In the seventies, my favorite memories of school were of conversations at recess, not of classroom discussions, which mainly consisted of questions at the end of a story in a basal or textbook chapter. I am positive that many who grew up before and after the seventies can relate. Most of the time, we were expected to work quietly and finish our assignments, and to answer questions about what we had learned. Not surprisingly, this was around the same time Dolores Durkin conducted her observational studies. In one study on comprehension instruction, she found discussion constituted only 7.89% of the 2,775 observed minutes of instruction. The largest percentages of time consisted of a combination of assignment help, transition, listening, assessing, non-instruction, assignments, and review (Durkin, 1978-79). Representative of discussions, and particularly, missed opportunities for engaging instructional discourse, were in situations like the following excerpt from Durkin’s studies:
Third graders worked on a topic sentence on commercially prepared worksheets. The children read the paragraphs silently, then took turns reading topic sentences aloud. This worked well because the materials were written to ensure that topic sentences existed and could be found. Next, the teacher shifted the focus to library books. This part of the plan was short-lived, however, for it was quickly apparent that real world materials don’t have topic sentences. Instead of discussing this dilemma with the children, the teacher terminated the activity” (1981, p. 454).
Following Durkin, various educational initiatives attempted to increase and improve instructional conversation; however, it appears that conversation, a hallmark of socio-cultural learning, is still an under-utilized tool (Howe and Abeden, 2013). Goldenberg (1993) defines instructional conversation as, “interactions to promote analysis, reflection, and critical thinking” (p. 317). Today, students would typically experience these conversations across the day (see Table 1). He added insight from Gordon (1990), who identified it as a “conversational form of tutoring” to develop reasoning and ideal truths (p. 15). Despite our best intentions, Goldenberg’s (1993) conclusion still applies to the present day: “Although educators have been talking about this type of teaching for millennia, it seems to be talked about more than done. Unfortunately, instructional conversations – or good classroom discussions – are notable not only for their desirable attributes, but also for their rarity (p. 318).
Fortunately, there are choices that prioritize conversation, to utilize it as a tool for transfer and learning. I know many teachers who do their best to include many opportunities for conversations throughout the day. A first-grade teacher I know even implements an unstructured playtime just to encourage talk. She and her literacy coach continue to work together in a Comprehensive Literacy design that I was fortunate enough to lead in the last 13 of my 25 years in public education. In a Comprehensive Literacy design (Dorn, Forbes, Poparad, and Schubert, 2015), instructional conversations are built into the workshop approach. Routines and procedures provide a safe and predictable structure for students, so that they are freed up to focus on, and enjoy, reading and writing. A layered approach supports all students, from classroom whole and small group and one-on-one, to tailored interventions with highly qualified reading specialists. In this approach, not only did our students engage in instructional conversations, but we as teachers also engaged in conversations through professional learning and coaching, which helped us lead by example.