Teacher: “What’s the answer to question number 2?”

Student: “C.”

Teacher: “No. Didn’t I explain to you what simple present tense is? Would you like to try again?”

Student: “Hmm… B?”

Would you consider the above as a dialogue? How would a good student-teacher dialogue look like then? Together, let’s explore how to successfully create meaningful conversations in the classroom.

 

RELC International Conference

The RELC International Conference was held on the 15th and 16th March this year and, albeit being held as a virtual conference for the first time, much was gained from both the local and international speakers.  I found it interesting that a significant number of session have the words ‘dialogue’, interaction’ and ‘talk’ in their presentation titles. Since much of the work at the DAS involves building oracy skills and developing meaningful student-teacher interactions, allow me to share some insights gleaned from those sessions and how it can be made applicable to both teachers and parents. 

 

Dialogic Teaching

The definition of dialogic teaching can be briefly summed up as a ‘collective’ effort between students and teachers, a ‘cumulative’ approach where all parties build on each other’s ideas and a ‘supportive’ process where peer-interaction is encouraged in a conducive environment for sharing. Teachers play an important role in facilitating conversations through questioning and encouraging interactions in the classroom. ‘Making Thinking Visible (MTV)’ and ‘Talk as Tool for Thinking’ are two commonly used approaches in schools and the framework in which local presenters for the RELC conference (mainly school teachers) adapted for their research and presentation. 

 

Challenges 

Creating meaningful dialogues can be challenging lest we think it is an easy feat that can be achieved overnight. One of the conference presenter commented that while the MTV pedagogy ostensibly creates a dialogic nature of interaction, this interaction still feels stifled and artificially constructed. Cultural challenges remain, which include seeing teaching as a passive learning of information, students lacking the confidence to interact and voice their opinions, and a lack of know-hows to develop meaningful conversations (where students’ responses are shallow or teachers’ questions are close-ended). 

 

Seven ways to facilitate dialogic teaching

Daunting as it may seem, therein lay tremendous opportunities for teachers and students to shift the nature of their interaction and move towards co-constructing ideas and using dialogues to create connections and effective meaning-making in the classroom. Here are seven of my takeaways to facilitate dialogic teaching:

 

1. Capture their attention

Are all Dinosaurs extinct?

I am pretty certain your answer is a resounding YES. What if I tell you that Dinosaurs do exist? Scientists believe that modern-day birds are, in fact, dinosaurs’ descendants- and if you believe those scientists, then dinosaurs’ relatives are today still living and flying among us!The above was an example by a presenter on the power of interest, which I believe is of great importance in starting a dialogue! To generate interest, choose a topic, a headline or an opening question that is novel, complex, yet comprehensible for our students. When we are interested in a task, we tend to pay closer attention, work harder and persist longer!

 

2. Plan your lesson

Plan your questions. Value questions as much as answers. To be interactive, teachers should facilitate more rather than just conducting frontal teaching (teacher faces the class and simply delivers the lesson content).

Teachers can explore ideas that they have a genuine interest in, or prepare questions that they do not already have a set of pre-determined answers. The questions can be arranged in a scaffolding manner that supports students in co-constructing knowledge and understanding. The nature of the question should also be one that helps students to clarify their own thinking.

 

3. Listen and go with the flow

As much as we like to stick with the plan and tick all the boxes of our lesson plan, it is equally important to go with the flow. In fact, doing the latter can sometimes be messy and create a sort of uneasiness within the teacher, as compared to rapidly and successfully covering what is needed in the curriculum. Yet, we have to acknowledge that as teachers, we do not fully know what our students already understand (or not). 

Often, students’ capability to influence discussion is hindered by teachers’ direction and selectiveness in responding to comments. Rather, by attending to the thought and intent of students’ responses, the discussion can now move towards an authentic direction. Using students’ answers as a starting point help to affirm their contributions to the discussion. Showing a genuine interest in students’ thinking also conveys respect and an environment that encourages open sharing of thoughts and ideas. Doing so allows for opportunities to uncover surprises along the way! 

