Instruction is a process in which teachers apply a range of instructional strategies to communicate and interact with students around academic content and to support student engagement. We know from both research and personal experience that teachers who have similar professional qualifications (such as degree, certification, or years of experience) teach differently in their classrooms and vary significantly in their performances when helping students learn academically. The primary difference between effective and ineffective teachers does not lie in the amount of knowledge they have about subject content, the type of certificate they hold, the highest degree they earned, or even the years they have been teaching. Rather, the difference lies more fundamentally in the manner in which they deliver their knowledge and the skills they use while interacting with their students.
Our goal for this book is to make the delivery of content and the interactions with students around the content more dynamic, engaging, and successful. It is our hope that this guide on instructional methods will motivate you to broaden your instructional versatility and creativity and that you find it practical, solidly researched, and easy to use. Now, let’s put these methods to use in your school or classroom.
Chapter 1
Classroom Discussion
Classroom discussion is an instructional method that engages learners in a conversation for the purpose of learning content and related skills. By engaging in quality classroom discussion, students build understanding of the subject matter, delve deeper into their own perspectives, present their own views verbally, support their arguments with evidence, listen and respond critically, take notes, and critique themselves and others.
According to Michael Hale and Elizabeth City (2006), “student-centered discussions are conversations in which students wrestle with ideas and engage in open-ended questions together through dialogue” (p. 3). In particular, there are two goals for a quality classroom discussion (Hale & City, 2006).
1. Teachers must deepen students’ understanding of ideas in instructional content, as well as their own ideas and the ideas of others.
2. Teachers must develop students’ abilities to engage in a civil, intellectually challenging discussion of ideas.
Hale and City (2006) note that “through close examination and discussion of ideas, along with the use of texts and other learning materials, students develop the skills and habits of reading analytically, listening carefully, citing evidence, disagreeing respectfully, and being open-minded” (pp. 3–4). Similarly, Stephen Brookfield and Stephen Preskill (2005) write that discussion causes “people to expand their horizons, develop new interests, and appreciate new perspectives” (p. 34), as suggested in the following fifteen benefits of discussion (Brookfield & Preskill, 2005).
1. Helps students explore a diversity of perspectives
2. Increases students’ awareness of and tolerance for ambiguity or complexity
3. Helps students recognize and investigate their assumptions
4. Encourages attentive, respectful listening
5. Develops new appreciation for continuing differences
6. Increases intellectual agility
7. Helps students connect with a topic
8. Shows respect for students’ voices and experiences
9. Helps students learn the processes and habits of democratic discourse
10. Affirms students as cocreators of knowledge
11. Develops the capacity for the clear communication of ideas and meaning
12. Develops habits of collaborative learning
13. Increases breadth of understanding and makes students more empathic
14. Helps students develop skills of synthesis and integration
15. Leads to transformation
Virtually all teachers have experience organizing and leading classroom discussions; in fact, along with lecture and questioning, discussion is one of the most prominent instructional techniques used in classrooms—especially secondary classrooms. By looking at the research on classroom discussion, it’s easy to see why.
What Research Says About Classroom Discussion
In an experimental study that examines the effect of collaborative classroom discussion on the quality of students’ essay writing by randomly assigning students to two groups either with or without discussion, Alina Reznitskaya et al. (2001) find that students who participate in collaborative discussion use a significantly greater number of relevant arguments, counterarguments, rebuttals, formal argument devices, and text information than students who do not engage in discussion. Another experimental study by Clark Chinn, Angela O’Donnell, and Theresa Jinks (2000) finds that both content and structure of the discussion matter for collaborative discussion learning. By diagramming the discourse structures that emerge during small-group discussion in science classes, the authors characterize these structures as a network of arguments and counterarguments with varied degrees of complexity and depth. They also find that student content learning is associated with the quality of those argument structures: the more complex the discourse structures, the better the student learning.
Karen Murphy, Ian Wilkinson, Anna Soter, Maeghan Hennessey, and John Alexander (2009) reviewed empirical research to determine the effects of classroom discussion on students’ comprehension and learning of text. Results reveal that discussion approaches produce substantial increases in the amount of student talk and reductions in teacher talk, as well as considerable improvement in text comprehension. However, there is no consistent evidence that discussion can increase students’ inferential comprehension and critical thinking and reasoning, and the effects are mediated by factors such as the nature of the outcome measure. Table 1.1 presents the specific effect sizes of various discussion approaches on a number of student outcome measures.
What we conclude from the review of studies reported here is that discussion has an overall positive impact on advancing students’ learning; however, the effectiveness of discussion is contingent on how the discussion is structured and how sensitive it is to the instructional goals. For instance, if the purpose is for general comprehension or comprehension of explicit meaning of texts, instructional conversation in which teachers and students respond to each other’s provocative ideas and experiences would be a better option. If the learning goal is to enhance students’ critical-thinking skills, then collaborative reasoning would be a more appropriate approach, as students would have to engage in reasoned argumentation.
How to Move From Research to Practice
Despite the ubiquitous nature of discussions, there are guidelines that effective teachers should consider as they seek to improve their skills as discussion designers and facilitators. Ronald Hyman (1980) proposes four major types of discussion for use in classrooms.
1. Policy discussion: This type of discussion focuses on students’ reactions toward certain issues and requires the group to take a stand.
2. Problem-solving discussion: This type of discussion requires groups of learners to seek an answer to a problem or conflict.
3. Explaining discussion: This type of discussion asks students to analyze and articulate causes and effects.
4. Predicting discussion: This type of discussion prompts students to predict the probable consequences of a given situation or position.
Teachers determine which discussion approach to use based on the learning objectives. For instance, they can use a problem-solving discussion for more sophisticated learning processes and can include all the major components of problem identification, problem analysis, potential solutions, solution evaluation, decision