Middle and High School Students' Perceptions of How They Experience Text-Based Discussions: A...

A lthough, as literacy teachers and researchers,each of us has been involved with classroomdiscussions of text over the past several years,we have rarely considered in any systematic

way how students might be experiencing such discus-sions. Granted, there have been a number of studies fo-cusing on classroom discourse (Barnes, Britton, & Rosen,1971; Bellack, Kliebard, Hyman, & Smith, 1966; Cazden,1986) and more specifically on what teachers do and sayin interacting with students to motivate them to engage

in literate actions with their peers (Alvermann, O’Brien,& Dillon, 1990; Dillon, 1989; Santa Barbara ClassroomDiscourse Group, 1992). These studies, coupled with therapidly growing body of research on peer-led, literature-based discussions at the elementary and intermediatelevel (Almasi & Gambrell, 1994; McMahon, 1991;O’Flahavan & Almasi, 1991; Raphael & Goatley, 1992),have contributed greatly to our awareness of how class-room talk about texts can be viewed as a window onstudents’ thinking and social interactions. In fact, it is

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Donna E. AlvermannJosephine Peyton YoungNational Reading Research Center,

University of Georgia, Athens, USA

Dera WeaverAthens Academy, Athens, Georgia, USA

Kathleen A. HinchmanSyracuse University, Syracuse, New York, USA

David W. MooreArizona State University West, Phoenix, USA

Stephen F. PhelpsState University College at Buffalo, New York, USA

Esther C. ThrashAtlanta Public Schools, Atlanta, Georgia, USA

Patricia ZalewskiLiverpool Central Schools, Liverpool, New York, USA

Middle and high school students’perceptions of how they experiencetext-based discussions: A multicase study

Reading Research QuarterlyVol. 31, No. 3

July/August/September 1996©1996 International Reading Association

(pp. 244–267)

ABSTRACTS

IN THIS multicase study, adolescents at five culturally diverse sitesacross the United States engaged in face-to-face interactions as theyreflected and reported on their perceptions of their own and otherstudents’ experiences in discussing regularly assigned content areatexts. Our decision to consider students’ insights into their experi-ences distinguishes this study from previous work on classroom in-teraction that has focused primarily on teachers’ and researchers’ in-terpretations of student talk. A social constructionist perspective,which provided the framework for the study, enabled us to explorehow verbal and nonverbal patterned ways of interacting shape, andare shaped by, social practices inherent in classroom talk about text.Data sources included three rounds of videotaped class discussionsfollowed by three focal group interviews, field notes, theoreticalmemoranda, narrative vignettes, and samples of students’ work. Datacollection and analysis, which were ongoing over the course of 1

school year, included a procedure for sharing field notes, transcribedinterviews, and videos across sites. This procedure for involving theparticipants at all five sites in analyzing common sets of data gener-ated findings that suggest students are (a) aware of the conditionsthey believe to be conducive to good discussions, (b) knowledgeableabout the different tasks and topics that influence their participationin discussions, and (c) cognizant of how classroom discussions helpthem understand what they read. By focusing on students’ percep-tions of their own actions, thoughts, and motives related to classroomtalk about texts, it was possible to make visible their negotiation ofdifferent roles and relations, rights and responsibilities, and normsand expectations in peer-led and whole-class discussions.Implications for researchers and teachers alike underscore the im-portance of considering the richness of data to be found in class-room discussions.

Middle and high school students’ perceptions of how they experience text-based discussions: A multicase study

Las percepciones de estudiantes de escuela media y superior acerca de las discusiones basadas enlos textos: Un estodio de casos

incluyeron un procedimiento para compartir notas de campo, en-trevistas transcriptas y videos de las diferentes localidades. Este pro-cedimiento de involucrar a los participantes de los cinco lugares enel análisis de conjuntos de datos comunes generó hallazgos gue su-gieren que los estudiantes son: a) conscientes de las condiciones queconsideran propicias para generar buenas discusiones, b) conoce-dores de las diferentes tareas y tópicos que influencian su partici-pación en discusiones y c) conscientes de cómo las discusiones enclase los ayudan a comprender lo que leen. Al poner el foco en lapercepción que tienen los estudiantes de sus propias acciones, pen-samientos y motivos relacionados con el discurso sobre los textos enel aula, fue posible hacer evidente su negociación de diferentes rolesy relaciones, derechos y responsabilidades y normas y expectativasen discusiones generales y guiadas por pares. Las implicancias paralos investigadores y docentes señalan la importancia de considerar lariqueza de los datos que se hallan en las discusiones dentro del aula.

EN ESTE estudio de casos, adolescentes de cinco localidades cul-turalmente diversas de los Estados Unidos interactuaron cara a cara,reflexionanado e informando sobre sus percepciones y las de otrosestudiantes acerca de discutir los textos de áreas de contenidos asig-nados regularmente. La decisión de incluir las percepciones de losestudiantes sobre sus experiencias distingue a este estudio de traba-jos previos sobre la interacción en el aula, en los que se puso elacento fundamentalmente en las interpretaciones de docentes e in-vestigadores sobre las expresiones de los estudiantes. La pespectivaconstructivista social, que constituye el marco del estudio, nos per-mitió explorar cómo los patrones de interacción verbales y no ver-bales dan forma y son conformados por prácticas sociales inherentesal discurso sobre los textos dentro del aula. Los datos incluyeron tresdiscusiones en clase video-grabadas seguidas por tres entrevistas agrupos, notas de campo, informes teóricos, resúmenes narrados ymuestras del trabajo de los estudiantes. La recolección de los datosy el análisis, que se llevaron a cabo durante un año escolar,

Erfahrungen mit textorientierten Diskussionen aus der Sicht von Mittel- und Oberstufenschülern: eine Mehrbereichsstudie

AN DIESER Mehrbereichsstudie nahmen Jugendliche an fünf kulturellunterschiedlichen Standorten quer durch die USA teil. Berichtet wirdüber deren Teilnahme an und deren Eindrücke von unmittelbarenDiskussionen, und dies wird verglichen mit den Erfahrungen jenerSchüler, die am herkömmlichen Unterricht mit themenspezifischerTexterfassung teilnahmen. Unsere Entscheidung, die gedanklichenÜberlegungen der Schüler hinsichtlich ihrer Erfahrungen mit inBetracht zu ziehen, unterscheidet diese Studie von vorangegangenenUntersuchungen über Klassendiskussionen, die in erster Linie ihrenSchwerpunkt in den Interpretationen von Schülergesprächen durchden Lehrer oder Forscher hatten. Eine sozial kontruktive Orientierung,die den Rahmen für diese Studie bildete, ermöglichte uns zu er-forschen, wie verbales und nonverbales Verhalten Diskussionen formtund auch von ihnen geformt wird, und welches soziale Verhalten imKlassenzimmer den textorientierten Gesprächsrunden eigen ist. ZurDatenerfassung gehörten drei videographierte Diskussionsrunden,gefolgt von drei zielgruppenorientierten Gruppeninterviews, Feld-beobachtungen, theoretischen Aufzeichnungen, Kurzberichten undBeispielen über die Arbeit der Schüler. Zur Erfassung und Auswertungder Daten, die sich über ein ganzes Schuljahr erstreckten, gehörten

auch Vorgaben zur gegenseitigen Information über Aufzeichnungen,transkribierte Interviews und Videos von den einzelnen Standorten.Diese Vorgangsweise, die Teilnehmer von allen fünf Standorten in dieAnalyse von allgemein verfügbaren Daten miteinzubeziehen, hatteErgebnisse zur Folge, die nahelegen, daß a) Schüler, die sich über dieBedingungen im klaren sind, glauben, daß jene einer guten Diskussionförderlich sind; b) Schüler, die über die verschiedenen Aufgaben undThemen Bescheid wissen, bewußter an Diskussionen teilnehmen; c)Schüler, denen der Sinn von Klassendiskussionen verständlich ist, einbesseres Textverständis haben. Indem besonderes Augenmerk auf dieArt der Wahrnehmung gelegt wird, wie die Schüler selbst ihre eige-nen Aktivitäten, Gedanken und Beweggründe beurteilen, war esmöglich, ihnen ihre Einbeziehung in die verschiedenen Rollen undBeziehungen, Rechte und Pflichten, Normen und Erwartungen inDiskussionen der Schüler untereinander oder in vom Lehrer geleitetenKlassendiskussionen deutlich zu machen. Die sich daraus ergebendenSchlußfolgerungen, die sowohl für Forscher wie Lehrer interessantsind, unterstreichen die Bedeutung der Ergiebigkeit von Daten, die sichaus Klassendiskussionen ergeben.

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ABSTRACTS

Les perceptions d’élèves de collège et lycée sur leur expérience des discussions basées sur un texte:étude de cas multiples

portait une procédure pour partager les notes de terrain, les entre-tiens transcrits, et les vidéos des différents sites. Cette procédurepour impliquer les participants des cinq sites dans l’analyse des en-sembles de données communs a produit des résultats suggérant queles élèves a) sont conscients des conditions qu’ils considèrent con-duire à de bonnes discussions, b) sont bien informés des tâches etdes sujets différents qui influencent leur participation aux discus-sions, et c) ont connaissance de la façon dont les discussions declasse les aident à comprendre ce qu’ils lisent. En se centrant sur laperception qu’ont les élèves de leurs propres actions, pensées et mo-tivations liées au discours scolaire relatif aux textes, on peut rendrevisible la négociation des différences de rôles et de relations, desdroits et des devoirs, des normes et des attentes lors des discussionsentre pairs et avec toute la classe. Les implications pour leschercheurs aussi bien que pour les enseignants sous-estiment l’im-portance de la prise en compte de la richesse des données que peu-vent fournir les discussions en classe.

DANS CETTE étude de cas multiples, des adolescents de cinq sitesculturellement différents des États Unis ont été engagés dans desinteractions en face à face pour avoir un renvoi et un compte rendude leurs impressions et de celles d’autres élèves au sujet des discus-sions de textes des disciplines enseignées dans les établissements. Ennous intéressant aux idées des élèves relatives à leurs expériences,cette étude se différencie des étude antérieures sur les interactionsen classe qui sont centrées essentiellement sur l’interprétation du dis-cours des élèves par les enseignants et les chercheurs. La perspectivesocio-constructiviste qui constitue le cadre de l’étude nous a permisd’explorer comment les structures des modalités d’interaction verbaleet non verbale façonnent et sont façonnées par les pratiques socialesinhérentes au discours de la classe relatif au texte. Les sources dedonnées comportaient trois séries de discussions de classe vidéo-scopées, suivies de trois entretiens de groupe focalisés, de notes deterrain, de rappels théoriques pour mémoire, de vignettes narra-tives, et d’échantillons de travaux d’élèves. La collecte et l’analysedes données, poursuivie tout au long d’une année scolaire, com-

largely through reading this literature that we came toappreciate how the social, cognitive, and motivationalaspects of classroom talk are intertwined and often ana-lytically inseparable.