 

4. Ask questions, clarify their thinking

Teacher: “What’s the answer to question number 2?”

Student: “C.”

Teacher: “Thank you for your answer. Why did you choose C?”

The difference-  regardless of whether ‘C’ is a right or wrong answer, students are given the opportunity to clarify their own thinking and teachers get to access their thought process. I feel that the biggest mistakes teachers often make is to gloss over correct answers, or hastily correct mistakes without clearly understanding the reasons behind the answers. 

Rather than accepting students’ responses at face value, asking them to explain their responses allow teachers to check if students have the right understanding of the concepts and steps leading to their choices. In this sequence, the teacher first acknowledges the contribution of the student and then asks for the reasons for the choice, thus encouraging the student to respond with a longer run for conversations to take place.

This applies not only to closed ended questions, but discussions that require students to voice their opinions as well. Other ways of questioning include: “What makes you say that?”; “Help me understand more about it!”; “I’m not quite following, can you say what you are thinking in a different way?”

 

5. Add an experiential layer

Some students may not have enough prior knowledge to tap on when being asked for their opinions. For example, when discussing on the theme of hawker centres to prepare secondary school students as part of their situational writing task, a student remained quiet and responded with ‘I don’t know’ throughout the guided discussion. It was then that I realised I missed out an important question from the outset: ‘Have you been to hawker centres?’.

Part of Fink’s model of active learning involves interactive learning, which promotes discussing and experimenting, and is social in nature. This reminded me of an example presented by a group of secondary school teachers in the RELC conference who planned for a hands-on and experiential approach to tackle the various demands for situational writing. Firstly, by following instructions in making balloon sculptures in class, students learnt the importance and function of transition words. The school then organised an excursion to Sungei Buloh wetland and students were asked to record their observations and experience. Finally, students then attempted their situational writing task of giving an account of a visit to Sungei Buloh, where they are able to independently draw on their prior experience with using transition words and their first-hand visit to the place. I believe that such a well-executed experiential approach can easily spark conversations between students and teachers and I can only imagine the excitement and chattering generated from the balloon sculpting activities and the excursion.

 

6. Prioritize your learners over yourself

The foundation of dialogic teaching is to draw out what students know and to engage them at the affective, cognitive and social level. As such, being learner-centric is fundamental for authentic conversations to happen. We often evaluate the effectiveness of a lesson by how well teachers know and deliver their lesson content. What if we now judge the effectiveness by placing students at the centre of our evaluation? All of a sudden, the role of a teacher changes from executing flawless teaching strategies to fostering students’ engagement and participation with ideas. Instead of regurgitating what is already known in our heads, teachers should try to bring out what is in their students’ heads. In doing so, we can eventually create classroom dialogues that validate and empower our students.

 

7. Steer the course

As attractive as dialogic teaching sounds, it takes time for our students and even as teachers ourselves to get familiar with it, especially if it is a class of new students. Let’s not forget that our learners with dyslexia may come to us with various other learning needs, such as speech and language difficulties, low self-esteem and inattentiveness, all of which result in our students being unable to structure their thoughts and express themselves clearly and confidently. For a start, teachers should scaffold students’ thought process and demonstrate how to use talk to clarify their own thinking and to help others.

Boundaries are still important for meaningful conversations to occur e.g. you would not wish for a conversation on hawkers in Singapore to deviate into the hottest video games in town. Teachers ought to be mindful to steer conversations carefully and intentionally and when the need arises, stick to the relevant prompts at hand. 

 

To surmise, I hope the seven suggestions above on facilitating dialogic teaching change the way we view our own approaches to teaching, helps us to model for our students what it means to think and engage with ideas, and to demonstrate that learning is beyond a regurgitation of content and memorizing for exams. Let’s enjoy creating dialogues!

 

Wang Ding Xiong, Andy
Lead Educational Therapist, PREP 2 PSLE & Main Literacy Programme
Associate Fellow (RETA), Sengkang Learning Centre

Learn more about Andy!