Children's Dialogic Responses to Wordless Texts Promoting Tolerance, Empathy, and Inclusion

• In Event: The Role of Texts in Dialogic Teaching

Abstract

This poster reports a study where a selection of wordless picture books and films were used as stimuli for children’s discussions, with the qualities of tolerance, empathy and inclusion promoted through the talk activity and also apparent as key themes within the texts themselves. The study is part of a large European project aiming to support and promote the development of children’s cultural literacy, defined as a ‘dialogic social practice’ (Author 2019). In the project, dialogue and argumentation skills are used to discuss themes around cultural heritages and identities, social responsibility and living together in 21st century Europe. The texts used are not merely springboards for discussion about cultural themes but serve as rich cultural resources. As visual texts, they are motivating as they are both aesthetically appealing, but also challenging in their often ambiguous storytelling. Their wordless quality engages the reader actively (Arizpe, 2014) in the construction of the narrative.

Positioned within a socio-cultural theoretical frame, the study examines how children co-construct meanings when split screen objectives (Claxton, 2007) enable them to consider the quality of their talk and interaction, alongside their collaborative interpretations of texts. In this way, they are considered ‘dialogic readers’ as they attend to the dialogic space (Wegerif, 2008) between themselves as they create ideas, but also the ‘space of possibility’ between themselves and the text (Author 2015) as they talk and think together to make meaning. While other studies of peer-group reading discussions highlight the quality of comprehension in different contexts (Murphy, Wilkinson, Soter, Hennessey, & Alexander, 2009; Wilkinson, Murphy, & Binici, 2015), here the focus is on the dialogic quality of the talk, that is the ability to engage with the ideas of others as a prerequisite for meaning construction.

As part of the wider cultural literacy learning project, 40 quartets of 6, 9 and 14 year old children were videoed in discussion about different texts and the cultural themes arising from them. Their talk was transcribed and analyzed using an adaptation of a scheme for coding educational dialogue, drawing out the dialogic moves that pertained to engagement with the ideas of others and reflected tolerance, empathy and inclusion. Results highlight the importance of provisional language or the ‘language of possibility’ (Boyd & Kong, 2017; Author 2015) for (1) providing the conditions for co-creation through respecting each other’s ideas, including different perspectives and empathizing with other viewpoints; and (2) as a tool to enable social cohesion and successful task management. The results also show the enactment of tolerance, empathy and inclusion through dialogic moves and how they support a wider dialogic ethos within group discussions.

This work is significant as it demonstrates the importance of enabling children’s small group reading discussions around text through explicit teaching of dialogue. It also emphasizes how provisionality is central to the effective co-construction of meanings from text. Further, it centralizes the potential of alternative text modes demonstrating the affordance of complex and often ambiguous visual narratives.

Author

• Fiona Maine, University of Cambridge