Supporting Teachers in Taking Up Productive Talk Moves: Challenges of Professional Learning at Scale

• In Event: The Role of Teacher Practice in Promoting Academically Productive Student Dialogue: Past, Present, and Future

Abstract

Our work on classroom discourse began in the 1990s as we spent time working closely with teachers known to be highly successful at orchestrating academically productive discourse in diverse urban classrooms. From these teachers we learned about the affordances (and the constraints) associated with a variety of talk moves. These are conversational ‘moves’ made by teachers that have the potential to elicit productive engagement from students. One move we dubbed “revoicing”—a restatement of what a student has said, followed by a request to the student to verify or clarify their intent (O’Connor & Michaels 1996). Others included what many have called “press for reasoning” (e.g. Why do you think that?) and moves designed to get students to work with the reasoning of others (e.g. Do you agree or disagree with Felicia, and why?).

From the simple (Say more...) to the complex (Why do you think Silas said that? What was he thinking?), it is possible to show the range of effects these moves have on student engagement and reasoning using detailed discourse analysis of actual lessons (O’Connor 2001). We also conducted a tightly controlled in vivo study comparing these practices with more traditional approaches, finding large effect sizes in student mathematics learning (O’Connor & Michaels 2015). Post hoc comparisons of year-long interventions with regular instruction revealed significant improvements in both mathematics and ELA test scores (Chapin &O’Connor 2012).

Yet these moves are not always easy to master. Working closely with a small group of teachers over a year resulted in large changes. But results of professional development at a larger scale are uneven: while some teachers skillfully take on these tools, others use them robotically or formulaically, inconsistently eliciting students’ productive engagement. So recently we added an overarching set of four goals that provide a context and rationale for the use of the talk moves and other tools. We will briefly present evidence that this explanatory layer has made PD on productive talk more effective than before (Michaels & O’Connor 2015).

Perhaps the largest challenge in conveying these tools to teachers has been to find ways to integrate their use with the intellectual core of instruction: the academic content. On their own, talk moves are only tools, akin to utensils we use to cook and eat—useful, but not the focus of the meal. In this metaphor, the academic content is the food itself. So how do we support teachers in taking up these tools in the context of instructional content, supporting disciplinary practices of reasoning and evidence-based argument? Our current work focuses on a cyber-enabled form of PD in support of teachers working to make the instructional shifts called for in the Next Generation Science Standards and NRC Framework. The talk tools are integrated into this platform. Initial data from pre-post surveys and classroom discussions from teachers in four states will be presented.

Authors

• Catherine O'Connor, Boston University

• Sarah Michaels, Clark University