Deliberative Discourse Idealized and Realized: Accountable Talk in the Classroom and in Civic Life

Abstract

Classroom discussion practices that can lead to reasoned participation by all students are presented and described by the authors. Their research emphasizes the careful orchestration of talk and tasks in academic learning. Parallels are drawn to the philosophical work on deliberative discourse and the fundamental goal of equipping all students to participate in academically productive talk. These practices, termed Accountable Talk SM , emphasize the forms and norms of discourse that support and promote equity and access to rigorous academic learning. They have been shown to result in academic achievement for diverse populations of students. The authors outline Accountable Talk as encompassing three broad dimensions: one, accountability to the learning community, in which participants listen to and build their contributions in response to those of others; two, accountability to accepted standards of reasoning, talk that emphasizes logical connections and the drawing of reasonable conclusions; and, three, accountability to knowledge, talk that is based explicitly on facts, written texts, or other public information. With more than fifteen years research into Accountable Talk applications across a wide range of classrooms and grade levels, the authors detail the challenges and limitations of contexts in which discourse norms are not shared by all members of the classroom community.

Exuberant, voiceless participation: an unintended consequence of dialogic sensibilities?

“…Mercer & Dawes, 2008;Michaels, O'Connor & Resnick, 2008). In the classrooms we observed, emphasis of form over content was not unusual when it came to these dialogic moves.…”

Contributions and silence in academic talk: Exploring learner experiences of dialogic interaction

“…In a higher education context, the idea of accountable talk or academically productive talk (Michaels, O'Connor & Resnick, 2008) is particularly relevant. Academically productive talk is accountable in the following ways:…”

Learning to Think: Cognitive Mechanisms of Knowledge Transfer

“…On the other hand, it seems clear enough, given how much instructors talk, that language is an important part of the academic learning process (cf., Michaels, O'Connor, & Resnick, 2008). Let us call the learning processes used in this case languagemediated (LM) learning.…”

“…Unfortunately, the constructivist alternative (cf., Tobias & Duff y, 2009) is sometimes misinterpreted to essentially mean students must teach themselves and instructors need not teach at all! A more sophisticated interpretation suggests that it is the students who should be primarily doing the talking, and the teachers' role is to get them talking (Michaels, O'Connor, & Resnick, 2008). While there is much merit in this idea, it is driven by intuitions that LM learning is where all the action is.…”