Canadian Journal of Action Research Volume 23, Issue 1, 2023, pages 43-67
STRUCTURED STUDENT CONVERSATIONS AND THEIR IMPACT
Kelsey Walker
Goshen County School District #1 Phu Vu
University of Nebraska at Kearney
ABSTRACT
This action research described how a middle school teacher integrated five discussion protocols including structured controversy, pair communication, triad protocol, personal experience panel, and Socratic seminar into her sixth-grade Language Arts classes. Collected data from three different sources indicated an overall improvement of both student conversational skills and relationship skills when various discussion protocols were implemented in the classroom.
Discussions and teacher's reflections were included.
KEY WORDS:Conversational skills; Discussion protocols; Relationship skills; Social-emotional learning; Student discourse
INTRODUCTION
The students had been begging and pleading for days: “Can we please get a new seating chart?” Finally, a new month meant a new seating arrangement for students. Four desks grouped together made a “pod” and students stood around all six pods with their backpacks still on their backs, waiting for the verdict. I pulled out the jar of popsicle sticks with their names written on each one. The randomization had begun. I doled out the new seating chart for the third quarter of the school year by pulling a few random popsicle sticks per pod and calling out names. As I pointed to the pod that would become each students' new home base for the next several weeks, there was a mix of emotions from the sixth-grade students. Some were excited to be seated next to their friends, while others were disappointed they did not switch pods or get a brand-new spot, especially by the big windows. “Change is good,” I said, trying to explain why I periodically changed seating charts throughout the year. “You get to know different people.” I continued as students reacted to my explanation with a chorus of grumbles.
When I revealed the last pod’s spots, one student was clearly upset. She was only paired with one other girl, and she made her disdain obvious. “I don’t want to sit there with her!” She complained to anyone who would listen to her. From across the room, I watched the scene unfold. The girl who was on the receiving side of the tactless comment stared at the student in disbelief and calmly told her while looking straight into her eyes: “Well, that was rude.”
Not necessarily a challenge but rather an observation. Then the pair, both disgruntled at the new seating arrangement, plopped their backpacks down on their new seats and proceeded to avoid eye contact for the rest of the class. I’m sure group work with that pod will need quite a bit of teacher guidance, I thought as I wearily continued with the lesson for the day.
This was not what I wanted to happen in my sixth-grade Language Arts classroom. I had taught sixth-grade for three years and, before that, seventh-grade for four years. In my seventh year as a middle school Language Arts teacher, I felt that I had established a warm, caring community of learners. Beginning the school year with teamwork activities that required students to get to know each other while learning how to function in groups, was a routine practice. There was even a teamwork poster signed by all of the students as a reminder of their commitment to work together throughout the school year. Students seemed to get along fine with each other during these classroom activities, but what about the rest of the time? This simple question opened the floodgate of further questioning. Had students been faking their peer relationship skills just for the classroom activities instead of learning the art of relationships, the art of truly understanding each other? How could students react so distastefully to one another halfway through the school year? These questions flooded my mind, one after another. Between my five class periods of Language Arts, I wanted all 69 of my students to be extending happy faces, great attitudes, and caring towards one another. Halfway through the school year, I thought I had been doing a decent job at building classroom community and teaching the importance of showing empathy for others and the value of learning from one another. The aforementioned situation took place over the span of thirty seconds but caused me to re-evaluate every lesson I had taught for the entire school year.
The problem I observed day after day with my middle school students was relationship skills.
According to Frey at al. (2019), relationship skills include skills such as communication, social engagement, relationship building, and teamwork. Woods-Groves (2015) observed that students with social and emotional skills tended to perform better academically, maintain stronger relationships with their peers and teachers, achieve greater well-being, and engage in less risky behaviors. Despite the numerous benefits of good relationship skills, and other social and emotional skills, my students lacked immensely in this area. As the seating chart incident highlighted, my students did not have the skill of peer acceptance or understanding, quintessential foundations for relationship skills. In fact, they behaved quite bitterly to each other more often than not. So, why had I not explicitly taught my students proper relationship skills? With pressures of district and state reading and writing assessments, there was not even enough time in the academic schedule to teach all of the mandated content standards, let alone skills not directly dictated by the state of Wyoming.
Upon reflection, this was a disservice to my students. As a professional, I knew I had to make instructional changes.
Throughout the past several years, social emotional learning (SEL) has received an uptick of attention, especially in the aftermath of a global pandemic. The Early Intervention Foundation (2021) indicated that teaching SEL within classrooms, schools, and communities benefits student academics, improves student lifetime outcomes, and enhances student behaviors. In the same vein, Schonert-Reichl (2017) argued that students taught in a SEL- oriented classroom tended to better understand their thoughts and emotions, be more self- aware, and develop more empathy for others within their community as well as the world around them. Being interested in SEL and focusing on the relationship skills competency for my students, I hoped that they would also be able to communicate with others more effectively and, in turn, learn from their peers through positive interactions.
Action research is a form of practitioner inquiry that is often used in the field of education. It involves the researchers or practitioners engaging in a research process with the aim of improving some aspect of their practice, and then observing and reflecting on the results (Bennett et al., 2022; Dadds, 2020). This type of research can be helpful in classrooms because it allows teachers to identify areas where of improvement and then take steps to address these issues. Additionally, it provides students with opportunities to participate in their own learning process and helps them develop critical thinking skills (Kemmis et al., 2014).
Within the topic of action research, teacher inquiry is a form of action research conducted by teachers in order to solve a problem of practice within one’s own context – in this case, my own classroom. Mertler (2021) outlines teacher inquiry as a way for teachers to utilize an investigative and reflective process to learn about themselves as teachers and practitioners while further exploring educational topics of professional interest within their own classroom settings. There are a number of different ways that teacher inquiry can be implemented in a classroom setting. One approach is for the teacher, as a researcher and insider, to come up with a question or problem of practice they would like to investigate. I decided to start my first teacher inquiry journey to see if implementing more student verbal discourse in the classroom, by means of discussion protocols through an action research project, would make a positive impact on student relationship skills.
DESCRIPTION OF SCHOOL AND CLASSROOM SETTING
The research took place at a small rural public middle school in Wyoming in the US. The school is a Title 1 school serving grades 6-8 with 41% of students on free/reduced lunch.
According to the U.S. Department of Education, a Title 1 school is an educational setting in which children from low-income families make up at least 40% of enrollment and is therefore eligible to use Title I funds by the federal government to operate schoolwide programs that serve all children in the school in order to raise the achievement of the lowest- achieving students. District-wide the school demographics are as follows: 80% white, 7%
Hispanic, 3% two or more races, 1% Native, and less than 1% Asian, Black, and Pacific Islander. The school currently serves 248 students, 69 of whom were the lead teacher’s current sixth-grade students whose ages range from 11-13. The students were equally dispersed throughout five classes which were 47 minutes in duration, except Friday classes
were 36 minutes each due to a 1:30 pm early release every week. The teacher taught every student for one class period per day.
The sixth-grade students involved in this action research were new to Wyoming Middle School (WMS, a pseudonym), as the school serves grades 6-8. In their grade 5 year, each student had one out of four 5th grade teachers who taught them Language Arts content skills.
However, at WMS, Kelsey Walker was the sole Language Arts teacher for all sixth-grade students in the school. Out of the 69 students, 30 students were boys and 39 were girls.
Although all 69 students were enrolled in Language Arts, 27 of the students were enrolled in a reading intervention class due to low state assessment scores and prior classroom performance. Out of these 27 students, seven of them were on Individualized Education Programs (IEP). The students enrolled in reading intervention were equally distributed throughout the five class periods of Language Arts, although six of the students on IEPs were in one Language Arts class. This class was co-taught with a special education teacher to provide students with their reading service time, as outlined in their IEPs. One Language Arts class, aside from the co-taught class, had the aid of one educational assistant. Two of the 69 students were on progress monitoring for ESL.
DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF INTERVENTION
This journey was propelled by Kelsey Walker’s recent takeaways from two professional development conferences. At the start of her inquiry journey, she had recently presented and attended the yearly conference of a locally renowned literacy organization in Colorado, and attended a Public Education and Business Coalition teaching argument writing workshop.
From these two conferences, she was reminded of the importance of incorporating rich experiences in oral language to support classroom learning. Gough and Tunmer (1986) outlined the importance of oral language as part of the simple view of reading, which argues that both word recognition and language comprehension work together enhance reading comprehension. Both conferences left her with takeaways to support elevated levels of oral language for students in order to improve their overall language comprehension. With the belief that it was important for her students to learn from one another by means of academic conversations, she now had the tools to support that belief, courtesy of those professional development experiences.
In order to foster more verbal discourse in the classroom, the teacher utilized various discussion protocols stemming from the professional development sessions. EL Education (2022) outlines the importance of protocols, stating, “Protocols provide the skeleton upon which students can safely build their own ideas: helping shy students to participate, reining in overly enthusiastic learners, and in general leveling the playing ground” (para. 5). These discussion protocols allow students to lean on one another to learn the concepts of the lessons, which improves their overall relationship skills. By allowing students to experience a variety of discussion protocols, students gain valuable insight to the complexities of both conversation and content. Young (2014) conducted research with third grade students and concluded that teachers should “create conditions for emergent comprehension in a complex adaptive discussion” (p. 438). The teacher chose five discussion protocols from her recent professional development experiences to use with her students in order to determine
whether they could help her students communicate with others more effectively and learn from each other by using positive interactions. Those discussion protocols included structured controversy, pair communication, triad protocol, personal experience panel, and Socratic seminar. During all the protocol implementations, the teacher facilitated the protocols by assigning randomized groupings for each protocol, keeping time, and observing discussions. These protocol interventions were implemented over the course of three weeks.
Each of the protocols were used at least once during the three-week research period (Socratic seminar was utilized twice). With the problem of practice identified, the research hypothesis developed, and the interventions selected, the idea of conducting research in the classroom for the first time seemed daunting. As this was the teacher’s first experience with teacher inquiry, she chose a brief intervention period to make the process more manageable within an already full school year. Although a short intervention period was not ideal, especially for more concrete conclusions, she wanted to focus on the process of teacher inquiry with a shorter time frame to ensure each step of the process was completed fully.
The duration of the intervention period also let the teacher incorporate the process into her three week cross-curricular “refugee” unit, where students engage with texts centered on the refugee experience from a variety of perspectives. The three-week refugee unit was a follow-up to the prior “immigration” cross-curricular unit where students explored texts centered on various immigration experiences from around the world. For the refugee unit, students read the middle grade novel Other Words for Home, a story about a Syrian refugee girl named Jude who moves to America, and other informational articles with common topics. The discussion protocols were introduced to and utilized by students within this curricular unit. All the discussion protocols centered on one reading literature standard and one reading informational standard and, throughout the three-week research period, students took two formative assessments (one for each standard). These assessments tested student skills of two standards to informally and quickly check how their content skills had developed throughout the curricular unit. The first standard used for formative assessment purposes captured student understanding of identifying claims, evidence, and reasoning in informational texts. The second standard, used on the second formative assessment, tested students on story setting and how that setting contributes to the plot of a literature text. A writing pre-assessment was completed that gave the teacher insight into student’s skills for writing an argumentative essay, which allowed her to plan a future curricular unit.
STRUCTURED CONTROVERSY PROTOCOL
The first intervention, structured controversy, was implemented over the course of three days. A structured controversy, sometimes called structured academic controversy, is a type of cooperative learning strategy in which student partners study a controversial issue from multiple perspectives. The structured academic controversy technique is designed to engage students in controversy and then guide them to seek consensus (Bruen et al., 2016). As a whole class, students read aloud a topical news article about Russia invading Ukraine. When classes read the text, the teacher modeled how to annotate their paper copies in order to find evidence supporting two opposing claims; that Ukrainians should flee their country and become refugees, or that Ukrainians should stay in Ukraine despite the invasion. The process of understanding and annotating the text was done as a whole group to ensure equal access
to the text so they could ultimately create arguments to support the two claims. Although teacher modeling for annotating evidence was essential when the class initially began reading the text, the teacher did less modeling and encouraged students to create their own annotations as the reading progressed.
