Enhancing Classroom-based Talk

Blending practice, research and theory

Robyn M. Gillies

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781138818293
• eBook ISBN: 9781317594956
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Enhancing Classroom-based Talk provides an overview of the major research and theoretical perspectives that underpin the development of classroom-based talk. It outlines specific dialogic strategies and elaborates on the key role that teachers play in promoting interactions, challenging thinking and scaffolding the learning of students.

While it is important to know how different dialogic approaches can enhance students' interactions and learning and the effects they have on students' social, emotional and cognitive development, it is also important to understand how students' interactions promote understanding and learning during small group discussions. Throughout the book, teachers will be shown how to embed different dialogic approaches in their classrooms to promote discourse, with chapters covering:

• Interest in classroom-based talk
• The teacher's role in promoting dialogue in the classroom
• Dialogic approaches to teaching
• Strategies to promote students' interactions, thinking and learning
• Help seeking and help giving behaviours
• Creating environments that promote classroom-based talk

Enhancing Classroom-based Talk will be a valuable asset to all those concerned with promoting classroom-based talk, as well as postgraduate students, teachers and academics who are regularly called upon to assist in developing classroom interventions that provide for the academic and social needs of students.

1

Interest in Classroom-based Talk

Introduction

Interest in classroom-based talk and its capacity to promote cognitive development and educational attainment has gathered momentum over the last three decades as studies have emerged that have demonstrated the key role social collaboration plays in the joint construction of knowledge, understanding and learning, and how such interaction has the capacity to build the mind. While both individual and social constructivism advocate the importance of social interaction in the development of children’s reasoning and cognition, it is only in the last thirty years that research has demonstrated how children learn from interacting with others and how teachers can utilise this information to construct experiences in classrooms to ensure the benefits attributed to such experiences can be developed and maintained.

Foremost among those who have provided insights into the development of children’s talk in classroom-based settings are Adey and Shayer (1990, 1993, 1994) who conducted a series of cognitive acceleration (CA) programmes in science and mathematics in primary and secondary schools where children were confronted with cognitively challenging situations, in the context of socially mediated learning, by their teachers who guided their thinking and learning. The effects of these programmes on students’ cognitive development and academic achievements were significant when compared to same aged peers who received the regular curriculum. Furthermore, the gains recorded generalised to national public examinations up to three years after the original intervention, with gains not only in mathematics and science, the original targeted subject domains, but also in English, demonstrating clear transfer effects. The positive effects of CA programmes were attributed to three common features: First, they challenge children’s thinking; second, they emphasise that knowledge and understanding are socially constructed by collaborating with others, building on their ideas, and cognitively reorganising and reconstructing information to co-construct new knowledge and understandings; and, finally, they encourage students to reflect on their learning and to think about the processes involved. In so doing, learning is consolidated as students learn to think metacognitively about the learning and thinking processes they employed.

Others who have investigated the powerful effects of dialogic interactions on students’ thinking and learning include Resnick (1991, 2010) and colleagues (Resnick et al., 2010) who argue that academically productive talk, which they call Accountable Talk, only emerges when students learn how to listen to others, build on their ideas, engage in providing explanations and justifications for their propositions, and are prepared to challenge what others have to say when evidence is not supported or available. The teacher’s discourse in this type of interaction often switches from providing authoritative knowledge to ensure that students acquire discipline-correct concepts to being more dialogic, where they are challenged and scaffolded to explore new ideas, ask questions, interpret findings, formulate hypotheses, and share understandings.

Robin Alexander (2008a) drew parallels between his work on Dialogic Teaching and Accountable Talk, arguing that both were discourse pedagogies that emphasised reciprocal dialogues, they occurred in a social environment that was supportive of students’ discussions, there was a clear purpose to the interaction, and the focus was to build on the ideas of others to co-construct and create new knowledge to help students learn.

Mercer (1996, 2008a) and colleagues (Mercer et al., 2009; Rojas-Drummond and Mercer, 2003) reported on a similar dialogic discourse which they called Exploratory Talk, where students were taught how to engage critically and constructively with each other’s ideas by learning to reason and justify their assertions and opinions as they collaborated. The results from a series of studies showed that not only did the use of exploratory talk enable students to become more effective in using language as a tool for reasoning and sharing knowledge, but it also led to higher levels of individual achievement and significant improvements in students’ capacities to reason and problem-solve.