At the same time, we have become acutely awareof how much more there is to learn about students’ sub-jective views about their own actions, thoughts, and mo-tives that arise during classroom talk about assignedreadings. Although a review of the literature on students’perceptions of classroom practices (Frager, 1984; Taylor,1962) and schooling in general (Phelan, Davidson, &Cao, 1992) suggested that researchers have studied thesephenomena for a number of years, there is little evi-dence that they have placed students’ experiences at thecenter of their research (see McLaughlin & Talbert, 1990,and Turley, 1994, for exceptions). According to Ericksonand Shultz (1992),

If the student is visible at all in a research study, he isusually viewed from the perspective of...educators’ inter-ests and ways of seeing.... Rarely is the perspective of thestudent herself explored. Classroom research typicallydoes not ask what the student is up to, nor does it...ques-tion whether “failing” or “mastering” or being “unmotivat-ed”...adequately captures what the student might beabout in daily classroom encounters with curriculum. (pp. 467–468)

In the research literature on adolescent literacy, weare aware of at least one longitudinal study (Oldfather &McLaughlin, 1993) that focused on middle and highschool students’ perceptions of their own reasons forbeing (or not being) motivated as literacy learners. Two other studies involving adolescents and literacy(Hinchman, 1992; Rogers, 1991) described the subjectivenature of students’ knowing and how such knowledgealtered students’ attitudes about learning from text.Although each of these studies addressed adolescents’literate ways of knowing in content area classes, nonefocused specifically on how students subjectively experi-enced discussions of assigned readings in those classes.

The purpose of the present study, therefore, was tolearn from middle and high school students’ perceptionshow they experience classroom talk about texts in theircontent area classes. Classroom talk is our descriptor forthe various forms of student-to-student verbal interactionthat we observed; however, students uniformly referredto all kinds of classroom talk about texts as discussions.A multicase study involving five sites across the UnitedStates allowed us to look at such discussions in culturallydiverse settings, not for the purpose of making evalua-tive judgments across sites, but rather for understandingin greater depth the range of students’ experiences. Thesignificance of the study lies in its potential to affect how

teachers use what students value about discussions inplanning their instruction.

Conceptual framework

Over a half century ago, Dewey (1938/1963) ar-gued that the proper interpretation of students’ educa-tional experiences rests on one’s ability to understandtheir thoughts, actions, and motives as they interact withothers in social situations. Although he acknowledgedthe role of the teacher and the curriculum in shapingstudents’ experiences, Dewey wrote, “[it is] the totalsocial set-up of the situations in which a person is en-gaged” (p. 45) that is most important in interpreting hisor her experiences.

Building on the ideas of Dewey, Kuhn (1970), andothers, Rorty (1979) has given even more credence tothe importance of the social in interpreting one’s experi-ences. Rorty deconstructed the metaphor of the humanmind consisting of two mechanisms: one, the so-calledmirror of nature that reflects external reality, and the oth-er, an inner eye that comprehends the reflection. Hedoes so on the grounds that this metaphor, which hasinfluenced Western philosophy since the time ofDescartes, leads to circular thinking about knowledgeand to some unresolvable problems in accurately repre-senting the nature and authority of knowledge. In placeof the mirror and inner eye metaphor, Rorty would haveus consider what can be learned from viewing knowl-edge as a social construct. His thesis is that all knowl-edge is socially constructed, such that the ways in whichwe come to describe or otherwise account for the world(including ourselves and our experiences) are derivedfrom historically situated linguistic and symbolic interac-tions with others.

Thus, one of the assumptions underlying socialconstructionism (Geertz, 1983a; Gergen, 1985) is that lin-guistic “entities we normally call reality, knowledge,thought, facts, texts, selves, and so on are constructsgenerated by communities of like-minded peers”(Bruffee, 1986, p. 774) over time. Based on this view ofknowledge as socially justified belief, which constitutesand is constituted by a community’s language system,social constructionists have reasoned that knowledgeand language are inseparable. The inseparability of thetwo was a particularly useful construct for us in ourquest to understand how students say they experienceclassroom discussions of assigned readings. As a con-struct, it provided the rationale for asking students toreflect and report on their subjective experiences asparticipants in small- and large-group discussions. Weassumed students’ knowledge of such experiences (con-structed as it was through the social interaction of group

Middle and high school studentsÕ perceptions 247

members) and the language they used to reflect thatknowledge were inseparable. This assumption addressesin part the limitations typically ascribed to self-reportdata. Although self-reports are open to criticism,nonetheless, they “are useful for assessing how individu-als make judgments about people and events, and theydo register what people think they do or what they thinkis socially acceptable to do” (Goetz & LeCompte, 1984,p. 122). Ultimately, of course, we recognize “that whatwe call our data are really our own constructions”(Geertz, 1983b, p. 42).

We chose a social constructionist perspective toguide our research because we were interested in ex-ploring how verbal and nonverbal patterned ways of in-teracting shape and are shaped by (Fairclough, 1993) so-cial practices inherent in classroom talk about texts (e.g.,ways of negotiating and being together, ways of posi-tioning and being positioned, and ways of participatingand not participating in discussions). A social construc-tionist approach also provided a rationale for method-ologically grounding our observations in the talk andactions of the students. This approach to understandingadolescents’ experiences, while different from the ap-proach taken by many motivation theorists (e.g.,Anderman & Maehr, 1994; Eccles & Midgley, 1989), is inkeeping with the recent work of McCombs (1996), whois attempting to integrate what students say about theirlearning experiences with the more traditional researchon motivation.

As students socially interact to construct meaningduring discussions of their assigned readings, they makevisible what is available to be known (Bloome & Bailey,1992) as well as a host of literate actions for how theycome to know (Santa Barbara Classroom DiscourseGroup, 1992). One distinguishing feature of these actionsand interactions is how students negotiate different rolesand relations, rights and responsibilities, and norms andexpectations as they engage with texts (Floriani, 1994;Heras, 1994). In the present study, we used the negotia-tion process as a heuristic for examining students’ per-ceptions of how they experience class discussions of as-signed readings. Specifically, we drew on the work ofGreen and Harker (1982), Heap (1991), and Heras(1994) to formulate general types of questions that guid-ed and were refined with our research. Initially, thesequestions included: (a) What roles and relationships in-fluence how students perceive their participation inclassroom talk about texts? (b) For what do they holdeach other accountable? and (c) What expectations dothey hold for such discussions?

As we gained insights into the students’ perspec-tives, we refined our questions in an inductive manner.This process sensitized us to the nuances present in stu-

dents’ responses to our current questions and enabled usto ask increasingly focused questions about negotiatedroles and relationships, expectations, and accountability.

Method

This section begins with our rationale for choosinga multicase study approach, followed by a brief over-view of the researchers’ backgrounds and roles. Next is adescription of the classes at each of the five sites, andthen a listing of the primary and secondary data sources.The section concludes with an account of the proce-dures used in analyzing the data.

Multicase study approachCapturing with some degree of specificity the

nature of students’ experiences of a particular phenome-non, such as classroom talk about texts, is labor inten-sive and frequently limited to a single case at one site.We chose to study multiple cases at different sites be-cause we were interested in obtaining as broad a viewas possible of students’ perceptions of how they experi-ence text-based discussions. We recognize that in takingthis broad view, we limited our ability to attend to therichness of individual sites.

According to Bogdan and Biklen (1992), the de-gree to which a multicase study can be used to demon-strate the typicality or diversity of the phenomenonunder study rests ultimately on the kinds of decisionsmade in choosing the various sites. In selecting the sitesfor the present study, we followed Stake’s (1994) rule ofthumb that the opportunity to learn from a site shouldtake priority over a concern for its typicality or represen-tativeness. Consequently, we chose sites that providedan opportunity to study students’ perceptions of text-based discussions under a variety of conditions (e.g.,peer-led, small-group discussions and teacher-led, large-group discussions) across culturally diverse settings.

It is important to note that we sampled only a lim-ited number of classrooms. Each of the classrooms useddifferent kinds of approaches to small- and large-groupdiscussion. Across all sites, students told us that theywere allowed to participate in discussion for only a limit-ed amount of time each day—often only in the class-room where the case study took place.

ResearchersÕ backgrounds and rolesWith the exception of the authors’ names, all other

names for individuals and schools in the study are pseu-donyms. All eight authors (one African Americanwoman, five European American women, and twoEuropean American men) were experienced educators atthe middle and/or high school levels. Five of us [Donna

248 READING RESEARCH QUARTERLY July/August/September 1996 31/3

Alvermann (DA), Kathy Hinchman (KH), David Moore(DM), Steve Phelps (SP), and Josephine Young (JY)]were university-based researchers, and three [EstherThrash (ET), Dera Weaver (DW), and Pat Zalewski (PZ)]were school-based researchers. Although common expe-riences as teachers contributed to our working well as ateam, each of us brought slightly different stances to theresearch project. Making these stances clear is integral tounderstanding how our own backgrounds and experi-ences as educators influenced what we saw as relevantdata, how we collected the data, and why we interpret-ed our findings as we did.

For example, Donna viewed students as the insid-ers and experts on how they experienced classroom talkabout texts. This view, coupled with her belief that allknowledge is socially constructed, led to Donna’s stanceon valuing the role of students in reflecting and report-ing on their own experiences as discussants.

Josephine’s belief that students are a valuablesource of information was heavily influenced by her pre-vious experiences teaching literacy at an alternative highschool, where she came to appreciate how knowledge-able students are about their own learning experiences.

Kathy brought a stance informed by her experi-ences as a middle school reading specialist. As a re-searcher trained in symbolic interaction, Kathy wasconcerned with understanding meaning from the stu-dents’ perspective, but she also respected the teacher(Pat) as the primary orchestrator of classroom events.

Pat’s concern as a social studies teacher focused on her students’ ability to comprehend the content-heavy global studies curriculum, which was mandatedby the state. Educated also as a reading specialist, Patfound herself in a never-ending conflict between loyaltyto content and to students’ understanding.

Having taught junior and senior high school stu-dents, David had vivid personal memories of discussionsthat resulted in some of the highest highs and lowestlows of his teaching. Thus, David’s experiences with dis-cussions led to his stance that they were an extremelypowerful, yet unpredictable, means of instruction.

Steve was conducting a yearlong professional de-velopment program at Thomas Jefferson High Schoolduring the time he was involved in the multicase study.This led to his stance on the importance of learning asmuch as possible about the interpersonal relationsamong students, faculty, and administrators at his site.

Twenty-nine years of teaching elementary and mid-dle school language arts in a large urban area of thesoutheastern United States led Esther to her stance. Shebelieved discussions and small-group work helped herstudents to understand the assigned readings and tothink critically.

Also a teacher of middle school language arts, Derahad long noted students’ preference for discussion overmost other modes of response to literature. Dera’s stancewas influenced by a belief in the potential of peer-leddiscussions for eliciting engaged reading and authenticresponse and by a curiosity concerning the teacher’s rolein such discussions.

Our research roles differed to some extent at thevarious sites. For example, a collaborative arrangementexisted between school-based researchers and universi-ty-based researchers at three of the five sites. Dera,Donna, and Josephine shared responsibilities for collect-ing and analyzing data during the 6-month collaborationin Dera’s classroom. Dera maintained responsibility forplanning and facilitating class discussions, while Donnaand Josephine did all of the taping and interviewing andwere responsible for distributing the tapes and tran-scripts to the other sites. A similar collaboration existedin Esther’s class, except that Donna and Josephine wereinvolved for only 4 months due to an unforeseen delayin gaining school district approval for the case study.The 8-month collaboration between Pat and Kathy close-ly paralleled the one in Dera’s classroom. Initially, Patkept a teaching journal that included her reactions tostudents’ discussions, whereas Dera met with Donna andJosephine during the class period immediately followingeach observed discussion. At the other two sites, less in-volved relationships developed between teachers anduniversity-based researchers during the 8-month-longcase studies. For example, Alan Williams did not becomea formal member of the research team, but he did readSteve’s transcriptions of the videotaped discussions andfocal group interviews. Like Alan, Paula Freeman did notparticipate as a teacher researcher, although she con-ferred regularly with David, the university-based re-searcher.

