Backer on The Distortion of Recitation

In his piece On Recitation, or The Second Distortion, David Backer describes the occurrence of the practice of referring to “recitation” as “discussion”. Backer calls this mislabeling a form of distortion, one which reflects the larger societal context of neoliberalism.

Backer begins by looking at recitation; as a process, recitation is most often cited as a process involving “facilitator initiation, participant response and facilitator evaluation” (IRE) (77). In this method, facilitators may speak freely on any topic, without objection of others and hold the attention of participants for the majority of the interaction (77-78). Backer describes this instructional practice as conservative, passive and undemanding for participants (78). While the efficacy of recitation is acknowledge, the political critique presented (through the work of Gutierrez and Larson) highlights the hegemonic and unequal nature of recitation; the language of recitation “protects the cultural capital of the dominant society through a hierarchical participation structure that forms rigid borders around activity” (79). The hegemonic position of a teacher in recitation inherently presents an unequal variety and sequence of turns (81) (this contrasted with the equal and discussion).

Backer uses studies found in a 1969 article by Hoetker and Alhbrand to present data surrounding the prevalence of recitation in classrooms; from the article we read findings such as:

• the majority of talking in classrooms, with both “good” and “poor” teachers, is done by teachers (82)
• Responses made by pupils remain alarmingly short (on average about 12 seconds) (82)
• leaders have been found to ask more than twice as many questions as the students (83)
• somewhere around 65% of teachers used the conventional procedure of teacher questioning (83)
• One study found that 90% of instruction involved zero discussion (85)

Despite studies resulting that recitation may be a poor methodological method, Backer observes that it remains the dominate form of educational interaction in US classrooms. At certain point in time, however, the word “discussion” began to refer to this practice (85). Backer engages Bahktinian circle author Valentin Volosinov to interpret this shift and it’s political and social implications.

On the Persistence of Recitation

In their article “The Persistence of the Recitation” Hoetker and Ahlbrand synthesize multiple studies on classroom teaching and observe patterns of consistency across classrooms, subjects and schools. Based on multiple studies of classroom practices, researchers have consistently found that the practice of recitation, the process of teacher questioning and student response, prevails as the main instructional practice present in classrooms over the past hundred years.