Analyses of classroom interaction have frequently spotlighted reasoned dialogue as beneficial for student learning, and research into small-group activity amongst students offers empirical support. ...However, the evidence relating to teacher-student interaction has never been compelling, and one of the few studies to investigate the issue directly detected no relation whatsoever between reasoned dialogue and learning outcomes. The present paper outlines additional data from that study, together with evidence from elsewhere, with a view to interpreting the results relating to reasoned dialogue. Account is taken of the generally positive evidence obtained from studies of group work amongst students. The key proposal is that it may be reasoned opposition that promotes learning rather than reasoned dialogue in general, and reasoned opposition is probably rare when teachers are involved. The proposal has implications for both the dialogic and the argumentation perspective upon classroom interaction, and these are discussed.
Language Learning Howe, Christine J.
1993, 20171206, 2017, Letnik:
3
eBook
Originally published in 1993, the starting place for this book is the notion, current in the literature for around 30 years at that time, that children could not learn their native language without ...substantial innate knowledge of its grammatical structure. It is argued that the notion is as problematic for contemporary theories of development as it was for theories of the past. Accepting this, the book attempts an in-depth study of the notions credibility.
Central to the book’s argument is the conclusion that the innateness hypothesis runs into two major problems. Firstly, its proponents are too ready to treat children as embryonic linguists, concerned with the representation of sentences as an end in itself. A more realistic approach would be to regard children as communication engineers, storing sentences to optimize the production and retrieval of meaning. Secondly, even when the communication analogy is adopted, it is glibly assumed that the meanings children impute will be the ones adults intend. One of the book’s major contentions is that a careful reading of contemporary research suggests that the meanings may differ considerably.
Identifying such problems, the book considers how development should proceed, given learning along communication lines and a more plausible analysis of meaning. It makes detailed predictions about what would be anticipated given no innate knowledge of grammar. Focusing on English but giving full acknowledgement to cross-linguistic research, it concludes that the predictions are consistent with both the known timescale of learning and the established facts about children’s knowledge. Thus the book aspires to a serious challenge to the innateness hypothesis via, as its final chapter will argue, a model which is much more reassuring to psychological theory.
Preface. 1. The Case for Innate Knowledge 2. The Contextual Completion of Meaning 3. The Time-scale to Observational Adequacy 4. The Approximation to Psychological Reality 5. The Establishment of an Alternative Theory. References. Author Index. Subject Index.
'Heat breaks up charcoal and puts sulphur dioxide in'; 'The air pulls faster on heavy masses.' These and other similar statements by school-aged children untutored in physics carry two messages. ...First, children's pre-instructional conceptions of the physical world are a far cry from the received wisdom of science; second, despite their lack of orthodoxy, children's conceptions carry a definite sense of causal mechanism. This sense of mechanism is the focal concern of this book, originally published in 1998, for it raises issues of central importance to both psychological theory and educational practice.
In particular, some psychologists have claimed that human cognition is organised around causal mechanisms along the lines of a theory. This carries specific implications for teaching. Does the existence in children's thinking of causal mechanisms relating to the physical world support these psychologists? Does this have consequences for the teaching of science?
Christine Howe reviews evidence relating to pre-instructional conceptions in three broad topic areas: heat and temperature; force and motion; floating and sinking. A wide range of published work is discussed, including the author's own research. In addition, a new study covering all three topic areas is reported for the first time. The message is that causal mechanisms can indeed play an organising role, that untutored cognition can in other words be genuinely theoretical. However, this tendency is highly domain-specific, occurring in some topic areas but not in others.
Having drawn these conclusions, Christine Howe discusses their meaning in terms of both cognitive development and educational practice. A model is outlined which synthesises Piagetian action-groundedness with Vygotskyan cultural-symbolism and has a distinctive message for classrooms. This title will be useful to cognitive and developmental psychologists and to science educators alike.
Recognizing that empirical research into classroom dialogue has been conducted for about 40 years, a review is reported of 225 studies published between 1972 and 2011. The studies were identified ...through systematic search of electronic databases and scrutiny of publication reference lists. They focus on classroom dialogue in primary and secondary classrooms, covering the full age range of compulsory schooling. The methods of data collection and analysis used in the studies are described and discussed, with changes and continuities over time highlighted. Study results are then summarized and integrated to present a succinct picture of what is currently known and where future research might profitably be directed. One key message is that much more is known about how classroom dialogue is organized than about whether certain modes of organization are more beneficial than others. Moreover, epistemological and methodological change may be required if the situation is to be remedied.
This commentary reviews the six articles that comprise the Special Issue on ‘Advances in research on classroom dialogue: Learning outcomes and assessments’. The commentary focuses on the general ...methodological and conceptual messages that can be drawn from the reported research and that are relevant for progressing the field further. Issues discussed include the conceptualization and assessment of oral communicative competence; the meaning of ‘participation’ within the context of dialogue and the implications of participation for student outcomes; and the characterization of educationally productive dialogue. The commentary concludes by anticipating research that does not merely specify the productive features but also elucidates the processes by which the features have their positive effects.
•Discussion of issues relating to the conceptualization and assessment of oral communicative competence.•Analysis of the meaning of ‘participation in dialogue’ and the implications of participation for student outcomes.•Concrete suggestions (in terms of methods and concepts) for future progress.
