ED:TALK – Evidence & Dialogue Toolkit

In designing your project, consider what kind of project might achieve the goal you’ve just discovered. This starts you on a path of developing a theory of change (more on that later).

Think about, and include in your project planning template:

1. How do you expect to achieve your goal?
2. What resources are you going to need?
3. What are the practical steps that will make your project possible?

Ideas, Activities and Resources for your project: Changing classroom practice and talk

The Toolkit offers four key building blocks for your project. Ultimately you should want to work with all of them. However, if you are new to dialogue, you may choose to integrate all of them into your project, or to take it one step at a time. Whether you start big or small, we encourage you to draw on the talk rules block to create classroom ground rules for talk with your students.

Subject activities and resources that support dialogue

For all subjects, developing discussion skills and students’ ability to develop, critique and analyse arguments is central. The Toolkit Website contains partner teachers’ example projects in Literacy, Literature and Computer Science. Specifically for teachers of science and mathematics, the epiSTEMe modules contain curriculum-relevant example lesson sequences with teaching notes, slides and rich tasks. These have been developed as both a ready-to-use module for the topics of Ratios and Probability in mathematics, and Forces in science, but they also serve as a model for developing rich dialogic tasks and sequences for other topics which support good learning discussions. [Link: Website resource page] Source: Ruthven & Hofmann (2013) and epiSTEMe Probability module.

While we talk all the time in our classrooms, we know that leading good quality discussions in classrooms is far from easy. But we also know that change in classroom talk doesn’t just happen because engaged teachers offer more opportunities for it. That is why we have developed a structured research-based approach to support teachers to improve talk in their classrooms.

Creating classroom ground rules for talk

The Toolkit offers the epiSTEMe Introductory module [link to Resource page] for creating classroom Ground Rules for Talk. If you class has not got these already, this is a recommended step for all classrooms and strongly support by schools’ experiences. The Introductory Module offers both tools for developing your class Ground Rules for Talk and tasks and activities for practising those. Just letting students discuss in groups wasn’t that successful, but when we used the Toolkit and created the rules for talk it was much more successful so even my weakest and poorly behaved students were able to have meaningful discussions. Source: epiSTEMe Introductory module.

We found that just because we talk all the time, we shouldn’t assume that we do it in the right way because we don’t. The Toolkit helped us really change the way we discuss maths.

To further improve classroom dialogue in your classroom, research suggests that it is beneficial to focus on classroom norms for talk that are deeper and more nuanced than what students and teachers may initially assume, as well as on strategies that teachers can actively use to support class discussions. The last two building blocks focus on these aspects.

The three dimensions of classroom dialogue: People, Talk, and Ideas

Sometimes classroom discussions do not bring their full benefit to student learning. Our research has found that this is because there are three dimensions in good discussions and we don’t always pay attention to all three: People, Talk and Ideas. The key idea is that these dimensions apply to any ground rule for talk. Whether we are thinking about Listening or Contributing, each rule will have all of these dimensions that good quality discussions need to consider. Source: Hofmann & Ruthven (2018) and Developing classroom talk norms

We have always embraced discussion and group work but the Toolkit has given us a much more structured approach and given us better outcomes. The difference in doing it with the structured approached of the Cambridge Toolkit was massive and that was a real surprise.

Finally, it can be really difficult to know what to say and not to say in that moment when students are talking and you are trying to help them have good discussions. We also know that teachers want to be helpful to students and support their learning and success – and students expect this from teachers. Our research has identified concrete communication strategies that teachers may find helpful in supporting whole-class and small-group discussions in an active way.

