How to Facilitate Meaningful Classroom Conversations across Disciplines, Grade Levels, and Digital Platforms
Document Type
Book
Publication Date
2020
Abstract
How can teachers facilitate meaningful classroom conversations in which students engage in shared inquiry, building on what others have written or said (even to disagree)? Such discussions can have many benefits: students can learn from each other, can bring their out-of-school ways of talking into classroom dialog, can make evidence-based, collaborative arguments, and can begin to communicate like historians, scientists, or other members of disciplinary communities. Yet classroom discussions often fail, teaching students implicitly that they have little to learn from school or each other, that their home-language practices are not welcome, that the loudest voice wins the argument, and that academic discourse is as mystifying and alien as the views of anyone who disagrees with them. Outside the classroom, dialog has never been more important. From climate-change summits or peace talks among neighboring nations, to clashes between rival ethnic groups or political-party mudslinging, to workplace conversations or a traffic stop on a dark street, we must learn to bring our own and others’ words into relationship with integrity or suffer the consequences. This book offers concepts, concrete classroom examples, and activities for teachers and students to transform classroom conversations into successful discussions across disciplines, grade levels, and digital platforms.
Was this content written or created while at USF?
Yes
Citation / Publisher Attribution
How to Facilitate Meaningful Classroom Conversations across Disciplines, Grade Levels, and Digital Platforms, Bloomsbury Publishing, 248 p.
Scholar Commons Citation
Sherry, Michael B., "How to Facilitate Meaningful Classroom Conversations across Disciplines, Grade Levels, and Digital Platforms" (2020). Teaching and Learning Faculty Publications. 748.
https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/tal_facpub/748
