Dialogue is essential to learning. It is through conversation that we can make a claim, question the claims of others, evaluate evidence, clarify, and even change our minds—all necessary components for learning. In education, we emphasize this importance: The Common Core includes "participate in collaborative conversations" as a speaking and listening standard for every grade level. The standards go on to include specific grade-level skills such as building on the ideas of others, asking questions, explaining ideas, justifying ideas in light of new evidence, and responding to diverse perspectives.
Even with all that emphasis on conversation in our standards, there are always voices that are in danger of being silenced in the classroom. As teachers, it is our job to encourage all students to use their voices and create spaces for them to speak. When teachers give students the opportunity to share their thoughts and have ownership in the conversation, it can lead to increased motivation and interest. As Stanford and Henderson (2016) point out, "Students in classrooms where 50 percent of the instructional time was spent on student-to-student interactions retained more information and were more academically successful overall" (p. 41). But when discussion is reduced to a series of interactions between an individual student (or just a few students) and the teacher, instead of an authentic communal discourse, it doesn't align with critical thinking and creativity skills.
Redefining the Roles
Both students and teachers have become accustomed to their role: Teachers hold control over classroom talk and students are invited to contribute and share only at specific times. It's no wonder that changing the paradigm of classroom discussion is so difficult. As Watters and Diezmann (2016) found, "[T]he lack of a student voice was evident in a study of elementary grade [sic] where over 68 percent of talk comprised teacher utterances. When the teacher attempted to implement discussion through initiating a sequence of open-ended questions, there was silence and lack of student engagement" (p. 27). If the nature of classroom talk is going to shift from inauthentic teacher-student-teacher exchanges to authentic dialogue, it will take determined effort and skill building.
Often classroom dialogue follows a familiar pattern. The teacher asks a question or introduces a topic, a student responds, and the teacher either evaluates that response with a comment like "good" or asks a follow-up question. Then a new student responds, and the cycle begins again. Bickmore described this pattern as "triangular … students spoke to the teacher, who directed comments or questions back to the whole class" (2014, p. 569). In this pattern, the teacher holds sole authority over what gets discussed and holds the responsibility to move the conversation forward. The teacher might tell herself that it is a discussion because students are participating and talking, but really, it's just a lecture in disguise.
So how do we facilitate authentic equitable conversation practices in our classroom? During a recent professional development seminar, I was introduced to the idea of hands-down conversation by educator and author Kassia Wedekind (2018). Outside of the classroom, we seldom raise our hands to speak. We don't raise our hands when talking in a car or around the dinner table; we just speak, and the conversation flows organically. The idea is to have a classroom conversation without raising hands, which helps students learn how to communicate and understand the flow of conversation and also creates space for students to have authentic dialogue.
As you introduce this idea in your teaching, keep the explanation simple: "We're going to talk, and I don't want you to raise your hands. But it is important that we listen to each other and only one person talks at a time. Everyone's voice is important, so we want to be able to hear what they are thinking." You might start by asking everyone to share the most interesting thing that they learned today. Tell them they can go in order and shouldn't raise their hands. Think about a gradual release of control. Next, go around twice, the first time sharing something and the second time having students comment on something that was shared by someone else. From there, build to a more natural discussion where students can join in as they have something to say.
When I tried this in my classroom, I started with topics that were not academic—things like favorite vacations, super powers you wished you had, a great book you recently read. Then we built to reflections on learning activities, analysis of quotes, and content-specific explorations. The hands-down strategy works best in conversations where there are multiple viewpoints or answers. At first, I spoke a lot, but with each hands-down conversation, I tried to say less and less. I wanted the students to know that their opinions were valued and important to our learning. Sometimes our conversations had awkward silences, but I found that if I jumped in to fill them right away, the students stopped addressing each other and quickly reverted back to addressing me, reinforcing the triangular pattern that I hoped to break. But if I waited, then the students would respond to one another and keep the conversation flowing.
Who Is Talking?
But even in authentic hands-down conversations, a small percentage of students can do most of the talking. I wanted to make sure that my students were getting equal opportunity to participate in the conversation. One of the strategies that Wedekind (2018) recommends using is a conversation map, which quickly became a tool that helped me work toward my goal of encouraging equitable conversations. A conversation map showed me and my students the flow of our conversation.
