Let’s
talk about talk. Talk is the sea on which ideas float. In productive dialogue,
participants bob up and down in this sea, taking their turns as they share
ideas, listen, encourage others to participate, and build on their own and each
other’s thoughts.
There
is persuasive research evidence about the importance of stimulating classroom
talk, including student-to-student talk. The teacher’s role in such talk is to
coach, support, and encourage; to prompt for relational thinking
that includes analogies, alternative hypotheses, and elaborative clarification.*
Students have higher cognitive engagement and increased learning when instruction
includes opportunities for them to ask questions, evaluate
each other’s contributions, and construct their own meaning.**
Interestingly,
students are more likely to use a sentence frame that has been introduced by a
peer rather than a teacher. When a student says something like, “What do you
think, ________?” or “I (dis)agree with ____,” the use of these phrases
escalates as the discussion continues. Researchers call this the “snowball
effect.” Student talk gets bigger and bigger.***
To
harness this power, teachers can reduce the time students work alone,
increase the time they work with each other, and prompt for the specific
types of thinking and talking described above.
In
your classroom, school, or district, is there an emphasis on student-to-student
talk? What are you doing to make it happen more? This kind of talk time is so
good for students! It is also good for grown-up learners!
Now
that you’ve thought about increasing student-to-student talk in the classroom,
let’s think about increasing peer-to-peer talk among educators, including PLC meetings
and coaching conversations. Is there an emphasis on peer-to-peer talk in your
school or district? Review the bolded recommendations above. What are you doing
to make these things happen during collegial conversations?
Although
the research cited above deals with student talk, I feel confident the impact
would be mirrored if educators’ talk were studied. Let’s talk about talk! In the classroom or the PLC room, learning
increases when it floats on a sea of talk.
* Lin, T. J., Jadallah, M., Anderson, R. C., Baker, A. R.,
Nguyen-Jahiel, K., Kim, I. H., ... & Wu, X. (2015). Less is more: Teachers’
influence during peer collaboration. Journal of Educational Psychology, 107(2),
609.
**Alexander, R. (2008). Towards Dialogic Teaching: Rethinking
Classroom Talk (4th ed.). Dialogos UK Ltd.
***Anderson, R. C., Nguyen-Jahiel, K., McNurlen, B., Archodidou,
A., Kim, S. Y., Reznitskaya, A., ... & Gilbert, L. (2001). The snowball
phenomenon: Spread of ways of talking and ways of thinking across groups of
children. Cognition and Instruction, 19(1), 1-46.