A strength of this multicase study was the opportu-nity for all of us, from our various backgrounds andstances toward research, to talk together about what weheard students saying about their perceptions. Thechance to view videotapes of text-based discussionsfrom within and across sites and to read transcripts ofstudents talking about their perceptions of those discus-sions added to the richness of the data. In fact, it wasthis layering of data that led to some of the more inter-esting research team meetings.

Participants and sitesThis section includes descriptions of the participat-

ing classes (arranged alphabetically by teachers’ lastnames) and the locations of the five sites. It also pro-vides information on how the focal students wereselected.


Paula Freeman’s class. Paula taught a 12th-gradeadvanced placement English class of 13 seniors andserved as head of the English Department at CamakHigh School (CHS) in the greater Phoenix, Arizona, area.The 4 males and 9 females in her class were fromHispanic, Asian, African American, and EuropeanAmerican backgrounds. The student population at CHSwas 60% Hispanic, with Spanish spoken frequently inthe hallways and lunchroom. Gang activity from thecommunity was discouraged in school; however, thegangs made their presence known by the graffiti on theoutside walls. When Paula’s class was asked how to des-ignate the focal students, one suggestion was made, andit was not challenged. The suggestion was to include thewhole class. This plan was accepted because the classwas small and quite verbal, according to Paula. The stu-dents, whose attendance was sporadic, were especiallylively at the beginnings and endings of class; they wereserious and compliant during class.

Esther Thrash’s class. Esther’s eighth-grade hetero-geneous language arts class was made up of 23 femaleand 5 male African American students from the west sideof Atlanta, Georgia. The class was representative of theethnic heritage of the approximately 1,000 students at-tending Greenwood Middle School, 99% of whom werefrom African American backgrounds and 1% fromEuropean American descent. Discipline was not viewedas a major problem in this working-class neighborhoodschool that has won districtwide oratorical contests.Esther’s students worked in peer-led groups on the aver-age of three times a week. The 6 focal students (1 maleand 5 females) who served as team captains for theirgroups were chosen by Esther because of their potentialleadership ability and their ability to keep order, com-mand attention, and manage the group.

Dera Weaver’s class. Dera taught at Halford MiddleSchool, one of three middle schools in a southern U.S.university town. There are approximately 850 studentsenrolled at Halford, 55% of whom are of EuropeanAmerican descent. Although the other 45% of the studentbody is composed mostly of African American students,a small percentage of students are from Asian andHispanic backgrounds. Dera’s class was part of thestate’s program for gifted students, in which each schoolis expected to provide some time during the school dayfor these students to receive an accelerated, differentiat-ed curriculum. At Halford, students identified as giftedwere served through their language arts classes, andDera chose to use a reading/writing workshop approachwith her students. The majority of the 14 students in herclass were European American, with 2 African Americanstudents, 1 Chinese student, 1 Canadian student, and 1 student from Guyana. Although all had been identified

as gifted students, all were not fluent or eager readersand writers. All 14 class members served as focal stu-dents because Dera did not want anyone to feel left outor privileged.

Alan Williams’s class. Alan’s 11th-grade U.S. historyclass consisted of 18 students ranging in age from 17 to22 years. The 11 males and 7 females were from Latino,African American, Arabic, Vietnamese, EuropeanAmerican, and Ukrainian backgrounds. The class wasrepresentative of the larger cultural mix of ThomasJefferson High School (TJHS), which is located inBuffalo, New York. TJHS serves most of the city’s newlyarrived high-school-age immigrants. The student body isroughly 40–50% Hispanic and 15–20% African American.Students come from as many as 32 different countries,representing at least 13 different languages; 43% of thestudents do not speak English as their primary language.Although the students in Alan’s class were encouraged towork together (and on occasion they attempted peer-leddiscussions), the dominant mode of instruction wasteacher-led discussion/recitation. Students were requiredto do no homework and very little reading. Alan gavequizzes every 2 to 3 weeks after first going over thequestions in class and telling students the answers. Focalstudents (3 males and 1 female) were selected fromthose in the class who were 18 years of age or older andwere willing to participate.

Pat Zalewski’s class. Pat taught 10th-grade globalstudies in a suburban northeastern U.S. school districtthat serves about 10,000 students, with roughly 2,800 ofthem enrolled in Middlesex High School. Of the 22 stu-dents in Pat’s class (10 males and 12 females), 2 were ofAfrican American heritage and the rest of EuropeanAmerican descent. The curriculum and final examinationwere dictated by statewide requirements and designedfor academically oriented students who were preparingto enter college. Peer-led discussions were used two tothree times a week by midyear to enhance students’ un-derstandings of the concepts Pat introduced through lec-tures and assigned readings. Six focal students (3 malesand 3 females) were selected for their potential to informthe study and because they shared a common free peri-od; however, due to changes in schedules, absenteeism,and school attrition, most of the focal group interviewdata came from four students.

Data sourcesLike Erickson and Shultz (1992), we believed that

“on the topic of student experience, students themselvesare the ultimate insiders and experts” (p. 480).Consequently, we enlisted their help in reflecting and re-porting on their own and other students’ experiences asdiscussants. Three rounds of videotaped class discus-


sions (VT), followed by three focal group interviews(FGI), served as the primary data sources. Field notes(FN) [supplemented by transcriptions of audiotaped classdiscussions (AT)], theoretical memoranda (TM), site de-scriptions, and student work (SW) were treated as sec-ondary data sources.

Primary data sources. At each site, the researchersvideotaped (and later transcribed) three discussions, oneat the beginning, middle, and end of their case. Struc-tured focal group interviews followed each of these tap-ings. In the focal groups, students viewed segments ofthe discussions in which they had taken part, and thenthey responded orally to the researcher’s interview ques-tions (see Table 1).

Questions for an interview protocol were negotiat-ed by the research team from a variety of informationsources, including our initial research questions, insightsgained from early participant observation field notes,and our experiences in eliciting talk from students. Theinterview protocol served as a guide to what was often a wide-ranging conversation, with interviewer and focalstudents invited to elaborate and probe as needed toclarify understandings. All focal group interviews wereaudiotaped and later transcribed. Prior to the third focalgroup interview, representative segments from eachsite’s videotaped discussions were shared across sites sothat students could observe and comment on discussionsfrom sites other than their own (see Focal group inter-view 3 in Table 1).

Secondary data sources. So that we could gain in-sight into each others’ backgrounds and points of view,teachers and researchers wrote beginning theoreticalmemoranda in response, but not limited to, this commonset of prompts: (a) What are your views of reading (in-cluding purposes for reading, how reading develops,and the teacher’s role in content reading instruction)? (b) What does a good text-based discussion entail? and(c) What are the students’ and teachers’ roles in a gooddiscussion, and how does reading fit?

To provide a rich base in which to ground under-standing of our classroom sites, researchers took fieldnotes as they observed weekly discussions at each site.In addition, discussions in Dera’s class were audiotapedand transcribed in order to amass a set of data thatwould provide a rich context for confirming and qualify-ing cross-site interview and observation data. Artifactssuch as student work, texts, and discussion guides werecollected or described for all classrooms when thesehelped to explain class discussions or contexts for thediscussions. Field notes, transcripts, and artifact descrip-tions were circulated among researchers at each site asour data collection and analysis proceeded.

Analysis proceduresEstablishing the beginning and ending boundaries

of the phenomenon under study was one of the first pri-orities for the research team. We used the procedureoutlined in Zaharlick and Green (1991) to establishboundaries for what came to be called a discussionevent. Because we were interested in how students ex-perienced classroom talk about texts and the socialsettings for that talk, we defined the boundaries of adiscussion event in a way that optimized the amount oftime we could observe students interacting with otherstudents. A discussion event was said to begin with theteacher giving directions on how students were to inter-act with each other, and it ended either with the stu-dents reporting back to the whole class (following peer-led small-group discussion) or with the teachercalling a halt to student-to-student interaction (followingteacher-led whole-group discussion).

We developed a procedure for recording, triangu-lating, analyzing, and sharing all team members’ obser-


Table 1 Three sets of focal group interview questions

Focal group interview 11. What do you think about the discussion you just viewed?2. How did the discussion help you to understand the topic?

(If it did not help, what could have been done to make it helpful?)3. What is it about you that made you participate the way you did

during the discussion?4. Describe how the discussion motivated you to think about the

topic. (If it did not, how could it have motivated you?)

5. Describe how the discussion encouraged you to read about thesubject. (If it did not, how could it have encouraged you?)

6. What is it about (supply the names of other focal students) thatmade them participate the way they did?

7. Suppose I (or a new student) wanted to join your group discus-sion. What should I (he or she) do or how should I (he or she) actin order to fit in?

Focal group interview 2Questions 1–7 (see above) plus:8. How has our presence in the room affected the way you partici-

pate in discussions?9. Why do you think your teacher encourages you to discuss?

10. How do you feel about being observed?

Focal group interview 3Questions 1–10 (see above) plus:11. How is the discussion you just viewed of your own group similar

to that of the discussion in Mr./Mrs. _______________’s room?12. How is the discussion you just viewed of your own group differ-

ent from that of the discussion in Mr./ Mrs. _______________’sroom?

13. Do you think that you’d have to act differently to participate suc-cessfully in the discussion you just viewed? How so?

14. Based on all you’ve seen and know, what is your definition of adiscussion?


Table 2 Phases of data collection and analysis

Phases Dates Communication Individual and team tasks Outcomes/products

I. Introductionsand preliminarydesign issues

II. Data collectionand analyses

III. Synthesis offindings

IV. Drafting offinal report

June–August,1993

September,1993–June,1994

July–August,1994

September–October,1994

� Memoranda� Two 2-hour-long team

conference calls� Individual follow-up phone

calls� Faxes� Electronic mail

� Four 2-hour-long teamconference calls

� Follow-up memoranda� Local team analysis session

(4 hours), Jan. 1994,DW/JY/DA

� Two face-to-face teammeetings for analyzing dataat National ReadingConference (Dec. 1993)and International ReadingAssociation annualconvention (May 1994)

� Electronic mail� Individual phone calls� Faxes� Surface mail packets

� Electronic mail� Individual phone calls� Local team analysis session

(8 days), Aug. 1994,DA/JY/DW

� Surface mail packets� Electronic mail� Individual phone calls� Team conference call

� Become acquainted as a team� Define individual interests and

how they relate to projectobjectives

� Explore grounds for a commonmethodology

� Establish tentative timeline forproject

� Exchange professional articleson research topic

� Design first draft of interviewand survey questions

� Begin negotiating collaborationswith teachers

� Begin obtaining permission toenter school sites

� Respond to teacher andresearcher survey

� Establish individual casetimelines

� Select focal students usingteachers’ input

� Revise earlier drafts of interviewand survey instruments

� Define discussion events� Make weekly observations of

class discussions (different sitesto follow their own timelines)

� Videotape three class discussionsat each site (beginning, middle,and end of each case)

� Conduct follow-up focal groupinterviews

� Exchange trifolds and theoreticalmemos across sites fortriangulation of data

� Write narrative vignettes� Exchange videotapes,

transcriptions of audiotapedfocal group interviews, and fieldnotes across sites

� Construct key linkages� Continue exchange of

professional articles

� Reread all five cases and high-light key linkages (DA and JY)

� Identify assertions� Write first draft and incorporate

information from narrativevignettes

� Compile data distribution tables

� All team members reread theirown cases and compile datadistribution tables for threeassertions

� React to four drafts of finalreport

� Submit final report to NRRCreview

� Written synopses of eachconference call

� Written synopses of each teammember’s progress betweenconference calls

� Written feedback on drafts ofinterview and survey instruments

� Written reflections on unresolvedmethodological issues

� Written outline of data collectionprocedures

� Individual case timelines� Completed interview and survey

instruments� Field notes, videotapes, audio-

tape transcriptions� Theoretical memos� Trifolds� Narrative vignettes� Key linkage charts� Preliminary synthesis presented

at Reading Research ‘94 inToronto

� First draft of findings� Data distribution tables

� Drafts 1, 2, 3, 4� Data distribution tables� Final report

vations related to the questions that guided the study.This procedure, which was ongoing during Phase II ofthis study and occurred simultaneously with new datacollection (see Table 2), involved reading and rereadingall field notes and transcriptions of videotaped discus-sions and focal group interviews. Prior to participating inface-to-face team meetings and telephone conferencecalls during Phase II, we identified general and sub-sidiary key linkages of the data within and across cases.This inductive analytic approach to discovering and test-ing patterns of data led to the generation of several as-sertions. According to Erickson (1986),

An appropriate metaphor for this kind of pattern discov-ery and testing is to think of the entire data set...as a largecardboard box, filled with pieces of paper on which ap-pear items of data. The key linkage is an analytic con-struct that ties strings to these various items of data. Upand down a hierarchy of general and subsidiary linkages,some of the strings attach to other strings. The task ofpattern analysis is to discover and test those linkages thatmake the largest possible number of connections to itemsof data in the corpus. When one pulls the top string, onewants as many subsidiary strings as possible to be at-tached to data. The strongest assertions are those thathave the most strings attached to them, across the widestpossible range of sources and kinds of data. (p. 148)

To check the trustworthiness of the assertions wegenerated, we sought disconfirming as well as confirm-ing evidence. If the instances of discrepant cases causedus to doubt an emerging assertion, or if key linkagescame primarily from one data source or one site, thenwe reworded the assertion to qualify the language sothat it applied to all settings within the study. In severalinstances, and especially early in the analysis, we endedup abandoning some assertions in favor of others thathad better linkages across a variety of data sources.

We wrote narrative vignettes in an effort to explainand support the assertions that we generated. Compos-ing these vignettes was a useful part of the analysisprocess because it pushed each of us to come to termsin a more public way with our beliefs about the value ofparticular assertions. The vignettes (see example inAppendix) contained excerpts that we lifted verbatimfrom primary and secondary data sources and then em-bedded within our own interpretive commentary.Portions of these narrative vignettes were used in writingup the findings that follow.

Results

Several understandings are important for the prop-er interpretation of the three assertions that follow. First,it is important to recognize that in generating each asser-

tion we were attempting to build abstractions across thefive sites in our multicase study. This is in keeping withYin (1984), who noted that one attempts “to build a gen-eral explanation that fits each of the individual cases,even though the cases will vary in their details” (p. 108).Second, it was this variation in details that prompted usto write each assertion in a way that focused primarilyon Dera’s class. Because the first three authors audio-taped and subsequently transcribed nearly all of the dis-cussions in her class, they amassed a rich set of data thatserved well as a base for confirmation and qualificationof the data from the other four sites. Third, because wesaw numerous instances in support of each of the asser-tions at each of the different sites, we compiled distribu-tion tables (available upon request from the first author)to show the frequency of the supporting data across timeand across a variety of primary and secondary sources.

We were able to generate three assertions to char-acterize what students know about text-based classroomdiscussion. The first assertion was that students areaware of the conditions that are conducive to discussion.Students’ words supported this assertion, generally, andimplied that they knew about working in small groups,about knowing and liking group members, about con-tributing to group talk, and about staying focused on atopic. The second assertion was that students say thetasks teachers present and the topics or subject matterthey assign for reading influence participation in discus-sion. Students’ views about this assertion were supportedwith talk about specific tasks and topics. The third asser-tion was that students see discussion as helpful in under-standing what they read. This assertion was supportedwith student talk about the importance of listening toeach other, voicing opinions/arguing, and attending tovocabulary.

Assertion 1: Students are aware of the conditionsthey believe to be conducive to discussion

Secondary school students in the United States typ-ically participate in few classroom discussions, and thestudents in this study were no exception. To illustrate,early in October we asked the students in Dera’s classwhat they thought of this research project. Brad said,

I like it because talking is one of the things that we arepretty deprived of at school. It is like, if we have a hatday, everybody will like the hat day; and if we have awhole class devoted to talking, then, I mean, people aregoing to like it. Which we did. (FGI/JY/10/12/93)

John added, “We do [talk], but you aren’t allowed to...”with Desuna finishing for him, “without getting into trou-ble” (FGI/JY/10/12/93). These words, and others likethem, have woven themselves into the fabric of our in-


vestigation; a thread too fragile, certainly, to define apattern or bind a border, but still a part of the whole, asubtle contribution to an intricate pattern. For if studentsare indeed “talk-deprived” in their classes, if they viewtalking in school as an often surreptitious activity, whatperceptions of discussion—if any—have they developed?

Our first assertion, students are aware of the condi-tions they believe to be conducive to discussion, is an im-portant, even necessary, foundation of this study be-cause realizing that our students had clear ideas andbeliefs about discussions is as important as knowing thecontent of those ideas and beliefs. In the remainder ofthis section, we portray the four specific conditions thatstudents believed were conducive to good discussion:working in small groups, knowing and liking groupmembers, contributing to group talk, and staying fo-cused on the topic.

Working in small groups. Early in the year, beforepeer-led discussion in small groups had become thenorm in Dera’s eighth-grade language arts class, studentsindicated an overall preference for small-group discus-sions over whole-class discussions. As John put it, “Ikind of like those [small groups] because you don’t haveto fight over, you don’t have to wait and wait and waitbefore you have a chance to talk. You only have likefive people in the group and everybody is close enoughto hear you, so you just kind of say your thing whenyou feel like it.” Alice added, “The small group is kind of nicer because it is more personal and people kind of listen to you more and get interested in it”(FGI/JY/10/12/93). In another interview, Jonathan re-ferred to a previous whole-class discussion when hesaid, “I only had one thing I would like to say, and Itried to say it, but someone cut in front of me.” Christyoffered, “It seems like it takes forever for [the teacher] tocall on me, and by that time we have gone on to anoth-er subject, by the time I get to say anything.” Smallgroups were especially attractive to Melanie, who wasdescribed by her classmates as quiet-natured: “It gets menervous to talk in front of a whole lot of people about,like, opinions and stuff. But then, small group, it’s likeme and my friends, so it is easier” (FGI/JY/10/12/93).

Across three of the other four sites, students voicedsimilar perceptions about group size. With few excep-tions, they preferred small-group discussions, whichwere peer-led, to teacher-directed whole-class discus-sions. For example, after one group of students inPaula’s senior English class watched a video of them-selves discussing Sylvia Plath’s poem, “Daddy,” Alexcommented that they were asking questions and talkinga lot among themselves. Other members of his groupagreed and elaborated on Alex’s statement. Brian said, “Ithink the smaller group was better because there are less

people to hassle you. You can go ahead and say some-thing that you’re not real sure about. Try out ideas.” Juneagreed, adding that she thought the small group made itpossible for students to explore what they thought aboutthe poem in more depth (FGI/DM/3/3/94).

In Pat’s sophomore global studies class, teacher-directed whole-class discussions were more prevalentthan peer-led small-group discussions, at least for thefirst semester. Nonetheless, except for Jennifer and Kate,who preferred to “talk to the teacher because she knowsthe answer” (FN/KH/5/26/94), the other focal studentsexpressed a preference for peer-led groups. For exam-ple, Mike liked talking to a small group of his peers be-cause “You can say the wrong answer...without thewhole class laughing” (FGI/KH/4/28/94), while Tammyliked small groups because they helped her payattention:

Tammy: I think we should work in small groups everyday. It helps me.

Kiesha: When we’re in a big class… [interrupted]Tammy: Everyone gets off task. Justin sits there and

makes noises.... I don’t pay attention at all. Hegot his book out and made it fly, and we wereall laughing. (FGI/KH/3/10/94)

In Esther’s eighth-grade language arts class, small-group work was the norm. Whole-class discussion wasinfrequent and reserved mostly for days when studentsshared a project they had worked on in their smallgroups. Students were assigned to more or less perma-nent groups of four or five individuals, with a team cap-tain acting as the spokesperson for the group. Whenasked to describe how she and her peers felt aboutsmall-group discussion, Janice, a popular and outspokenteam captain, was positive in her response. She likedgetting together and talking about a topic with her team(SW/ET/3/15/94).

The students at one site countered the general fa-vor for discussions in small groups. The students inAlan’s 11th-grade U.S. history class were encouraged todiscuss their assignments in small groups, but they rarelydid, opting instead to work alone (FN/SP/11/12/93;FN/SP/12/20/93) or in pairs (VT/SP/1/12/94). Whenasked why he thought his peers did not choose to en-gage in small-group discussions, Rico attributed it to eth-nic and racial biases, saying, “See, some people, youknow it’s like they don’t want to talk to someone who’sdifferent. And you know, a lot of people felt that wayabout me. But I’m half Puerto Rican, you know, so...themajority of this school is Puerto Rican, so they talk tome...because I have the same ethnic race as them”(FGI/SP/1/13/94).


In general, most—but not all—students reportedpreferring discussion in small groups rather than in alarge group. Small-group discussions seemed to promotestudents’ class involvement by increasing the number oftimes they could talk and by decreasing the risks theytook when expressing personal or tentative thoughts.

Knowing and liking group members. Early in theyear, Dera conducted a confidential survey to learn stu-dent preferences for the makeup of small-group discus-sions. The students had strong feelings at that time aboutpeers with whom they felt they could or could not talkto successfully, and they expressed these preferencesclearly. Friendship played a part, but the students alsogave consideration to their perceptions of the ways inwhich other students might approach a discussion. Atthe time of the survey, most students listed at least oneor two of their peers under the heading “people I can’tdiscuss with.” At the beginning of the year, the makeupof a group seemed to be a highly influential conditionfor good discussion.

In the beginning, Dera tried various ways of group-ing the students for discussion (sometimes based on theconfidential survey, but not always). Before long, shebegan to turn the choice of forming discussion groupsover to the students themselves. They suggested a vari-ety of groupings, such as placing students who talked alot in one group and those who were better listeners inanother group. Giving middle school students somechoices in how they formed their groups seemed a logi-cal step in exploring peer-led discussion. However, forsome students, these choices presented problems; for in-stance, Desuna worried that if her peers put the groupstogether, friends would choose friends and some peoplewould be left out (SW/DW/9/17/93). In the early stagesof discussion with student-selected groups, there weresome uncomfortable moments that required Dera’s inter-vention, but over the course of the year, the students’ at-titudes toward forming discussion groups began tochange. In March, Sandra reported,

I think that we—I guess as we started, we have becomemore comfortable with talking with almost everyone inthe class, and we are just, like, we will go to whoever. Itdoesn’t really matter anymore. It is not like, well, I don’tlike you, I don’t want to go with you, I don’t want to bein a group with you, I want to be in a group with my bestfriend or anything like that. It just—we are all just com-fortable talking with each other now. (FGI/DA/3/3/94)

Unwilling to discount totally the importance offriendship, Mark, another student in Dera’s class, re-viewed the following history:

Some people are saying, well, no, it doesn’t have any-thing to do with friendship, but it does. Because, um, my

group [today] was me, Brad, Sandra, Omar, and Duncan.And, um, we are all friends. And then me and Sandra andBrad have been together during the group ever since she[Dera] has been telling us, well, “just find a group.” Thatwas the first time that we got in a group, and thenMelanie and April were in there, too, and then they wentto another one and me and Brad and Sandra still stayedtogether. And, um, then, so I think it does have a lot todo with friendship. (FGI/DA/3/3/94)

The idea of forming “talk-alike” discussion groupsappealed to the 13 students in Paula’s 12th-grade ad-vanced placement class as well. They saw an advantageto putting outspoken people together after viewing avideotape from Dera’s classroom. For example, Heatherfelt it would be less intimidating for the more quiet stu-dents if the outspoken ones were in a group by them-selves. Alex agreed, saying, “Like, like me—me andHeather-–we’ll talk no matter if someone’s talking ornot” (FGI/DM/5/10/94). Friendship was a factor identi-fied as being important to the makeup of a group inPaula’s class as well. In fact, after viewing a videotape ofEsther’s class, Alex wondered if the noticeably smallamount of student-to-student talk could be attributed tothe possibility that “they weren’t good friends—like us”(FGI/DM/5/10/94).

The focal students in Pat’s sophomore global stud-ies class said that they usually preferred to be in groupswith their friends, or with others whom they knew well.Overall, they transmitted a sense of knowing which stu-dents worked productively, and although they werequick to say they wanted to work with friends, in theend, getting the job done was more important. A few,like Jennifer, thought the teacher should let the studentspick their own group members: “Like our teacher, shejust puts us in these groups .... I think if she would let uspick our own groups, we would pick the people that weknow can work together.... I mean like then [we’d know]we had to get the project done, and we could all saysince we were friends, come on we have to do this”(FGI/KH/11/4/93). Kiesha agreed that being with peopleyou know well can motivate you to participate(FGI/KH/3/10/94), as did Mike, Tammy, and Jennifer on several other occasions (FGI/KH/11/4/93;FGI/KH/12/9/93).

Knowing a lot about other group members, includ-ing their expectations, was seen by the eighth-gradestudents in Esther’s room as being conducive to gooddiscussion. Martha said she expected people in hergroup to do their work and make discussion “a little fun”(FGI/DA/2/1/94). Martha also noted, after viewingvideotapes of discussions in Alan’s and Dera’s rooms,that it would take much maneuvering and getting toknow Alan’s and Dera’s students before she would feel


comfortable participating in any of their discussiongroups:

First I would have to have some nerve. Then I wouldhave to get to know the people, you know, all kinds ofthings they do in that group. And then I know if I be inthat group—then I would just act like they act.(FGI/DA/3/15/94)

Like students at other sites, Tyrone, who was a fo-cal student in Alan’s U.S. history class, believed it wasimportant for newcomers in a group to get to know thegroup before venturing to say anything. In giving adviceabout how a new student from the Middle East might fit in one of the existing groups, Tyrone described what he himself would do in such a situation: “I wouldjust stay quiet for a while to see what’s going on”(FGI/SP/4/18/94). Tyrone believed that “if [students] picktheir own group,” they get along better. However, bothTyrone and Nick, another focal student in Alan’s room,thought it was the teacher’s responsibility to help quietor shy students feel more comfortable. Nick’s belief inthe advantage of grouping students with similar person-ality traits was indicated by his suggestion to, “Put themtogether, you know. Shy people talk to each other, toother shy people” (FGI/SP/10/29/93).

Several aspects of knowing and liking are evidentin our students’ remarks about this condition of gooddiscussions. Knowing and liking someone before work-ing together in a group might be important, but somestudents also realized that friendships developed as a re-sult of group work. Along with the notion of friendship,students indicated that compatibility could come whenothers shared personality traits, worked together produc-tively, and were fun. Students who somehow fit in witheach other created good discussions.

Contributing to group talk. Across all five sites, stu-dents believed that doing one’s fair share of the talkingwas everyone’s responsibility. In fact, most students inDera’s class described the responsibilities of group mem-bership in terms of an obligation to participate in thetalk: “Say what you have to say,” suggested Duncan, andJason added, “contribute something when you feel likeit” (SW/DW/10/13/93). Some students noted differencesin the quality of talk. In describing Jason, Jonathan said,“He doesn’t say stupid stuff, yeah, what he says is im-portant...lots of people who talk all the time, like, theycome out with stuff that has nothing to do with any-thing, but when Jason talks he says something that hasmeaning” (FGI/JY/10/13/93). And John described hisown role in this way: “Well, like, if I don’t have much tosay, there is really no point in participating, because youjust waste other people’s time by saying something thatshould be ignored.... I just participate when I think I

have a good point” (FGI/JY/1/20/94). Brad, however,had no such reservations. In a small-group discussionwhen Mark commented that Melanie chose to talk lessfor fear of sounding stupid, Brad responded, “That ishow I was, like, in first grade, but then I grew out of it. I just say the stupid stuff...nobody cares. And it adds todiscussion” (AT/DA/1/11/94).

To Alex, a senior in Paula’s room, contributing togroup talk meant exhibiting “a certain degree of serious-ness,” and to his classmates, Heather and June, it meant“trying to involve everybody” and “asking questions ofother people...not just taking it all upon yourself”(FGI/DM/5/10/94). When asked what students new totheir class would be expected to do to demonstrate thatthey were contributing to group talk, the focal studentsin Paula’s class responded: “Say what you feel” (Alex),“Don’t be afraid to share your feelings” (Ruby), and“Don’t put people down” (Heather) (FGI/DM/3/3/94).

The focal students in Pat’s global studies class be-lieved that peer-led discussions worked when all individ-uals in the group felt obligated to do their part ratherthan rely on one or two people to carry the load.Interestingly, “doing one’s part” seemed to relate directlyto whether or not students talked. Simply doing the as-signed work individually and writing down individualanswers did not count. For example, after viewing ataped discussion on the day her group began workingon a Middle East report (VT/KH/10/26/93), Jennifer an-nounced, “I think my group doesn’t work together verywell because they don’t say anything, and I feel like I doall the work” (FGI/KH/11/4/93). And, on another day asstudents viewed a videotaped discussion involving theirgroup (VT/KH/12/9/93), Jennifer complained that Elainedidn’t say anything: “See, look. She writes stuff down,but she doesn’t say anything” (FGI/KH/12/9/93). Whenasked what a newcomer would have to do to join one oftheir small groups, Joseph replied, “Do your part.” Otherstudents chimed in and agreed with Joseph, while Justinadded, “Put some effort in, instead of just sitting theresaying, ‘What is your answer?’ or ‘What did you get?’ ”(FGI/KH/11/4/93).

Students in Esther’s language arts class were equal-ly clear about the need for their teammates to contributeto group talk about an assignment. Team captains hadlittle patience for members of their group who didn’tread their assignments and weren’t prepared for discus-sion (FGI/JY/12/14/93). For example, after viewing avideotape of her group, Janice said in an irritated voice,“There are some people in the group that don’t read thestory, and then when we are trying to do a resourcepage, they want to know what happened. They don’twant to read, but they always want the answers”(FGI/DA/3/15/94).


Different motivations for contributing to group talkexisted for students in Alan’s room. Two of the focal stu-dents felt it was their responsibility to initiate the group’sdiscussion. Nick said, “I only participate to get it going.You just sit there”—at which point Tyrone interruptedhim to say, “You just sit there, it gets boring”(FGI/SP/10/29/93). But Rico did not agree that it was thestudents’ responsibility to initiate discussion, believinginstead that it would take some intervention on theteacher’s part because some students adopted a pose ofindifference or hostility:

A lot of these students, you know, they got that “gangsta”type thing to them, so it’s like they come in there and it’slike “What’s up?” you know, and they’re hard guys. Butyou know, a lot of them you can see right through it, youknow. (FGI/SP/1/13/94)

In brief, the students we talked with indicated sev-eral responsibilities that group members should fulfill tocontribute to group talk. The students disdained thosewho took from the group without offering anything inreturn. They noted group members’ responsibilities to-ward each other such as initiating talk, getting others in-volved through questioning, and keeping order.Demonstrating responsibility for their own behavior in-cluded actions such as offering pertinent points about atopic, sharing personal beliefs, and working to fulfill theacademic task. One responsibility, staying focused onthe topic, received enough attention to warrant a sepa-rate category in this study.

Staying focused on the topic. From the first focalgroup interview, the eighth-grade students in Dera’sclass were aware that they got off the topic of discussioneasily and thought that this was detrimental to a gooddiscussion. John believed that straying from the topichindered his ability to understand it. Alice added, “I for-got what the topic was after the discussion was over, be-cause, I mean, we really were not at all on the topic. Wespent hardly 5 minutes on it” (FGI/JY/10/12/93). In not-ing a possible reason for straying from a topic, Bradsaid, “There are a lot of things in our minds that wearen’t thinking of, and words can trigger those,and...when you have the whole classroom talking andsomeone says something it can trigger those off and itkeeps on going” (FGI/JY/10/12/93). This statement wasreflected later in the year with John’s description of hisown discussion style: “If the subject goes off, I help it gofurther...because it is something that I am interested in,usually” (FGI/JY/3/1/94).

In Paula’s and Alan’s classes, students were equallyadamant about their expectations for groups to stay fo-cused on the topic of discussion, especially peer-leddiscussion groups. For example, Alex in Paula’s class

remarked after viewing a videotape of his group’s dis-cussion of Sylvia Plath’s poem, “Daddy”: “Sticking on thesubject...would have made the small groups work evenmore if people would have stayed on the topic.Sometimes the topic floats. I even do that. I’ll say, ‘Whatabout the Suns?’ (laughter), and then we get off the sub-ject” (FGI/DM/3/3/94). Brian agreed with Alex that peer-led discussions should “keep focused,” whileHeather thought that “breaking [the poem] down to the themes” might have helped the group stay focused(FGI/DM/3/3/94). In Alan’s class, Nick believed thatsmall-group discussions encouraged off-task behaviorunless the teacher was there to keep an eye on the stu-dents who strayed from the topic. In Nick’s words:“When they get in groups like that, they just talk abouttheir own things.... If you keep them together, you canwatch them, they do their work” (FGI/SP/10/29/93).

Students at two of the other research sites reportedthat when a group got off topic, one or more studentswould remind everyone of the need to stay focused. Forexample, the focal students in Pat’s class counted onPeggy or Kate to assume that role: “I mean she’s [Peggy]fun and everything, but when we get off the subject andshe knows we have to be done, that’s when she’ll saysomething,” Kiesha said (FGI/KH/3/10/94). Or, as Mikenoted, “We were talking about something today, andthen Kate said, ‘Come on, let’s get this done.’ She startedgetting annoyed, too” (FGI/KH/2/3/94). In Esther’sroom, the team captains said it was their responsibility tokeep their groups focused on the topic. Janice reportedthat the reason the teacher had picked her to be acaptain was because “I know how to keep order”(FGI/JY/12/14/93).

As these comments suggest, students perceivedthat staying focused is a characteristic of good discus-sions. They noted that individuals and groups often pur-sued thoughts with obscure relationships to the originaltopic. They distinguished among discussions that fo-cused on a specific aspect of a topic, that explored top-ics in different ways, and that pursued unrelated topics.

Assertion 2: Students say the tasks teachers presentand the topics or subject matter they assign forreading influence participation in discussion

This assertion reflects students’ perceptions thattheir participation in text-based discussions varied withthe task and topic their teachers assigned. Our students’comments about these task and topic influences revealedrather sophisticated understandings. Perhaps this level ofsophistication should be expected after considering thenumerous experiences secondary school students havewith academic work. In this section, we specify the com-monalities across sites of students’ statements about dis-


cussion tasks and topics. Tasks. The discussion tasks Dera assigned students

grew from her own goals for discussion. In her words, “I want something to emerge from discussion that wasn’tthere in individual readings: a new way of seeing, an un-comfortable sense that the world may not be quite as onehad always assumed, a flash of insight into personal atti-tudes and beliefs, or just a sense of having worked welltogether. Whatever form it takes, something more thanthe simple sum of each reader’s separate experience”(TM/DW/11/1/93). The tasks Dera presented for discus-sion encouraged students to interpret (e.g., “Everyonesays teachers only ask questions they already know theanswers to. Well, I don’t understand the last paragraph ofthis story...help me out”) (SW/DW/10/26/93); compare(e.g., “These poems have some relationship, and I wantto know how they relate and how you would presentthem to the class”) (AT/JY/2/22/94); and introspect (e.g.,“As you read a poem, are there things outside the poemthat someone could tell you that might enrich your expe-rience and enjoyment of it?”) (AT/DA/2/15/94).

Although Dera’s questions influenced the begin-ning of a discussion, students said they felt little obliga-tion to follow them when the questions they raised intheir small groups proved more interesting. When Deraasked, “Did you discuss my questions? The questionsthat I asked you at the beginning,” Laura, with a some-what embarrassed laugh, answered for her group: “No.We didn’t get to it” (AT/DA/2/15/94). In fact, Laura’sgroup had read and discussed the assignment, but notwith Dera’s questions in mind. On another occasionwhen Dera asked the students to tell her how they wentabout doing what she asked them to do in their discus-sion groups, Jason said, “We usually read first; then wetalk about whatever you hinted at.” Jonathan elaborated:“We pretty much do this every time. I usually like tocome up with some strategy for doing the assignment.Yesterday, I tried to bring them [other students in hisgroup] back to your instructions, but I didn’t get any re-sponse.” Melanie added, “We just sort of forgot about itand worked,” to which Laura responded, “Maybe wedidn’t quite hear it—it was important for us as a lead-in,but we didn’t have time to get to your discussion”(FN/DW/2/16/94; FN/JY/2/16/94).

Like Dera, Paula also assigned tasks that were inline with her goals for discussion. She developed specif-ic tasks involving comprehension, analysis, and evalua-tion to encourage students to synthesize material byrelating it to other literature they had read or to currentevents (TM/DM/4/5/94). When Paula’s assigned tasksmet her students’ expectations, animated small-groupdiscussions occurred. For example, when she preparedstudents to read Crime and Punishment by dividing

them into two groups, one to discuss crime and its con-sequences, and the other to talk about the effects ofpunishment, a lively discussion ensued. Both groupsbrought current events into their discussions, includingthe notorious Lorena Bobbitt, Dr. Kervorkian, andCharles Manson (FN/DM/3/10/94). Tasks that met withless enthusiasm sometimes prompted a critical note fromstudents, as in the case of Heather who thought a boringtask had limited her participation in discussion.Reflecting on this task in a small group that includedPaula, Heather stated: “It could have been done like in a more...imaginative way to analyze the poem instead ofjust breaking it down to the themes and what was actu-ally in the poet’s poem. Just make it more imaginative”(FGI/DM/3/3/94).

Pat’s discussion tasks often reflected the influenceof the state-mandated curriculum. Many times the tasksshe assigned students involved reviewing details fromprevious reading assignments based on that curriculum.Although students were expected to discuss their an-swers in small groups, they found ways to expedite theactivity. For example, they would divide a set of ques-tions among their peers and make each student respon-sible for answering a smaller number of questions. Thispractice resulted, not surprisingly, in students workingindependently with minimal discussion and calling outtheir answers to other members in their group(VT/KH/10/26/93; FGI/KH/11/4/93). But when Pat’stasks required students to link their knowledge of socialstudies concepts (e.g., the relation between geographyand power) to specific locations (e.g., ancient Greece) tomake predictions or to confirm hypotheses, lively discus-sions were the norm. Pat’s students were well aware ofhow these differences in tasks affected their participationlevel. For example, after viewing segments of a video-taped discussion in which they were actively engaged inwriting a group story based on a Russian history unit(VT/KH/12/6/93), several of the focal students comment-ed that it was better than most previous discussion tasksin eliciting their participation (FGI/KH/12/9/93).

Students in Alan’s class also felt the influence of astate-mandated curriculum. However, unlike the studentsin Pat’s class who enjoyed the occasional open-endeddiscussions that sparked heated debates, students inAlan’s U.S. history class did not get much practice partic-ipating in peer-led small-group discussions. When theopportunity for such discussions did arise, students inAlan’s class made it clear that in order for them to partic-ipate successfully, the task had to be clearly defined.When this expectation was not met, they communicatedtheir sense of frustration and confusion. For example, inone videotaped discussion (VT/SP/1/12/94), studentsvoiced their uncertainty over Alan’s instructions to dis-


cuss Martin Luther King’s six principles of nonviolencewith their peers. After viewing segments of that tape dur-ing a focal group interview, Rico (laughing) said,

What the hell was [he] talking about? That is exactly whatI was thinking...I figured it out but...it was just real con-fusing the way he was doing it.... If he, like, put more de-tail in what he was explaining about, what he wanted usto actually do, I think it would have been a lot better.(FGI/SP/1/13/94)

Esther’s discussion tasks consisted primarily of thequestions and projects in the student resource book thataccompanied the class’s literature anthology. In manyways, these tasks were similar to the ones that Pat as-signed in her class, and not surprisingly, they elicitedsome of the same types of responses from students. Forexample, although Esther’s students understood that theywere expected to discuss an assigned resource pageamong themselves before completing and turning it in to the teacher, they rarely complied. When asked why,they explained that it was necessary to talk to oneanother only when someone didn’t know the answer(FGI/DA/3/15/94). Thus, in instances where the task wasnot demanding (and therefore did not require dis-cussing), they worked alone even though they agreedthey would prefer to work together on tasks(FGI/JY/12/9/93).

In general, students perceived discussion-worthytasks to be interesting and demanding yet clearly de-fined, drawing on their abilities to reason and to evalu-ate ideas. Indeed, some students substituted their owntasks for the teacher’s assigned ones if these conditionswere not met. The students in our study also indicatedan expertise at adjusting their work habits to the de-mands of discussion tasks. Their degrees of collaborationand their individual responses depended substantially onthe assignment they were completing.

Topics. Some students in Dera’s language arts classassociated the topic of a particular reading selection withhow much they talked about it. April, for example, said,“I discuss if I enjoy the story. Like, if I like the story, Ilike to talk about it. But if I don’t like the story, I justwant to sit there and be mean” (AT/JY/1/11/94). And,when Alice was asked to comment on why she thoughtDesuna seldom participated in discussions, Alice said, “If she doesn’t like something, she decides that she justwon’t do it.” Desuna herself seemed to apply the stan-dard of “liking the story” to her own assessments of oth-er students’ participation level. For example, when askedwhy she thought Andy had not participated in a discus-sion, Desuna said, “He didn’t like the story, I don’tthink.” And Jason? “He participated the most, so I thinkhe enjoyed the story,” replied Desuna (FGI/DA/1/20/94).

Nearly all the students in Dera’s class expresseddefinite preferences for certain subject matter texts. Forexample, they preferred to discuss literary texts as op-posed to social studies texts. After watching a video-taped segment of a discussion in Pat’s global studiesclass, Mark said, “[The] history of Russia sounds boring,but discussing a poem...sounds more creative and inter-esting.” Melanie agreed, saying, “Their group may not beboring, but...I had rather be in our group because I likediscussing poetry better” (FGI/DA/3/3/94).

Pat’s global studies class was also aware of the dif-ferent expectations students and teachers held for dis-cussions of literary versus social studies texts. After view-ing a videotape of Dera’s students discussing a shortstory from the Junior Great Books program, Pat’s globalstudies students attributed the differences they observedin the two classes’ discussions to the topics or subjectmatter of their assigned readings. Tammy said (andKiesha agreed): “Everything’s so hard that we do.... They[Dera’s students] can say anything they want and there isreally no wrong or right answer” (FGI/KH/3/10/94).

Like Pat’s students, those in Esther’s room believedthat their level of participation in a discussion dependedheavily on the topic of the selections they were assignedto read. Martha summed up the topic’s influence thisway: “Now my group, you give us a good topic, we canmake a discussion. I guess the discussion depends onthe topic; if the topic is boring, you ain’t going to hearnothing” (FGI/JY/2/1/94). Or, as Janice put it, after view-ing a videotape of her group’s rather listless response toa science fiction story, “It is the kind of story somebodywith no friends would read.” When asked to explainwhat she meant, Janice answered, “If you like that kindof story, evidently you ain’t got no friends. It just madeno sense. It is boring” (FGI/JY/12/14/93).

Paula’s students were also convinced that the topicof a selection influenced their interest in discussing it.After viewing a videotape of her group’s discussion of aJames Thurber short story, June attributed the students’lack of participation to the fact that “We didn’t have agood enough topic to discuss,” and Heather agreed(FGI/DM/2/10/94). Like the students in Dera’s and Pat’sclasses, Heather expressed definite views on the impor-tant role subject matter plays in the nature of discus-sions. On one occasion, she explained, “To me the sub-ject makes a big deal because you can become moreoutspoken for one certain subject” (FGI/DM/3/3/94),and still later, Heather said, “In English you debate a lotmore about the question because we all see it from dif-ferent points of view” (FGI/DM/5/10/94). Brian dis-agreed about the need to debate a question. He main-tained that he spoke up more in discussions duringcalculus class where there was only one right answer to


a question and he knew how to get it: “I show them[members of his group in calculus] how to do it, andthen it makes me feel good, so then, I’ll show more”(FGI/DM/5/10/94).

As for how they viewed the relation betweenchoice of topic and level of participation in discussion,Alan’s students assessed the situation this way: If thetopic is not interesting, Tyrone and Nick noted, then it isthe teacher’s responsibility to “make it sound exciting.”In Tyrone’s words, “Stress it more, you know. Imean...you gotta project it to the students more. Makethem want to understand it” (FGI/SP/10/29/93).

To summarize, students expressed preferences fortopics that they experienced as likeable, interesting, anddebatable. Most students valued topics that were natural-ly interesting; some held the teacher responsible forarousing interest in dull topics. Students typically favoredsubject matter topics found in literary texts over thosefound in social studies texts.

