ABSTRACT
The field of research on the role of dialogue in learning and instruction is reaching a new phase. We now know that students who participate in structured argumentation and discussion with their classmates can make surprising, even stunning, learning gains. A growing number of research studies show that relatively short engagement in dialogic learning can produce strong and lasting effects on student knowledge in the major domains, as measured by examinations and other assessments. To take just a few examples, students in England who talked their way through puzzling science problems scored higher than their peers on the General Certificate of Secondary Education exams—not only in science, but also in English and maths (Adey & Shayer, 1990; Adey & Shayer, 2015). In the Eastern US, students who participated in discussion-rich maths classes far outscored other students on the state test, in English as well as maths (O’Connor, Michaels, & Chapin, 2015; Chapin & O’Connor, 2012). Students from the American Midwest who engaged with a science/public policy issue through discussion and debate used more academic vocabulary during their classroom conversations and during an interview about a different topic, compared to students who were taught the same material through direct instruction (Ma et al., 2017).
