An Imaginary Party Sparks Academic Conversation

ACM Inroads

Available for iPad, Available for iOS, "… stop for a moment and listen during the student discussions. They're talking. All the way to the back! I had no idea you could have a classroom like that. And guess what? They're learning!"

ERIC Document Reproduction Service, 2013

Students studying together inside their classrooms is widely advocated in the literature on teaching methodology. This paper provides a brief overview on the idea of students also studying together outside of class, either face-to-face or electronically. Such out of class student-student interaction offers many of the same benefits of in class collaboration. Teachers and students have for many years been organizing this student-student interaction, whether it is: organized by the educational institution, such as peer mentoring programs or special facilities; organized by teachers and instructors, such as in the case of group projects on which students are assigned to collaborate; or organized by the students themselves, for instance, two or more students who decide on their own to come together to study for an exam or to offer each other online feedback on their essay assignments. The paper’s structure is based on answering the 5W and 1H questions about Out-of-Class Academic Collaboration, i.e., who, what, when, where, why, and how. Nineteen references are provided from practical, research, and theoretical works.

When students chatter in class it can be disruptive, but could that chatter also have some redeeming qualities? We asked students to keep track of their social interactions in a particular class. On days when students had more social interactions than usual, they reported a greater sense of belonging, which was, in turn, related to greater class enjoyment (i.e., a withinperson effect). Further, students who tended to have more social interactions than others reported a greater sense of belonging, which was, in turn, related to greater class enjoyment (i.e., a between-person effect). These results held when examining daily ratings of social interactions, belonging, and class enjoyment, and when examining overall end-of-semester ratings. Critically, higher average daily feelings of belonging mediated the effect of the number of average daily classroom interactions on students' end-of-semester class enjoyment and marginally on grades. For educators, promoting peer-to-peer conversation may create a positive effect by which students judge the overall class experience positively.

Pedagogies: An International Journal, 2018

Collaborative social practices that people participate in to coauthor, or co-create, support, and sustain, a classroom community are challenging to research and represent because they are fluid and emergent, and interdependent and cumulative, as they develop across time and space, across experiences and relations. In this article, we take a year-long look at how a weekly whole class greeting ritual, a Class Handshake, serves as a socio-epistemicembodied-community building practice. We provide a rich description of the dialogic what and how of the Class Handshake ritual, and articulate connections between the Class Handshake and other classroom values and practices. We explore ways this collaborative social practice enacted values and relations that anchored a dialogic teaching and learning stance in this classroom community. We find that the Class Handshake functions like a "polyphonic web," manifesting and perpetuating a sense of "We"-ness of this classroom community of practice. This study adds to classroom literature that considers dialogic stance and dialogic teaching and learning practices across time. Importantly, this sociocultural discourse analytic study extends attention beyond procedural moves to a big picture examination of purposeful, accretive, and coherent orchestrations of collaborative practices and relations that, together and across time, build classroom community.

T he principal of a large, urban middle school enters Ms. Cecil's 7th-grade classroom during a social studies lesson. One by one, students read a paragraph aloud from the textbook. Between readers, Ms. Cecil asks literal recall questions to random students. If students don't answer accurately, Ms. Cecil reprimands them for not paying attention. At the end of the chapter, students dutifully get out a piece of paper, each writing her/his name and the date neatly in the right-hand corner of the page. One student asks his neighbor for a piece of paper, and Ms. Cecil quickly calls him to her desk where she scolds him for not being prepared and for talking without permission. Ms. Cecil directs students to follow their routine and complete the comprehension questions at the end of the chapter. She encourages them to cover their answers. The principal leaves the class wondering how Ms. Cecil is able to keep all her students on-task almost all the time. Most teachers in the school have diffi culty with management and keeping students engaged.

T he principal of a large, urban middle school enters Ms. Cecil's 7th-grade classroom during a social studies lesson. One by one, students read a paragraph aloud from the textbook. Between readers, Ms. Cecil asks literal recall questions to random students. If students don't answer accurately, Ms. Cecil reprimands them for not paying attention. At the end of the chapter, students dutifully get out a piece of paper, each writing her/his name and the date neatly in the right-hand corner of the page. One student asks his neighbor for a piece of paper, and Ms. Cecil quickly calls him to her desk where she scolds him for not being prepared and for talking without permission. Ms. Cecil directs students to follow their routine and complete the comprehension questions at the end of the chapter. She encourages them to cover their answers. The principal leaves the class wondering how Ms. Cecil is able to keep all her students on-task almost all the time. Most teachers in the school have diffi culty with management and keeping students engaged.

1991

A case study examined the brief conversations about writing that took place between a high school English teacher and two of his students. One illustrative writing conference conversation lastine; 1 minute and 19 seconds shows how, through the push and pull of their short exchange, student and teacher simultaneously read the book, read the writing assignment, and read each other, revising their "readings" along the way. Another such conference between the teacher and a different student, lasting 1 minute and :I. second, illustrates how the student examined a rhetorical strategy that had begun to look problematic and worked through a solution that confirmed her original plans. Because he has limited amounts of time in which to converse with each student, yet places high value on such talk, the teacher has adopted four strict strategies to make such conversation possible. These "ordinary" and quickly fleeting exchanges between teacher and student are critical events in the business of learning to write. (RS)

who, 2018

no abstract

1991

Abstract: For more than a centruy, American schooling has ben conducted in much the same way: The teacher assigns a text for the students to master and then assesses their learning. Known as the" recitation script," this repeated cycle of assign-assess is far from the natural kind of teaching by which societies have been instructing their young since the dawn of time. Contemporary eductional reform is now emphasizing the fundamental, natural method of teaching, which is the assisting of learners through the instructional conversation.