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CHAPTER 2

ENGINEERING ENGAGING CONVERSATIONS

The feeling of being interested can act as a kind of neurological signal, directing us to fruitful areas of inquiry.

—B. F. Skinner

The practice of engineering engaging conversations in the classroom provides a significant foundation for a successful culture of learning. Despite its invaluable contribution to learning, the process of engineering engaging conversations is completely underused when it comes to making real-time instructional adjustments. Teachers should not consider dialogue or active, social learning as strategies for rare occasions. Rather, engaging conversations should happen intentionally and consistently, not merely when it is convenient or when students seem ready. In other words, working collaboratively with peers in a learning context is vital to the process of learning and is imperative to being instructionally agile. Engineering engaging conversations marks a change in modern teaching and learning, as even direct instruction must include a pathway of provocative questions and compelling conversations that students drive themselves.

The Main Idea

Dylan Wiliam (2011) notes that engineering engaging conversations is a critical formative assessment practice. What does it mean to engineer conversations? During instruction, teachers design engaging conversations (for example, topics of interest, worthy questions, collective inquiry, provoked thinking, collaborative learning) within a wide variety of discussion formats, such as Socratic seminars, philosophical chairs, debates, and juried forums, and varied groupings (large group, small group, and one-on-one options), as a primary means of helping students explore the concepts at hand. While direct instruction provides the easiest pathway for dispersing key concepts and is the most teacher-controlled option for dispensing and then monitoring learning, it can fall short of helping students make meaning as they do when teachers invite them to co-create understanding with their peers through conversations. There are five significant reasons why a culture of learning must embrace engaging conversations as a cultural expectation and a core instructional practice. The first three benefit students, while the last two benefit teachers.

1. Developing speaking and listening skills

2. Promoting productive group work

3. Co-creating meaning

4. Gathering emerging evidence

5. Shifting power

Teachers benefit when students do the heavy lifting during the instructional process. When students control the conversation, it frees teachers from the demands of thinking ahead to the next instructional decision while they are in the midst of delivering direct instruction. It also provides more time for teachers to observe and interpret emerging evidence, making them more apt to respond with precision and flexibility along the way.

Develop Speaking and Listening Skills

Communication is a critical skill. It involves sharing thoughts, feelings, ideas, questions, concerns, and solutions in healthy and productive ways. While writing is an important medium for communicating, speaking and listening are far more common in the average person’s daily life. Virtually every state, province, region, and country has education standards for speaking and listening. Modern standards require students to be able to accomplish the following communication skills.

■ Communicate coherent instructions.

■ Express thoughts clearly.

■ Crisply articulate opinions.

■ Analyze and frame effective arguments.

■ Maintain a sustained conversation over a period of time with diverse audiences.

■ Motivate others through powerful speech.

Speaking and listening are critical 21st century communication skills and, as such, are relevant for study in every discipline, subject, and grade level. Revised standards, written to target the next generation’s needs at the state, provincial, and national levels, consistently require high levels of discourse in all subjects as the bridge between inputs (such as reading, viewing, listening, or observing) and outputs (such as writing, speaking, creating, or solving). When it comes to speaking and listening, there is much to learn. As the world continues to shrink through global interdependence and connectedness, the skills of clear communication and civil discourse continue to grow in importance.

Promote Productive Group Work

Engineering conversations involves employing constructs for collaborative group work in which teams work together to reach a common goal, capitalize on each team member’s strengths, and achieve a greater purpose. Like speaking and listening, productive group work is a 21st century skill or crosscurricular competency. The National Education Association (n.d.) states:

Generally, collaboration has been accepted as a skill that’s essential to achieve meaningful and effective results. In the past decade, however, it has become increasingly clear that collaboration is not only important but necessary for students and employees, due to globalization and the rise of technology. (p. 19)

To engineer conversations, teachers must do more than simply design interesting questions worth discussing; it involves employing robust, provocative, and meaningful questions that elicit observable evidence. This allows teachers to have access to student thinking that in turn allows them to respond with agility.

