environment to promote student responsibility and orchestrate turn-based discourse. An effective teacher reformulates questions and interpretations when needed or recaps and elaborates on perspectives to deepen the discussion. One way to keep the ball rolling is to allow breakout sessions in which students in pairs or small groups gather their thoughts about a particular concept or argument.
While the students are in the midst of a discussion, the teacher can move to the back of the room or out of students’ line of sight to encourage student-to-student interaction, all while continually monitoring behaviors that may interfere with discussion. For instance, the teacher can keep track of student responses with verbal summaries or use of a public document, such as a chart on the SMART Board, overhead display, or dry-erase board. Or he or she can also use graphic organizers to synthesize student contributions while maintaining instructional focus on a certain new concept. This approach usually encourages both student listening and reflection.
These techniques make classroom discussion effective and more manageable. They allow teachers to establish a learning-centered climate characterized by active engagement, dialogue, and multiway communication. They can also foster extensive collaboration between students and teachers for higher levels of reflective and critical thinking and creative problem solving.
Summary
By verbalizing ideas and opinions during discussion, students not only deepen their understanding of subject content but also learn the important life skill of communication. Through discussion, the talk in classroom is no longer a monologue; students actively learn from each other. In fact, successful discussion prompts students to continuously refine, articulate, and synthesize their knowledge.
To close the chapter, we include several handouts to help teachers effectively integrate discussions into the classroom. In the handout “Types of Student Discussions,” we look at the nine methods that Murphy et al. (2009) reference. There are many approaches to organizing student discussion around text, and various types of student discussion impact learning outcomes differently (such as text comprehension versus higher-order critical thinking). We recommend that teachers evaluate the students’ learning needs and select the method that is best aligned with the learning objectives.
To further the use of a Socratic seminar, we’ve included a rubric on page 11 that defines levels of performance for students and clearly identifies the skills, knowledge, understanding, and conduct teachers expect students to demonstrate. The rubric may overwhelm students new to Socratic seminars, so more explanation may give students a better understanding of expectations.
Finally, we include the “Student Self-Assessment of Discussion” handout (page 13). Students themselves are critical to the success of student-centered discussions. At the end of the discussion, the teacher can encourage students to reflect on what they’ve done well and what they can improve. This tool provides a sample format for student self-assessment.
Types of Student Discussions
| Strategy | Description | Decision |
| Critical-analytic | ||
| Collaborative reasoning | In this strategy, “the teacher poses a central question deliberately chosen to evoke varying points of view. Students adopt a position on the issue and generate reasons that support their position. Using the text, as well as personal experiences and background knowledge, students proceed to evaluate reasons, to consider alternative points of view, and to challenge the arguments of others.” (Murphy et al., 2009, p. 742) |
|
| Philosophy for children | Students share reading, listening, or viewing with their teacher and devise their own questions. They choose one question that interests them and, with the teacher’s help, discuss it. The teacher encourages students to welcome the diversity of initial views and then involves them in questioning assumptions, developing opinions with supporting reasons, analyzing significant concepts, and applying good reasoning and judgment. |
|
| Paideia seminar | This strategy fosters critical and creative thinking through seminar dialogue, intellectual coaching, and mastery of information. It usually involves three steps: a preseminar content preparation, a seminar to discuss the ideas, and a postseminar process to assess participation and application of ideas. |
|
| Efferent | ||
| Questioning the author | This strategy aims to engage students deeply in the process of deriving meaning from text and in questioning the author’s position as an expert. The teacher encourages students to pose queries to the author while reading a given text rather than after reading. The queries may look like “What is the author trying to say?,” “Why does the author use the following phrase?,” or “Does the author explain this clearly?” |
|
| Instructional conversation | This strategy resembles a paradox. It is instructional and aims to promote learning but is also conversational in quality, with natural and spontaneous language interactions free from the didactic characteristic of language normally used for teaching. In the instructional conversation, the teacher listens carefully, makes guesses about students’ intended meanings, and adjusts responses to help students better construct knowledge. |
|
| Junior great books | Students work with complex ideas and rigorous texts to develop skills in reading, thinking, and communicating. They use interpretive discussions and construct inferential and thematic meanings from the text. |
|
| Expressive | ||
| Literature circles | A group of four students selects a book to read. The teacher assigns each member one of the four roles: (1) discussion director, (2) literary luminary, (3) vocabulary enricher, and (4) checker. In this way, all students are involved deeply in the process. |
|
