The Art of Interactive Teaching

Listening, Responding, Questioning

Selma Wassermann

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351704373
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

In this book, Selma Wassermann, international expert on classroom interactions, sets the stage for the relevance of the interactive teaching method, provides data and classroom examples that support its effectiveness at all student learning levels and in different subject areas, and offers detailed and specific help for teachers who are considering embarking on this approach to teaching. Coverage includes "teaching to the big ideas, " preparing students, and the basics of developing good listening, responding, and questioning skills in an interactive discussion. A chapter on learning to become reflective practitioners deals with how teachers may become more aware of what they are saying and in better control of framing responses and questions in the art of interactive teaching. The book draws from the author's long experience and study of interactive teaching using the case method rooted in the Harvard Business School's approach to large class instruction.

1

INTERACTIVE TEACHING: THE WHAT, THE WHY, AND THE HOW

The stimulus for the class discussion was the case, “It’s Up to You, Ms. Buscemi” (Wassermann, 1993) about a teacher who was torn between giving a Grade 12 boy the mark she believed he deserved, based on his classwork, homework assignments and test scores, and the principal’s urging that she give the boy a better grade so that he would be able to enroll in post-secondary studies at a community college. The students had prepared by reading the case in advance, followed by working in small groups to address the study questions that accompanied the case. The case highlighted several critical issues, i.e., the actual academic performance of the boy based upon the teacher’s ratings, the fact that he had to work part-time to help his low-income family, the competence of the teacher, the pressure from the principal, and the influence of the mark on his post-secondary school options. The class that read the case and prepared for the class discussion was a graduate education class that enrolled practicing teachers who were in a Masters of Education program.

She began her preparations for class discussion by first re-reading the case, highlighting what she considered to be the essential features, and then writing six “discussion questions” that would help her to focus the discussion on the important aspects of the case. She would keep this list of questions in front of her, to enable her to “stay on course” – i.e., to return to the important points if and when the discussion veered off course.

When she met the students that warm summer afternoon, they were seated in an informal arrangement of tablet armchairs scattered about in a large room. There was already a buzz in the atmosphere – she took that as a sign that the case was still “active” and fomenting. After greeting them, and asking them to place their name cards on the armchair, so that she would be able to call each one by his and her own name, she asked them first to give her a summary of the important aspects of the case. Rather than use the “cold call” strategy of picking on a student who had not volunteered, she waited for hands to be raised – for some intrepid soul who would brave the first stage of the inquisition! For this she had to wait what seemed to be some long moments until a hand was raised.

“Yes, Ethan. Tell us how you would summarize the important features of this case.”

As Ethan presented his views, she walked over to his chair, and stood close to him, focusing all of her attention on what he was saying. She listened carefully, making a mental note of his statements, and when he had concluded, “played them back” to him, in a more succinct way, capturing the essence of his views.

“Have I reflected your summary accurately?” she asked him.

He smiled and agreed that she had. The other students watched and understood the process.

“Would anyone like to add anything to Ethan’s summary?” she asked, opening the discussion to call for further information that the students considered relevant. Several students raised their hands, feeling safer to respond now, and several additional points about the case were offered. These she also listened to carefully, making mental notes of the statements, and reflecting back the core ingredients of what had been said. With each student statement, she moved to that student’s chair, and stood close by – giving her full attention to not only the statement but also to the student who was entering the discussion. Her first responses to the summary statements of the case were, by and large, reflective responses, holding up a mirror to what the student had said, and giving him or her a chance to further reflect on it – to see if she had accurately restated the key issues. In doing this, she demonstrated, through her behavior and through her reflective responses, that she had listened carefully, been respectful and free of judgment, and had given each student her full and complete attention, her behavior always indicating: “I am with you. I hear what you are saying and I am using that as working material to help you think further about the issues and about what you have said.”

Only after the students had expended their views about the case summary did she raise the first question on her “crib sheet” of discussion questions.

“Tell me about the teacher. What can you say about her, and her teaching?”

Now the room was a flood of hands in the air, vying for “air time.” Many in this group of practicing teachers had something to say about this teacher, Violet Buscemi, who had just taken her first job as a secondary math teacher in an inner-city school of a large city.

As was her style, she listened carefully to the statements being made, and without judgment or offering her own view, she reflected, at first by saying back the essential ideas, and moving on, asking students to examine assumptions, to identify value judgments, to think further about certain issues that warranted more examination. All of this she attempted to do in a non-threatening, non-inquisitorial style, so that the students would continue to feel comfortable offering their ideas. In raising the higher order questions, she was careful not to sound challenging, but rather as someone looking for further information, for clarification. Or as Christensen would call it, “teachers and students in a community of learners” (Christensen, 1995).

It was at this point that the discussion “took off ” – with many students eager to offer ideas. She had made it safe for them to speak; and many of them had something they wanted to say. Each student statement was listened to carefully and respectfully, played back and sometimes, left hanging. Sometimes a further question was raised for clarification. Like a conductor of a Beethoven symphony, she knew when to cue in the timpani, and when to ask the string section for more crescendo. After much experience with discussion teaching, she had a keen hand and eye for when to shift gears to the next question, when to use reflective responses, when to raise clarifying questions, when to ask a “humdinger” – a question that would call for a deep, thoughtful, and wise comment.

