Analysis 7
English 2
English 2
I have selected these two literature circle recordings because clip 1 exhibits a dialogue that students reported feeling “just a like a normal conversation,” despite anxieties about the dialogic activity. Clip 2 exhibits a dialogue that was predominantly dominated by two of the four students, allowing insight into the struggles of monitoring shared dialogic space in even a group as small as four.
Task
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Literature circles task students with exploring their own inquiries into texts.
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The literature circles’ texts were those that we had been using to train districted-mandated skills and to expand our conception of intersectionality, all throughout the week leading up to the literature circles.
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Jennifer Kim’s “Intersectionality 101” (Medium)
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Monita K. Bell’s “Teaching at the Intersections” (Teaching Tolerance)
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Sandra Cisneros’ “My Name”
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For 10 minutes, groups of 4 students (the same groups used throughout the entire dialogic unit) explored and co-constructed answers to their pre-generated questions about the text, following new questions as they were raised by the dialogue.
Scaffolds Prior
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For each text as we encountered it, students were asked to construct higher-order questions to push their understanding of intersectionality.
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Students were given 30 minutes before the literature circle in their groups to:
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determine each text’s main idea;
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identify each speaker’s/author’s purpose;
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infer each speaker’s/author’s personal beliefs;
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assign literature circle speaking roles;
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construct at least two questions to underpin their group’s respective literature circle.
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Materials
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Question stems, one per group, printed on cardstock
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Timer on smartboard (10 minutes)
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“Emergency procedures” for when students were allowed to call a teacher over for assistance
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Literature circle organizers (one per group)
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All three texts (with annotations and skill-development organizers from days prior)
Expectations
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Students were expected to:
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contribute consistently to the dialogue;
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fulfill their literature circle role, while recognizing that their lit circle role was not their only role;
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repeatedly string together ideas shared by peers to arrive atincreasingly higher-order places of understanding.
For the purpose of examining students’ capacity to meet the particular expectations of the literature circle, I have decided to focus on students:
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“Speculating, imagining, and hypothesizing”;
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“narrating”;
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“arguing, reasoning, and justifying”;
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“asking questions”; and
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“analyzing and solving problems.”
The following are highlights from the literature circles, identified using Juzwik et al.’s lenses characterizing “speaking out.”
Clip 1 (00:12–1:54)
The following exchange illustrates that students understand the literature circle as an exercise in which each student takes turns sharing ideas, as opposed to a collaborative construction ideas––a “putting together” of answer to challenging questions. Because students are simply taking turns speaking, one student predominantly carries the beginning of the literature circle.
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To begin their literature circle, a student asks, “When reading or hearing about other people’s thoughts on intersectionality, would it change the way you already think about intersectionality?” Or in other words, “Would other people’s opinions change your opinion?”
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A student hypothesizes that “people can keep passing on their thoughts on intersectionality” generationally, a cycle “will never end” (00:55).
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The student who originally asks the question shares an answer to her own question, imagining that having an “experience that somebody else had” would likely “change [their] views.”
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In response, another student imagines that having an experience that somebody else had” would “change their aspect a very little bit” but “not that much.”
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To continue the dialogue, a student asks the next question that the group had agreed to ask prior to the literature circle: “Do you think there are pros and cons of intersectionality?”
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The same student contributes a pro by narrating a personal experience: “for me, when I was 15, I wanted a job: I had to wait until I was 16, so older people have an advantage of getting a job.”
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Clip 1 (7:17–8:00)
The following exchange illustrates that the nature of a question can lead students to want a teacher’s input––not because they need the input to continue the dialogue, but because they would like a teacher’s input to render the dialogue richer. A student wants “a teacher’s perspective” on his seemingly controversial question, but another student is more than willing to answer their question without my assistance.
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A student calls me over to ask me a question, likely because of its controversial nature: “Is it bad that whenever I think of the word ‘intersectionality’ I feel like it connects to discrimination?” (7:17)
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In the silence, I am gesturing to the group to answer his question (hence the giggles).
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“From a teacher’s perspective!” the student exclaims (7:33).
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I begin to answer, but a student asks to answer themself––which I of course allow (8:00).
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Clip 2 (5:18–7:10)
The following exchange illustrates a fast-moving dialogue between two students about on whom the onus of knowing the student should fall. The students raise interesting questions in response to each other, and one student repeatedly checks to see if they understand the questions being posed. But the pace and topic of the dialogue understandably presents a challenge to the other two students in the group who are naturally more taciturn.
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A student narrates a speculative example to illustrate their point: “You struggle in one subject, and that teacher just doesn’t know anything about you, doesn’t question why you’re struggling, doesn’t help you at all––just wants to blame it on you, but doesn’t know why you’re struggling [...] You need to have a better connection.”
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A student explains that “most students just say something, too.”
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The student responds with a simple probing question: “But why should we?”
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The other student responds, reasoning that “most of the time, a lot of kids are sent to school, to learn to be disciplined.”
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The student responds again with more probing question: “But why? [...] How would a teacher know who they are? [...] “Why should we step up to the plate when we already have enough on our plate?”