Teacher strategies to support student discussions

Students cannot develop independence in working with challenging tasks and ideas if teachers immediately tell students when their ideas are incorrect. But as we discussed, research also shows that we shouldn’t leave students on their own but we should support them. We have identified strategies that teachers can use in supporting, and leading, whole-class and small-group discussions that do not take away students’ independence but that are contingent on students’ current understandings. In this Resource [link to Resource page] there are strategies you might wish to think about in facilitating student discussions - you probably use some of these already but consciously considering them can help you use them when the situation arises quickly. Source: Hofmann & Mercer (2016) and Developing classroom talk norms

Developing a theory of change

With a theory of change we mean the mechanisms or pathways by which we expect learning to improve in our projects.

We discuss research findings on such mechanisms and pathways in the Research Background section.

Below are some practical examples of how the Toolkit partner teachers found that these played out in practice. They can inform your theory of change for your class or school.

Talk supported learning through improving vocabulary and/or memory
Discussion opportunities supported the understanding and use of wider vocabulary needed for the learning of those children who do not have many opportunities for discussion outside school, or who speak English as another language; and actively discussing topics and ideas themselves helped students remember them better.

Structured talk opportunities improved student engagement and confidence
The structured approach to discussion and ground rules for talk improved student engagement in learning. Discussing ideas helped students suggest ideas when they did not have to commit to writing them down immediately. And discussing ideas with other students, and not having to give your answer to the teacher straight away, helped students’ confidence to try things and take risks.

Discussing ideas through talk fostered students’ reasoning and argumentation skills
Discussing things with others helped students become aware of different perspectives or viewpoints; this fostered their capability to reason, to compare ideas and support their own views, and therefore improved their ability to develop arguments.

Discussing ideas raised students’ awareness of alternative strategies to use when tackling a task
Discussing challenging tasks with other students made students more aware of multiple different approaches they could apply in order to attempt a difficult task.

Addressing challenges

There may be things that you are worried about when planning your project, or you may encounter challenges you hadn’t anticipated. Here are some insights from our partner teachers for addressing some common concerns or challenges you might encounter or be worried about.

My class has many disengaged or disruptive students.
Working with the Toolkit led to real surprises as it helped our weaker students take lead roles, and our normally disruptive students become engaged.
Introducing the ground rules for talk really helped my poorly behaved students engage in positive ways.

My class has many low attaining students or students with special educational needs.
We used the Toolkit with all our sets in maths including the special needs group and it worked for all of them.
Doing this project in English has given me a lot more confidence to do group work in challenging groups of students and it has influenced what I do with other classes too.

My class is very high attaining and likes to work according to their existing routines.

The problem I first had with the top set was that they are really used to just getting on with things and being able to do it, they didn’t initially like the stopping and chatting. It was novel and really useful for them to slow down and think about alternative approaches to the problem. I was surprised by the depth of discussion that the Toolkit enabled my students to have and how it led them to look at problems in multiple different ways. In the end the feedback from students was really positive.

I am worried that giving more time for discussion will not help improve my students’ assessment outcomes.
I was nervous before starting the Toolkit project as I have a very low ability group, whether they would be able to discuss, and I was nervous spending time on discussion and not seeing written work straight away. But actually I found that the structured discussions did have a huge impact on their written work.
The toolkit approach has helped my top set maths students approach difficult GCSE questions in more productive ways.

I am worried about not being able to cover the curriculum if I give up control over the pace of lessons.
A dialogic approach does not have to mean giving up control to students. A teacher teaching a group of students with significant behavioural issues managed to gain real benefits from a dialogic approach by introducing very ground rules for talk and using an approach whereby the dialogue was controlled by the teacher.
Letting them just go doesn’t work. But I can still have the conversation, very micromanaged but we are still having the conversation. With them, they need those prompts and that confinement, but they still feel empowered. --- loads of them never would have put their hand up; they [now] feel comfortable to have a go and to express their ideas. It is a massive life skill to be able to use dialogue properly.

I am worried about taking risks in a high accountability environment.
The Toolkit gave us the opportunity to take a managed risk as we had a plan and used the tools to monitor progress.
Taking managed risks gave us the opportunity to demonstrate to our children that taking risks to learn is ok.

Move on to Step 3: Decide what evidence to generate.