discourse & language

2) Students and instructors engage as co-inquirers during class discussions and activities. 

Students experience classrooms with reduced hierarchy, where faculty and students learn together.

• Unbiased but ideologically unclear Teacher beliefs about language practices of emergent bilingual students in the U.S. Article about how teacher beliefs impact their attitudes toward linguistically and culturally diverse students.

Students interact in classroom space conducive to challenging, questioning, and critiquing faculty and materials.

• Explicitly frame class with discourse and language indicators.

Students co-develop parameters and guidelines for small and large group discussions; with attention paid to linguistic diversity and multimodal communication.  

• Twenty Questions about Cogenerative Dialogues by Kenneth Tobin. 2014 paper provides short introduction to co-generative dialogue and implementation ideas.

Students use their own language to co-construct discussion questions as a way of gaining agency of their learning within the class discussions.

• Point out when you don’t know things and model the learning process.

Students co-inquire utilizing the co-constructed discussion questions to develop the academic language required to disciplinarily discuss, investigate, understand the subject.

• Use productive math talk moves to question and elicit student thinking.

• Provide constructive feedback, identify what went well and what they need to work on.

Students are encouraged to develop their own research/ inquiry questions, especially those that challenge the norm and dominant narratives/ perspectives.  

• Setting the Tone for Inclusive Classrooms resource guide from University of Michigan describes practices for setting classroom expectations, as well as other practices that help build classroom community.  

• Encourage students to ask questions and value engaging in discussion to learn.

• Invite/assign students to find and contribute outside resources.

• Students need to lead the classroom, not teachers Katherine Cadwell Ted Talk 2018 about classroom discussions.

• Encourage students to ask questions “in their voice”.

• Initially let students think in their native language and translate to English. But as the term progresses, encourage them to construct their solutions/thinking in English.

• Useful Questions for Dialogue Facilitation resource guide from University of Michigan Inclusive Teaching. 14 types of questions for use by students and instructors. 

• Design small group discussions in students’ native language.

• Ask students to design questions connecting content to their interests/majors.

• Guidelines for Discussing Difficult or High-Stakes Topics resource guide from University of Michigan with a variety of resources for navigating difficult discussions.

• Dominant narratives activity guide from University of Michigan Inclusive Teaching resource guides includes several versions of potential activities to implement in your course.