The hour and a half of class time flew by – and by the end of the discussion, none of the issues in the case was resolved. This case, after all, was drawn from real classroom life, where there are seldom hard and fast answers, and where often, the “answers” depend on a particular point of view, a particular set of values, a particular orientation, and a view toward “what’s important” in the teacher’s and students’ lives. At the end of discussion in cases such as these there is no closure but the niggling and jarring condition of “uncertainty” – so that the case is never finished in the students’ minds – but like the pebble in a shoe, this will keep students thinking about it for a long time to come. It is this kind of interactive teaching that enables students to make meaning from experience (in this case, a case), allowing for greater insight and enriched understanding, leading to decision making that is based in data. In this process of meaning making, students grow in their intellectual power, in their ability to understand, and in their wisdom and maturity (Wiggins & McTighe, 2011). The teacher’s skill and craft in conducting an interactive discussion is the key to that enriched intellectual experience.

Class Discussions and Class Discussions

Class discussions are not alien to teachers. They come in all sizes and shapes, and are seen at all levels of the educational hierarchy. Some of them are extraordinarily rich and productive – like the ones in evidence at the Harvard Business School (HBA), when a master teacher like “Chris” Christensen is “in the pit” conducting a case. Some of them involve a teacher-led discussion of a book, a film, a story, or a current event – where the teacher is the “point person,” raising questions for students to answer, leading them to the core issues that the teacher wants examined. Some of them appear as discussions, but are actually stages for teachers to disseminate information, while students listen, take notes and, occasionally, raise a hand to ask a question (Wiggins & McTighe, 2011).

What may be more alien is the fact that some class discussions are so rich, so full of potential for student thinking and reflection, so challenging, that they have the capacity to leave students in a state of reflection long afterwards, trying to sort out discrepancies, making sense of complexities, working to resolve dissonance. And some discussions, drowned in teacher talk, lie like a beached whale, making the class seem a hundred years long, and leaving the mind dulled and opiated – as Professor Christensen liked to say, “instead of a teacher sitting on a log talking to a student, a teacher sitting on a student talking to a log.”

What makes the difference? What does a teacher do to engage the minds of students in ways that open doors to discoveries, stimulate thinking and reflection, and enable and empower rational and logical reasoning? It is not obvious from the surface of a classroom observation – one has to know, to perceive, what it is we are looking for and looking at. We have to know more about what it takes for a teacher to dig into the minds of students and bring about more thoughtful, more insightful wisdom and understanding. We have to understand what Scott Turow learned in his student days at the Harvard Law School – that the teacher he had only lately learned to find of value was “some sort of jeweler of ideas, using questions like a goldsmith’s hammer, working the concepts down to an incredible level of fineness and shine” (Turow, 1977). We have to allow that classroom discussions are not for giving students information – for that is more easily acquired through multitudes of high- and low-tech sources, and it is surely a waste of a teacher’s time to do what other sources can do more effectively and more economically – but rather to elevate wisdom, to enable and empower critical thinking and logical reasoning, to help students make meaning of complex issues. This can be done more effectively through a process sometimes called “discussion teaching” and sometimes “interactive teaching.”

The lecture, the didactic form, will always be the primary method of teaching because it embodies the transfer of knowledge from expert to students. A good lecture is a work of art. But, the discussion method works best when teaching objectives shift from knowledge transference to student transformation – where qualities of mind (curiosity, judgment, and wisdom) become key. Or when academic goals demand the ability to apply concepts and knowledge to the solution of specific problems. (Christensen, 1995, p. 6)

At the very first, to do this, a teacher, no matter what educational level or subject area, must believe that this is the teacher’s job. To wean oneself away from information dispensing to the higher and more challenging role of discussion leader is not for the faint-hearted. It is not easy to give up the role of master, and invert it, to become, with students, a “partner in learning.” Having shifted gears, having risen to these challenges, the teacher is promised rewards that are not only observable, but much more satisfying. Students become more engaged; they are stimulated to think and to reason, and they are involved in what is going on in class. And the more the teacher “works” students’ ideas, the more their thinking becomes more reasoned and more rational. This has been the case in virtually every “discussion teaching” class – from the Harvard Business School (Ewing, 1990) to Richie Chambers Grade 11 social studies class with the “Case of Injustice in Our Time” (Wassermann, 1992; Adam, 1992), to Bromley’s work (1986) in psychology and related disciplines, to Eileen Hood’s Grade 3 class where students were studying the “The Hockey Card” (see Appendix E). In fact, Bromley is quoted as saying: “The case for case-studies is made in terms of the pervasiveness of its employment in a range of human activities, from administration and anatomy, to politics and sociology, in terms of a basic methodology which underpins its use in these areas – the logic of scientific method.”

But interactive teaching does not have to begin with a “case.” It can begin with any other curriculum experience of significance – a story, a film, an article from a newspaper, an historical event, a Supreme Court decision, a TV program. The bases for interactive teaching are numerous and varied, and limited only by imagination and inventiveness. The Bill of Rights? Why not!

