Working With Texts to Support Productive Argumentation: Teachers' Experiences

• In Event: The Role of Texts in Dialogic Teaching

Abstract

Objectives
Despite its recognized pedagogical potential, dialogue is still rare in today’s classrooms (O'Connor, Michaels, & Chapin, 2015). In this study, we examined one possible obstacle to a more prominent presence of dialogue – teachers’ knowledge about how to choose and use texts to support productive interactions. We used data from a prior professional development (PD) project designed to help teachers learn to facilitate students’ engagement in argumentation during classroom discussion (Authors, 2015, 2017). We examined teachers’ learning to work with texts when planning for and implementing discussion in elementary language arts classrooms.

Theoretical framework
According to Alexander (2006), dialogic teaching requires teachers to employ a broad repertoire of discourse practices to address different instructional goals for their students. One type of discourse, called inquiry dialogue (Walton, 1998), is particularly suited to engaging students in collaborative and rigorous argumentation. During inquiry dialogue, students work together to find the most reasonable answers to contestable questions raised by the texts they read.

A well-chosen text helps support the quality of student argumentation during inquiry dialogue (Authors, 2017). Following Bakhtin (1981), such text has a dialogic quality, in that it contains traces of multiple voices and deals with issues that lend themselves to alternative interpretations. In addition, a well-chosen text is accessible to students. Although students do not have to understand every aspect of the text, the content should be familiar enough to them (Anderson & Pearson, 1984). Finally, a well-chosen text is engaging; students need to identify with the ideas and characters portrayed in the text (Hidi, 2001).

Methods and Data Sources
The data came from the third and final year of our PD project (Authors, 2017). Fourteen fifth-grade language arts teachers at two sites, Ohio and New Jersey, participated in a year-long PD program. The program offered 36 contact hours, and included workshops, study group meetings, and coaching sessions. In addition, teachers took part in three focus group interviews.

We audiotaped and transcribed all PD activities and focus-group interviews. We used NVivo to conduct content analysis of teacher experiences. On 20% of the data, the percent of agreement was above 90%.

Results and Scholarly Significance
Our results show that teachers had conflicting experiences when learning how to choose and use texts to support students’ argumentation. On the one hand, teachers struggled with finding texts that had a dialogic quality, particularly non-fiction. Relatedly, they found it difficult to learn how to formulate contestable questions about texts in a way that capitalized on their dialogic quality.

On the other hand, teachers valued the experience of practicing inquiry dialogue around texts during PD, as it allowed them to identify controversial topics and develop a deeper understanding of possible arguments around these topics. When working with non-fiction, teachers also appreciated the value of using text sets to provide students with a more complex and diverse content. These and other insights into teachers’ work with texts can help to build an understanding about teacher learning and inform future professional development efforts.

Authors

• Ian A. G. Wilkinson, Ohio State University

• Alina Reznitskaya, Montclair State University