van der Veen, C., Michaels, S., Dobber, M., van Kruistum, C., & van Oers, B. (2021). Design, implementation, and evaluation of dialogic classroom talk in early childhood education. Learning, Culture and Social Interaction, 29, 100515–. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lcsi.2021.100515
Classroom discussions offer opportunities for developing
learning, reasoning, and language skills. However, often times, classroom talk
uses the Initiation-Response-Evaluation sequence, limiting opportunities for
students to think and talk together, for example:
Teacher: How do plants grow?
Student: Photosynthesis
Teacher: Correct
One promising approach to involve students in classroom talk is called talk moves. Talk moves are conversational strategies that teachers can use to encourage students to (a) share, expand, and clarify their thinking (Let’s take time to think); (b) listen to others (Can you repeat what John just said?); (c) deepen reasoning (What evidence did you use?); (d) and think with others (Do you agree or not? Why?). Students themselves could also use talk moves to invite others into the conversation. It would follow that understanding how talk moves could affect classroom culture is warranted.
The present study consisted of two cycles, each lasting about 8 weeks. At the start of each cycle, teachers met with the researchers to learn about talk moves and co-design classroom discussions incorporating talk moves. Baseline observations were completed before the first workshop. After which, observations of their classroom (92 students total) were coded for the following outcome measures. Teacher talk was coded for mean length turn (number of words/turn) and types of talk moves used. Student turns were coded for oral communicative competence assessed with a standardized test of pragmatics, child participation, mean length turn, and key linguistic words used (e.g., because, Why?, I think).
Overall, preliminary results were promising. Teachers increased their use of talk moves, especially the share, expand, clarify (Let’s take time to think) and metacommunication moves (What talk moves did we agree upon?). As for students, their oral communicative competence scores increased throughout the intervention, they took longer turns, and used more key linguistic words. Taken together, supporting the use of talk moves in the classroom could be beneficial for student’s oral language development and engagement more broadly.
