Deeper Learning, Dialogic Learning, and Critical Thinking

Research-based Strategies for the Classroom

Emmanuel Manalo

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781000627428
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Professional Development

Deeper learning, dialogic learning, and critical thinking are essential capabilities in the 21st-century environments we now operate. Apart from being important in themselves, they are also crucial in enabling the acquisition of many other 21st-century skills/capabilities such as problem solving, collaborative learning, innovation, information and media literacy, and so on. However, the majority of teachers in schools and instructors in higher education are inadequately prepared for the task of promoting deeper learning, dialogic learning, and critical thinking in their students. This is despite the fact that there are educational researchers who are developing and evaluating strategies for such promotion. The problem is bridging the gap between the educational researchers' work and what gets conveyed to teachers and instructors as evidence-based, usable strategies.

This book addresses that gap: in it, leading scholars from around the world describe strategies they have developed for successfully cultivating students' capabilities for deeper learning and transfer of what they learn, dialogic learning and effective communication, and critical thought. They explore connections in the promotion of these capabilities, and they provide, in accessible form, research evidence demonstrating the efficacy of the strategies. They also discuss answers to the questions of how and why the strategies work.

A seminal resource, this book creates tangible links between innovative educational research and classroom teaching practices to address the all-important question of how we can realize our ideals for education in the 21st century. It is a must read for pre-service and in-service teachers, teacher educators and professional developers, and educational researchers who truly care that we deliver education that will prepare and serve students for life.

Part 1

Structuring dialogue

1

The Playground of Ideas

Developing a structured approach to the Community of Inquiry for young children

Laura Kerslake

Summary

The Community of Inquiry is a pedagogy which allows children to participate in collaborative discussion, and has been a key practice of Philosophy with Children since its inception. This chapter presents research findings which support the claim of the educational benefits of this approach, and also considers barriers to participation by all children, especially those who have not developed early communicative competency. I therefore present the Playground of Ideas, which provides a structured discussion framework approach in order to support children's critical thinking skills and dispositions through collaborative dialogue. Two case studies with children aged 6 and 7 and their teachers indicate that the Playground of Ideas contributes to the development of a classroom culture of dialogue and collaborative thinking.

Background

In 2014, I started a Primary Post Graduate Certificate of Education (PGCE) course with a school-based provider in England. The instruction included a number of weeks' observations of different teachers in a school, followed by the start of our own practice. This was interspersed with days of center-based training, which was primarily carried out by an educational consultancy company.

It soon became apparent that there was a considerable disparity between the information given to us on training days about what would and should happen in the classroom, and the reality of what occurred in classroom practice.

A particular example of this was on the maths instruction days. The sequence of events, according to our trainers, was similar to the following:

1. Put children into small groups (pairs or groups of three);
2. Provide visual and tactile materials to represent number concepts (number lines, Cuisenaire rods, Numicon, etc.);
3. The children will talk together and in doing so come to a greater understanding of mathematical concepts. Higher-ability children will increase their understanding by explaining the concepts that they have already grasped to lower-ability children; lower-ability children will increase their understanding by collaborating with higher-ability children.

The discrepancy arose in that children did not talk in the way that had been indicated. In the practical context, children's talk was not always productive: some children argued, others understood problems quickly but did not communicate their understanding to others, some children were not confident to speak – or, in other words, children exhibited all of the usual behavior one might expect from a group of children in a classroom.

Reflecting on this, there seemed to be a gap between steps 2 and 3 in the list above. Providing small groupwork activities for children seemed to be giving them the opportunity to talk, but it did not follow that children had the skills to do so in a way which was productive for the lesson.

This was not wholly unexpected. The work on mathematical collaboration in primary schools was carried out by Askew (2012), popularizing the work of Boaler (1999) for a UK practitioner readership. Further reading of Askew determined that he does not tend to undertake one-off sessions in schools because children need training in order to be able to carry out productive discussions. Indeed, Askew writes that teachers tend to adopt a “See, I told you these kids couldn't do that” attitude.

What was missing from the sequence above, and from my PGCE training, was a way of teaching the children how to engage in productive talk in the classroom. This lack of guidance is also reflected in the new National Curriculum document for Speaking and Listening (Department for Education, 2013), which contains a single page of speaking and listening guidelines to cover all of primary school instruction. There are no specific guidelines as to how teachers should teach speaking and listening skills.

This is a concern also highlighted by Ofsted, the body which is responsible for school inspections in the UK. A review of school inspection documents for Devon schools in the last three years highlights a number of comments that reveal concerns about the spoken communication abilities of children at school-entry age. A school which was identified as “requires improvement” received the following comment: “a significant number have low speaking and listening skills” with “not enough focus on learning and acquiring the basic [talking] skills” (Ofsted, 2014, p. 4). This is compared to an outstanding school in which children are “routinely challenged with probing questions which make pupils think deeply” (Ofsted, 2015, p. 6). This comment also makes explicit the connection between talking and thinking.

