Download Talking with Children

Talking with Children
Beth Ashforth, May 2003
Northumbria University, School of Education, England
in collaboration with Sven Persson
Malmo University, School of Education, Sweden
Introduction
“The concept of democratic values in education is primarily about attitudes,
communication and how people view one another. Modern research into democracy
has developed an approach that places communication, democratic discussion, at the
centre.” (Persson, 2002)
This paper was written in collaboration with Sven Persson, one of the members of the
DIPSIE Project, and I shall be drawing upon his work throughout. Persson argues that
democracy is constructed in communication and that dialogue is the goal to be sought
in the specific kind of interactions, which take place in the classroom. The paper
discusses how communication within the classroom has traditionally been viewed in
England and considers different models for classroom interaction. Approaches, which
try to create more democratic interactions in which participants express and
contemplate their own opinions and views and those of others, are considered. These
would encourage the type of discussion that satisfies the demand for a democratic
approach in childcare and schools and is also a good way of developing democratic
skills in children and young people. This is based upon an approach to knowledge that
considers individual learning and development to be derived principally from
interaction with others, in a social context that affects the prerequisites for learning.
Instead of a technique whereby children and young people are perceived as passive
recipients, this approach views learning as the outcome of mutual communication and
interaction. In this sense, the effort to promote democratic values is a collective
phenomenon that affects the entire educational undertaking. By focusing on
relationships and discussion, the emphasis is less on each separate individual than on
the individual in a particular context.
Communication in classrooms
Classrooms are not ideal places to promote democracy and the role of the teacher is
not always conducive to democratic approaches. Research in many countries has
shown that teachers tend to talk much more than their pupils in whole class sessions.
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A typical pattern of time distribution in the classroom is:

The teacher:
o gives instructions and answers; relatively varied and rich language, 25%;
o reacts to student answers; relatively short utterances, 35%.

The students:
o answer; in more than half of the cases the answer is given by the
question or by the context; one syllable word or short sentences, 25%.

The teacher talks 75% of the time and the remaining 25 % is divided among the
pupils.