For this intervention, students were randomly assigned partners to work with. The original partners did not change throughout the activity. The partnership was assigned one side of the two-sided argument. When the teacher applied this protocol to her classes, she assigned partner pairs one of two positions. The teacher assigned both claims equally for all classes in an effort to ensure equal representation. The partners worked together, using the informational news article (which provided evidence for both claims) to create an argument that supported their assigned claim. Students took notes and rehearsed their arguments during the designated work time. They were told that after 20 minutes of work time with their partners, they would verbally present their claim, evidence, and reasoning to another group who had the opposite claim. These working groups of four total students did not change throughout the protocol. Before presenting their arguments the teacher told students that active listening in a classroom setting typically consisted of students looking at the speaker, not talking when the speaker is talking, and gently nodding from time to time to show understanding. She also encouraged students to take brief notes when partners presented so that they could remember their key points of their argument. Each pair of students presented their argument while the other pair listened. Then, the listening partners verbally summarized the main points of the speaking partner’s argument. If the summary was done to the approval of the speaking partners, the first portion of the protocol was complete, and groups were to wait for all students to finish. If the listening partner’s summary was not satisfactory to the speaking partners, then the speaking partners needed to verbally discuss what main points were missing from their summary.
After both pairs had presented their arguments and summarized their opponent’s arguments, the student partners were instructed that they would repeat the process they just experienced but by using the opposite claim as a basis for the argument. However, for the second argument, partners could not use any points or evidence that the other pair of students already used in their group of four. Original partners reconvened to develop their own arguments, separate from their collective group of four students. They again took notes and rehearsed their arguments during this period of work time for an additional 20 minutes.
After the pairs had developed an argument for the opposite claim, without using any evidence shared by the other pair, they again verbally shared their new argument with their groups of four. The oral argument protocol was repeated, with speaking partners sharing their arguments and listening partners utilizing the active listening techniques and taking notes on their main points. At the conclusion of the presentation of the argument, the listening partners summarized the main points verbally. If it was done properly, the speaking partners said so. If it was done insufficiently, the speaking partners verbally shared what points were missing from the summary. Then, the partner roles switched. The speaking partners became the listening partners and vice versa. The process of sharing the argument and summarizing the argument was repeated for the opposite claim, too.
The third and final portion of the protocol involved groups coming to a consensus. However, class time was short, and the teacher wanted students to take time to individually process the structured controversy experience and form their own opinions. At that point, students completed a one paragraph personal writing assignment about whether they thought that Ukrainians should become refugees or stay in Ukraine and why. At that point, students could use any of the most compelling evidence shared throughout the structured controversy protocol in their own writing. The teacher used this student writing sample as a pre- assessment to measure student ability to write an argumentative essay for an upcoming curricular unit.
SOCRATIC SEMINAR PROTOCOL
After three days of the structured controversy protocol, the teacher used the same informational text about the invasion of Ukraine that students had already read and annotated for the application of Socratic seminar protocol. After each student’s writing was completed on the argumentative topic, they then did a formative assessment on a reading informational standard where they needed to demonstrate understanding of claim, evidence, and reasoning in the text they read as a class. The first question on the formative assessment asked students to circle three supporting details from the text to support the president’s claim that war should be avoided. The second question asked students to explain whether or not they thought the claim was valid using evidence from the text. This brief formative assessment provided the teacher with a quick data source to determine if students understood the essential elements of argumentative texts (i.e., claim, evidence, and validity).
If students needed extra support with this skill, the teacher retaught specific students that skill during an intervention class period.
All students had previously written a paragraph using evidence from the article that argued whether they thought Ukrainians should become refugees or stay in their country. That topic was then used for the Socratic seminar protocol, where all students had the opportunity to voice their opinion on the topic in a whole-group structure. The Socratic seminar protocol, as outlined by Expeditionary Learning (2012) involves a whole class discussion that starts with a teacher-given problem/prompt and a text set featuring issues stemming from the topic. Socratic seminars begin with the text set where students read the text and annotate it independently for 15 minutes to allow for independent thinking time and preparation before the discussion takes place. Independent thinking time and preparation was already done by students when they completed their opinion writing at the conclusion of the structured controversy protocol. After completing the formative assessment independently, the whole class participated in a Socratic seminar. According to the protocol process, the physical arrangement of Socratic seminars is crucial. All students should be seated in a large circle to ensure everyone can easily see each other without looking over their shoulders or turning their bodies. Then, students discuss the prompt and text set in a whole group setting for 10 minutes, receive feedback from the teacher, and then resume with a five final minutes of discussion.
Before commencing the protocol, the teacher rearranged desks and chairs in a big, round circle on the outskirts of the classroom so that every student could easily make eye contact
with all the other students in the room. With one open-ended discussion question driving the entire protocol, the teacher posed the same discussion question that students used to complete the structured controversy protocol and their writing: Should Ukrainians leave Ukraine and become refugees or stay in Ukraine despite the ongoing conflict with Russia?
Students were able to use their writing to aid them in the discussion. The teacher instructed students that they could share what they had written, their opinion or background information on the topic, or respond to what someone had said in the discussion. She encouraged positive questioning techniques and provided three question stems students could use. The discussion stems included: “What do you mean when you say…?”, “I agree with what you say because…?”, “I disagree with what you say because…?” The teacher told students that they did not need to raise their hands to speak because she would not be involved in the discussion and would not be calling on students to speak. Students were advised to use active listening strategies as in the previous protocol and were reminded that active listening in a classroom setting consists of students looking at the speaker, not talking when the speaker is talking, and gently nodding from time to time to show understanding.
The teacher opened the Socratic seminar discussion by asking who would like to speak first.
