Dialogue in classrooms – questioning conventional wisdom

Adam Lefsteina.lefstein@ioe.ac.uk

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

a.lefstein@ioe.ac.uk Institute of EducationUniversity of London20 Bedford WayLondon WC1H 0AL

Tel +44 (0)20 7612 6000Fax +44 (0)20 7612 6126Email info@ioe.ac.ukWeb 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