Assessing the Conversational Classroom (original) (raw)
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ACM SIGCSE Bulletin, 2003
Concepts taught in large, lower-division computer science courses are carefully explained in standard textbooks. Thus we hypothesized that the classroom experience should not consist primarily of a restatement of those explanations by the professor. Instead, it should provide an opportunity for the students to learn through a process of conversation among themselves and with the professor. We were able to establish such a process in a sophomore-level course with an enrollment of 116 students.
Why All This Talk About Talking Classrooms? Theorizing the Relation Between Talking and Learning
Talk in the classroom is a hot topic these days. This book and the conference in which it originated clearly indicate this trend. There is a reason to this sharp rise of interest. Whereas school learning has always been grounded in intensive interpersonal communication, the last few decades have seen a significant change in the patterns of participation. For instance, when I was a child, almost all the talking in mathematics classroom was done by the teacher. Only rarely were the students expected to respond, and when they did, it was mainly in a written code that gave mathematics an image of being meant “for insiders only”. This is not the case with the majority of schools I am frequenting these days. In the new mathematics classroom, with its intermittent spells of group work and whole-class discussion, students have ample opportunities to talk to one another. It is this new kind of learning environment, one that encourages students to talk, that I will bear in mind in this chapter while using the expression “talking classroom.” The new phenomenon raises many questions, the most urgent of which is also the most basic: Why the “discursive turn” in education in the first place? For example, why should students talk to one another in mathematics or physics classrooms? The rest of this chapter is devoted to this query. After deconstructing some seemingly self-evident answers, I argue that convincing arguments for the talking classroom will not be found until theories are available that can explain the relation between communication and learning. I continue with a proposal for a direction the theory-building effort can take. The chapter concludes with a brief remark about the implications of the proposed approach for the question of how and when student learning can benefit from different forms of classroom conversation.
Staying in the Game: Making Conversation in the Classroom
1993
The ways in which second language learners and teachers together can develop learners' ability to carry on conversation in the target language are examined. The discussion is based on the idea that practicing language skills, therefore creating opportunities to gain additional knowledge, is essential to continued learning, whereas using such techniques as miming, pointing, avoiding particular topics, or shifting from one topic to another when vocabulary runs out is unproductive. Emphasis is on English-as-a-Second-Language teaching. It is proposed that because conversation is purposeful, unpredictable, and jointly negotiated, and uses language patterns unlike those used in textbooks, second language learners must be taught strategies for managing conversation. Four classroom teaching principles are offered: using one's own creativity, flexibility, and listening skills; exploiting what learners bring in the way of language knowledge and social competence; using authentic texts; and taking advantage of the classroom as a social setting in which genuine interaction occurs. Teachers can use problem-reducing and problem-creating strategies to either avoid risk to students or to challenge them. Learners can be taught to use reduction strategies (playing it safe) and achievement strategies (directly addressing problems, for both coping and fine-tuning). Specific behaviors corresponding to these strategies are outlined. (Contains 12 references.) (MSE) *
This chapter provides a selective and synoptic overview of research on classroom talk, interrogating diverse research traditions and approaches. We discuss four key findings from this large body of scholarship: 1) Certain kinds of talk promote robust learning; 2) The field lacks shared conceptualizations of what productive talk is and how best to characterize it; 3) Dialogic discourse (however construed) is exceedingly rare in classrooms across the world; and 4) A helpful way forward is conceptualizing " talk moves " as tools. Following a presentation of findings, we comment on each, offering constructive critique-of our own and others' work-exploring some of the key gaps and challenges facing scholars of classroom talk. Finally, we go beyond description of the status quo and shift to a more " prescriptive stance. " We describe some new developments-that show the promise and power of key ideas, a shared metalanguage, and innovative applications-in producing useable knowledge for students and teachers. Our goal is to locate, and even revive, a number of scholarly traditions and look critically at the intellectual history of the work on classroom talk-particularly useful for newcomers to this complex body of work. The hope is that the diverse community of scholars and practitioners and youth researchers interested in classroom discourse can collaborate more successfully across disciplinary and