Assertion 3: Students see discussion as helpful inunderstanding what they read

Like our first assertion, this one has two dimen-sions. Realizing that students see discussions as helpful is one dimension, and understanding how students thinkdiscussions render this help is another. Knowing thatstudents value the impact of discussions justifies know-ing how discussions affect their understandings of whatthey read. In this section, we specify the following threeways that students across all five sites said discussionshelped them understand what they read: listening toeach other, voicing their opinions/arguing, and attendingto vocabulary.

Listening to each other. The students in Dera’s classviewed listening as an important part of discussion, evenwhile recognizing that their own listening skills were notalways adequate. Reflecting on ways she could improveher participation in discussion, Alice said, “I think maybe I have to listen to other people more. Because Idon’t think I listen, um, I think I talk more than I listen.And listening, listening is a good skill to have”(FGI/JY/1/20/94). On another occasion, Laura andSandra shared reasons for thinking that they had im-proved their understanding of an assigned reading bylistening to others in their group. In Laura’s words, “Wethought we were a good discussion group because, Imean, we tried to listen to what everybody had to say,really, instead of just trying to talk over people.” Towhich Sandra added, “And instead of just trying to getacross what you are trying to say, I mean, now, that isimportant, but you should also give others a chance toget across what they want to say” (AT/DA/1/11/94).

According to several students in Dera’s class, learn-ing to give others a chance to say what they want to saywas a factor in April’s growth as a discussant over thecourse of the year. John, Jonathan, and Laura thoughtApril listened more and was more open-minded, whileBrad was more blunt in his assessment of her progress:

You can get her to shut up easier.... It is the truth. Shekept going blah, blah, blah, and she would keep on talk-ing, and you would go, “April, please keep quiet,” andshe will stop now. Because she wants other people to—she is eager to hear now, not eager to talk.(FGI/DA/3/1/94)

Students in Paula’s room were similarly apprecia-tive of what they could learn by listening to others ex-press their ideas. In describing how his group’s discus-sion motivated him to think more deeply about what hehad read, Alex said, “Well, sometimes people get ideas,that-–‘Yeah, I never thought of that!’ ” Or, as Heather putit: “If we had just read the story, people would havebeen interested to just let the story drop. To just thinkabout how they interpreted it, and then that was it.But...as we discussed it, we saw a lot more depth in thestory” (FGI/DM/2/10/94).

One of Pat’s stated goals for discussion was that itwould expand students’ understandings of a concept(TM/PZ/9/20/93), and it did appear to do that. Studentstypically listened and reacted to each other’s ideas untilthey had reached some kind of group consensus aboutwhat they had read. Maryanne thought she learned bet-ter in peer-led discussions because she understood whatother students were saying (FN/KH/5/26/94). Justinagreed: “Because you get ideas from other students andnot from the teacher. You understand better from some-one your own age that has the same background”(FGI/KH/2/3/94).

Esther’s and Alan’s students also felt they had abetter understanding of what they read when they lis-tened to their peers discuss a selection. When askedwhy she thought her teacher liked students to discusswhat they had read, Janice said that Esther must realizestudents understand their peers better than they under-stand her (FGI/JY/2/1/94). Tyrone believed that “Thebest thing to do [in Alan’s class] is just like, listen...andthen take it from there after you hear it out, and thenask a question.” When Steve asked, “So, if I’m hearingyou right, you think that some of discussion has to dowith listening?” Tyrone responded emphatically, “Mostof discussion has to do with listening, ’cause you and mecouldn’t discuss anything we talking about if I wasn’t lis-tening” (FGI/SP/4/18/94).

As can be seen, students respected the role of lis-tening during discussions. They indicated that they


gained different ideas about a passage especially by lis-tening to their peers’ comments.

Voicing opinions/arguing. In the peer-led discus-sions in Dera’s room, rudimentary listening skills oftengave way in the face of widely differing and stronglyheld opinions. Offering opinions on a topic was frequent-ly mentioned by students as helping them understandwhat they read, but knowing when to withhold suchopinions was not a simple matter (SW/DW/10/14/93;FGI/DA/1/20/94). Nor was it a simple matter to distin-guish between expressing one’s opinions and arguing, asseen in Laura’s and Alice’s experiences of their own talk.According to Laura,

[Alice] tries to get her point across and just says “Well, didyou understand this, because I understood it this way”....And she kind of says she’s right and if we didn’t under-stand it that way then how could we not understand itthat way or whatever. (FGI/JY/1/20/94)

Alice, on the other hand, offered her own version of herdiscussion style (without, incidentally, having heardLaura’s):

Well, I have noticed that sometimes when I am talking tosomeone I usually...keep on explaining to them until theyunderstand what I am saying. And so maybe I like to ar-gue. We certainly did a lot of that in my group.(FGI/JY/1/20/94)

Argument was an acknowledged fact of life duringdiscussions in Dera’s classroom, and the students talkedfreely about this feature of their talk and how it helpedthem to understand what they read. It was a feature oftalk with which students in Pat’s room could also identi-fy. For example, Justin noted, after viewing an argumentbetween Laura and Alice on videotape, “I’m always argu-ing. I’m trying to get my point across.” When asked whyothers in his group were reminded of Kate (a girl in Pat’sclass) when they watched the argument involving Lauraand Alice, Justin replied, “Because she [Kate] talks andtalks. She tries to get her point across. That’s goodthough” (FGI/KH/3/10/94). And for Rico, in Alan’s class,arguing or stating one’s opinion was just a way of stand-ing out and defining oneself: “You got to say what youwant. People are not mind readers, you know, and ifyou want to be noticed, you have to open up and saysomething, you know” (FGI/SP/1/13/94).

Students at the other two research sites generallysaw themselves as being less opinionated and argumen-tative than Dera’s students, however. After viewing avideotaped discussion involving students in Dera’s room,Heather (a 12th grader in Paula’s class) stated: “Theywere really opinionated [laughter]. I was surprised.... Iremember what I was like in seventh and eighth grade.

I don’t think I was that opinionated” (FGI/DM/5/10/94).But Heather, Alex, and Brian all agreed that other peo-ple’s opinions were valuable to their understanding ofwhat they read, especially when those opinions helpedthem to “look at something from a different point ofview” (FGI/DM/2/10/94).

While students in Esther’s class attributed arguingamong their own group members simply to the fact thatthey all had “their different opinions,” they were reluc-tant to attribute the same reasoning to Dera’s class.Comments from Esther’s students, after viewing Lauraand Alice’s interaction, ranged from “They couldn’t getalong” to “They could have quit fussing and arguing and listen to each other and then express their opinions”to “More humor; you need that to have a good time”(FGI/DA/3/15/94).

As the students noted above, expressing oneselfgave people something to think about. The focus ofthese comments was on what discussions did for listen-ers; only a few comments were about what discussionsdid for speakers. Additionally, many students in thisstudy seemed to view the speaking component of dis-cussions primarily as an opportunity to persuade others.Only a few comments were about discussions as oppor-tunities to search for consensus or to explore alternativeinterpretations.

Attending to vocabulary. Some students in Dera’sroom were convinced that attending to the meaning ofvocabulary was a priority. It was, as Alice said, “like they wanted to know what the words meant so theywould get what the story was trying to tell them”(FGI/JY/1/20/94). In referring to her own group’s discus-sion of a story, Desuna said,

Some of it, it was like old language, and it had a lot ofhard words.... They had, like, a whole list of hard words,like down one page, and you were going back and forthto the dictionary, trying to find out and if you didn’t, thenyou wouldn’t understand the story. (FGI/DA/1/25/94)

Yet, when Dera asked the students if they would preferthat she preteach the vocabulary that would likely pre-sent some trouble, they said “no.” Laura explained,“When you tell me, I don’t want to know. If I comeacross it on my own, I have a reason to find it.” Jasonand Mark agreed, while Jonathan noted, “If you tell us, it might focus more attention on the word than it reallydeserves.” Laura nodded in agreement, adding, “Yeah, it’slike you make the word in boldface” (AT/DW/2/16/94).

After viewing a videotape of a discussion in Pat’sclass, Dera’s students drew a distinction between theirown use of the dictionary to look up vocabulary andthat of the students in Pat’s class. Jason noted: “Thegroups in the video-–they seem like really stiff. Because


all of the groups seem to be following a pattern. They all start reading and they are doing all of this stuff, andwe don’t do that. We, like, look up a word if we wantto, and then we start talking about things. They didn’tseem into it.” Sandra added: “It just seemed like theywere looking at one person to look up the word andread what it meant. And then they would all write itdown” (FGI/DA/3/3/94). However, at least some of Pat’sstudents did see group discussions as helpful to their un-derstanding of the vocabulary in their social studies text.For example, Mike commented that the students in hisgroup put the text in “easier terms” (FGI/KH/12/9/93),and Jennifer thought her group learned a great deal fromeach other when they discussed a long list of vocabularyon Russian history that they used in creating a group sto-ry (VT/KH/12/9/93).

In Paula’s class, one pattern of talking about vo-cabulary that contributed to students’ understanding ofwhat they read consisted of students spontaneously in-serting themselves into classroom talk by questioningPaula or a peer about unfamiliar terms. “What is a con-cept?” (FN/DM/11/19/93), “What is a chop house?”(FN/DM/2/3/94), and “What’s enervated mean?”(FN/DM/3/24/94) illustrate the types of questions stu-dents inserted. After such questions were asked, studentstypically reacted to the response, as in the following ex-change:

Alex: What does craven mean?June: Cowardly.Alex: Really?

Heather: Yeah, she’s right. (FN/DM/3/24/94)

Students in Alan’s class also spent considerabletime talking about the meanings of words. Oftentimesconfusion reigned because students did not have theappropriate background knowledge, or they associatedwords that sounded alike but had widely divergentmeanings. One example occurred in the context of awhole-class recitation, where the goal was to convergeon a single correct answer to the teacher’s question,“What’s the Spanish Armada?” Tyrone’s response, “It’s acountry song,” was ignored initially. It was only later inface-to-face discussion that the actual reasoning behindthe response came out and Tyrone’s confusion was giv-en a full airing:

Tyrone: I thought that was a song. That’s the arma-mada, right?

Steve: I don’t know.Tyrone: I mean, I know that a country has a song, like

“Oh, say can you see” and all that.Steve: That’s the national anthem.

Tyrone: It’s called the arma-mada.

Steve: Arma-mada. I’ll have to check that out. Oh, Iknow what! I’ve got it. Alma Mater.

Nick: I heard something like that, too.Steve: Alma Mater. It’s a song, like for the school.

(FGI/SP/10/29/93)

Students reported attending to vocabulary duringtext-based discussions because the words often inter-fered with their understandings of the passages. Thisattention to vocabulary seemed to be most highlyregarded when the students identified and resolvedtroublesome words while interacting with each other intheir attempts to comprehend assigned texts. Discussionsabout terms allowed students to confirm appropriatemeanings and clarify misconceptions.

Discussion

In this multicase study, adolescents at five researchsites engaged in face-to-face interactions to talk abouthow they experienced discussions of assigned readingsin their content area classes. The themes that emergedfrom these interactions suggest that students are (a)aware of the conditions they believe to be conducive togood discussions, (b) knowledgeable about the differenttasks and topics that influence their participation, and (c) cognizant of how classroom discussion helps themunderstand what they read.