Research into small-group collaboration during middle to late childhood shows that while individual understanding can be promoted through exchanging differing opinions, the joint analyses that groups ...construct while collaborating play a tangential role. Individuals may or may not accept these constructions depending upon processes of reflection and reconciliation that are triggered through difference and sometimes occur post-group. Recognizing a dearth of research with older participants (together with inconclusive suggestions that collaborative constructions may become more significant with age), the reported study examines the impact of small-group collaboration during adolescence and early adulthood. Forty-six pairs of students aged between 10 and 22 years worked on a computer-presented task that required them to discuss and predict the trajectories objects follow when they fall from stationary or moving carriers. Associations between group dialogue and post-test performance confirmed a key role for differing opinions while collaborative constructions turned out to have little relevance.
•Extensive data on adolescents' and young adults' understanding of object fall.•Dialogue around differing opinions shown to boost understanding.•Knowledge growth found to be unrelated to the quality of group analyses.•Growth interpreted as the interplay of dialogue, meta-cognition, and feedback.•Processes that apply with older learners parallel those established with children.
Scholarly interest in dialogic pedagogy and classroom dialogue is multi-disciplinary and draws on a variety of theoretical frameworks. On the positive side, this has produced a rich and varied body ...of research and evidence. However, in spite of a common interest in educational dialogue and learning through dialogue, cross-disciplinary engagement with each other’s work is rare. Scholarly discussions and publications tend to be clustered in separate communities, each characterized by a particular type of research questions, aspects of dialogue they focus on, type of evidence they bring to bear, and ways in which standards for rigor are constructed. In the present contribution, we asked four leading scholars from different research traditions to react to four provocative statements that were deliberately designed to reveal areas of consensus and disagreement1. Topic-wise, the provocations related to theoretical foundations, methodological assumptions, the role of teachers, and issues of inclusion and social class, respectively. We hope that these contributions will stimulate cross- and trans-disciplinary discussions about dialogic pedagogy research and theory.1 The authors of this article are five scholars, the dialogic provocateur and the four respondents. The order of appearance of the authors was determined alphabetically.
It is now widely believed that classroom dialogue matters as regards student outcomes, with optimal patterns often regarded as requiring some or all of open questions, elaboration of previous ...contributions, reasoned discussion of competing viewpoints, linkage and coordination across contributions, metacognitive engagement with dialogue, and high student participation. To date, however, the relevance of such features has been most convincingly examined in relation to small-group interaction among students; little is known about their applicability to teacher-student dialogue. This article reports a large-scale study that permits some rebalancing. The study revolved around 2 lessons (covering 2 of mathematics, literacy, and science) that were video recorded in each of 72 demographically diverse classrooms (students' ages 10-11 years). Key measures of teacher-student dialogue were related to 6 indices of student outcome, which jointly covered curriculum mastery, reasoning, and educationally relevant attitudes. Prior attainment and attitudes were considered in analyses, as were other factors (e.g., student demographics and further aspects of classroom practice) that might confound interpretation of dialogue-outcome relations. So long as students participated extensively, elaboration and querying of previous contributions were found to be positively associated with curriculum mastery, and elaboration was also positively associated with attitudes.
A study is reported where 118 participants aged between 10 years and early 20s drew the trajectories they expected objects to follow as they fell. The younger participants typically anticipated ...backward trajectories during fall from moving carriers while forward but non‐parabolic trajectories were relatively more frequent amongst the older participants. Both patterns suggest strong sociocultural influences, with implications for models that regard development in this area as purely the inhibition of principles established in infancy.
Statement of contribution
What is already known on this subject?
Research with infants demonstrates an early‐established belief that dropped objects fall straight down.
The erroneous expectations that pre‐schoolers hold about object fall are consistent with failure to inhibit the presumption of straight‐down fall, in contexts where it is inappropriate.
What does this study add?
The research replicates and extends research with older participants, which indicates errors that cannot be explained via failed inhibition of straight‐down fall.
It is the first study to trace patterns of errors across late childhood, adolescence and early adulthood.
A consequence of the findings is that adequate modelling in developmental psychology must consider multilayered interactions between prior representations and sociocultural experiences.
•The most comprehensive review ever produced of the author's studies of group work in science.•A systematic review of published research into the discourse that routinely occurs in science ...classrooms.•A new perspective on the barriers to improving small group discourse in science contexts.
Acknowledging that small group activities are prominent features of science classrooms, this article addresses two questions about the discourse that occurs while such activities are in progress. The first is whether small group discourse actually matters as regards student learning, in other words whether there are forms of discourse that, if they occur in small groups, promote knowledge gain. With reference to the author's past research, this question receives a clear, affirmative answer. The second question relates to the prevalence of productive forms of small group discourse in science classrooms, and here the focus is a systematic review of research that others have conducted. Although a sizeable body of material is identified that describes relevant discourse, virtually none of it takes productive forms as the yardstick and addresses their prevalence. This state of affairs is attributed to tacit theories of learning, which locate key processes within whole-class discourse orchestrated by teachers and physical activities (not discourse) that occur at the small group level. Moreover, these theories are likely to be held by practitioners as well as researchers. The implication is that if classroom-based discourse is to be improved in small group settings, it is not, for science, fundamentally a question of establishing relevant strategies. Rather it is acceptance that, far from being tangential to the teaching and learning process, small group discourse is a resource that should be harnessed appropriately. It is suggested that this message might apply beyond the science context.
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