institutional boundaries to promote more equitable and powerful learning opportunities for students and teachers alike. Part 1. Introduction: What this Chapter Is (and Is Not) ● Synoptic summary of some key findings ● Constructive critique-identifying some key gaps and challenges ● Prescriptive stance and new developments In an Oxford Research Encyclopedia Chapter on classroom talk, it's fitting to begin with an example of classroom talk that we will examine together, and refer to throughout this chapter. But beyond this beginning section, there is nothing typical about this " handbook " chapter. Instead of a comprehensive review of the research, we interrogate the diverse research traditions and approaches that make up a large body of scholarship, and provide a selective and synoptic summary of some of the key findings, taking care to locate ourselves, our governing gaze, and our traditions. We also offer a constructive critique-of our own and others' work-exploring some of the key gaps and challenges facing scholars of classroom talk. Finally, we go beyond description of the status quo and shift to a more " prescriptive stance. " We describe some new developments-that show the promise and power of key ideas, a shared metalanguage, and innovative applications-in producing useable knowledge and " on the ground " benefits for students and teachers. Our goal is to locate, and even revive, a number of scholarly traditions and look critically at the intellectual history of the work on classroom talk-particularly useful for newcomers to this complex body of work. Finally, we hope to do so in a way that is accessible to both academic researchers and practitioner researchers-so that the diverse community of scholars and practitioners and youth researchers interested in classroom discourse can collaborate more successfully across disciplinary and institutional boundaries, and stand on
Advances in research on classroom dialogue: learning outcomes and assessments
The goal of this special issue is to examine how certain modes of classroom dialogue might contribute to students' learning outcomes. The articles in this special issue share the idea of classroom talk as a problem-oriented dialogue. In other words, an interactional configuration based on exchanges among students and teachers that go beyond the predominantly monologic approaches of classroom talk. In each of the contributions to this special issue, different types of learning outcomes were studied as a result of specific ways of orchestrating classroom dialogue. All in all, the studies in this special issue yield a picture of the field as a productive research area: they provide evidence for the plausibility of the assumption that dialogic orchestrations of classroom talk may produce various desired learning and developmental outcomes in students, depending on what outcomes we want to articulate, and how they are assessed. Although the studies in this special issue yield promising results for future improvements of classroom practice more (preferably longitudinal) research is required.
Learning Through Discussions: Comparing the Benefits of Small-Group and Large-Class Settings
Journal of Political Science Education, 2011
A large literature on teaching and learning heralds the benefits of discussion for student learner outcomes, especially its ability to improve students' critical thinking skills. Yet, there are few studies that compare the effects of different types of face-to-face discussions. Using student surveys, we analyze the benefits of small-group and large-class discussions in an upper-level political theory course. We also analyze whether the same types of students are likely to participate, and reap the benefits of, both types of discussions. We find that overall, participation is higher in small-group discussions, as are students' perceptions of learner outcomes. We also find a more equal participation of students of different ethnic backgrounds in small-group discussions.
Conversation Analysis in an Els Classroom Interaction
IGWEBUIKE: African Journal of Arts and Humanities, 2020
This paper examines the conversation techniques used in an ELS real-life classroom interaction to establish how useful conversation techniques are to the realisation of effective classroom pedagogy. Working within conversation and discourse analysis theories, with restriction to five conversational techniques-turn-taking, turn design, sequence organisation, repair mechanism and overlapping-, data was drawn from six (6) teacher-student classroom interactions randomly recorded, transposed to writing, labelled and subjected to a quantitative methods of analysis. The transcripts labelled A-C were analysed based on the five conversation techniques above. The finding revealed that five conversation techniques-turn-taking, turn design, sequence organisation, repair mechanism and overlapping-were engaged in real-life classroom. It was also observed that turn-taking was the most frequently used conversation technique, followed by turn design and repair mechanism. While sequence organisation and overlapping were less frequently used because a classroom conversation is an organised type of conversation. The paper therefore concludes that turn-taking as a conversational technique will go a long way improving students' ability of getting involved in classroom interaction because turn-taking, as a vital aspect of conversation technique, enables one to start and be involved in an effective conversation.