While it is important to know how different dialogic approaches can enhance students’ interactions and learning and the effects they have on students’ social, emotional and cognitive development, it is also important to understand how students’ interactions promote understanding and learning during small group discussions. In a series of studies Webb (1991, 1992) and colleagues (Webb and Farivar, 1999; Webb and Mastergeorge, 2003a) found that providing elaborated help in response to requests for assistance was positively related to achievement, whereas providing minimal explanatory responses or explanations that were not requested was not. More recently, Webb (2009) has extended this research to include the teacher’s role in promoting collaborative dialogue in the classroom.

The purpose of this chapter is to provide an overview of the research and theoretical perspectives on classroom-based talk that have emerged in the last three decades and the implications this information has for informing teaching and learning in schools. This is particularly important given the scrutiny schools receive as a consequence of global movements in educational reform which place an emphasis on developing a knowledge-based society to fuel economic competitiveness where people need to be able to work with knowledge, explore new ideas, cooperate with others, problem-solve, and have the flexibility to adapt to changing situations (Hargreaves, 2009). National economic competitiveness, Sahlberg and Oldroyd (2010) argue, is ‘linked to intellectual and creative capital and is therefore driven by knowledge, creativity and innovation’ (p. 280). Moreover, many school systems now recognise the need to focus on deeper learning, the importance of holding higher expectations for all students, and ensuring better connections between learning and assessment if they, in turn, are to produce graduates who can contribute to national sustainable economic growth and prosperity.

Given that governments, internationally, are investing trillions of dollars in these educational innovations, schools are now more accountable for the education students receive. This, in turn, has led to the introduction of educational standards, benchmarks for teaching and learning, prescribed curricula, and aligned testing and assessment with a focus on an ‘evidence-based policy agenda’ (Sahlberg, 2011, p. 176). While there is merit in many of these reforms, teachers are often reluctant to embrace new approaches to teaching such as classroom-based strategies for promoting more teacher–student and student–student interactions unless there is evidence that these pedagogies work (Gillies, 2015).

These pedagogies have been referred to as ‘smarter pedagogies’ by Sahlberg and Oldroyd (2010, p. 296) who propose that they – along with a more adequate reorganisation of schools and teaching – have the potential to bring significant improvements to knowledge, skills and competencies needed for improving economic competitiveness and ecological sustainability. Included in these ‘smarter pedagogies’ are cooperative learning, problem-based learning and creative problem-solving – all activities that involve social collaboration where students are interdependently linked to work on problem-based issues they are unable to solve alone.

Problems that are complex and challenging, Murgatroyd (2010) proposes, are ‘wicked problems’ (p. 267) or problems that have no right answer as there may be multiple explanations. Solutions to wicked problems are only good or bad, as there are no right or wrong solutions, and every wicked problem is the consequence of a higher level problem. Furthermore, every wicked problem is unique and every wicked problem solver is fully accountable and responsible for their actions. In short, many wicked problems are similar to the ill-structured, complex problems that Cohen (1994) refers to, which are open and discovery-based, having no right and wrong answers, so successful completion of the task requires students to interact and exchange ideas and information if they are to come up with creative solutions. Successful completion of the task under these circumstances depends on the frequency of group members’ task-related interaction or students’ willingness to socially collaborate.

When you have finished this chapter you will understand:

• The key role social collaboration plays in the joint construction of knowledge;

• The importance of classroom-based talk;

• Implications for teachers;

• The role of the learner;

• Strategies for the classroom.

Social collaboration

There is an enormous volume of research that has documented the benefits students derive from collaborating with others to complete a task or solve a problem. Such strategies include cooperative learning and other forms of peer-mediated learning such as peer tutoring and peer collaboration (Foot et al., 1990). In cooperative learning, each student is required to not only complete their part of the task but also to ensure that others do likewise (Johnson and Johnson, 2002). The technical term for this dual responsibility is ‘positive interdependence’ and it is the most important element of cooperative learning (Deutsch, 1949). Positive interdependence exists when students perceive that they cannot succeed unless others do and must synchronise their efforts to ensure that this occurs. Cohesion develops in the group as a direct result of the perception of goal interdependence and the perception of interdependence among group members (Slavin, 1996).

