Managing Effective Student Discourse

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Managing Effective Student Discourse

• Matt Fisher
• LuAnn Malik
• Corinne Murawski

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Managing Effective Student Discourse

• Why is high level classroom discourse so
  difficult to facilitate?
• What knowledge and skills are needed to
  facilitate productive discourse?
• Why is it important? (i.e. Why do we care?)

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Teaching is HARD WORK!

• Orchestrating classroom discussion that builds on
  students thinking places specialized pedagogical
  demands on teachers and requires an extensive and
  interwoven network of both pedagogical and
  content knowledge.

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A Brownie Problem

• I invited 8 people to a party (including me), and
  I had 12 brownies. How much did each person get
  if everyone got a fair share?
• Later, my mother got home with 9 more brownies.
  We can always eat more brownies, so we shared
  these out equally too. This time, how much
  brownie did each person get? How much brownie
  did each person eat altogether?
• - Corwin, Russell and Tierney 1990, 76

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Social Norms

• Social Norms are things like explaining thinking,
  sharing strategies and collaborating
• These afford opportunities for students to engage
  in conceptual thinking
• Many teachers attempt to establish these social
  norms
• HOWEVER, SOCIAL NORMS ALONE MAY NOT ADVANCE
  CONCEPTUAL THINKING

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Sociomathematical Norms

• Explanations consist of mathematical arguments,
  not simply procedural summaries of the steps
  taken
• Errors offer opportunities to reconceptualize a
  problem and explore contradictions and
  alternative strategies
• Mathematical thinking involves understanding
  relations among multiple strategies
• Collaborative work involves individual
  accountability and reaching consensus through
  mathematical argumentation
• Adapted from the work of Yackel and Cobb, 1996

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Socioscientific Norms

• Scientific argumentation is about sharing,
  processing, and learning about ideas. It focuses
  on ideas, not individuals.
• Explanations consist of scientific arguments,
  not simply procedural summaries of the steps
  taken or recall of facts.
• Different conclusions based on patterns of
  evidence offer opportunities to explore
  alternative explanations.
• Scientific thinking involves understanding the
  relationship between theories, hypotheses, and
  experimental evidence.
• Collaborative work involves individual
  accountability and reaching consensus through
  scientific argumentation
• Adapted from the work of Yackel and Cobb, 1996
  and Taking Science to School

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Discourse for Conceptual Understanding

• Quantitative analyses indicate that the higher
  the press in the classroom, the more the students
  learn
• Press for Learning was measured by the degree
  to which teachers
• Emphasize student effort
• Focus on student learning and understanding
• Support student autonomy
• Emphasize reasoning more than a correct answer

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The Importance of Questions
Teachers questions are crucial in helping
students make connections and learn important
mathematics and science concepts. Teachers need
to know how students typically think about
particular concepts, how to determine what a
particular student or group of students thinks
about those ideas, and how to help students
deepen their understanding. Weiss Pasley,
2004
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The Importance of Questions
Teachers provoke students reasoning about
mathematics through the tasks they provide and
the questions they ask. NCTM, 1991

• Asking questions that reveal students knowledge
  about mathematics allows teachers to design
  instruction that responds to and builds on this
  knowledge.
• NCTM, 2000

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Patterns of Interaction

• Teacher What kind of mathematical relationship
  does the equation y 2x 5 show?
• Student A linear relationship
• Teacher Okay. Its a linear relationship

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Patterns of Interaction

• Teacher What kind of mathematical relationship
  does the equation y 2x 5 show? Initiation
• Student A linear relationship Response
• Teacher Okay. Its a linear relationship
  Feedback

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Patterns of Interaction

• Although this form of interaction, called IRF,
  was identified and described over 25 years ago,
  it is still prevalent in classrooms today
• - Stigler and Heibert, 1999
• This type of interaction has been shown to lead
  students through a predetermined set of
  information and does little to encourage students
  to express their thinking.
• - Cazden, 1988, Nystrand 1997

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The Role of Questioning in Instruction

• Read the vignette on pages 562 563 of the
  article, Unveiling Student Understanding The
  Role of Questioning in Instruction

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The Role of Questioning in Instruction

• What are your impression of the vignette and the
  discourse that did or did not occur?
• What can you say about the press in this
  classroom?
• How would you characterize the teachers
  questions?
• How do you characterize the students responses?
• What can you say about what students knew or
  learned by the end of the episode?

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Analyzing Questions

• Form
• Closed form seeks a particular answer.
• Open form are aimed at promoting
  description,explanation, solution method,
  strategies, etc.

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Analyzing Questions
Look at the specific questions from the vignette
and think about the form. How does the form
influence what is learned by the teacher about
student thinking? How does the form influence the
level of discourse in the classroom?
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Analyzing Questions

• Read the vignette (example 2) on page 485 of the
  article, Questioning our Patterns of Questioning
• How does this vignette compare/contrast with the
  previous vignette?
• Think about the form of the questions. How do
  they affect the outcome of the discussion?

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Questioning Funneling or Focusing

• Funneling occurs when a teacher asks a series of
  questions to guide students through a procedure
  or to a desired result.
• Teacher engages in cognitive activity
• Student merely answering questions often
  without seeing connections

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Questioning Funneling or Focusing

• Focusing requires the teacher to listen to
  student responses and guide them based on what
  students are thinking rather than how the teacher
  would solve the problem.
• Allows teacher to learn about student thinking
• Requires students to articulate their thinking

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Questioning Funneling or Focusing

• Again, consider the vignette (example 2) on page
  485 of the article, Questioning our Patterns of
  Questioning.
• What questions would you ask to move from
  funneling to focusing?

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Questioning Funneling or Focusing

• Read example 2 (revised) on pages 487 488.
• What are the key differences between the example
  as funneling and the example as focusing?
• How might this be applicable in your classrooms?
• Do funneling versus focusing questions have any
  potential influence on the discourse?

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Science Writing Heuristic

• Originally a framework rooted in writing to
  learn and
• Elements work well for verbal discourse also
• beginning questions
• procedure development
• claims and evidence
• reading and reflection

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Teaching and Learning
Instruction
teacher
content
student(s)
student(s)
contexts
Ball and Cohen (2000)
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Scouts and Tents

• Take a minute to think about this problem on your
  own
• Four tents will house 12 scouts.
• If there are 40 tents, how many scouts
• will have a place to sleep?

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Scouts and Tents Student Work

• As a group, choose 3 student strategies that you
  would want to have shared in a whole class
  discussion.
• How would you characterize each of these
  strategies?
• In what order would you have these students
  share?
• What questions would you ask the student as they
  are working at their desk?
• What questions would you ask the class as they
  are sharing their solution?
• When you decide on how you would order the work,
  write your choices on the chart paper up front.

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Questions for Student A
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Questions for Student B
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Questions for Student G
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Enactment of a Classroom Episode

• Ms. V. teaches a combination fourth- and
  fifth-grade class in an elementary school in a
  mid-sized urban city in the Midwest.
• She had recently participated with other teachers
  in professional development programs designed to
  help teachers understand and build on childrens
  mathematical reasoning.

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The White House held an Easter egg hunt on
Monday. For every 16 children that staff hid 20
pink eggs. If there were 36 children, how many
pink eggs did they hide?
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Ms. Vs Class
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Debrief the classroom enactment

• Use the transcript to site evidence as you answer
  these questions
• How would you describe the social interaction?
• How would you describe the discourse forms?
• Do you think the mathematical goal of the lesson
  was achieved?

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Before you leave

• Complete the session evaluation. This is session
  D.
• Take a copy of the Gomez article from the table
  by the door.