How can the
classroom EMPOWER students' voiceS?
WORKING THEORY
The classroom can empower students' voices through dialogic teaching and learning.
Professor Mary M. Juzwik et al. define "dialogic teaching and learning" in their pedagogical book Inspiring Dialogue: Talking to Learn in the English Classroom, the guiding text for my 2019 ELA classroom inquiry. "Dialogic teaching and learning" exist as a carefully constructed dialectic between students "speaking out" their own thoughts and "taking in" the thoughts of others––consequently positioning students' voices as collaborative and central learning tools.
Scroll down for definitions for"speaking out" and "taking in."
DIALOGIC TEACHING & LEARNING
My inquiry is into the affordances and challenges of implementing dialogic teaching and learning in an english classroom midyear.
Why inquiry into dialogism?
I constructed dialogic units for my sections of English 2 (sophomore English) and AP English Language and Composition, which are both heavily tested subjects. It is because goals centered around dialogic teaching and learning were separate from AP course requirements and state-tested standards that I selected said goals. Because both subjects focus so heavily on outside assessments, objectives that are not explicitly tested easily fall to the wayside. Dialogism undeniably challenges traditional constructions of teaching and learning that empower the teacher's voice more than the students. Dialogism renders teaching and learning more personal, humanist, communicative, and worthwhile for students’ long-term conceptualization of learning. Throughout the units, I used Inspiring Dialogue: Talking to Learn in the English Classroom as the my guiding text––scaffolding the “classroom contexts and conditions, strategies and practices for talk, questioning processes, and students’ languages” necessary to take a thorough dialogic stance (Juzwik et al., 2013, p. 19).
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I began with AP for my first attempt at implementing dialogism; subsequently, I applied the more refined and troubleshooted dialogic unit to English 2, a class community that needs more curricular structure and routine. As Juzwik et al. (2013) explain, "teaching as a draft frames practice not as a final product to be judged but a work-in-progress to be continually revised and refined" (p. 10). So even after my dialogic unit with English 2, there were lessons to be learned for future implementations of dialogism (see Conclusions).
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Both units were underpinned by the goal of shifting the class away from “Initiate-Response-Evaluate” (IRE) talk and toward “dialogic student-driven learning talk”: discussion that is 1) sustained mostly or completely by students, and 2) characterized by knowledge-seeking dialogue (as opposed to known-answer/test questioning) (Juzwik et al., 2013, p. 5).
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Additionally, inherent to my units' dialogic goals was the intention to generate pedagogical knowledge about how dialogism in the classroom––specifically in classrooms within an academically underperforming and socially underprivileged school––could be used as a means for "social justice ends": ends that would transform students' learning into an empowering and introspective community, as opposed to students' traditionally monologic schooling; see figure (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 2009, p. 41).
"TAKING IN"
(p. 18)
"Active listening"
physically active demonstrations of listening: "making eye contact with the speaker, leaning toward the speaker, nodding in agreement from time to time, and jotting down notes"
"Being receptive to multiple alternative viewpoints"
suspending personal beliefs in order to "countenance alter-native viewpoints," inviting others to articulate opposing frameworks
"Thinking about what is heard and
giving others time to think"
allowing students to "mull over and digest what others have to say" by being comfortable with silence, generating more careful and deliberate engagement with student-driven dialogue
"SPEAKING OUT"
(p. 14–15)
"Speculating, imagining, and hypothesizing"
considering answers or explanations while rooting them in theory, evidence, or personal experience: "entering imaginatively into literary works)
"Narrating"
sharing stories "to one another or in response to text"
"Arguing, reasoning, justifying"
defending claims "about texts, controversial issues, current events, or other topics––through reasoned argument"
"Explaining"
clarifying an idea and/or developing an interpretation by providing more detail
"Instructing"
"when students teach one another" and/or the teacher about information or how to perform a skill
"Asking questions"
posing questions about course content, which can indicate "how well students are grasping a concept under study"
"Analyzing and solving problems"
"deliberative," "problem-analysis," and/or "problem-solving" talk around problems or concerns with "multiple possible solutions"
Conclusions &
Extension Questions
The curricular design goal behind implementing dialogism in the ELA classroom was to position students’ voices as primary and central learning tools, training students’ speech for “speaking out” and “taking in” their own ideas and the ideas of their peers. This goal demanded a shift from monologic instruction, in which not the students’ voices but the teacher’s voice was positioned as the primary and central learning tool. Inherently, the shift from teacher-driven monologism to student-driven monologism is a reversal of––or perhaps even a resistance against––ostensibly lifetimes of education that have been traditionally teacher-driven and monologic. Subsequently, the challenges and affordances experienced in my analyzed endeavor to construct dialogic classrooms in the middle of the year have come together to form a fundamental maxim about dialogism in the classroom (ELA or otherwise):
Dialogic teaching and learning are less curricular tools or implementations than they are the construction and maintenance of a collaborative, intimate community.
For both my sections of English 2 and AP English Language and Composition, I sought out to revamp routines, assessments, and classroom structures. Ultimately, such a curricular revision demanded more dramatic changes in my students’ collectively shared expectations about school. Dialogism demanded shifts in mindsets, social roles, and overall epistemology. Comparatively speaking, it was easy for me create and sequence scaffolded dialogic activities––but it was much more difficult for students to understand that they can be (and arguably should be) collaborative generators of their own knowledge to questions to which even I did not necessarily have answers.
My attempts to implement dialogism into the classroom midyear has lead me to believe that a consistent academic goal for students should be to succeed as dialogic learners in a dialogic classroom community––especially within a discipline as communicative, subjective, and humanist as English. Dialogic teaching and learning meaningfully addresses ELA speaking and listening standards by tasking and training students to utilize their voices and the voices of their peers to arrive collaboratively at higher places of understanding and application. When students begin to talk with each other to build knowledge about content––and about themselves––and intimate learning community is ideally generated.
Because this model of teaching and learning is exposing, personal, and all-around more vulnerable, there are dangers faced by a dialogic classroom that are not face or less likely faced by a monologic classroom. These dangers necessitate further inquiry into the factors that dialogic teaching and learning:
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How does teacher identity/Jungian persona affect students’ capacity for dialogic talk?
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How does culture affect said capacity?
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How does student identity/Jungian persona affect said capacity?
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What roles do social anxiety and mental health play in dialogic teaching and learning?
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How roles do adolescence and identity formation play in dialogic teaching and learning?
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By what criteria is successful monologic instruction ultimately better than engaging, essential, authentic
instruction that more often struggles to meet expectations and that trains skills that are untested? -
In what ways can dialogic expectations and tested standards/AP course requirements be intrinsically aligned?
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Dialogism is not just “a part” of Mr. Barlin’s class: dialogism is Mr. Barlin’s class.
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While there are still unanswered and unidentified questions about dialogism in the classroom, my inquiry has revealed enough to support the idea that teachers should avoid constructing a dialogic classroom in the middle of the year. Like with all classroom norms and expectations, dialogism should be established and trained from the first day of school.
To advance my inquiry into and practice of dialogism in the classroom further, I will be reading Matthew Kay’s Not Light, but Fire: How to Lead Meaningful Race Conversations in the Classroom. Kay not only illustrates his own experience designing and sustaining a dialogic ELA classroom from day one, but also speaks to the philosophical mindsets and pedagogical strategies necessary to generate and support dialogue that can simultaneously trigger anxiety and demand candor and authenticity.
My student teaching experience with constructing dialogic classrooms has contributed indelibly to who I will be and how I will think and plan as a teacher for the rest of my career. Regardless of where I am teaching or who I am teaching, anyone who walks into my classroom will see:
