Magirius/Scherf/Steinmetz (2022): A Framework for High Quality Conversations in the Literature Classroom, ARLE 2022, Nicosia.

Abstract

In our presentation of a conceptual paper, we propose a model which can be used in teacher education. The model draws on two basic notions: that teachers have to identify questions about the literary text which are worthy of clarification and that teachers have to provide support in a way that is appropriate to the literary subject matter, in particular its ambiguity. Questions about the literary text are worthy of clarification when 1) they have testable answers, and when they are either 2) disputable or 3) student-initiated or both.

Full text

Support in Dialogic Teaching
A Framework for High Quality Conversations in the
Literature Classroom
Marco Magirius, Daniel Scherf & Michael Steinmetz
ARLE 2022, Nicosia, Cyprus
Thursday, June 16

A Framework for High Quality Conversations in the Literature Classroom
Contents
Starting Points
Worthiness of Clarification
Disputability
Testability
Student-initiated Questions
Support during the Conversation

A Framework for High Quality Conversations in the Literature Classroom
Starting Points
Contents
Starting Points
Worthiness of Clarification
Support during the Conversation

A Framework for High Quality Conversations in the Literature Classroom
Starting Points
Positions on Dialogic Teaching
(Kim and Wilkinson, 2019)
•“dialogic teaching” as ambiguous and contested concept
•one dierence regards:
learning through dialogue learning for dialogue
Resnick Wegerif, Matusov
Mortimer & Scott; Alexander
•The learning through dialogue stance sees dialogue as a tool for
reasoning in order to reach a certain goal of understanding.
(see Zabka, 2015)
•Seen from the learning for dialogue perspective, dialogue opens up
relations with others that foster reflection, creativity, and discovery. In
this case dialogue is a desirable outcome of education in itself. (ibid.)

A Framework for High Quality Conversations in the Literature Classroom
Starting Points
Positions in the German Discourse on Literature
Education
•Teacher stances derived from the Socratic method of
questioning are severely criticized (e.g. Spinner, 1992).
•Influencial research groups tend to side with “learning for
dialogue” approach – conversing about individual and creative
interpretations of the literary text by each reader (e.g.
Merkelbach, 1995, Härle and Steinbrenner, 2014, Härle, 2014).

A Framework for High Quality Conversations in the Literature Classroom
Starting Points
Learning through Dialogue
•focus on learning about the literary text as object of joint inquiry
•Our studies draw on the works of Zabka (2015; 2020) who suggests to
apply concepts of task research (Steinmetz, 2020, Winkler, 2011,
Köster, 2003) to conversations/dialogic teaching.
•Empirical Study by Magirius, Scherf & Steinmetz (2021): Evidence and
Impact of Potential Quality Criteria in Dialogic Literature Classes
•Today: Conceptional research on the role of the teacher in dialogic
teaching
1. mainly before class: The teacher has to anticipate challenges
and barriers to understanding the literary text.
2. only during class: The teacher has to support the learning
process with suitable utterances.

A Framework for High Quality Conversations in the Literature Classroom
Starting Points
1. Which questions about a literary text should be in the
center of conversation in class in order to deepen
literary understanding?
2. What are beneficial teacher utterances which support
the students in their process of understanding the
literary text?

A Framework for High Quality Conversations in the Literature Classroom
Starting Points
1. Which questions about a literary text should be in the
center of conversation in class in order to deepen
literary understanding?
2. What are beneficial teacher utterances which support
the students in their process of understanding the
literary text?

A Framework for High Quality Conversations in the Literature Classroom
Worthiness of Clarification
Contents
Starting Points
Worthiness of Clarification
Disputability
Testability
Student-initiated Questions
Support during the Conversation

A Framework for High Quality Conversations in the Literature Classroom
Worthiness of Clarification
Worthiness of Clarification
(Magirius, Scherf & Steinmetz, 2021a)
The worthiness of a text-related question for learning through
dialogue settings depends on three criteria. A question or
respectively an answer to a question can be
a) disputable
b) testable
c) student-initiated

A Framework for High Quality Conversations in the Literature Classroom
Worthiness of Clarification
Origin of Data for Example Questions
•data taken from the “Gefoelit”-Studies (Harwart, Sander
& Scherf, 2020, Harwart and Scherf, 2018):
15 literature classes, students aged 12-15, each class took
around 80min
•already analyzed by Magirius, Scherf & Steinmetz (2021):
4 literature classes about the short story “Der blaue Falke”

A Framework for High Quality Conversations in the Literature Classroom
Worthiness of Clarification
The blue falcon
A girl walked through a garden, in which a woman was busily working. Have
you seen my blue falcon? she asked her. No, said the woman. The girl went
on... Schubinger, J. (1995). Als die Welt noch jung war. Weinheim: Beltz &
Gelberg.

A Framework for High Quality Conversations in the Literature Classroom
Worthiness of Clarification
Disputability
Contents
Starting Points
Worthiness of Clarification
Disputability
Testability
Student-initiated Questions
Support during the Conversation

A Framework for High Quality Conversations in the Literature Classroom
Worthiness of Clarification
Disputability
Disputability
Interpretation begins where the reader makes a decision: the
decision to see something that is no longer clear one way or the
other. To be able to read better means to be sure about all that
is indisputably established about a text and where that
indisputability ends and decisions of the reader are added.
(translated from Matuschek 2012, p. 21)

A Framework for High Quality Conversations in the Literature Classroom
Worthiness of Clarification
Disputability
Disputability
Interpretation begins where the reader makes a decision: the
decision to see something that is no longer clear one way or the
other. To be able to read better means to be sure about all that
is indisputably established about a text and where that
indisputability ends and decisions of the reader are added.
(translated from Matuschek 2012, p. 21)

A Framework for High Quality Conversations in the Literature Classroom
Worthiness of Clarification
Disputability
The blue falcon
A girl walked through a garden, in which a woman was busily working. Have
you seen my blue falcon? she asked her. No, said the woman. The girl went
on....

A Framework for High Quality Conversations in the Literature Classroom
Worthiness of Clarification
Disputability
Disputability
Teacher: Why on earth is somebody looking for a blue falcon?
I haven’t seen such a person yet in my life.
Teacher: What are the persons’ thoughts in the moment
the girl asks them?
Student: Now I am confused. Is it the blue falcon or is it
a raven?

A Framework for High Quality Conversations in the Literature Classroom
Worthiness of Clarification
Disputability
Disputability
Decisions:
•Which text elements are relevant for answering the
questions?
•Which context knowledge is needed/suitable for
answering the questions?
⇒Abduction sensu Charles S. Peirce (see Jannidis, 2004, p. 79)

A Framework for High Quality Conversations in the Literature Classroom
Worthiness of Clarification
Testability
Contents
Starting Points
Worthiness of Clarification
Disputability
Testability
Student-initiated Questions
Support during the Conversation

A Framework for High Quality Conversations in the Literature Classroom
Worthiness of Clarification
Testability
Testability
When understanding literary texts, creativity can take on a life of its
own and overshoot the target, especially in the absence of prior
knowledge (see Kreft, 1977, p. 378). In our empirical data we found
that students tend to do this when pondering questions whose
answers are hypotheses (Føllesdal, Walløe & Elster, 1988, Eco, 1987)
which are not testable. For example:
Teacher: Why on earth is somebody looking for a blue falcon?
I haven’t seen such a person yet in my life.

A Framework for High Quality Conversations in the Literature Classroom
Worthiness of Clarification
Testability
Testability
•Indisputable Questions have fully testable answers. In this
case there is conclusive indication in the text.
•An answer is partly testable if no right-wrong-dichotomy
applies, and thus there are only cues in the literary text which
can help to contest or corroborate an answer to the question
(see Weimar, 1995). There is no conclusive indication but
uncertainty.
Teacher: What are the persons’ thoughts in the moment the girl asks
them?
Student: Now I am confused. Is it the blue falcon or is it a
raven?

A Framework for High Quality Conversations in the Literature Classroom
Worthiness of Clarification
Testability
Testability
•Indisputable Questions have fully testable answers. In this
case there is conclusive indication in the text.
•An answer is partly testable if no right-wrong-dichotomy
applies, and thus there are only cues in the literary text which
can help to contest or corroborate an answer to the question
(see Weimar, 1995). There is no conclusive indication but
uncertainty.
Teacher: What are the persons’ thoughts in the moment the girl asks
them?
Student: Now I am confused. Is it the blue falcon or is it a
raven?

A Framework for High Quality Conversations in the Literature Classroom
Worthiness of Clarification
Testability
... Have you seen my blue falcon? This time she asked a foreign woman. I
am not from here, the woman answered in bad German and pointed to a
bus stop: Look, there! Indeed, there was a bird sitting on the back of a
bench. But it’s not blue and doesn’t look like a falcon, the girl objected.
Now it was the bird who spoke: But it’s me! he said. The girl came closer.
She apologized: I didn’t recognize you right away. You are rather black and
look more like a raven. That’s all right, said the blue falcon. The main thing
is that we have each other again.

A Framework for High Quality Conversations in the Literature Classroom
Worthiness of Clarification
Student-initiated Questions
Contents
Starting Points
Worthiness of Clarification
Disputability
Testability
Student-initiated Questions
Support during the Conversation

A Framework for High Quality Conversations in the Literature Classroom
Worthiness of Clarification
Student-initiated Questions
a) testable: Are there cues in the literary text which can help to
contest or corroborate an interpretation?
b) disputable: Does the question lead to several contested
interpretations?
c) student-initiated: Is the question brought up by a student?
Questions about the literary text are worthy of clarification in learning
through dialogue settings if and only if
a) their answers are at least partly testable, and they are either
b) disputable or c) student-initiated or both.
Definitions

A Framework for High Quality Conversations in the Literature Classroom
Worthiness of Clarification
Student-initiated Questions
Worthiness of Clarification
testable disputable st.-initiated worthy of c.
no yes no T: Why is somebody looking for a blue falcon?
(yes) yes no T: What are the persons’ thoughts when the girl asks them?
(yes) yes yes S: Is it the blue falcon or is it a raven?

A Framework for High Quality Conversations in the Literature Classroom
Worthiness of Clarification
Student-initiated Questions
Worthiness of Clarification
testable disputable st.-initiated worthy of c.
no yes no no T: Why is somebody looking for a blue falcon?
(yes) yes no T: What are the persons’ thoughts when the girl asks them?
(yes) yes yes S: Is it the blue falcon or is it a raven?

A Framework for High Quality Conversations in the Literature Classroom
Worthiness of Clarification
Student-initiated Questions
Worthiness of Clarification
testable disputable st.-initiated worthy of c.
no yes no no T: Why is somebody looking for a blue falcon?
(yes) yes no yes T: What are the persons’ thoughts when the girl asks them?
(yes) yes yes S: Is it the blue falcon or is it a raven?

A Framework for High Quality Conversations in the Literature Classroom
Worthiness of Clarification
Student-initiated Questions
Worthiness of Clarification
testable disputable st.-initiated worthy of c.
no yes no no T: Why is somebody looking for a blue falcon?
(yes) yes no yes T: What are the persons’ thoughts when the girl asks them?
(yes) yes yes yes S: Is it the blue falcon or is it a raven?

A Framework for High Quality Conversations in the Literature Classroom
Support during the Conversation
Contents
Starting Points
Worthiness of Clarification
Support during the Conversation

A Framework for High Quality Conversations in the Literature Classroom
Support during the Conversation
1. Which questions about a literary text should be in the
center of conversation in class in order to deepen
literary understanding?
2. What are beneficial teacher utterances which support
the students in their process of understanding the
literary text?

A Framework for High Quality Conversations in the Literature Classroom
Support during the Conversation
Application of Task Research to Dialogic Teaching
(Magirius, Scherf & Steinmetz, 2021b)
Overexaggerating the students can lead to arbitrariness of
understanding. To avoid this the task research suggests the
inclusion of support elements in interpretation tasks by providing,
for example, information on contexts (Stark, 2016, 2012),
interpretation hypotheses or hints about critical elements of the
literary text (Steinmetz, 2020).

A Framework for High Quality Conversations in the Literature Classroom
Support during the Conversation
Application of Task Research to Dialogic Teaching
(Magirius, Scherf & Steinmetz, 2021b)
•Understanding the literary text and completing interpretation tasks is
modelled in analogy to problem solving.
•Pushing the understanding forward during the conversation does not
mean to necessarily converge to a predetermined place. To guide the
students can mean to shift their focus to the ambiguity of the literary
text.

A Framework for High Quality Conversations in the Literature Classroom
Support during the Conversation
Application of Task Research to Dialogic Teaching
(Magirius, Scherf & Steinmetz, 2021b)
•Understanding the literary text and completing interpretation tasks is
modelled in analogy to problem solving.
•Pushing the understanding forward during the conversation does not
mean to necessarily converge to a predetermined place. To guide the
students can mean to shift their focus to the ambiguity of the literary
text.

A Framework for High Quality Conversations in the Literature Classroom
Support during the Conversation
Results from Empirical Study
(Magirius, Scherf & Steinmetz, 2021b)
•Students can gain alot from dialogic teaching if the teacher is
supportive, opens up discussions for a wide range of
interpretations and yet helps to falsify interpretations which
are not consisent with the literary text.
•This way the students benefit in their learning experience and
evaluate the literary text more positively.
•consistency, support and discussion as quality criteria for
literary learning through dialogue

A Framework for High Quality Conversations in the Literature Classroom
Support during the Conversation
Next Steps
We are going to ...
•generalize our empirical findings by applying our concepts to a
dierent data set.
•improve our framework in terms of practical usability for
inservice teachers trainings.
•conduct an intervention study and find out whether the usage
of our concepts by teachers has a positive eect on literary
learning.

A Framework for High Quality Conversations in the Literature Classroom
End
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References II
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References V
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A Framework for High Quality Conversations in the Literature Classroom
End
Thank you for your attention!

A Framework for High Quality Conversations in the Literature Classroom
End
Contact Information
Marco Magirius
University of Tübingen
marco.magirus@uni-tuebingen.de
Daniel Scherf
Heidelberg University of Education
scherf@ph-heidelberg.de
Michael Steinmetz
University of Education Weingarten
steinmetz@ph-weingarten.de
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