Teaching & Incorporating Inclusive Discussion Practices

Adams, A.

This poster presentation discusses results of a TAR project conducted through the Eberly Center in 76-100, a first-year writing course in the English Department. Most students in 76-100 are international students who come from different cultural, linguistic, and educational backgrounds. Due to these various backgrounds, students may be unaware of the implicit rules that guide classroom discussions. This TAR project designed a classroom discussion format that explicitly taught students different discussion moves (e.g., agree/disagree, expand on a topic, provide an opinion, etc.) that they could use to participate in class. In addition, discussion was structured to include small and whole-group discussions. This inclusive teaching practice could be modified to incorporate other discussion moves relevant in different disciplines. Results will include analysis from a pre-post survey on discussion beliefs, observational classroom data coded for discussion moves, and student reflections, in order to address the following research questions:

1. How does students´ interactional competence develop over time?
2. How do different discussion formats affect group discussions?

Alexis Adams, Modern Languages