Literacy Coaching for Dialogic Text Discussions: Designing Online Experiences

• In Event: Designing Online Experiences to Support Teacher Learning and Professional Development Across Content Areas

Abstract

Adaptive expertise (Hatano & Inagaki, 1986) is key to supporting teachers as they cultivate the skills to facilitate student-centered text discussions of high cognitive demand. In such dialogic text discussions students are provided opportunities to examine complex texts and engage in active meaning making with their peers to justify inferences based on text evidence (Alexander, 2006). These discussions are fundamentally different from traditional forms of discourse. They are, thus, relatively rare, partly because shifting from traditional forms of discourse towards dialogic discussions is challenging (Kucan, 2009).

In particular, teachers typically find it easier to enact open-ended questions at the beginning of a lesson as opposed to implementing new ways of responding productively to students’ contributions (e.g., Franke et al., 2009). This skill of responding in-the-moment to advance student reasoning, without reducing the thinking demands, requires adaptive expertise, necessitating not only knowledge of potential ‘talk moves’ but also the ability to anticipate how particular talk moves are likely to alter the trajectory of student thinking.

In this presentation we discuss how a workshop based on situated learning theories built foundational knowledge (a common vision and vocabulary) that was used during coaching to further teachers’ adaptive expertise. In order for shifts in discussion practice (from traditional towards dialogic) to occur, we suggest that teachers’ existing mental models must be considered. While it is common for teachers with traditional conceptions of instruction to “add-in” elements of teaching based on new conceptions of effective practices, such shifts seldom lead to substantive or lasting change (Spillane, Reiser and Reimer, 2002). Instead, in order for conceptual change to occur, teachers’ existing mental models must be surfaced and considered in light of evidence of the effectiveness of teachers’ current discussion patterns. Dissonance created between the use of certain talk moves and teacher’s learning goals for student thinking in text discussions is a potentially rich site for teacher learning, motivating teachers to (co-)construct how different talk moves could be more productive. In this way, teachers may be able to create new associations (Wilke & Losh, 2012) providing a foundation for when and why they should employ new facilitation moves during discussions, yielding adaptive expertise to facilitate dialogic discussions.

Video-based coaching provides conditions that can foster both dissonance and co-construction supporting conceptual change (Ibid.) When coaches select short, two-minute video clips based on teacher-chosen goals, and provide teachers text to stimulate their reflection and meaning making of the exchanges in the text discussion (Borko, et al., 2008) they can promote teachers’ own understanding of associations between particular talk moves and student thinking. We ground our discussion of affordances of online coaching in theories of learning, but we also note several challenges posed by recent work in online coaching – specifically, high attrition. Attrition from online learning experiences is not unusual, with dropout rates often ranging from 30%–50% (Stanford-Bowers, 2008). Exit interviews suggested that additional time outside of the school day was a barrier for most participants who did not complete the experience.

Authors

• Richard James Correnti, University of Pittsburgh

• Dena Zook-Howell

• Lindsay Clare Matsumura, University of Pittsburgh

• Marguerite Walsh, University of Pittsburgh