Dialogue in classrooms – questioning conventional wisdom Adam Lefstein [email protected].
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Transcript of Dialogue in classrooms – questioning conventional wisdom Adam Lefstein [email protected].
Dialogue in classrooms – questioning conventional wisdom
Adam [email protected]
Socrates: Now, if you are the sort of person I am, I would like to cross-examine you. But if not I prefer to let the matter rest. And what sort of person am I? I am ready to be refuted if I say something untrue, and ready to refute anyone else who speaks wrongly. But I prefer to be refuted than to refute, for I believe that the former poses the greater benefit, since it is better
to be cured of an evil than to cure another. And I imagine that there is no greater evil than to be mistaken in the matters about which we speak.
-- from Plato’s Gorgias
Why is everyone so excited about dialogue?
• Fashion (and tradition)
• Speaking and listening skills
• A respectful way of relating to pupils
• Preparation for democracy
• Developing argumentation & critical thinking
• An effective means of learning
• Dissatisfaction with current classroom culture
Current classroom culture
How do you think the pupils are answering the
teacher’s questions in text #1 ?
Initiation (line 3)
Response #1: “bones”(line 6)
Response #2: “it’s”(line 20)
Response #3: “hundreds” (line 26)
Initiation: plural or possessive? (lines 8-11)
Initiation: “Does anything belong to those bones?” (line 13)
Response: silence(line 12)
Response: “no”(line 14)
Positive evaluation: “no” (line 15)
Negative evaluation: “it’s not one” (line 16)
Negative evaluation: “that’s just an “s”…”(line 17-18)
Positive evaluation: “it’s is the first one”(line 21)
Initiation: “which is short for?”
(line 22)Response: “it is”(line 23)
Positive evaluation: “it is made of…” (line 24)
Negative evaluation: silence (line 27)
Response: “no”(line 28)
Initiation: “what belongs to the hundreds?” (lines 29)
Response: “no, animals’”(line 30)
Positive evaluation: “animals, good” (line 31)
Different dimensions of “dialogue”
Structural: equitable interactional structures, reciprocity
Epistemic: critical stance toward knowledge
Interpersonal: collaborative & supportive community
Substantive: responding to & building on other’s ideas
Political: empowerment and voice
What’s wrong with us? What’s wrong with us current thinking about classroom dialogue?
In what ways do the following examples
reflect dialogic or otherwise good practice?
In what ways are they problematic?
Text #2: In what ways does this reflect dialogic or otherwise
good practice? In what ways is it problematic?
What’s wrong with this way of thinking about dialogue?
• Ignores non-academic aspects of talk: identity, power, aesthetics
• Ignores institutional constraints
• Still based on teacher interrogation
• “Best practice” view of dialogue-as-solution
Common sense about teacher questions
Why ask questions?
• To extend pupils’ thinking from the concrete to the more abstract.
• To challenge pupils to apply the key ideas to a range of observations and findings.
• To promote the use of thinking skills, for example, reasoning, evaluation.
• To promote pupils’ thinking about what they have learned and how they have learned.
- Key Stage 3 National Strategy (2004) Strengthening teaching and learning in science through using different pedagogies - Unit 2: Active questioning.
Common sense or common nonsense?
• Displaced inferences• Questioning in other enterprises:
opinion-polling, cross-examination, psychotherapy • Questioning and social relations• Equivocal research evidence
- Dillon, J. (1982) The Effect of Questions in Education and Other Enterprises. Journal of Curriculum Studies 14 (2):127-152.
Questioning in classrooms
• How many questions do teachers ask in 30 minutes?
• How many questions are asked by students?• What kinds of questions are asked by each? • What is the significance of these questioning
practices?
A pedagogy of answers• Teachers ask 45-150 questions per half-hour
lesson…
• but estimate asking 12-20 questions.
• 67%-95% of the questions involve straight recall.
• Students ask 2 or fewer questions per lesson.
• Teacher recall questions are negatively correlated with student questions.
- Review of research by Susskind, discussed in Sarason (1996) Revisiting The Culture of the School and the Problem of Change
A pedagogy of answers: what are we teaching
Try to guess the answers to the questions in text #3
The “correct” answers:
1. (E) [this novel] should be read with sensitivity and an open mind
2. (C) disapproval
3. (A) universality of human experience truthfully recorded
Text #4: In what ways does this reflect dialogic or otherwise
good practice? In what ways is it problematic?
QU
ES
TIO
N:
Wh
en
th
ey
wen
t in
th
ere
ag
ain
it
was
all
blo
ck
ed
up
… w
hy
did
th
at
hap
pen
? (M
sJ, l
ines
1-7)
CONJECTURE #1 They only let people in at certain times (Ben, lines 18-22)
CONJECTURE #2 Maybe the wardrobe only lets in good people (MsJ, lines 24-25)
CONJECTURE #4 If they believe in it [they’re let in] (Brian, line 37)
CONJECTURE #3 They only let certain people in (Sean, line 31)
CONJECTURE #5 Because they were with Lucy they were let in (Julie, lines 55, 58, 61, 63)
REFUTATION But they let in Edmund (Julie, line 28)
CONTESTATION Nope (Anon, line 26)
SUPPORT Lucy didn’t know about it and then… she believed (Vanessa, lines 38-43)
SUMMARY So we’re disagreeing with that then (MsJ, lines 29-30)
REFUTATION The rest of the children didn’t believe in it (MsJ, lines 44-54)
ELABORATION So they were with someone who believed (MsJ, lines 64-5, 67)
REFUTATION But what about Edmund? (Deborah, lines 72, 75-7)
ELABORATION Okay, maybe you were wrong (Anon & MsJ, lines 81-3)
Dialogical tensions and the teacher’s role
Structural: Establishing and maintaining communicative norms...
Epistemic: Questioning orthodoxies, challenging pupil ideas, strengthening minority positions, highlighting points of contention...
Substantive: Maintaining conversational cohesion, summarizing threads, making explicit developing argument(s)...
Interpersonal: Building classroom community, encouraging participation, protecting ‘weak’ pupils...
Political: Undermining own authority, empowering pupils...
Aesthetic: Orchestrating an engaging & informative discussion...
Better than “Best Practice”:
• Dialogue as a problem
• Classroom culture, not teaching technique
• Attending to audience
• Focusing on content and tasks
21
Any questions?
Thank you,
Adam
[email protected] Institute of EducationUniversity of London20 Bedford WayLondon WC1H 0AL
Tel +44 (0)20 7612 6000Fax +44 (0)20 7612 6126Email [email protected] www.ioe.ac.uk
Fertile questions?Attending to text #4:
• Which questions, if any, do you find most fertile? Which, if any, do you find problematic?
• Why? What are the characteristics of fertile questions?
• In what contexts (e.g. year group, disciplinary field) might you use these questions?
Fertile questions?Open: in principle has no one definitive answer; rather, several
different, competing possible answers
Undermining: challenges basic assumptions, the “self-evident”
Rich: necessitates grappling with important and rich ideas; cannot be answered without careful and sustained inquiry
Connected: relevant to the learners, society and disciplinary field
Charged: contains an ethical dimension; is charged with emotional, social, and political implications
Practical: in the given context of learners and resources
Robin Alexander’s “dialogic teaching”
• Collective• Reciprocal• Supportive• Cumulative• Purposeful
But what about…?
• Critical• Meaningful
Toward a pedagogy of questions: the community of thinking programme
Toward a pedagogy of questioning
• Fertile questions• Culture of inquiry• Posing rather than asking• Celebrating questions• Tying knowledge to the questions that
gave rise to it