Quality Talk: Developing Students' Discourse to Promote High-level Comprehension

Students often struggle to comprehend complex text. In response, we conducted an initial, year-long study of Quality Talk, a teacher-facilitated, small-group discussion approach designed to enhance students' basic and high-level comprehension, in two fourth-grade classrooms. Specifically, teach...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inAmerican educational research journal Vol. 55; no. 5; pp. 1113 - 1160
Main Authors Murphy, P. Karen, Greene, Jeffrey A., Firetto, Carla M., Hendrick, Brendan D., Li, Mengyi, Montalbano, Cristin, Wei, Liwei
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Los Angeles, CA SAGE Publishing 01.10.2018
SAGE Publications
American Educational Research Association
Subjects
Critical Thinking
Discourse Analysis
Educational research
Elementary School Students
Grade 4
Group Discussion
Language Arts
Persuasive Discourse
Predictor Variables
Reading Comprehension
Reading Instruction
Small Group Instruction
Students
Studies
critical thinking
classroom discussion
argumentation
Quality Talk
reading comprehension
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Summary:Students often struggle to comprehend complex text. In response, we conducted an initial, year-long study of Quality Talk, a teacher-facilitated, small-group discussion approach designed to enhance students' basic and high-level comprehension, in two fourth-grade classrooms. Specifically, teachers delivered instructional mini-lessons on discourse elements (e.g., questioning or argumentation) and conducted weekly text-based discussions in their language arts classes. Analysis of the videorecorded discussions showed decreases in teacher-initiated discourse elements, indicating a release of responsibility to students, whereas students' discourse reflected increased critical-analytic thinking (e.g., elaborated explanations or exploratory talk). Importantly, statistically and practically significant increases were evidenced on written measures of students' basic and high-level comprehension, indicating the promise of small-group discourse as a way to foster individual student learning outcomes.
ISSN:0002-8312
1935-1011
DOI:10.3102/0002831218771303