Contrastive conversations are not new to many teachers. Contrastive conversations occur when the teacher involves students in sharing their thinking with each other in a public way and then uses what was shared as a way to investigate the similarities and differences across ideas. These conversations may vary in name and form across content areas (contrastive conversations might also be referred to as strategy conversations in mathematics and so on) but they share the core elements and principles that we focus on here. First, a problem is posed or a question asked that allows for multiple approaches to an important content-based idea. Second, students are provided ample time to engage with the problem or issue in a way that makes sense to them. Third, the students share their ideas with the other students in the class. Fourth, the class works together to detail the ideas shared. Fifth, the shared ideas are compared to highlight both similarities and differences. Sixth, students are given an opportunity to try their own or someone else’s strategy on a new problem. While there are always subtle aspects of the work that surround these elements, these elements taken together constitute a contrastive conversation.
Contrastive conversations occur when (a) the problem or issue addressed lends itself to detailing a range of responses, (b) the teacher is interested in engaging the students in sense making around a particular idea or (c) students will benefit from detailing their own thinking in relation to others’.
Contrastive conversations are particularly useful when the problem posed or issue addressed lends itself to a range of different ideas or strategies that one’s students can access. The content-based issue to be addressed provides openings for students to begin to work on it in their own way and thus, elicits a range of ideas. Often when contrastive conversations don’t get off the ground it is due to the problem posed, whether it lends itself to students using what they know to come up with a variety of ways of thinking through the problem or whether it was too easy or too difficult for the students.
Second, contrastive conversations support the development of an idea as students engage together in sense making. Contrastive conversations are not about three students and the teacher. They involve discussion that brings together all the students in the class to make sense of the issue being addressed. Students work together to unpack, often through discussion, the problem itself. They work on detailing their own ideas and comparing the different ideas that are shared. Students engage in individual sense making and then share and develop their ideas as they engage with the class. Contrastive conversations are not just about process. They are in service of learning particular ideas about the content. This requires consistent attention throughout the conversations to the content, both by the teacher and the students.
Figure 3. Steps to a contrastive conversation.
Third, contrastive conversations occur so that students can articulate their own thinking and compare their ideas to others, learning more about the content. Asking students to share their thinking means just that. Students publicly describe their ideas in oral and often written form. The teacher and students work together to detail the idea by asking questions or discussing a part of the idea. Typically sharing would not stop with one idea shared. Sharing a range of ideas provides students the opportunity to engage with an idea that might make sense to them and allows for a comparison across ideas. The comparison across ideas is the part of the contrastive conversation that is often skipped. However, this is also the aspect of the conversation that provides the most opportunity to make connections and develop understanding of the underlying content-based idea.
Contrastive conversations begin not with the sharing discussion, but when the problem is posed. The work that occurs by students and the teacher as they unpack the problem and begin to work through their ideas is critical to the success of the contrastive conversation. As can be seen in the example, after the problem is posed the teacher and students work through the problem and document their individual approaches and ideas in ways that they can refer back to when they share their ideas with the class. During a contrastive conversation students need opportunities to not only complete a strategy but they need to be working through how they would talk about their idea, what representations they will use to show what they did, and so on. The teacher can use this time to read the terrain, and find out how students have thought about the problem. The teacher can position students to share and engage students in talking in pairs with each other about their strategy. The teacher can challenge a students’ thinking and scaffold movement to a new idea. The teacher can listen to student’s explanations and support students in providing detail. This work all occurs as a part of contrastive conversations.
Contrastive conversations are not contrastive conversations without (1) student agency around the strategies, (2) active discussion that involves all students, (3) attention to the core content. Throughout the conversations students must maintain ownership over their own ideas. Each student needs to have the opportunity to make sense of the problem in their own way. Thinking through the problem in one’s own way first provides access to learning more about the content embedded in the problem. It is difficult to listen to another’s idea without
some notion of how to make sense of the problem oneself. It is difficult to ask questions or compare without something to relate it to for oneself. Positioning oneself in relation to a particular idea is what makes the contrastive conversation work.