"DISCUSSION AS A WAY OF TEACHING" Response

             “Discussion as a way of teaching” is a great article by Stephen Brookfield that explains how teachers can integrate discussions into the normal classroom activities. Many of the activities that Brookfield explains are classroom discussion outlines that I have seen before in classes that I have taken. One of the discussions ways that I hadn’t seen before, and would like to try in the classroom, would be the conversational moves. The Conversational moves are interesting because the moves can help students get away from their normal discussion roles. Conversational roles are very similar to Conversational Moves because the roles are dictated to the students. Conversational roles give students roles that they take on in the group discussion. In this way, we teachers can push students outside their comfort zones. One of the most common type of discussion modeling that I have seen and used in the classroom is the snowballing discussion. The snowballing discussion is easy to introduce to the class because it is the type of discussion that gets the discussion moving. In the beginning of the year when students are still trying to get to know each other, and getting a feel for how they want to interact with the rest of the class. The snowballing discussion lets those who want to take a larger role, take the larger role.

           

 I noticed in the document that many of the discussion types seemed to fall under one of two categories, and can be used with students at different times. One of the types of discussions is the democratic type. The democratic types of discussions allows students to participate at will and let the students take control of the discussion and where it is heading. The other types of discussions presented in the document is the regulated or facilitated discussions. These discussions require a strong role of the teacher to enforce the ground rules set up in the discussion. These two types of discussions can be used at different times. In the beginning of the course, it would be smart of a teacher to take more of a facilitator role with the students, until they are comfortable enough with the material and each other that they are willing to speak up. Democratic types of discussions are best done with classes that are well versed in the material, or are more comfortable with their speaking ability. With this document by Brookfield, teachers have a great resource to use in the classroom to give students more control in their learning of the subject matter.