One reason for the disparity in children's speaking and listening skills could be the socioeconomic status of the child. In the UK, the National Literacy Trust (NLT, 2016) State of Nation Report 2015/16 reports that children who receive free school meals (used as a measure of disadvantage as receipt is primarily dependent on low income or being in care) are less likely to have achieved required standards for communication in Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS). The EYFS presents the educational expectations for children up to the age of 5 in the areas of Listening and Attention, Understanding, and Speaking, and 77%, 76% and 75%, respectively, of such children attained the expected level in these areas in 2015. The data for children who do not receive free school meals shows attainment of 87%, 86%, and 86%, respectively, in the assessed areas (NLT, 2016, p. 4).

That is already a sizable gap at the age of 5, and this does not diminish in the early years of schooling, as Key Stage 1 data from the NLT report show that teacher assessment in Speaking and Listening criteria sees 82% and 92% of children receiving free school meals and not receiving such free meals, respectively, attaining the expected level (NLT, 2016, p. 10). This pattern is repeated across other areas of the literacy curriculum.

It is therefore possible to trace a path between EYFS communication deficit and lower attainment in assessments and national testing right up to the end of formal schooling. This culminates in figures for UK national exams taken at age 16, which show that in the 2014/15 academic year, 33.1% of children receiving free school meals achieved five passing grades (including English and maths), compared to 60.9% of other children (NLT, 2016, p. 20). This is a considerable gap, and while it would of course be a presumption to attribute this entirely to children's ability to participate successfully in productive classroom talk situations, a number of educationalists and researchers connect productive talk with children's ability to access curriculum content (Alexander, 2004; Askew, 2012; Boaler, 1999; Mercer, 2008).

Critical thinking and classroom discussion

The previous section introduced the importance of classroom talk to educational practice, drawing connections between classroom talk and critical thinking skills. This section clarifies the meaning of those terms and further establishes the connections between them.

Attempts at defining critical thinking tend to be lengthy, highlighting Schwarz and Baker's (2018, p. 96) recent complaint that it is a term which is “not well delineated.” As early as 1963, Ennis identified ten criteria which comprise critical thinking: deduction, assumption-finding, definition, explanation, reliability of evidence and authorities, generalization, hypothesis testing, evaluating theories, detecting ambiguities, and detecting over-vague and over-specific claims (p. 18). A key claim of Ennis' is that a thinker who becomes competent in only one or two of these criteria should not be considered a competent critical thinker, highlighting the interplay between the range of skills noted above.

In 1990, 46 panelists with philosophy, psychology, education, and social science backgrounds produced the Delphi Report (Facione, 1990). The statement is of considerable length, but some key points, which expand on Ennis' are

• Critical thinking is “essential as a tool of inquiry”;
• The ideal critical thinker is “habitually inquisitive,” “willing to reconsider,” “open-minded,” and “flexible”;
• Educating critical thinkers involves “nurturing those dispositions which consistently yield useful insights.”
  (p. 18)

This definition of critical thinking indicates that being a good critical thinker involves dispositional elements and that critical thinking is a collaborative endeavor for the sharing and refining of knowledge.

This conception of critical thinking is highly commensurate with the pragmatist origins of the Community of Inquiry, which was initially conceived of by Peirce (see Kerslake, 2018b). A central tenet of pragmatism is a denial of the Cartesian duality of knowing for certain or relinquishing all claims to knowledge. Instead, doubt is perceived as “simply a necessary fact of being in the world” (Ellerton, 2016, p. 112). In an inquiry, beliefs are held cautiously, to be doubted, questioned, and reformulated as further beliefs to be held tentatively. Dewey (1933) summed this up as: “there is no belief so settled as to not be exposed to further enquiry” (pp. 8–9).

As inquiry takes place in the form of discussion within a community, the connection between the development of critical thinking skills and classroom discussion is clear. It can also be seen clearly from the description of the spoken language requirement for pupils across all ages of UK formal schooling (age 5–16):

Pupils should be taught to speak clearly and convey ideas confidently using Standard English. They should learn to justify ideas with reasons; ask questions to check understanding; develop vocabulary and build knowledge; negotiate; evaluate and build on the ideas of others; and select the appropriate register for effective communication. They should be taught to give well-structured descriptions and explanations and develop their understanding through speculating, hypothesising and exploring ideas. This will enable them to clarify their thinking as well as organise their ideas for writing.

(Department for Education, 2013, section 3.1)

The italics are my own, and highlight the ways in which spoken language teaching is a mechanism for the development of critical thinking skills which have been posited by Ennis and the Delphi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Endorsements
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• List of contributors
• Introduction: Establishing a case for sharing research-based instructional strategies
• PART 1 Structuring dialogue
• PART 2 Facilitating meaning construction
• PART 3 Cultivating questioning
• PART 4 Promoting engagement and reflection
• PART 5 Training specific competencies
• PART 6 Program/course teaching
• Index