Once a student was selected, the teacher gave one final reminder that she would not be directing the discussion but rather students should decide who speaks next, as the discussion was theirs and theirs alone. Students then discussed the question for ten minutes without the teacher interrupting, even when students spoke over one another. This often caused students to have confused looks on their faces, as this diverged from the established norms.
After ten minutes of discussion, the teacher stopped the activity. She reminded students of active listening techniques and challenged them to approach the last five minutes of discussion with the intent of active listening. After the student discussion concluded, the teacher pointed out instances where students had used active listening techniques, stems to incite discussion, and outstanding points made by students to support their argument using textual evidence and logical reasoning.
PAIR COMMUNICATION PROTOCOL
After exploring the topic of Ukrainian refugees, students began reading the classroom novel, Other Words for Home, which tells the fictional story of a Syrian refugee girl who moves to America with her mother to escape violence in her home country. Students studied the novel for two class days as a whole group, and were taught elements of the exposition, such as setting, characters, and glimpses into the potential problems within the plotline. After students were exposed to literary elements in the first 50 pages of the free verse novel, they participated in the pair communication protocol. As outlined by White and Mohr (2017), pair communication encourages students to work with together and focuses on active listening within pairs of students. The teacher explained the process to students and projected instructions on the board. For this lesson, students were randomly paired and the protocol was outlined. Students completed four rounds of discussion using one question per round.
For each round, both partners A and B had the opportunity to verbally respond and listen/summarize.
While partner A verbally answered a discussion prompt, partner B used active listening skills for 60 seconds. The teacher reminded students of the elements of active listening (i.e., looking at the speaker, not talking when the speaker is talking, and gently nodding to show understanding). At the end of the 60 second discussion, partner B paraphrased partner A’s speaking points. For 15 seconds, partner A gave feedback about how they felt the round had progressed. Then, partners switch roles and repeat the same process. Students completed the first round of discussion by answering the question: What do we know about the characters in the novel so far? Students had copies of the novel so they could refer to the pages they read in class, if needed. The teacher timed the round and once the first round was completed, she pointed out groups who had been using active listening skills and brought up pertinent points to answer the question. She also applauded specific students who were successful at summarizing their partner’s discussion. Multiple rounds of discussion questions were conducted with the same partners so that the discussions could gain momentum as the partners gained familiarity with one another. For the second round of discussion, students responded to the question: What do we know about the setting of the novel so far? Students then repeated the protocol using active listening skills, discussing, and summarizing. In the third round, they responded to the question: What do we know about the conflict of the novel so far? During the last round of discussion students made a prediction for what they thought might happen next in the novel.
After the conversational protocol, the students completed an individual formative assessment of the unit. The questions on the formative assessment centered on story setting and how setting contributes to the plot text. There were three questions on this formative assessment: When and where does the story take place? How does the war contribute to the development of the plot? How would the story change if the book were originally set in America instead of Syria? If the formative assessment showed students needed extra support with the standard, the teacher retaught the skills in an intervention class during a different class period of the day.
TRIAD PROTOCOL
After two more class days of reading a subsequent section of the novel with lessons centered on the rising action of plotlines, students participated in the triad protocol intervention.
Building on active listening, the triad protocol as outlined by Easton (2009) consists of student groups of three, determined at random. Each student has one role per round:
discusser, questioner, and summarizer. For each round, student groups are given one question relating to the content. When the teacher applied this protocol, she had students complete four total rounds of discussion, with student discussion roles rotating for each round. Each discussion round consisted of one primary question, and one follow-up question to connect to the students’ lives.
The protocol started with round one, which had the following question prompt: According to the main character, how is Syria different from America? This question tied into the formative assessment students had just completed, which centered on the setting of the story. Each discussion round also included page references so that if the discussers did not immediately know the answer to the primary question they could refer back to the novel.
Also, if the questioners needed guidance to deepen the conversation, they could refer back to the designated pages in the novel. This allowed the discussion rounds to be centered on the text, while students also practiced the skill of using textual evidence. The discusser answered the question and if there was a break in the discussion, the questioner would ask the discusser a question in an effort to stimulate a deeper discussion. For example, in the first round, some questioners asked: “What are some differences of Syria that Jude mentions on page 40?” Then the discussers could scan the page and continue with their discussion.
The teacher kept track of the discussers’ allotted 60 second time limit. After the discussers’
time, the summarizers had 30 seconds to verbally summarize the conversation that had taken place. Students rotated jobs in subsequent rounds.
The question prompt for the first round was: “How does Jude’s American family interact with her? Do you have similar interactions with your family members?” This personal question was added to the prompt in an effort to help students connect with the characters in the novel. In turn, the follow-up questions created a space where students connected with the other students in their triad. The question was designed to make students feel more comfortable with the protocol, as they could talk about their own lives instead of trying to answer the question about the book correctly. There were no right or wrong answers, which helped put students at ease with the structured conversation. The new discussers had 60 seconds to answer the prompt, while the new questioners waited for a break in the discussion to ask questions to deepen the conversation. If there was no break in the conversation, the questioners did not need to interject. The questioner was there to support the discusser but only if needed. At the end of the 60 seconds, the new summarizers had 30 seconds to summarize the conversation that had just taken place. For the third round, students answered this prompt: “In what ways is Jude different in America than she was in Syria? Do you think moving to a different country would change you - why or why not?”
Student roles were rotated again for the final round. The final round prompt was: What are some challenges refugees have when they move to a different country? How are these challenges similar or different from your challenges? Students completed the final round of discussion using the same process as outlined above.
