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National initiative needed on chattering classes

Formal training for teachers in how to lead better classroom discussions could significantly improve children’s overall performance at school, a gathering of curriculum experts will hear today (Friday, February 26th).

Speaking at a seminar on the National Curriculum in London, Neil Mercer, Professor of Education at the University of Cambridge, will call for a critical review of the way in which teachers encourage classroom conversation and debate, arguing that it could have a "life-changing" impact on their pupils.

His presentation will point to a growing stockpile of research, largely overlooked by policy-makers, which suggests that children who are exposed to an environment in which they feel confident about expressing their opinions at an early age will enjoy clear advantages throughout their school career.

Encouraging children to air their views has long been recognised as an important way of teaching them about communication and teamwork, but Professor Mercer will argue that, when properly managed, it can also improve their overall levels of attainment.

He will refer to several studies, including a number of his own, which show that if pupils are first asked for their own thoughts and ideas about a topic, then discuss them as a group, they end up with a much better grasp of the subject than pupils who are simply taught the facts.

Research has also indicated that when asked to tackle problems by themselves, children who have had this dialogue-based style of teaching exhibit better reasoning skills than their peers.

To date, the issue of talk in the classroom, whether it involves teachers discussing ideas with pupils or children themselves working together in groups, has not been formally integrated into national teacher training programmes.

"Most classroom talk looks like it has always done, with teachers asking closed questions to which children can either give a right or wrong answer," Professor Mercer said.

"Paradoxically, we have hard evidence showing that classroom teaching is most effective when it is about dialogue rather than transmission and recitation. If children are given a chance to air their understanding, or even their misunderstanding, of a subject first, they then have a series of mental hooks on which to hang the knowledge the teacher imparts."

The seminar is being hosted by the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA) and aims to identify how thinking in a range of areas, such as social psychology and knowledge management, could influence the ways in which experts think about the National Curriculum in the future.

Professor Mercer`s presentation will argue that teaching children to tackle problems discursively through talk should be a fundamental part of their education, just as maths, science, cookery and IT are all seen as areas in which they need basic training at the very least.

That would necessitate the introduction of a national initiative to train teachers to cultivate an appropriate "climate of talk" in classrooms. The paper stresses that this means more than just asking children questions and then telling them whether their answers are right or wrong; rather, pupils should be encouraged to elaborate on and justify their own opinions even if that at first reveals that they have not understood a topic fully.

Research indicates that this process of expression, debate and reappraisal has two benefits: Children`s retention of knowledge about the particular subject of study is improved, but they also gradually emerge as educated thinkers capable of analysing and solving other problems in their own right. As a result, their chances of doing well at school are significantly improved.

The same technique also has benefits for teachers, who, by discussing the children`s ideas can assess their pupils` level of knowledge and tailor their teaching to address specific needs, issues and knowledge gaps.

"Most revamps of education policy focus purely on literacy and numeracy skills," Professor Mercer added. "We should question a system where at the moment it is more important for children to know about trigonometry by the age of 15, than it is for them to be able to communicate well with other people."

"When children are helped to understand talk as a problem-solving and learning tool and given the appropriate guidance to use it, the quality of their conversation, group work and their individual learning outcomes all improve. For children whose out-of-school lives give them little exposure to reasoned discussion, this classroom environment can be a life-changing experience."