticity and freedom, test preparation evokes all that is narrow, instrumental and cynical in education. In this paper, we argue that such positioning of dialogic pedagogy as antithetical to testing is detrimental to attempts both to foster d…
Low Ability,” Participation, and Identity in Dialogic Pedagogy
Teachers are increasingly called on to use dialogic teaching practices to engage active pupil participation in academically challenging classroom discourse. Such practices are in tension with commonly held beliefs about pupil ability as fixed and/or context independent. Moreover, teaching practices that seek to make pupil thinking visible can also make perceived pupil “inarticulateness” and/or “low ability” visible, with important implications fo…
Taking stock of research on teacher collaborative discourse: Theory and method in a nascent field
Teacher Face-Work in Discussions of Video-Recorded Classroom Practice: Constraining or Catalyzing Opportunities to Learn
Classroom videos can make instructional practice public, cultivating collaborative, critical teacher discussions. However, video-based learning also involves a risk—the risk of hurting one’s own or a colleague’s public image, or face. In this study, we investigate the role of face threat and face management in teacher professional learning in 16 cases of video-based discussions in six school-based teacher teams. We present findings about the prev…
Dilemmas of Leadership and Capacity Building in a Research–Practice Partnership
Background Research–practice partnerships (RPPs) are proliferating in education, generating increasing interest and posing many challenges. In this study, we shed light on the challenge of supporting practitioners> leadership and building capacity in an RPP. In the RPP literature, practitioner leadership is often highlighted as both a way to improve design development and enactment and as imperative for capacity building and sustainability. Howev…
Développer la pédagogie par le dialogue: Répondre à la contestation d’un élève
En écho à la notion de best practice largement répandue dans le monde de laformation professionnelle, la contribution illustre les apports et les limites d’uneapproche dialogique de l’apprentissage de la litéracie et l’applique à la formation desenseignants. Elle prend pour exemple une séquence dans laquelle une enseignanteenvisage avec ses élèves les différentes manières de commencer un récit. Dans unesprit dialogique, la contribution relaie de …
Relocating Research on Teacher Learning: Toward Pedagogically Productive Talk
Most research and practice in teacher in-service learning focuses on formal professional development activities. This article calls for paying greater attention to the informal conversations that are embedded in teachers’ day-to-day work and through which they learn from one another what it means to be a teacher and how to perform their duties. The authors build on theory and research in teacher on-the-job discourse and learning in order to (a) a…
Compelling student voice: Dialogic Practices of Public Confession
Encouraging and developing voice in the classroom is a key aim of dialogic pedagogy, but teachers’ elicitation of student voices is not always experienced as empowering. This case study investigates a sixth grade literacy lesson discussion about responding to peer group social ostracism. The teacher pressed students to adopt and articulate a stance on this socially and morally charged issue, resulting in a series of student public confessions. Us…
Reform ripples: The role of recontextualization in scaling up
This paper explores how educational interventions impact the districts they are implemented in above and beyond their intended outcomes. We argue that such unplanned “ripple effects”, in which program elements are recontextualized into other settings, are an important aspect of bringing educational interventions to scale. We analyze these phenomena in one Israeli district in which a teacher leadership and professional learning community initiativ…
Status and inquiry in teacher communities
Teaching as a Clinical Profession: Adapting the Medical Model
One influential way of thinking about teaching is to conceive of it as a clinical profession, similar in important ways to medicine. However, fundamental differences between doctors' and teachers' practice limit the usefulness of the medical model. How can we adapt our understandings of clinical practice in light of the unique aspects of teaching and the context of teachers' work? In this article, we explore the requirements of the central clinic…
Sociology (31 works) · Psychology (30 works) · Pedagogy (29 works) · Teacher Education and Leadership Studies (20 works) · Mathematics education (17 works) · Political science (17 works) · Epistemology (11 works) · Ethnography (11 works) · Multilingual Education and Policy (10 works) · Linguistics (8 works)