To create a conversation map, first have students sit in a circle. This is important because it places everyone on an equal plane and sends the message that all perspectives and thoughts are welcome during this conversation. Much of communication is nonverbal; sitting in a circle is necessary for the participants to read the nonverbal cues of the conversation.
Resist the urge to participate in the conversation. Yes, I know it is hard. But bite your tongue and wait it out. Students will be tempted to talk to you, but you want them to talk to each other. Your role in conversation mapping is as observer, not as participant. With the students in charge of the conversation, it may go in a different direction than you anticipated, but welcome that. You may be surprised with what they come up with, and if they get too far off-topic you can intervene and bring them back to focus.
Introduce the conversation topic, then give them some silent think time while you set up your conversation map. On a blank piece of paper, draw a circle and write where each student sits in the circle. For your first conversation map, just write the students' names, but as you get more comfortable with the practice, you can expand identifiers to learn more about patterns in your classroom discussion. For instance, you may be curious about the participation of different genders, so you could use different colors for different genders, or you could track how often your ELLs participate. Adapt this tool to best fit your needs.
Mapping the Conversation
When the conversation begins, draw a line inside the circle from the first speaker to the second speaker. Then draw a line linking the second speaker and the third speaker, and so on. You want a continuous web of lines that show the flow of the conversation. As the conversation continues, the lines will overlap. See Figure 1 for a completed conversation map from a classroom discussion. Note that the conversation map doesn't show you the order in which people spoke, just the overall contributions and patterns in the conversation as a whole. Some teachers may find it valuable to note who started and finished the conversation, so you could mark those students if that is of interest to you.
Figure 1. A conversation map from a reflection on an urban game simulation. Girls are marked in pink and boys are marked in green.
The real work of conversation maps as a tool for equity begins after the conversation has finished. You will notice some patterns about which students spoke the most and which hardly spoke at all. Teachers strive to know their students, so you may think you have a general idea of who your biggest participants are, but you might be surprised to see just how unbalanced the conversation can be when you count up those lines. This tool gives you a clear picture of the interactions in your classroom.
Once you have this picture, you can use it to inform your instruction and address equity issues in the discussion. After mapping a conversation, I would reflect on it with my students while the conversation is fresh in their minds. When students analyze the map of the conversation, they learn from it. In Figure 1, for instance, it's clear that Jayden, Micah, Youssef, Kyle, and Miles spoke a lot while Sofia, Hannah, Erin, Julie, Joey, and Jodie didn't speak at all (all student names are pseudonyms). It shows a clear distinction between the contributions of boys and girls.
When I shared this map with my students, one of the boys who had spoken quite often said, "Well, it's because the girls didn't have anything to say." As a teacher and an equity advocate, I immediately saw a red flag. But before I could address his comment, one of the girls jumped in to say, "That is not true. I had lots I wanted to say but you never gave me a chance. You talked right over me!" Through our reflection, we were able to see inequality in our classroom and create a space for everyone to recognize the role they had been playing, either dominating the conversation and not allowing others to speak or staying silent and not adding valuable contributions to the conversation.
Equity in Discussions
My students and I were able to talk about and start to practice self-regulation in conversation, recognizing the limitations of talking too much and of listening too much. This practice also allowed me to teach my students specific techniques and sentence frames for inviting someone into the conversation. We talked about the nonverbal cues that people display when they want to say something—sitting up straighter, shifting in their seat, leaning forward, opening their mouths, or shaking and nodding their heads. Suddenly I wasn't just telling them they should have a conversation; I was able to show them how to have a good conversation.
As I continued to use conversation mapping, I saw my students grow. They began to use the techniques and sentence frames we discussed, such as, "It looks like you have something to say …", "I'm wondering what Erika is thinking about this …", "Let's go back to what Micah was saying …", and "I agree/disagree with Jerome because …." When we noticed that many students were inviting only their friends into the conversation, we tried to encourage them to invite others—particularly peers not in their social circle.
We have much richer conversations as a result. The students laugh when they see their old conversation maps, and we are all proud of the way they have adopted more equitable conversation strategies.
With conversation maps, I was able to remove myself from directing the conversation and see a complete picture of the classroom discussion. I taught my students to listen to conversations, regulate participation in the conversation, and advocate for their peers to speak up—creating a more equitable, and effective, classroom community.