While other forms of peer mediation involve students cooperating, peer tutoring usually involves a more capable peer providing assistance and guidance to another, usually on a one-on-one basis. This approach to teaching closely matches Vygotsky’s view (Vygotsky, 1978) that collaborating children construct knowledge together while interacting with the more able student guiding the interaction. Interestingly, research has shown that students who participate in helping other students also benefit, possibly because they have to cognitively restructure the information that they are teaching in order to be able to explain it in a way that those being helped can understand (Allen, 1976).

Peer collaboration is similar to peer tutoring in that it usually involves two students of similar ability working together to solve a problem that neither could solve by themselves, requiring both to actively exchange ideas rather than have one child passively learn from the other. By engaging in conversations with their peers, different ideas are challenged, and children are often forced to ‘decentre’ as they learn to consider the perspective of others. This form of peer mediation is based on Piaget’s (1950) theory of cognitive growth that proposes that when children disagree with one another, they experience ‘cognitive dissonance’ which acts as a catalyst to reconcile contradictory information, with the result that a clearer understanding of the problem emerges (Foot et al., 1990).

When students work cooperatively with others, they learn to give and receive help, share ideas and listen to other students’ perspectives, seek new ways of clarifying differences, and resolve problems, and, in so doing, construct new understandings and learning from engaging in these processes (Webb et al., 1995). The result is that students demonstrate higher academic achievements and are more motivated to achieve than they would be if they worked competitively with others or alone (Johnson and Johnson, 2002). In a meta-analysis of 148 studies that compared cooperative, competitive and individualistic goal structures in promoting early adolescents’ achievement and positive peer relationships, Roseth et al. (2008) found that higher achievement and more positive peer relationships were associated more with cooperative learning than with either of the other two goal structures. The establishment of cooperative group goals appears to affect cognitive processes directly by motivating students to engage in peer modelling, cognitive elaboration and/or practice with one another (Slavin, 2014).

There is no doubt that when students become involved in learning to listen to what others have to say, contest opposing points of view, reconcile anomalous information, and work towards developing new understandings, they become involved in shared thinking processes, and, in so doing, they learn new ways of thinking and talking and co-constructing meaning from these experiences (Mercer, 1996, 2008a). Social interaction aids cognitive development when partners are actively engaged in shared thinking processes in which they challenge others’ understanding of a task, share their own insights, and attempt to reconcile different positions (Rogoff and Toma, 1997). For example, Mercer and Sams (2006) reported on an intervention called Thinking Together that was designed to raise children’s awareness of the use of language as a means of thinking together, develop their abilities to use language as a tool for thinking both collectively and individually, and enable them to use language effectively in their study of mathematics. They found that children can be taught to use language more effectively as a tool for reasoning and problem-solving, and that talk-based group discussions can positively affect the development of children’s individual reasoning, understanding and learning.

Constructing meaning

This process of constructing meaning from social experiences can be explained from two theoretical perspectives: personal and social constructivism. In the former, personal constructivism is predicated on the writings of Jean Piaget (1950), who proposed that social interaction is critically important in challenging children’s perspectives of the world by forcing them to ‘decentre’ and consider the perspectives of others when they encounter views that differ from their own. In so doing, they learn to reassess and restructure their own thinking on the basis of the new information they receive (Damon, 1984). Peer interactions provide the experiences and contexts for students to revise their cognitive systems, although the change itself is achieved by the individual reflecting on these interactions and perspectives in order to construct new meanings and understandings from them (Damon, 1991).

Social constructivism (Vygotsky, 1978), on the other hand, emphasises the interpersonal dimensions of learning, particularly the role more competent others play in helping children gain mastery over the tools and signs that are important for their cultural group. Interaction with others, where more capable peers and adults mediate the child’s environment by focusing attention on relevant information and providing tools such as speech and other cultural artefacts for problem-solving and reasoning, is critical for the development of higher-order cognitive functions in children. Through continual exposure to new ways of thinking and patterns of thought, these thinking strategies and communication processes become internalised as part of the child’s mental repertoire, leading to both social ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• 1. Interest in classroom-based talk
• 2. The teacher’s role in promoting dialogue in the classroom
• 3. Dialogic approaches to teaching
• 4. Strategies to promote students’ interactions, thinking and learning
• 5. Help-seeking and help-giving behaviours
• 6. Creating environments that promote classroom-based talk
• References
• Index