It is NOT the case, or other stimulus itself that does the work. It is the basis, the generator, of what follows, the interactive discussion that has the power to produce change in student thinking and behavior. Ewing (1990, pp. 9-10) in his insightful book about the “how and the what” of the Harvard Business School gives some evidence:

You need only compare what comes in with what goes out. The incoming group was no more sophisticated than any other group of bright, energetic kids their own age might be. Their naiveté was colossal. Two years later, however, these same kids possessed a remarkable understanding, had an astonishing ability to put their arms about complex problems and analyze them, were able to make decisions with imperfect information with great skill, possessed penetrating insights into their own strengths, weaknesses, and aims in life.

Ewing also quotes John Russell, a senior professor at Boston University (Ewing, 1990, p. 10):

Harvard does one thing better than any other school that I know of: it changes students. For nearly four decades I have seen this happen, over and over again. In the early first-year classes in September, I have seen students deal with cases in an amateurish way, missing the point, pontificating, applying glib rules of thumb, and making every mistake that a group of bright but wet behind the ears people might be expected to make. They would be so sure of themselves, it was frightening. Yet, in this class and study groups, subtle but profound changes would be occurring in the quality of discussion and analysis. By spring, wondrous new abilities would be showing and during the second year, a true blossoming would take place.

What accounts for the difference? What teaching strategies are held as key to the improvements in students’ behavior and ways of thinking?

At HBS, students are not taught in the way generally practiced by universities and training programs – that is, by lectures and reading. Rather, they learn by discussing cases that lack simple answers and making up their minds themselves in the presence of a master teacher. The theory behind that work is that students learn more realistically if presented with concrete problems from experience, and more thoroughly if they are forced to distill the lessons of those experiences themselves rather than be spoon fed the principles. (Ewing, p. 14)

Interactive Teaching – It’s Not for Every Teacher

Having made a case for the importance of interactive teaching as a means of elevating students’ higher order skills, and empowering them as independent thinkers, I must also add some caveats for those who might wish to consider this approach with their own classes. While I would, on the one hand, advocate it as an important methodology for the kinds of learning goals we say we want for all students, I would, on the other hand, recommend that teachers wishing to consider this approach reflect on their own personae, their own values about teaching and learning, their own psychological mind-sets before embarking on using interactive discussions.

So I offer some caveats for teachers to consider:

Interactive classrooms are places where the tension of uncertainty is elevated. There are no answers that are sought; rather discussions leave students often in a state of ambiguity – from which they are required to find their own resolutions. Does this kind of classroom seem exciting? Does it seem “wrong?” Does it raise hackles to think that students leave the room with unanswered questions, without closure (Richart, Church & Morrison, 2011)?

Teachers who are comfortable with the elevation of uncertainty, who have a higher tolerance for dissonance, who see productivity in not knowing and counter-productivity in absolute closure, are more likely to consider interactive teaching. Those who depend on the safety of absolute ground are likely to find interactive teaching discrepant with their core values.

Fred Fenster teaches economics to first-year students at a community college. He believes his job as a teacher is to give students information, that student learning involves receiving the correct information to build a strong knowledge base. Fenster believes that only when students have the correct information will they be able to think about economic issues. Thinking occurs later, once the information is in place. He also believes that his particular skill as a lecturer makes for more effective information dispensing and knowledge building than is possible through written material. In his lectures, Fenster maintains tight control of the three important ingredients in a teaching/learning situation: time (when a task begins and how long it takes); operations (sequencing of lectures, monitoring students’ mastery of concepts, monitoring mastery of procedures); and standards (monitoring control over student performance) (Berlak & Berlak, 1981). He is more than unlikely to choose interactive discussions; in fact, this methodology would be anathema to his educational goals.

A teacher’s need for control is not a chosen value. It doesn’t come from having made a conscious choice of how to behave. It rather comes from teachers’ needs to feel “in charge,” or to feel “on top of situations.” Underlying this perception lies the thought that to “lose control” means losing one’s effectiveness as a teacher. Teachers who are ruled by such needs are not likely to be persuaded to use interactive teaching in their classrooms. Control needs militate against the more open, more uncertain, more discordant interactive classr...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Interactive Teaching: The What, the Why, and the How
• 2 The Shape of Teaching and Learning in the Interactive Classroom
• 3 Preparing for Interactive Teaching
• 4 Scenes from Interactive Classrooms
• 5 Basic Interactive Skills: Listening, Attending, Apprehending, Making Meaning
• 6 Basic Interactive Skills: Responding, Saying Back, Paraphrasing, Interpreting
• 7 Basic Interactive Skills: Questioning
• 8 The Well-Orchestrated Discussion
• 9 Reflecting in Action
• Appendix A: Practice in Listening, Attending, Paraphrasing, and Being Non-Judgmental
• Appendix B: Practice in Listening, Attending, and Responding
• Appendix C: Task Analysis
• Appendix D: Analyzing Interactions
• Appendix E: Cases
• Index