Examining the relationship between teachers’ discussion facilitation and their students’ reasoning

ABSTRACT

We conducted a two-year study with four teachers (two mentors and two mentees), one university researcher, and a political science professor focused on improving discussion facilitation. This article examines the facilitation of a collaboratively developed seminar/deliberation discussion by four teachers and the relationship between their facilitation and the reasoning of the students. We found that all four teachers explored the factual questions of the discussion topic, but that two of the teachers led more substantive explorations of the definitional and value questions by purposefully teaching the students norms of behavior in a quality seminar/deliberation, practicing discussion throughout the course, allowing more student-tostudent talk, and focusing students’ attention on the persistent definitional and value issues that connected the case to analogous cases.

KEYWORDS:

• Authentic intellectual work
• civic education
• deliberation
• discussion
• lesson study
• professional development
• reasoning

Notes

1. All names throughout this article are pseudonyms.

2. We note after each student pseudonym their race and gender (e.g., BM is Black male).

3. The Junior Reserve Officer Training Corp is a United States federal government program in which junior high and high school students are instructed in the art and science of military strategy, leadership skills, and physical training. We researchers were unfamiliar with the specific activities in which this student participated in at the high school we researched.

Additional information

Funding

This project was funded by an Auburn University College of Education Seed Grant and a Teaching Tolerance Grant of the Southern Poverty Law Center.