Putting Students in a Position to Elaborate: Powerful Talk About Texts in Individual Conferences and Small Groups

• In Event: Roundtable Session 27
  In Roundtable Session: Raising the Bar With the Third Turn: Discourse Tools That Encourage the Expansion of Student Reasoning

Abstract

Purpose
This research examines how teachers in upper elementary classrooms use follow-up responses during discussions of texts to help students elaborate their ideas, articulate their reasoning, and identify evidence to support their claims.
Theoretical Framework
The study is framed by a view of language as a tool for engaging in culturally- and historically-situated joint activity and for learning (Vygotsky 1986; Wertsch, 1991). Teacher–student interactions are examined through the lenses of positioning and press. Positioning theory underscores the interrelatedness of speech acts (talk), positioning processes (how temporary roles are opened up for participants through talk), and storylines (norms and narratives surrounding classroom activities, such as text discussion and reading) (Harré & van Langenhove, 1998). Teacher follow-up moves, i.e., speech acts, can either press students to elaborate on their ideas by requesting evidence, clarification, explanation or examples, or reduce the press to elaborate by answering their own questions, providing hints about “correct” answers, narrowing open-ended questions to limit choices, or moving on to another student after an unelaborated, unclear, or unexpected response.


Methodology
This paper reports on discourse analyses of small group reading sessions and individual reading conferences in three fourth- and fifth-grade classrooms. Discourse samples from the first two classrooms were drawn from a data set including 21 fourth- and fifth-grade teachers in a mixed methods study of discourse, engagement, and achievement. The researcher visited each classroom seven times and gathered field notes, completed observation protocols, and video recorded reading instruction. Two teachers who frequently used high press follow-up moves were selected for analysis. Discourse samples for a third classroom were drawn from a professional development study where the teacher engaged in action research around talk during her classroom reading instruction. The focus on small group reading sessions and individual conferences resulted from an observation that these settings offered students opportunities to try out elaborated responses within a less intimidating context than whole class discussions and enabled readers labeled as “struggling” to contribute their reasoning to whole class discussions.
Results
Analyses revealed that while high press follow-up questions were useful tools for prompting elaborated student responses and references to textual evidence, these queries did not always prompt such student responses, while closed and reducing press responses sometimes did. Teacher follow-ups were not the only tools “in play” in prompting elaborated, reasoned student responses. The ongoing norms about the practices of text discussion and reading shaped the “situated meanings” (Gee, 2001) of some teacher follow-ups, such that questions that took on closed “forms” actually functioned to open up students’ thinking. Similarly, teacher moves that positioned students as possible knowers (Aukerman, 2007), or individuals with valuable ideas about texts, provided a framework for more elaborated student responses.
Importance
This research sheds light on important teaching tools to engage students in elaborated, reasoned discussions of texts and underscores the importance of moving beyond a strict focus on utterance types in research on classroom talk.

Author

• Dot McElhone, Portland State University