PERSONAL EXPERIENCE PANEL PROTOCOL
Students had an additional day to read another section of the novel, with the instructional lesson centering on the climax or conflict of the story. Students then read an article about a present-day Syrian refugee family living in America and going to an American school for the first time, as did the protagonist in the novel, Other Words for Home. The article was accompanied by a short video which featured an interview with the Syrian family and showed the children’s first day of school. After reading the article and viewing the video, volunteers were asked to participate in the personal experience panel protocol. The personal experience panel is modeled after professional conference panels where experts share their opinions on various topics. This protocol in the classroom setting consists of 3-5 students who discuss teacher-given questions related to a topic. The National Equity Project (n.d.) outlined the primary guidelines of the protocol which includes equal time for speakers to speak, no interruption from other participants or listeners, no criticism from participants,
and undivided attention to the speaker. The panelists address the audience of students in the classroom with the goal of sharing information rather than conducting a discussion with the other panelists. The setup of this protocol is paramount: panelist chairs were in a single row at the front of the room facing toward the audience. This setup ensured that students addressed the audience rather than engaging in direct discussion with the other panelists.
Because the attention of the entire class was on one speaker, unlike other protocols that were constructed in smaller student groups, the teacher picked student names at random but then asked if they would like to be a panelist. Classes ranged from three to five volunteers per round. When the discussion protocol was applied in the classroom, the teacher provided six questions for the prompt that panelists could discuss. Questions were all open-ended questions about characters in the novel or other class texts that centered on the topic of refugees. Panelists could discuss any of the following questions about the novel and/or the informational article: Do you think Jude is lucky? Is Sara justified in her opinion of Jude? Do you think Jude’s dad should have become a refugee? How do you connect with Jude? What are you learning through this book? What are some challenges refugee students face?
Panelists had two choices for their discussion; they could either answer the teacher- provided questions or they could build on another panelist’s ideas (which could include disagreeing with a panelist’s opinion). All students received equal amounts of time to discuss the prompt, while the rest of the class listened but did not verbally participate in the discussion. Reminders were provided about active listening. The teacher kept a running clock and privately documented how long each panelist spoke in total seconds. Once the total time for a panelist reached two minutes, the teacher announced that the panelist had reached the limits of their discussion and could not voice further opinions; this allowed other panelists equal speaking time and equal opportunity to share their thoughts. Most students spoke for between 60 and 120 seconds throughout the round. While some classes completed one round of panel discussion, a few classes had enough time left in the period to complete a second round with different panelists examining the same question prompts.
THE FINAL CLASSROOM DISCUSSION
After two additional days reading the further in the novel, with instructional lessons on falling action of plotlines, students participated in a final intervention. This took the form of a second Socratic seminar that followed the same structure as the one conducted three weeks earlier. The Socratic seminar protocol is a whole group discussion where all students get the same opportunity to participate in a structured discussion with minimal teacher direction and intervention, allowing for a more authentic conversation that is directed and determined by the students themselves. The teacher decided that this protocol would be the final classroom discussion because student familiarity with the protocol and the topic of refugees could lead to a more in-depth conversation than the first time the protocol was conducted. The hope was that students would be able to apply many of the conversational skills they practiced within the smaller discussion protocols to a larger discussion with more participants.
When the teacher applied this protocol to the classroom for the second time, she reviewed her field notes from the first application and was struck by the overall chaos that
underscored most of the first discussions. Even though every participant could see every other student in the classroom, due to their being seated in a large circle in the classroom, a discussion involving 10-15 people can become confusing for some. Knowing who has the floor to speak and who does not can be problematic. This environment can become frustrating to students as they are unsure how to actively listen when more than one speaker is speaking. In order to help students have order in their discussion, the teacher implemented a talking piece for the discussion. This provided students with a visual cue for who the speaker was at any given time during the discussion. “The talking piece helps resolve the issue of any one person dominating the discussion. It also encourages active listening and provides focus for the one point being made at the time” (Frederick Community College, 2019, para. 1). Only the student with possession of the talking piece could speak, while other students engaged in active listening. When a student finished speaking, they chose the next speaker by tossing the talking piece to them. This provided a visual reminder of who could speak, which alleviated some of the chaos that came with the first Socratic seminar. The talking piece created a conversational norm where students did not talk over one another, but instead practiced active listening skills when their classmates spoke. The talking piece used was a small stuffed watermelon that was soft so as not to hurt anyone when it was tossed across the room.
For the second application of Socratic seminar discussion protocol (with the addition of the talking piece), the teacher began by showing a video on a topic that the classroom novel addressed: what it means to be American. The NPR video clip featured several college students, some of whom were refugees and immigrants, talking about what it means to be American. Students then completed a five-minute individual free write about what they thought it meant to be American. After the five minutes of writing, students participated in the Socratic seminar using the talking piece. The question discussed was the same as the writing prompt: What does it mean to be American? Students could use their writing and the novel to help them with their discussion. Discussion stems were not provided for the second application of the discussion protocol. Instead, page numbers from the book were provided for reference during their discussion to enable them to practice using textual evidence in discussion. The page numbers that were provided directed students to the portion of the book where the protagonist of the story contemplated a similar question to the discussion prompt. Students could answer the prompt or respond to what another student had said when it was their turn to speak, and students were reminded to use active listening techniques during the discussion.
After ten minutes of discussion the teacher paused the Socratic seminar in order to give students a real-world application of the discussion prompt with an additional open-ended question for students to discuss during the remainder of the protocol. The teacher provided four different scenarios of people’s situations and asked students if they thought one person was more American than another. The four scenarios were projected on the board for students to refer to during this portion of the discussion: (1) A person born, raised, and living in America. (2) A person born and raised in Afghanistan but living in America for two years.
(3) A person born and raised in America but currently in prison. (4) A person born and raised in America but who moved to Europe. Students discussed this prompt for another ten
minutes. At the end of the discussion, the teacher acted as a discussion facilitator for five minutes, and the protocol ended with a five minute debrief where the class reflected on the content of the discussion and the discussion skills utilized. To conclude the refugee unit, students finished reading the novel Other Words for Home independently.
DATA COLLECTION
Before, during, and after the intervention, the teacher measured the effects of the intervention to determine if improvement had occurred in student relationship skills through use of individual student interviews, surveys, and field notes. The teacher collected three different types of data sources to ensure the credibility and validity of her research findings. According to many researchers (Flick, 2018; Vu et al., 2019), this triangulation technique can also help enrich research as it provides a variation of datasets to explain possible diverging facets of a phenomenon of interest.
