Dialogic Teaching in the Context of Common Core: Planful and Contingent Oracy Practices

• In Event: 33.061 - Emergent Forms of Dialogic Pedagogy: How Culture, Policy, and School Conditions Shape Local Teacher Enactments

Abstract

Objectives

Classroom oracy practices shape the what and how of teaching and learning. Common Core performance standards identify what students should be able to do (follow agreed upon rules, ask/answer questions, build on others’ talk, recount, describe, create). As is appropriate, standards do not address the how (how much content and the complexity of that content, or how teacher oracy practices can support the quality of students’ work, the degree to which students demonstrate learning, and student involvement in the learning process). Implementations of how signal monologic-dialogic relations (Wells, 2006).

Pressures to conform to Common Core expectations have led struggling urban school districts to “teacher-proof” the how through scripted programs to “ensure” accountability. Dialogue, by definition, cannot be scripted. As contrast, this study explicates what dialogic teaching and learning looks like in a second grade classroom in a poor, diverse, urban public school district. Through analysis of two daily literacy events across time– Morning Meeting and Writing Workshop - we show how one teacher plans and supports a robust repertoire of learning talk experiences. Research questions are:

1. How does this teacher’s planful and contingent decision-making instantiate dialogic teaching conditions that support student learning?
2. In what ways are classroom oracy practices in service of a dialogic stance and how do they align with expectations articulated in ELA Common Core performance standards?
Theoretical Framework

Our theoretical framework is grounded in dialogic pedagogy (Alexander, 2008; Author, 2011; Bakhtin, 1981; Burbules, 1993; Lefstein, 2010; Wegerif, 2008). We assert that classroom oracy practices that instantiate a dialogic how, a critically and morally engaging what, and inclusive whose voices best support student engagement and learning.

Data/Methods

Focal data are part of a two-year ethnographic case study. They include video and talk transcripts, lesson plans, interviews, written artifacts. We examined oracy practices during Writing Workshop mini-lessons across a month-long unit (3 hours –whole-class teacher instruction) and Morning Meetings during this time period (almost 3 hours – whole-class greetings, sharing, activities). We created lesson talk profiles and noted variations (pacing /range of activities, talk opportunities) within and across literacy events.

We analyzed data across two frameworks: Rubin’s (1990) communal (intimate-articulate) and epistemic (knowledge-telling and knowledge-transforming) functions of talk; Scott & Mortimer’s (2006) authoritative and dialogic tensions and levels of inter-animation. We then selected two WW lessons (one fairytale-retelling, one fairytale-adaptation) and talk associated with each component of Morning Meeting for close discourse analysis.

Findings
1) Teacher and students both listening and communicating
2) Teacher flexibility and persistence (contingent practices)
3) Ways teacher positioned students to participate in different ways and to different degrees across varieties of classroom talk; attendant degree of student uptake.
4) Teacher fluidly moving back-and-forth between authoritative and dialogic stance
5) Teacher consistently attending to communal and epistemic functions of talk -explicit times and expectations.
6) Purposeful, reciprocal and cumulative characteristics of teaching and learning. Involvement of students (class handshake, minilesson planning).

Significance

This study contextualizes a repertoire of dialogic approaches (Burbules, 1993) and articulates the critical non-scripted role of teacher oracy practices.

Authors

• Maureen P. Boyd, University at Buffalo - SUNY

• Valentyna Mykula, University at Buffalo - SUNY

• YoungAe Choi, University at Buffalo - SUNY