Classroom Discourse Research
Nystrand’s research on classroom discourse and learning, in collaboration with Adam Gamoran, extends the dialogic foundations of his work on writing by investigating the role of reciprocity between teachers and students as it shapes students' understanding of literature in eighth- and ninth-grade literature instruction. This work was the first empirical research to document the role of open classroom discussion in student learning: Opening Dialogue: Understanding the Dynamics of Language and Learning in the English Classroom (Teachers College Press, 1997). His study, “Questions in Time: Investigating the Structure and Dynamics of Unfolding Classroom Discourse” (with L. Wu, A. Gamoran, S. Zeiser, D. Long, Discourse Processes, 35 (2003), 135-196) is the first-ever use of event-history analysis to investigate classroom discourse.
Data for this research were collected with 
CLASS (Classroom Language Assessment System), a Windows program for analyzing the kinds of questions teachers and students ask and patterns of discourse in unfolding lessons.
RESEARCH
∙ Writing