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The other student asks a probing question in response: “How would they know if we not saying anything?” The student complicates the probing question with yet another: “But why should we if we already have enough on our place? Why do I need to express, why do I need to vent to you, if I don’t even know you’re going to provide help?”
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Because the literature circles are recorded as only audio and not with video, there are no ways to check for “active listening.” So inherently, I have decided to focus on students:
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“being receptive to multiple alternative viewpoints”; and
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“thinking about what is heard and giving others time to think.”
Relatively speaking, there is little evidence of "taking in." Please see "Significance to Future Practice" for explanations as to why that is.
Clip 1 (2:18–2:29)
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Two students ask another student in their group if they “have anything to say,” but the student refuses to participate in the literature circle (2:18).
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Nevertheless, the literature circle continues: the student who originally asked the question reasons that arranged marriage is a con of intersectionality (2:29).
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Clip 2 (8:08–10:05)
A student revisits their literature circles first question to allow space for the quieter students to share thoughts that they perhaps did not have the chance to share initially.
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The more talkative students empathize with the quieter students as they express their ideas, sharing that the “question is hard” and that there “isn’t a right or wrong answer
––readily “receptive” the the “alternative viewpoints” they may provide.-
The more talkative students allow brief but discernible moments of silence to give “others time to think.”
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Significance to Future Practice
Several of the affordances and challenges are the same as the affordances and challenges reported for AP’s literature circles, given the nature of the dialogic task.
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Affordances and challenges that were identical across AP and English 2’s literature circle are highlighted in yellow.
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Language highlighted in blue indicates an affordance or challenge that was present in AP but not present in English 2.
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Language that is not highlighted indicates an affordance or challenge unique to English 2.
Affordances
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Student-driven conversation in a relatively small setting of 3 to 4 other peers allows students to feel more comfortable contributing and synthesizing ideas.
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Charging each student with generating their own questions and selecting their two favorite questions as a group ostensibly increases student interest in the literature circle and intrinsic motivation to share ideas.
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(As opposed to the written chalk talk) the verbal nature of the literature circle provides more frequent opportunities for students to practice using dialogue stems in a real-world context.
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The combination of the dialogue stems and prior exposure to dialogism in the chalk talk trains a habit around co-constructing ideas.
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Dialogic engagement with texts appeared more thorough, sustained, and overall enjoyable compared to other, independent engagement with texts attempted in the past (e.g. short answer questions; graphic organizers).
Challenges
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Although the teacher can listen to conversations in retrospect, the teacher cannot keep track of all conversations in real time.
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The responsibility of monitoring student speech falls heavily unto the students; although this helps to train students' self-awareness about the nature of dialogism, without strong and reliable self-awareness, the teacher cannot be present to respect students' zones of proximal development.
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Students reported that the literature roles sometimes felt ambiguous and subsequently unhelpful.
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Students (especially as seen in Clip #2) can easily fall out of co-constructive dialogue and into argumentative debate.
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Even in a group of four, space can easily be dominated by a fraction as small as two people, especially when the dialogue is fast-moving. As heard in Clip 2, I made the mistake of placing two pairs of friends in a group, in which one pair of friends was verbose and the other was not. Future structures should consider space for teacher interventions and further student self-monitoring.
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English 2 had one group who was not familiar with the texts and did not adequately prepare for the literature circle. As with any task, dialogic or not, students who do not engage in the classes that scaffold towards the final performance task will not do well in said task. The one group who struggled suggests that success in a literature circle depends on time, deliberation, and preparation that span across several prerequisite classes.
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Because students demonstrated and felt confident in their comprehension of the texts, students struggled to construct higher-order questions about the texts to push and challenge their own thinking. Subsequently, students needed guided practice: identifying a topic; determining places of shallow understanding and/or further interest; and then forming a question.
Effects on Following Artifacts
The literature circle indicates English 2's capacity to take their comprehension of dialogism and apply it to a verbal context (as opposed to the Chalk Talk's written context.) Subsequently, the literature circles revealed that students' conceived dialogism simply as "talking": sharing ideas with each other, but with each idea in isolation from––instead of collaboration with––other students' ideas. This is ostensibly why there is such little evidence of "taking in." Dr. David Bloome et al. (2005), professor of teaching and learning at Ohio State University, determines that "turn-taking" cannot be considered evidential of learning or deep engagement: he rightfully claims that "one would be making the assumption that there was something in the turn-taking protocol (e.g., saying a sent of printed words aloud) related to learning" (p. 28). If I expect students to learn how to dialogue to arrive at higher places of understanding collaboratively, turn-taking patterns of speech only provide evidence for a lack of learning and a need to reteach collaborative dialogue. For English 2's fishbowls, much more emphasis was placed on teaching dialogue as a collaborative learning activity.
Contributions to Inquiry
Both clips evidenced students making insightful and introspective text-to-self connections, sharing those connections with their groups. And when students' insights and connections are shared with the group, even if those ideas are not necessarily used to build collaboratively new ideas, students were seen refining ideas, feeling prompted to share their own ideas––using their voices to render their engagement with the material more dynamic and personal. Positioning students' voices as avenues towards answers to student-generated questions has led to more intimate engagement with content and peers alike.