Abstract:
Abstract What happens when students are given opportunities to talk and interact with each other? What happens when teachers talk less and students talk more? What happens when the focus is on student and not teacher questioning? To examine these questions, an intervention, in the form of a Paideia Seminar, was trialed in 2008 in two classrooms (ages 11 to 13 years) at a New Zealand school. A Paideia Seminar is a method for discussing a topic which is student focused. This study found that the complexity of the discussion increased when teacher talk was reduced and the interactions included mostly student-to-student responses – that is, student-to-student responding with a question, challenge, or expansion of ideas led to enhanced outcomes. Ensuring these conditions and outcomes occur requires a provocative statement developed by teacher and students, high-quality preparation by the students on the content knowledge of the question, and post-seminar feedback discussion.
