Students' Reactions to Discussion and Debate Topics: The Roles of Background Knowledge, Motivation, and Identity

• In Event: 26.030 - An Innovative Social Justice Curriculum Through the Eyes of Students

Abstract

The study investigates student perspectives towards Word Generation lesson units of international students enrolled in or preparing to apply to American high schools. The purpose of the project is twofold. On one hand, it will help reveal how newcomer students from another country would approach, interpret, and tackle discussion and debate topics in American classrooms, which contain elements specific to American politics, society and school culture, and help delineate how educational justice is revealed for this group of students. On the other hand, it will help identify the premises of successful discussion and debate besides students' language competence, such as background knowledge (McNamara & O’Reilly, 2009), motivation (Pintrich & Schunk, 1996), and identity (Gee, 2000-2001), when students are situated in the intricate relationships between learner, text and context (Moje, Dillon & O’Brien, 2000). Twenty-two Chinese secondary school students were interviewed to determine their attitudes towards the WordGen unit topics. Surveys about students' academic background, English proficiency and vision of studying in American high schools were collected.

Initial analysis of responses indicates that although students’ English proficiency is good, they lack a full understanding of the topics for discussion and debate. These students lack background knowledge about why a particular topic is controversial; when they are provided with the background information, in the "Readers’ Theater" at the beginning of each lesson unit, they experience challenges to immediately integrate that information into their discussion and writing.

These findings suggest that the attitudes of this group of newcomer students towards the curriculum are formed by several layers of perspective taking: a perspective brought from their country of origin, the perspective of their new identity as current or prospective students in American schools, and perspectives developed within the discussion and debate activity. A full analysis is underway and will show whether this is a general trend for the whole student group. The study will help identify student characteristics predicting successful discussion and debate, and inform practitioners teaching students from diverse cultural backgrounds.

Author

• Ziyun Deng, Harvard University