Moving Ideas. Dialogic interaction and writing in History.
Submitted by:
Jannet van Drie
Abstract:
To learn history implies learning the language of history. Both spoken and written language foster students’ ability to use discipline-based discourse and develop their thinking. Dialogic teaching is an important approach to stimulate historical reasoning in the classroom (van Boxtel & van Drie, 2016). We explore how students make use of whole–class discourse in individual writing. Although various studies have shown the importance of classroom interaction for writing (Chinn, Anderson & Waggoner, 2001), little is known about how this works. Our starting point is the Vygotskian idea that learning can move from the interpersonal level in classroom discourse to the intrapersonal level in subsequent individual writing. The research question guiding this small-scale exploratory study is: Do students draw on dialogic whole-class interaction in their subsequent writing in history, and if so, how?
Method. Pre-university students (Grade 11) followed a unit, including groupwork, whole-class interaction and argumentative writing The central question of the whole-class discussion and the writing task was: Which person/event was most significant for the development of Dutch democracy? (van Drie, van Boxtel & Stam, 2013).
The whole-class discussion was analyzed on ‘productive disciplinary engagement (Engle & Conant, 2002); here the proportion of historical reasoning by students and the teacher.
To gain insight into how students made use of the discussion in writing, we identified ideas from the document-set, the whole-class discussion and the written texts. The ideas in the student-texts were traced back; either deriving from the document-set, the whole-class discussion, or both. Analyses were conducted by two coders independently and differences were discussed. We also analyzed how students’ use of language in the discussion differed from the language-use in writing. Particularly, we looked at the use of the language of time and nominalizations, key resources for writing in history (Coffin, 2006).
Results. The discussion contained 79% historical reasoning utterances, 26% by the teacher and 53% by students. We found that almost half of the ideas in the texts could be traced back to the
discussion, but also that students developed additional ideas. We identified two ways in which students used classroom interaction in their texts: reproducing existing ideas or transforming existing ideas into new ones. Examples of both will be discussed. Students’ use of the language of history in the discussion and in writing seemed different. When writing, students used more nominalizations and the language of time was more complex.
Conclusion. First, we conclude that the whole-class discussion was dialogic since it contained high and substantive student reasoning. Second, this study showed how ideas can move from the interpersonal level in classroom interaction to the intrapersonal level in individual writing and how these ideas are transformed. Individual writing can benefit from whole-class discussion because students reproduced and transformed ideas in their writing, resulting in knowledge development. Moreover, students’ use of the language of history became more proficient. Both oral and written language use are needed to foster students’ historical reasoning. More large-scale research is needed to substantiate these findings.
References.
-Coffin, C. (2006) Historical discourse: The language of time cause and evaluation. London:
Continuum.
-Chinn, C. A., Anderson, R. C. & Waggoner, M. A. 2001). Patterns of Discourse During Two Kinds of Literature Discussion. Reading Research Quarterly 36, 378–411.
-Engle, R. A., & Conant, F. R. (2002). Guiding principles for fostering productive disciplinary engagement: Explaining an emergent argument in a community of learners classroom. Cognition and Instruction 20, 399-483.
-Van Boxtel, C., & Van Drie, J. (2017). Engaging students in historical reasoning: the need for dialogic history education. In M. Carretero, S. Berger, & M. Grever (Eds.) International Handbook of Research in Historical Culture and Education. Hybrid Ways of Learning History. pp. 573-589. Palgrave Handbooks.
-van Drie, J., van Boxtel, C., & Stam, B. (2013). “But why is this so important?” Discussing
historical significance in the classroom. International Journal of Historical Learning, Teaching and Research, 12(1), 146-168.