Making sense of classroom interaction via a multiple-method design: social, experiential and epistemological dimensions

SUMMARY

This article explores the contribution of a multiple-method design to the study of classroom interaction. The theoretical and methodological frameworks of three constructivist discourse-oriented methods (i.e., Institutional Speech Event Analysis, The Four-World Method and Grounded Theory) are summarized and the same text is submitted to three independent text analyses. The article shows that a multiple-method design is conducive to the discovery of implicit meanings related to social, experiential and epistemological aspects of classroom interaction.