The difference between the most and the least verbal of the pupils is however
17:1. (Lundgren, 1979).
There is a certain interaction between teacher and pupils, the teacher asks questions
(the answer to which they already know) and the pupil tries to answer with the correct
answer. The teacher responds. In a formal sense it could be called a dialogue, but in
reality it is a monologue where pupils are asked to fill in the blanks, a missing word or
a phrase. Too often this IRF (initiation-response-feedback) model makes up the
majority of discourse in whole class time where interactions tend to be brief not
sustained. Classroom dialogue is managed by the teacher, who has an end point in
sight, limiting creativity with little room for speculative talk where the child is
encouraged to think aloud. The answer to the question marks the end of the dialogue
however, it is what follows from the answers that is crucial, not the answer itself. As
Bakhtin (1981) proposes, “If an answer does not give rise to a new question itself,
then it falls out of the dialogue.”
Traditionally English schools are dominated by the teacher talking more than the
pupils, in addition to this, the teacher is in control of who speaks, to whom and when.
Teachers also ask the majority of questions and pupils are usually expected to give
short, correct responses to the teacher’s questions. This creates very unequal
communicative rights and talk is viewed more as the medium of instruction rather
than its object.
Communication as a social process
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Modern learning theorists recognize the importance of social interaction viewing the
learner as a social constructor of knowledge (Wells (1981). Nevertheless, in the
classroom, the recognition of the cognitive potential of talk often overrides the social.
However, if children are too inhibited or reserved to participate there is little point in
promoting cognitively rich talk (Alexander 2003). This misses the very point
Vygotsky identified that learning is a social process.
“A group working together can construct knowledge to a higher level than can
individuals in that group each working separately. The knowledge rests upon the
group interaction.” (Wray and Medwell 1998)
Research has shown that there are qualitative differences between interactions in home
and school (Wells & Wells, 1989). In school, children are less active in
communication; they do not initiate dialogue and do not raise questions (even if they
do not understand). Their language is less complex and is usually related to aspects of
here and now. At home the adult often scaffolds the child’s language (Vygotsky, 1978,
Bruner, 1983) whereby the child is helped to reach their inner goals within an activity,
goals which they cannot reach for themselves. They need to be helped so they can do it
for themselves, as Maria Montessori concludes, the pedagogical task.
Communication through dialogue
“The aim of dialogue is mutual understanding. I want you to understand what I mean
and I want to understand what you mean. There is no other purpose. Confirmation in
dialogue is the nutrition we need to grow emotionally and intellectually.” (Persson
2002)
Democracy is constructed in communication, and students must experience democracy
in “authentic dialogue”. Considering that democratic values in education primarily are
about attitudes, communication and how people view one another, the prevalence of
teacher talk in the classroom is a problem. In the monologic classroom students do not
have the possibility of formulating and discussing their own ideas, thoughts and
questions. The discourse revealed in practice is that teachers in the monologic
classroom are in possession of accountable knowledge while students’ knowledge and
experiences are valid if they fill in the blanks. The distribution of speech and time in
the classroom is also a distribution of power.
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Children’s thoughts and responses can be extended and shaped by exposure to the
responses of others. This will also encourage children to talk to, and listen to, each
other rather than addressing all talk to the teacher. We need to consider the learning
potential of inviting children to give longer and more considered responses which lead
to further questions. Exchanges where children speculate and develop their thinking;
where teachers pay heed to the handling of answers as much as the phrasing of
questions can set the scene for cognitively challenging talk.
Teaching through dialogue
‘Dialogic talk’ is that in which both teachers and pupils make substantial and
significant contributions and through which pupils’ thinking on a given idea or theme
is helped to move forward (Mercer, 2003). Children need to be involved in authentic
dialogue in which they are encouraged to reason, reflect, enquire and explain their
thinking to others. Dialogic teaching needs to include tasks, which teachers and pupils
address collectively, as well as being reciprocal where pupils and teachers listen to
each other and share ideas and viewpoints. These ideas need to be built upon,
generating enquiry, including feedback and ‘feedforward’. Importantly pupils need to
feel safe to express ideas freely helping each other construct shared understandings
from different frames of reference through ‘joint enquiry’ (Barnes and Todd 1995).
An approach, which reduces the fear of giving a wrong answer and the high premium
set on providing only the right answer, which dominates in England, is needed.
Children need to be helped to discover that mistakes, difficulties, misunderstandings
through collective scrutiny can be the answer to learning. By encouraging the whole
class to join in the task of identifying the nature of the problem and how it can be
addressed this is a more powerful form of learning.
This goes some way to promoting Mercer’s (2000) notion of a ‘community of inquiry’
using ‘interthinking’ to show how talk in learning is not one-way ‘communication’ but
a reciprocal process where ideas are bounced back and forth to take children’s thinking
forward. This is in line with Vygotsky’s notion of the zone of proximal development,
which suggests that a child is capable of doing more, with the help of an expert, than
could be done alone. In other words, the gap between what a learner can do in
collaboration with others and what he/she can do alone. Vygotsky suggests that all
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learning occurs twice, once on the social plain and once on the individual. It is
important that activities in the classroom are oriented towards what is still ahead of the
student. Schools are often too pre-occupied with testing what the students know,
instead of the potential for future learning.
However teaching through dialogue may entail teachers and pupils rethinking their
approaches. Children often try to ‘guess’ what answer the teacher wants, and have
often adopted excellent strategies to avoid answering questions because they may not
want to be seen as too clever or not clever at all. Pupils often know that if they wait,
the teacher will probably answer the question for them anyway. Teachers need to
learn to listen to the actual response a child gives, not for the response they
want/expect to hear. They also need to be able to recognise that silence between
answers can be useful rather than awkward. A pause of five seconds may be enough
to allow the child to elaborate further or draw in another pupil’s contribution. Teacher
intervention can often inhibit responses not encourage them.
“If we accept that dialogue is a necessary tool of learning then we may need to accept
also that the child’s answer is not the end of a learning exchange (as in many
classrooms it tends to be) but the true centre of gravity. Important though questions
are….we could profitably pay rather greater attention to children’s answers to our
questions and to what we can do with those answers. Put more bluntly, if we want
children to talk to learn – as well as learn to talk – then what they say actually
matters more than what teachers say.” (Alexander 2003)
It is important that participation is shared around the class (or group) and not
dominated by the teacher and one or two confident pupils. Traditional teaching roles,
such as summarising, managing turn taking and so forth, should not be the sole
responsibility of the teacher. This view of learning should really foster a socially
interactive process.
Conclusion
In communication one has to assimilate, imaginatively, something of another’s
experience in order to tell about one’s own experience. We need to analyse the
communication game in the classroom from a democratic point of view. How does
communication between teachers and children construct discourses of democracy
through interaction and communication? What does the interaction between teachers
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and children tell us about school democracy in practice? How is democracy socially
constructed in communication?
“Effective communication involves the thorough understanding of the other person’s
world (listening) and conveying that understanding to that person (responding).
Through accurate listening and responding, barriers that hinder mutual
understandings can be broken down,” (Dinkmeyer and Losoncy 1980)
The democratic goal can only be gained if we see ourselves and children as social
beings. Democracy must be communicated and cannot exist without communication.
In fact we can say that democracy is communication as well as democracy is mediated
by language. This more philosophical point of view stresses the importance of
dialogue.
"The dialogic means of seeking the truth is counterpoised to official monologism,
which pretends to possess a ready-made truth… Truth is not born nor is it to be found
inside the head of an individual person, it is born between people collectively seeking
for truth in the process of their dialogic interactions." (Bakthin, 1984)
As Bakthin points out, dialogue and dialogic are basic qualities in human
interaction. Dialogue is a goal to be sought in the specific kind of interactions, which
take place in the classroom. Dialogue as a fact and dialogue as a goal will run side by
side. From a learning point of view we would like to stress the close connection
between language and thought:
“Real concepts are impossible without words, and thinking in concepts does not exist
beyond verbal thinking. That is why the central moment in concept formation, and its
generative cause, is a specific use of words as functional tools.” (Vygotsky, 1978).
This means that the concept of democracy must be formulated and articulated by
children, they must construct the concept in their mind and in relation to others. On the
other hand, democracy is not only a cognitive concept. Democracy is strongly related
to values and attitudes. Democracy and democratic values must be embodied by
children in their daily life, if we want them to understand what democracy really is.
Democracy is therefore a matter of identity leading to an increase in self-confidence.
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References
Alexander R. (2003) Talk in Teaching and Learning: international perspectives QCA
Bakhtin, M.M (1981) The Dialogic Imagination, Austin TX
Bakhtin, M. M. (1984). Problems of Dostevsky’s poetics. Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press.
Barnes, D & Todd, F (1995) Communication and Learning revisited, London, Heinemann
Bruner, J. (1983). Child’s talk: Learning to use language. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Dinkmeyer & Losoncy (1980) in Prentice M. (1994) Catch Them Learning; a handbook of
classroom strategies, Arlington Press
Lundgren, U. P. (1979). Att organisera omvärlden. En introduktion till läroplansteori.
Stockholm: Liber.
Mercer N (2000) Words and Minds, Routledge
Mercer N. (2003) The Educational Value of ‘dialogic talk’ in ‘whole-class dialogue’, QCA
Vygotsky, L. (1962). Thought and language. Cambridge Mass: MIT Press.
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Wells, G. (1981). Learning through interaction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Wells, G & Wells, G. (1989). Learning to talk and talking to learn. Theory into practice,
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