The Common Core State Standards (National Governors Association Center for Best Practices [NGA] & Council of Chief State School Officers [CCSSO], 2010) highlight some of the following features of productive group work:

• Participate in collaborative conversations with diverse partners … (SL.2.1)

• Follow agreed-upon rules for discussions … (SL.2.1a)

• Initiate and participate effectively in a range of collaborative discussions … (SL.9–10.1)

• Come to discussions prepared, having read and researched material under study; explicitly draw on that preparation by referring to evidence from texts and other research on the topic or issue to stimulate a thoughtful, well-reasoned exchange of ideas. (SL.9–10.1a)

• Work with peers to set rules for collegial discussions and decision making (e.g., informal consensus, taking votes on key issues, presentation of alternate views), clear goals and deadlines, and individual roles as needed. (SL.9–10.1b)

• Respond thoughtfully to diverse perspectives, summarize points of agreement and disagreement, and, when warranted, qualify or justify views and understanding and make new connections in light of the evidence and reasoning presented. (SL.9–10.1d)

Students of all ages must be able to speak in one-to-one situations, in small groups, in large groups, with people older than themselves, with peers, with individuals with whom they share ideology, and with individuals with whom they disagree. Moreover, they must understand the rules of quality discussions and follow protocols for different dialogue constructs.

According to Robert J. Marzano (2007), collaborative or cooperative learning is one of the most powerful instructional options a teacher has in the classroom. Most industries today value the idea of working—and learning—collaboratively. Education is no exception, as teachers engage in the work of professional learning communities (PLCs; DuFour, DuFour, & Eaker, 2008; DuFour, DuFour, Eaker, Many, & Mattos, 2016). Don Tapscott (2013), chancellor of Trent University, notes the following during his commencement speech to the graduating classes of business and nursing:

Collaboration is important not just because it’s a better way to learn. The spirit of collaboration is penetrating every institution and all of our lives. So learning to collaborate is part of equipping yourself for effectiveness, problem solving, innovation and life-long learning in an ever-changing networked economy.

Students’ success is based on their ability to survive in a workforce that demands productive group work. That means teachers must engineer thought-provoking conversations with an assessment mindset in order to provide students with realtime next steps.

Co-Create Meaning

Making meaning does not happen in a vacuum. No matter their age, students generally need to grapple with their understandings to create meaning and better refine their grasp of concepts. Many instructional theories (for example, project-based learning, constructivism, inquiry-based education, and authentic intellectual instruction) have attempted to capture this notion for classroom teachers:

After the late 1980s, theory and research increasingly emphasized inquiry-based instructional models, in which the teacher’s most important role was in designing lessons or learning experiences that involved guiding students toward new understanding through exploration and induction. (Louis, Leithwood, Wahlstrom, & Anderson, 2010, pp. 38–39)

Conversation, through exploration and inquiry, is essential for students to co-create meaning of their learning.

Peer-to-peer modeling can occur as students co-create meaning. Douglas Fisher and Nancy Frey (2010) and John Hattie (2009) note that ability grouping can be detrimental to students’ self-esteem and efficacy, so intentionally creating diverse groups is important to ensure each team’s success and each student’s opportunity to continue to learn: “As part of their interaction, productive group members share information and experiences, thus building each other’s background knowledge” (Fisher & Frey, 2010, p. 118). When teachers place students in mixed-ability groups to grapple with difficult concepts, struggling students, nonreaders, and second language students immerse themselves in a steady dose of:

■ Access to academic language (a deficit in vocabulary knowledge is a major obstacle to academic achievement)

■ Opportunities to hear and observe how students think and explore complex material

■ Exposure to complex material that they may not have otherwise accessed through personal reading

Likewise, in mixed groupings, strong readers and skilled students gain access to:

■ Clarity about potential pitfalls, misunderstandings, and misconceptions