Individual student interviews were used as both a qualitative and quantitative data measurement. The teacher wanted to talk to students one-on-one to understand their personal beliefs surrounding classroom discussions in relation to peer relationship skills. By taking the time to speak with students without their friends or peers present, the teacher would be provided with a more honest student opinion about the interventions conducted in the classroom. Interviews were conducted twice; prior to beginning the interventions and after the three-week long action research period ended. In order to choose students, the teacher used a name randomizer to select one participant from each of her class sections.
However, when the teacher saw which students were chosen, she noticed that the group consisted of four girls and one boy. Not wanting an imbalance of genders to affect the data, she spun the name randomizer once more for the first class and a boy was selected. She interviewed six students, two boys and four girls. Out of the six students, five of them performed at grade level on reading skills and one of the students was enrolled in a reading intervention class during the day. Another student was on ESL progress monitoring. The same students were selected for both the pre- and post-intervention interviews. During the interviews, the teacher asked questions centered on classroom discussions and peer relationship skills (see Appendix A). The interviews were done during the first period of the day in the school library by the teacher and were video recorded so that she could reflect on their input. When the teacher analyzed the interview data, she transcribed the conversation to pinpoint how many words the students spoke during the interview. If students answered a question in a questioning tone, the teacher documented the statement making particular notes about the overall tone of the student’s voice. As the interviews were transcribed, she also documented the duration of the interview, including student pauses before and during the answering of questions.
Pre- and post- intervention surveys were administered to all students to provide quantitative data showing student perception of the elements of productive conversations as well as how students felt about their peers. The questions contained rating scales, a written response, and yes/no question types, with seven total questions (see Appendix B).
The surveys were administered through Google Forms in order to efficiently collect the data from all 69 students. At the start of the intervention, on the morning of February 28th, the
teacher emailed the survey link to all of her students. During each class period, students were given time to complete the anonymous survey. The teacher sat at her desk, away from student computers, while students completed the surveys to ensure anonymity. Students had one day to complete the survey and then the link became inactive. At the end of the intervention period, on March 22, the teacher sent a link to a new survey (using the same questions and the same rating scales) and gave students one day to complete the survey before deactivating the link. Descriptive analysis was then employed to analyze students' responses to the questions in the surveys.
Through field notes, the teacher jotted down observations during the discussion protocols, noting student body language, verbal participation, student talking points that indicated understanding of the academic content, and students’ active listening techniques. During each discussion protocol, she documented field notes for each class period. This method of data was used to garner an overall sense of the environment. For instance, if the conversations during the class period had a feeling of awkwardness, confidence, excitement, etc. Through the qualitative measure of field notes, the teacher wanted to capture classroom moments that may otherwise not have been documented.
RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS
Two quantitative measures were recorded from the pre- and post- intervention student interviews: the time of the interview and the number of words spoken by the students. While the average time of the interview lengthened by 11.8%, the average amount of words spoken by students during the interview also increased by 18.1%, as seen in Table 1.
Table 1
Student Interview Results
Interview 1 Interview 2 Percentage of Growth
Average time 169 sec. 189 sec. 11.8% growth Average words 182 words 215 words 18.1% growth
While both the number of words spoken and the interview time grew when measuring the average of all six students, Student E, Student D, and Student F had substantial changes from pre- to post- interview words spoken and interview time, which caused the overall averages to primarily reflect the data from these three students. However, there was a wide variance from student to student when the pre and post interview data was compared with the other three students. Student B’s data was in direct opposition to the averages because they spoke 20 seconds less, using 20 fewer words in the post interview. Student A spoke eight seconds less but spoke 48 additional words during the post interview. Student C’s interview was one minute shorter during the post interview and the student spoke the same amount of words during each interview.
When analyzing the quantitative data from the pre and post student interviews, it is difficult to draw conclusions for a variety of reasons. First, the sample size of six students was not sufficient to use averages. With only six students, the averages were more impacted from the three aforementioned students and the data did not completely capture all the student interviews. More students needed to be interviewed in order to draw more conclusive statements about the intervention’s impact on student ability to converse in an interview setting. The other limitation is that measuring the time of the interview did not capture Student A’s ability to speak more words in less time. This student was more concise in the post interview, but the quantitative data collected reflects this negatively when solely compared with the average. This is similar to Student C who was also more concise and had a briefer post interview, but spoke the same amount of words in both interviews. The data from Student A and Student C might have been affected because the teacher used the same questions for each interview. The students could have better understood the questions the teacher asked during the post interview because the questions for both interviews were the same, which would cause the amount of interview time to lessen for the post interview. The students did not require as much processing time to understand the questions after hearing the questions for a second time. Student B could have spoken for less time and for fewer words because the student already explained the reasoning and justification to the questions in the pre interview. Perhaps it felt redundant for the student to repeat the same answers in the post interview to the same person.
The pre- and post- intervention interviews were also examined for their qualitative data. For several questions, some students were more confident in their answers and had more to expand on in their responses during the post interview. When asked how classroom conversations could be beneficial outside of school, Student A and Student F had vague responses during the pre-interview. In contrast, when asked the same question during the post interview, Student A spoke about how classroom conversations were helping her open up to her classmates. Student F spoke about how those conversations were helping him think through scenarios both inside and outside of the classroom while applying decision making skills to his life. Although this was his point in the pre interview, he was more articulate and thorough in the communication of his thinking in the post interview. When Student E was asked if she considered herself adept at classroom conversations, her response during the post interview was eloquent and fluent and also indicated a positive relationship between classroom conversations and peer relationship skills (See Table 2).
The qualitative data from the student interviews show more of a correlation of improvement due to the interventions utilized than the quantitative data did. The students were more articulate in their answers about the positives and the pitfalls of classroom conversations, and on the whole, students were more vulnerable in their responses and more confident of their answers in the post interview. Students demonstrated that confidence in their conversational skills when the teacher interviewed them a second time, often using their hands to demonstrate points, making eye contact for the majority of their answers, and speaking loudly enough for both the video to record them and for the teacher to hear them.
