About

Sarah Chepkirui Creider is an Assistant Professor of Teaching in the Applied Linguistics & TESOL program at Teachers College, Columbia University. She is a conversation analyst who specializes in institutional interactions, applied conversation analysis, teacher-student interactions, and teacher reflection. Her work focuses on the possibility for change inherent in each moment of everyday interaction, examining student participation and agency in multilingual classrooms, teacher agency and reflection, and community conversations about and across difference. Her scholarly contributions include publications in various academic journals and a co-authored book titled 'Micro-reflection on Classroom Communication: A FAB Framework,' published by Equinox in 2021. Her current projects involve integrating the FAB framework into teacher preparation, conducting teacher participatory action research on teacher agency and well-being, and leading a student research group on teacher-student interaction.

Research topics

• Sociology
• Computer Science
• Psychology
• Mathematics education
• Engineering
• Pedagogy
• Mathematics
• Philosophy
• Linguistics

Selected publications

• Developing Conversation Analytic Mindsets and Skillsets in a High School Classroom

  2025-01-01 · 3 citations

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• 8 I’m Just Saying: Being Explicit in a Mixed-Race Conversation about Racism

  Multilingual Matters eBooks · 2024-05-16

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Teachers as Researchers: Exploratory Practice in Tunisian EFL Classrooms

  Studies in Applied Linguistics and TESOL · 2023-12-11

  articleOpen access

  This Special Issue is dedicated to teachers’ exploratory practice research (Allwright, 2005; Allwright & Hanks, 2009). It showcases nine studies conducted by Tunisian EFL teachers in their own classrooms.
 In the publishing world of TESOL and applied linguistics, despite a proliferation of journals and edited volumes in recent decades, there remains hardly any space for practitioner research. Book publishers and journal editors, driven in part by concerns about profit margins, tend to reject this type of research (unabashedly) citing, as pretexts, the lack of geographical reach or lack of name recognition among contributors. Against this backdrop, this Special Issue counters the commercial mindset and helps fill a longstanding void in TESOL and applied linguistics literature. It illustrates how exploratory practice research can be done and illuminates the potential of practitioner research and the largely untapped ingenuity of practitioners.
 As an introduction to this Special Issue, we will, briefly, discuss the research-practice divide phenomenon and describe the genre of exploratory practice (EP). After, we present a synopsis of nine EP studies. We conclude by emphasizing the unique role of EP in advancing foreign language instruction and suggesting ways to substantiate it.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Book Review: Micro-Reflection on Classroom Communication – A FAB Framework

  RELC Journal · 2022 · 1 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  • Sociology
  • Psychology
  • Linguistics
  PublisherDOI

• Micro-Reflection on Classroom Communication

  University of Toronto Press eBooks · 2021-12-31 · 23 citations

  bookSenior author

  Traditional concerns with classroom communication have centered on questions such as who talks more, whether the interaction is teacher-centered or student-centered, whether participation is restricted to a few or available to all, what kinds of questions teachers ask, and what kinds of feedback they give. These indicators provide a simple and useful way of capturing classroom communication in distributional and categorical terms. Less attention has been devoted to observing and understanding the quality of this communication — whether it facilitates learning regardless of, for example, who talks more. Based on over a decade of fine-grained analysis of video-recorded ESL classroom interaction, this book offers one way of seeing and gauging the quality of classroom communication beyond distributions and categories. In particular, by parsing detailed transcripts of actual classroom interaction, it invites reflective conversations on how three principles of skillful classroom communication may be practiced in the micro-moments of classroom interaction: fostering an inviting environment, attending to student voices, and balancing competing demands (FAB). The goal is to cultivate a mentality of micro-reflection—one that sensitizes teachers to the consequentiality of every move they make as they make them in the simultaneity and sequentiality of second-by-second classroom interaction.

  PublisherDOI

• Research methods for educational dialogue

  Classroom Discourse · 2021 · 7 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Sociology
  • Computer Science
  • Mathematics education

  According to Wegerif (2019), dialogic education can be defined on multiple levels. Any classroom where group work and student talk are valued might be considered dialogic. However, more complex def...

  PublisherDOI

• What was it like to be an ESL teacher in 2020? Reflections from the prek-12 community

  Studies in Applied Linguistics and TESOL · 2021-05-27

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Suddenly, with the advent of COVID-19, our familiar teaching tools disappeared. How, in a two-dimensional world, were teachers to connect with students? This is a question we have all been asking ourselves since last spring — and when we began to discuss this forum, it was the question we posed to our community. We asked student teachers, cooperating teachers, and student-teacher supervisors to reflect on a single moment from this past year. We hoped to document — and to share — a few moments from the actual experience being an ESL teacher during the 2020 school year.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Student talk as a resource: Integrating conflicting agendas in math tutoring sessions

  Linguistics and Education · 2020 · 7 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Computer Science
  • Mathematics education
  • Pedagogy
  PublisherDOI

• Pivotal Moments in Student Teaching

  DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) · 2019-12-19

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  When we first discussed a forum devoted to current and recent student teachers, we simply thought it would be worthwhile to highlight the voices of teachers preparing to work with English Language Learners (ELLs) in our public schools. What we didn’t realize is that we would also hear the voices of their young students—and, in the process, be asked to rethink our own vision of the importance of student teaching.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• “You Can Make a Tower”: Using Conversation Analysis to Understand a Math Tutoring Session

  2019-05-28

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  A recent article in the New York Times (Spencer, 2011) described a series of well-attended workshops on how to encourage children to play effectively with wooden blocks. At first glance, the idea of teaching children to play seems somewhat absurd. And yet, if we think about learning via play rather than learning to play, it is reasonable to ask how adults can encourage mathematical and verbal complexity in children’s games and activities. By looking closely at what parents and teachers say to children during play sessions, we can perhaps better understand the kind of language that supports intellectual development in the context of child-directed play. In this brief paper, I attempt to show how one teacher uses language to bring together learning and play in a math tutoring session. Specifically, I discuss an instance where the teacher finds a moment in a student’s self-directed game where it would be appropriate to introduce beginning math concepts.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Hansun Zhang Waring

  4 shared

• Catherine DiFelice Box

  Philadelphia University

  3 shared

• Vivian Lindhardsen

  Columbia University

  3 shared

• Christine M. Jacknick

  2 shared

• Ashley Beccia

  Columbia University

  1 shared

• Rebecca Black

  Patient Advocate Foundation

  1 shared

• ZhaoHong Han

  1 shared

• Tara E. Tarpey

  Columbia University

  1 shared