Promoting Academically Productive Student Dialogue: A Personal Journey

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

Abstract

Initial investigations

I was initially very interested in cooperative learning and the research on how to create small group experiences where students were able to discuss group tasks in a meaningful way (Johnson & Johnson, 1990; Sharan, 1980). However, it became apparent that groups needed to be well structured so that students understood how they were expected to behave and provide assistance to their peers. The early research by Webb (1982,1992) on student interactions and the importance of explanatory behaviour on student achievement helped to frame my early studies where I investigated not only students’ behaviour states but the language they used as they worked together on various group-based tasks. I also found students were generally more motivated to work on tasks if they were challenging, open and discovery-based where interaction was vital to productivity and they were required to produce a group product (Cohen, 1994).

What I have learned

Research has shown that: (a) students do not generally ask thought-provoking questions unless they have been taught to do so; (b) students can be taught to ask thought-provoking questions with positive effects on their thinking, reasoning and achievement (e.g., Accountable Talk, Philosophy for Children & Guided Reciprocal Peer Questioning); (c) teachers need to be strong advocates for inducting students into different ways of thinking and learning by making explicit how to express ideas, seek help, contest alternative propositions, and reason cogently (Gillies, 2004); (d) teachers need to model how to seek and provide help so students understand that they must persist in seeking assistance and those who provide help must ensure that it is detailed and able to be used; (e) teachers need to be active in probing students’ explanations to help them to make their problem-solving and thinking strategies more explicit as this encourages students to provide more information on how they solved different problems. Teachers also need to follow-up on students’ initial ideas as this determines whether other students will engage at a deeper level with these ideas; (f) dialogic teaching encourages students to develop different ‘talk repertoires’ on which different types of thinking and understanding are based (Alexander, 2008); (g) certain forms of talk facilitate problem-solving and reasoning across different disciplines and transfer to standardised tests.

Where my work is leading

The following three themes reflect where my work is leading:

1. Current research indicates that certain types of structured talk leads to specific academic gains and transfers to standardised tests (Resnick et al., 2010). I am hoping to follow-up on these findings by investigating if there are changes in fluid intelligence as a result of these experiences.
2. There is considerable agreement from neuroimaging studies that cooperative behaviour leads to greater activation in regions of the brain associated with reward-based learning; suggesting that individuals obtain greater reward when they cooperate leading to greater engagement during cooperative tasks (Decety et al., 2004).
3. Evidence is emerging that greater synchronization in speech events appears to facilitate prosocial behaviours and language development when students cooperate (Manson et al., 2013).

Author

• Robyn Margaret Gillies, The University of Queensland