This indicates that the qualitative data gathered from the student interviews generally
supports evidence that the interventions were effective. However, not all of the improvement can be explained based solely from the interventions utilized. Because the teacher conducted the student interviews, it is arguable that the student responses pandered to student perception of what the teacher wanted to hear as a response. Although the teacher began each interview by telling students they were free to state their opinion, whether negative or positive, some students may have been uncomfortable stating more negative opinions to the teacher. On the other hand, some students may have been more comfortable with the teacher and a level of familiarity could have played a part in their responses. The last factor to be considered was that the interviews were recorded. Although the camera was pointed down, recording the table and not the faces of the students, some students could have been uneasy with being recorded at all. None of the students had ever been interviewed for research purposes, so the data could have reflected some of the student's adaptability to a new situation or the inability to face a new experience confidently.
The results from the pre- and post- intervention surveys revealed several differences on all survey questions (see Appendix C). While there were areas of positive growth on all seven survey questions, there were three sections that showed the greatest improvement. One area was survey question one: I know what makes a good classroom conversation. The pre- intervention survey revealed that only 21% of students replied yes. However, on the post intervention survey, 43.8% of students replied affirmatively, which is a growth of 22.8 percentage points between the two surveys. The second area of improvement was student confidence in the area of classroom conversations, as evidenced by question three on the survey: I feel so confident about the qualities of a good classroom conversation I could explain it to another person. Only 21% of students replied yes on the pre-intervention survey, but 43.8% replied yes on the post-intervention survey, with also a growth of 22.8 percentage points. Question two of the survey also indicated a positive correlation between the interventions used and the intended skills measured. The question asked students to list the qualities of a good conversation in the classroom. While there were only 47/61 correct responses on the pre-intervention survey, there were 56/63 correct responses on the post- intervention survey. Correct responses varied in nature but many students said listening, disagreeing politely, eye contact, participating, and head nodding. The teacher counted these responses (and others like them) as incorrect: jokes/playing around, funny things, about her dog, and good. For the same question on the pre-intervention survey, eight students responded with “I don’t know” and only four students responded with “I don’t know” on the post intervention survey, which indicates a slight improvement due to the intervention period.
Questions 4-7 consisted of a rating scale where students had to indicate the extent that they disagreed (1) or agreed (5) with a given statement. On the pre-intervention survey, student responses varied for all rating scales. On the post-intervention survey, the agree (5) option was the highest scoring for all rating questions, which reveals a positive correlation between classroom conversations and student relationship skills. The question four statement was:
Even if I don’t consider my classmates friends, I can listen to them and learn from their perspectives in class. Although rating 4 declined from 45% to 37%, rating 5 (agree) grew from 30% to 42%. Similarly, question five asked students to rate this statement: I value my
23%, but rating 4 grew from 30% to 32% and rating 5 grew from 36% to 40%. These rating questions indicate that the interventions had a positive impact on peer relationship skills.
Table 2
Selected Student Pre- and Post- Intervention Interview Responses
Question 4: How do you think classroom conversations could be beneficial to you in life outside of school?
Pre Interview Post Interview Student A If you don't feel like talking a
lot and you get in lots of conversations, you get used to it.
It could be beneficial because if I keep having classroom conversations, then maybe after a while I get used to it. I can open up more and talk to people outside.
Student F Tells me kind of like what not to do and like not to make mistakes like. Like talking a proper way and like and do these things right.
They help me make the right choices ahead.
Like not get in trouble outside of school or inside of school. Just do the right things. So, like when we talk about if someone did something bad. I guess if they did something bad and then we talk about that and then we tell each other why it wasn’t good or why it wasn’t bad, so we know if we want to make the right choices, I guess. It’s kind of hard to explain.
Question 3: Would you consider yourself good at classroom conversations?
Pre Interview Post Interview
Student E Most of the time. I would think I am okay at them, but sometimes I don’t really speak what I really want to say because sometimes I get afraid around people. I’m more likely to share my opinion now because I’m used to the class and have been with them the entire year.
Questions six and seven had their own nuance due to the scale option for responses. Question six had students rate this statement: When I give my opinion in class, I feel that my classmates listen to what I have to say. Although rating 2 and 3 were about the same on both surveys, rating 1 grew from 8% to 10%. Two additional students responded in disagreement that their classmates listen to what they say. This piece of data underscores the nuance of this question. Perhaps more students disagreed with the notion that their classmates listen to what they say because they had a bad experience with their assigned groupings of peers
during a conversational protocol. Although a bad experience could have just occurred during one protocol or even during one round of a protocol, this may have tempered student experience with peer conversations and consequently affected how the student responded to the survey statement. Another explanation of the data could be that students learned through the intervention period that it is acceptable or even encouraged to disagree with others. Because of this, students could have been more likely to choose the disagree rating on the post intervention survey because they learned that disagreement is acceptable by experiencing disagreement in the discussion protocols. Question seven on the survey also had conflicting data. Students had to rate this statement: Mrs. Walker’s classroom is a place where I can share my opinions. While rating 5 (agree) rose from 37% to 42%, rating 1 and 2 each increased a few percentage points. One additional student chose rating 1 and three additional students chose rating 2 on the post-intervention survey. This data could be partially explained because two additional students took the post intervention survey who were not present in class when students took the pre intervention survey. However, this cannot explain all four of the additional students who chose rating 1 and 2. The post intervention survey was taken at the end of March; the pre-intervention survey was taken at the beginning of March. Although there were only three weeks in between the surveys, it could have been enough time for peer conflicts outside of the classroom to affect the classroom environment. Spring break (consisting of two vacation days from school) where
“spring fever” traditionally sets in and students become more irritable was in the middle of the intervention period, and could have negatively impacted the data of the post intervention survey. Peer conflicts outside of the classroom may also have made some students uncomfortable sharing their opinions in the classroom simply because they had a disagreement with a fellow student. Overall, with the exception of the two data points that raise nuanced implications, the pre- and post- intervention surveys generally point to a positive connection between elevated student discourse and relationship skills.
