Research has shown that proper use of classroom discourse can strengthen teacher-student rapport, create an open and supportive learning environment, and provide students with new ways of exploring information that can lead to deeper understanding of new concepts.
Strategy Overview:
What is it?
Discourse is "the interactions between all participants that occur throughout a lesson," according to Van de Walle, Karp, Lovin and Bay-Williams (2014, p. 20). This includes teacher-student and student-student interactions that are both written and oral representations of learning.
How effective is it?
Evidence shows that classroom discussion is dependent on frequency, intensity and duration. The more often students are discussing for longer periods of time ad a greater depth, the greater the impact on student learning. Hattie measured the average effect size of classroom discussion at 0.82.
Considerations
"Meltzoff (1994) characterizes the role of the teacher as one who skillfully weaves teaching and learning, creates an interconnectedness among lesson concepts, and guides students in developing rich relationships within the classroom. In addition, teaching should be a bidirectional process between students and teachers. While engaging students in discourse, it is imperative for teachers to acknowledge individual differences of students while creating an interconnectedness within the classroom." - Hoskins Lloyd, Kolodziej, & Brashears (2016).
This strategy is demonstrated when the teacher:
only guides from the periphery of the convseration.
waits for student to clarify thinking of others.
follows student explanations closely.
asks students to contrast explanations.
This strategy is not demonstrated when the teacher:
is at the front of the room, dominating the coversation.
is the only questioner.
This strategy is demonstrated when students:
carry the conversation themselves and ask questions of one another.
defent and justify their answers with little prompting from the teacher.
believe that they are content leaders and can help shape the thinking of others in supportive, collegial ways and accept the same support form others.
Examples that illustrate the strategy:
Example 1: Consider a high school laboratory activity that begins with the teacher hanging a mass from a spring-scale at the front of the classroom. The scale reads “1 kilogram.” He then produces a large bell jar which he places over the entire scale and attaches the jar to a vacuum pump. “Can anyone share their thinking about what the scale might read if I pump all the air out? Let’s take a minute to generate some hypotheses.” After a period of quiet thinking, students begin to offer a few thoughts.
Jaden: I’d say it would weigh less—
Teacher: Can you say more about that?
Jaden: Because before you put the jar on top, the air is pushing down on it—the air weighs something, so it’s the weight of the thing plus the weight of air.
Teacher: And when you pull the air out?
Jaden: It’s not pushing down anymore so it weighs just a little bit less.
Teacher: Mm-hmm. [Waits in silence]. Anyone else want to add?
Helena: Well, air weighs something, but air I think is pushing on all sides of the thing, not just the top…
Jaden: Like water, if you’re under water in a pool.
Helena: Yeah.
Teacher: Wait, Jaden are you changing your mind? How is your pool example like Helena’s claim?
Jaden: So if you are under water, maybe you can feel pressure from all sides?
Marta: So it’s like a submarine—it can get crushed if it goes too deep, crushed on all sides, so that’s evidence—I can look it up…
Teacher: Evidence of what, Marta?
Marta: Water, the air is like an ocean, pushing on all sides, so we get that pressure on all sides all the time.
Teacher: OK, Marta, so it sounds like you’ve claimed that air has the same effect that water does, it exerts pressure on all sides. Does that mean the mass would weigh the same without air in the bell jar? More? Less?
Marta: The same? Now I’m not sure.
Example 2: This is an example of kindergarten children discussing Leo Lionni’s book Tico and the Golden Wings:
Teacher: I don’t think it’s fair that Tico has to give up his golden wings.
Lisa: It is fair. See he was nicer when he didn’t have any wings. They didn’t like him when he had gold.
Wally: He thinks he’s better if he has golden wings.
Eddie: He is better.
Jill: But he’s not supposed to be better. The wishing bird was wrong to give him those wings.
Deanna: She has to give him his wings. He’s the one who shouldn’t have asked for golden wings.
Wally: He could put black wings on top of the golden wings and try to trick them.
Deanna: They’d just sneak up and see the gold. He should just give every bird one gold feather and keep one for himself.
Teacher: Why can’t he decide for himself what wings he wants?
In this discussion of fairness, the turn taking is managed and initiated by the children without the teacher controlling who speaks. They listen to and build on each others’ ideas. The teacher and children coconstruct the text as they present and defend their points of view. In the participation structure established in this classroom the children are free to disagree with the teacher. They are equal partners in determining the direction of the discussion. The teacher promotes cognitive development by putting the children’s voices in the foreground and asking them to reflect on and state their own ideas. They become the meaning makers. The teacher gains insight into their ability to understand and analyze the text as well as their skill in using language. Of course these types of conversations also influence children’s social development as they learn of and debate the merits of different points of view.
Continuum of Practice:
Emerging
Teacher is at the front of the room and dominates conversation.
Teacher is only questioner. Questions serve to keep students listening to teacher. Students give short answers and respond to teacher only.
Teacher questions focus on correctness. Students provide short answer-focused responses. Teacher may give answers.
Culture supports students keeping ideas to themselves or just providing answers when asked.
Evolving
Teacher encourages thesharing of ideas and directs speaker to talk to the class, not to the teacher only.
Teacher questions begin to focus on student thinking and less on answers. Only teacher asks questions.
Teacher probes student thinking somewhat. One or two explanations may be elicited. Teacher may fill in an explanation. Students provide brief descriptions of their thinking in response to teacher probing.
Students believe that their ideas are accepted by the classroom community. They begin to listen to one another supportively and to restate in their own words what another student has said.
Embedding
Teacher facilitates conversation between students, and encourages students to ask questions of one another.
Teacher asks probing questions and facilitates some student-to-student talk. Students ask questions of one another with prompting from teacher.
Teacher probes more deeply to learn about student thinking. Teacher elicits multiple explanations. Students respond to teacher probing and volunteer their thinking. Students begin to defend their answers.
Students believe that they are learners and that their ideas and the ideas of their classmates are important. They listen actively so that they can contribute significantly.
Excelling
Students carry the conversation themselves. Teacher only guides from the periphery of the conversation. Teacher waits for students to clarify thinking of others.
Student-to-student talk is student initiated. Students ask questions and listen to responses. Many questions ask “why” and call for justification. Teacher questions may still guide discourse.
Teacher follows student explanations closely. Teacher asks students to contrast explanations. Students defend and justify their answers with little prompting from the teacher.
Students believe that they are content leaders and can help shape the thinking of others. They help shape others’ content thinking in supportive, collegial ways and accept the same support from others.
Resources:
Fig. 11. Levels of classroom discourse. From Hufford-Ackles, Fuson, and Sherin (2014), table 1. https://robertkaplinsky.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Levels-of-Classroom-Discourse.pdf
Hattie, J. (2009). Visible learning: A synthesis of over 800 meta-analyses related to achievement. New York: Routledge.
https://www.educationnext.org/how-to-empower-every-student-to-talk-in-class-why-it-matters/
School Community Journal, 2016, Vol. 26, No. 2 Available at http://www.schoolcommunitynetwork.org/SCJ.aspx