The third data source, field notes, revealed an overall sense of students being uncomfortable in the earlier discussion protocols, including lack of eye contact and overt fiddling or nervous leg bouncing. Although there was still some student uncomfortableness in the later interventions, the teacher's field notes indicate a general classroom improvement with regards to eye contact, nodding in agreement, disagreeing respectfully, and a variety of students voicing their opinions during classroom conversations. The biggest evidence of success in the field notes were observations recorded during the first Socratic seminar on day five of the intervention period and the second Socratic seminar on day 15. During the first Socratic seminar, students talked over one another and spoke more than they listened.
Conversely, during the second Socratic seminar, students employed active listening skills and ensured that only one student spoke at a time. The discussion throughout the second Socratic seminar was more thoughtful and considerate with an overall sense of calm and formality. In her field notes, the teacher recorded that there were still a few students fiddling with papers during conversations instead of actively listening to their classmates, even during the later protocols. There were still pockets of quiet time between partner discussions, and some group conversations ended early, without lively discussion throughout the time allotted for each protocol. However, several of her field notes documented observations of students asking one another thoughtful questions during
discussions, using hand gestures to aid in their conversational points, and head nodding when actively listening to peers.
The use of field notes proved challenging for the teacher and posed several questions upon analysis of the data. It was difficult for the teacher to listen to the content of the conversations and examine student behaviors exhibited during conversations as well as time keep. Each protocol consisted of only a brief period of time and balancing all three duties was proven to be difficult for one person to do. This could have affected the quality of notes taken during the intervention period. There was also a limit to how much the teacher could observe and then document during the protocols. Many of the protocols consisted of numerous student groups conversing simultaneously. It was impossible for the teacher to overhear or observe the majority of conversations in the classroom. Moreover, the field notes were highly subjective and raised several questions concerning the validity of field notes overall. Could pockets of quiet time not be a sign of a thought-provoking exchange of ideas rather than poor conversation? Did the conversation end early because the students were succinct and concise? Did students talk over one another in some protocols because the prompt was highly engaging to them, and not because they did not exhibiting the requisite conversational skills? Were the students doodling to ease their social anxieties when the protocols required them to perform public speaking, an activity that many people find extremely difficult? Did students actively listen or did they simply perform the three outward steps that looked like active listening? The field notes were subject to the bias of the teacher and, because of that, raise more questions than they provide confirmation that the intervention period was successful.
Triangulating data from three different sources consisting of pre- and post- intervention student interviews, pre- and post- intervention surveys, and field notes indicated an overall improvement in both student conversational skills and relationship skills when various discussion protocols were implemented in the classroom. Although there were implications of the data from all three sources to consider, the overall trend of the data points to a successful period of intervention in observed ways and quantifiable ways.
DISCUSSION
The teacher knew before conducting the inquiry process that the three-week intervention period was not ideal and may not provide sufficient time to conclusively determine if the intervention was successful or not. However, the teacher decided to maintain a three week period as an entry point into the inquiry process that was manageable for her. Ideally, the intervention period would have been conducted over the span of a semester or an entire school year. This would have allowed the teacher to use each discussion protocol several times over the span of several curricular units, letting students get comfortable with the process and eventually shifting the student learning focus from the steps of the protocol to content and conversational skills. Due to the brief intervention period, the teacher simplified the teaching of conversational skills to active listening by looking at the speaker, staying quiet while the speaker talks, and occasionally nodding to show understanding. In reality, active listening consists of far more than these three steps and a longer intervention period would have allowed students to experience the nuances of active listening.
The teacher had concerns with each form of data collection, which could have been alleviated with a few adjustments. Since the pre- and post- student interviews consisted of the same questions, having a different interviewer for each session could have made the data more reliable. It would have been a good test of conversational skills for students to interview with someone other than their classroom teacher as well. Additionally, the pre- and post- student surveys provided pivotal information but it would have been interesting to have data part way through the intervention period as well. If the intervention period were longer, students could have completed a pre- and post- survey, and an additional survey at the halfway point of the intervention period to serve as another data point. As for the field notes, if the teacher were to utilize this form of data collection again, she would have at least one other person observe and document alongside her. Having an outside observer evaluate conversations with a checklist of specific behaviors (students asking thoughtful questions to partners, eye contact, use of notes to make conversational points, head nodding to show understanding, etc…) to look for may have lessened the subjectivity of the field notes. Perhaps the students could have created a short list of qualities of good conversations, which could serve as the observation list for the outside person to document while observing the protocols.
For each discussion protocol, the teacher used random groupings. This raises the question of what the results of the intervention would be if other groupings were utilized? In the student interviews, many of the students made remarks about the negative and positive aspects of speaking in a classroom conversation with friends. Overall, they felt it was good to discuss with friends because they were already comfortable with them, but it could be a negative because friends try to change each other’s minds and try to appease each other.
Would student-chosen groups be more or less effective than randomized groups? Another approach to deliberate groupings could be based on ability levels. If all of the same protocols were conducted using mixed-ability groups, would the result be different or similar to same- ability groups? Ultimately, how would randomized groups, student-chosen groups, mixed- ability groups, and same-ability groups compare to one another within the same confines of the research? It would also be interesting to see how students respond when discussion protocols are repeated, after they have already experienced the process of the protocol once before.
The elevated use of oral language skills in an ELA class through discussion protocols in order to enhance peer relationship skills should not be an instructional practice reserved exclusively for English classes. The protocols utilized in the research have strong cross- curricular implications. Conversational skills and peer relationship skills should be taught by all teachers and practiced by all students, not only English teachers and their students. At the secondary education level where students typically have multiple teachers throughout the day, it would be beneficial for all teachers to elevate their instructional practices to include student oral language for academic purposes. This research demonstrates the benefit of student verbal discourse in academic settings across all content areas and invites educators of all levels and content areas to raise their instructional practices to include peer oral discussions in their classes.