By focusing on adolescents’ views about their ownactions, thoughts, and motives related to classroom talkabout texts, we attempted to place students’ perspectiveson their experiences as discussants at the center of theresearch. In this way we hoped to make visible how stu-dents say they negotiate different roles and relations,rights and responsibilities, and norms and expectationsin their discussions of content area texts. We hoped suchvisibility would enhance instructional and research deci-sion making. Social constructionist thinking provided theframework for studying how students made sense oftheir experiences as discussants through talking thoseexperiences into being (see Davies, 1993; Green &Dixon, 1994).

ConclusionsAs demonstrated in their talk about their experi-

ences in text-based classroom discussions, students fo-cused more on their relations with each other and theircommitment to understanding what they read than ontheir teachers’ actions per se. The conditions studentsbelieved to be conducive to discussions centered moreon mutually exploring ideas than on following teachers’guidelines. Although the adolescents we studied wereaware that the tasks teachers presented and the topics


they assigned for reading had the potential to influencestudents’ participation in discussions, it was clear thatpossessing such an awareness did not necessarily bringabout compliance. For example, students in Dera’s classoften ignored her discussion questions when their ownproved more engaging, or they would resist joining in adiscussion if it was on a topic they did not like.

However, it is important to bear in mind that peer-led small-group discussion was the norm in Dera’s roomand, thus, it may have been easier for her students toignore the tasks and topics she assigned. Students wereless free to follow their own leads in classrooms wheresmall-group discussion was not the norm or where thepace of the curriculum allowed less room for deviation.Even so, students voiced their opinions about unpopulartasks and topics through their words (e.g., offering alter-natives to a boring task in Paula’s class or recommendingthat Alan assume responsibility for making dull topicsexciting) and through their actions (e.g., maintainingsilence when Alan’s directions for a task were unclear).

Learning from middle and high school studentsabout their perspectives on conditions conducive togood discussions can provide teachers with crucial infor-mation to use in shared decision making. Similar learn-ings have occurred in recent studies on curriculumdecision making in high school English classrooms(Applebee, Burroughs, & Stevens, 1994) and on students’perceptions of effective teaching practices (Turley, 1994).And, while many of the implicit or explicit recommenda-tions made by students in the present study were alsoemphasized in Applebee et al. (e.g., the importance ofcontributing to group talk) and Turley (e.g., the notionof assigning teachers the responsibility for generatingstudent interest in an activity), some were not. For exam-ple, in the present study, students generally preferredpeer-led small-group discussions to those that wereteacher directed and involved the whole class. InTurley’s (1994) study of eight high school seniors, thestudents preferred whole-class settings or individuallearning activities to small-group discussions. The poten-tial for being placed in an unproductive group whereone student was responsible for all the work madesmall-group discussions the least favored arrangement inTurley’s study. Interestingly, the fear of becoming part ofan unproductive group was among the reasons studentsin the present study gave for believing in the importanceof knowing and liking the members of one’s group.

The commonalities in students’ experiences acrossthe five research sites were greater than the differences.Regardless of variations in their grade level, academicplacement, geographical location, and socioculturalsetting, the adolescents who were the focus of the fivecases in this study demonstrated considerable agreement

about what it is they hold each other accountable forand the expectations they have for discussion. Ouranalysis showed that these students constructed commonexpectations for text-based discussions and that they val-ued listening to each other as they expressed their opin-ions and argued about the meaning of what they read.Furthermore, they demonstrated an aptness for negotiat-ing roles and responsibilities—one that suggests thepower of language in both shaping and being shaped bythese adolescents’ individual social histories.

Research implicationsSeveral directions for further study are suggested

by the findings reported here. First, the three assertionsof the present study need fleshing out. As we worked togain a sense of the assertions that could be made aboutstudents’ perceptions of their experiences in text-baseddiscussions across multiple sites, we also attempted togain a sense of the nuances in each assertion. Morework needs to be done in exploring specific voices, per-haps by gathering more contextualized data on some ofthe focal students (e.g., tracing their steps through theirdays inside and outside of school). Although collectivelythe students helped us to understand better the role ofpeer relations during text-based discussions, we wouldlike to have greater insight into individual students’ per-spectives.

Second, our analysis of students’ perceptions oftheir discussion experiences in diverse classroom settingsfocused on common threads across settings. Althoughwe have begun to investigate the influence of genderedpractices on students’ perceptions of their discussion ex-periences, much additional work needs to be done(Patterson, 1995), including that which looks at the sub-tle cultural biases found in mainstream curricula (e.g.,Alton-Lee, Nuthall, & Patrick, 1993).

Third, the need exists for research that exploreshow students’ perceptions of their experiences as discus-sants vary across the disciplines. Although the cases inthis study fall within the humanities, or more specifically,the English/language arts and the social studies, there issome evidence to suggest that discussion plays out dif-ferently in mathematics classes (e.g., see Mike’s com-ment on calculus class under the second assertion), andperhaps in other disciplines as well. Thus, we wonderhow different reading demands documented in the his-torical literature on content area reading instruction(Moore, Readence, & Rickelman, 1983) might influencestudents’ perceptions of class discussion.

Fourth, an interesting question for further researchmight be how text-based discussions differ from moregeneral discussions. Perhaps students are more likely toargue with a book than with their teachers or peers be-


cause there is less chance for reprisals or hurt feelings. Fifth, more indepth research is needed to explore

students’ generalizations about classroom talk (e.g.,Nick’s statement that shy people talk to other shy peo-ple, or Rico’s observation that racial and ethnic biasesdiscourage students from participating in small-groupdiscussions). Similarly, comments from students that de-scribe outcomes without explaining how they came tobe (e.g., Sandra’s statement, “We are all just comfortabletalking with each other now”) need to be explored.

A sixth direction for further study involves explor-ing students’ perceptions of the effect of discussion onindependent reading strategies. Our students reportedpositive feelings about the influence of discussion ontheir ability to understand what teachers directed themto read, but they did not mention how such discussionmight affect their free or self-directed reading.

Finally, the importance of topic to students’ percep-tions of their willingness to participate in discussionsdeserves more investigation. The complexities involved innegotiating choices in topics that address student, teacher,and curricular interests have yet to be unravelled.

Classroom implicationsStudents’ perceptions in this study support some

long-held beliefs about the benefits of discussion. Ourfindings indicate that discussion allows students to be-come engaged with ideas, to construct meaning, to takeresponsibility for their own learning, and to negotiatecomplex cognitive and social relationships. When discus-sion is a regular part of classroom life, students learnhow to work with others, how to fit in, how to stay fo-cused on a topic, and the importance of listening andcontributing to a group effort.

However, it is also apparent that what students sayand do during discussion is not always congruent withwhat teachers intend, or with what is reported in re-search that does not include the student perspective. Ifwe were to draw one practical implication from our find-ings, it would be that teachers who use small-groupdiscussion in their classrooms should expect the unex-pected. Students have different viewpoints from teachers(and other adult observers) of specific tasks and topics,of their own role in discussions, and the role of others.Students may pursue their own agendas during discus-sion, different from the teacher’s intentions but neverthe-less relevant to the content at hand and productive interms of what they learn.

Looking at discussion in this way may present afundamental challenge to teachers who are focused onmaintaining control over curriculum, class routines, andspecific student outcomes. But for teachers who valuestudent independence and self-directed learning, this

study offers the following suggestions for facilitating pro-ductive small-group discussions:

� Provide students with frequent opportunities todiscuss what they read. In short, don’t let thembe “talk-deprived,” as one boy in the presentstudy put it. If this seems to run counter to cur-rent curricular goals that argue against deviatingfrom a fast-paced delivery of content, considercontacting the curriculum director or someoneelse who exercises authority in curriculum deci-sions. It may be useful to reconsider presentcurricula in light of what students see as thebenefits of discussion in helping them to con-struct knowledge as a social group.

� Develop a sense of community in the classroom.Students say they like discussion more whenthey feel comfortable with group members andwhen they feel they have something in commonwith others. Teachers can foster a sense of com-munity by setting a good example of courtesyand respect, acknowledging the diverse contri-butions of class members, emphasizing commongoals, and pointing out the benefits of coopera-tion.

� Attend to group dynamics. From the presentstudy, it appears that students are likely to tryout new ideas when group dynamics foster mu-tual respect and understanding among members.Because the productivity of group membersseems to outweigh the importance of personalfriendships, be explicit about the importance ofcontributing to the discussion, listening to oth-ers, being tolerant, and staying on the topic.

� Build on students’ keen sense of the conditionsthat foster good discussion from their perspec-tives. Use class time occasionally to let studentsevaluate their discussions. Through such self-evaluations, students are likely to see how class-room discussions share some of the samequalities found in everyday conversations: Bothforms of talk require socially negotiated movesthat lead to improved understanding.

� Moderate, don’t dominate. Students can and will direct their own productive discussions.Teachers can facilitate this by setting up theconditions for a discussion, but then they shouldstep back and let students work with minimalinterference.

� Search for topics that engage students. Theiropinions about suitable discussion topics sug-gest the need for students to have a voice in se-lecting and defining them. Students’ perceptionsof their experiences with discussion tasks seem


to suggest that topic is more important than taskwhen it comes to eliciting their participation indiscussions.

LimitationsThe study was designed to learn from students’

perspectives how they experience text-based discussionsin their content area classes. Taking into accountErickson and Shultz’s (1992) claim that it is the student’svoice that has been most conspicuously absent in the re-search on student experience, we focused on what stu-dents had to say. In doing so, certain qualifications ininterpreting the data must be acknowledged. First, weassume that students’ knowledge of their past and pre-sent experiences as discussants was inseparable from thelanguage they used to reflect that knowledge. To the ex-tent that this assumption was supported, students appearto have sophisticated and well-articulated understandingsof the nature of classroom talk about texts.

Second, we assume that the presence of outsiderschanged what happened in our classroom research sites,although we think we were present frequently enoughto eliminate some of this influence. Nonetheless, we rec-ognize that by asking questions of students, we influ-enced the way they saw their classrooms and theiractions within those classrooms. This changed way ofseeing is, in turn, apt to have affected at least some oftheir actions.

Third, although a multicase study design enabledus to examine a range of students’ experiences across di-verse settings, the fact remains that one of the cases(Esther’s class) was not studied as intensively or as longas the other four cases. In addition, two of the class-rooms did not engage in peer-led discussions to the ex-tent that the other three did.

Fourth, the decision to enlist several focal studentsat each of the five sites to ensure a rich and varied set ofperspectives limited the degree to which we could ex-plore in depth how any one individual went about con-structing his or her encounters with the discussionprocess. No doubt this limitation seriously reduced whatwe might have learned about the subjectivities of a sin-gle student at each of the sites. Similarly, our contextsfor study were very different, and all yielded insightsabout students’ discussion that were unique to the siteand tied to grade level, subject matter, location, andbackground of participants. In deciding to seek asser-tions that could be made across these diverse class-rooms, we compromised our ability to understand thenuances of individual contexts.

Fifth, although we made considerable effort to un-derstand students’ points of view, we still were limited toour own ways of interpreting their words. We think our

collaboration has strengthened our ability to see and tounderstand—especially since some of us are from insidethe classroom and some of us from outside—but weknow that there may be other ways of hearing and inter-preting students’ words.

SummaryOur multicase study supports the importance of lis-

tening to students. Their words suggest much about theirsocial lives and histories in and out of school, their in-sights into classroom talk about texts, and their under-standing of their own roles as participants in small- andlarge-group discussions. They know each others’ roles,too, and hold each other accountable for fairness in theirparticipation. Students expect to learn from discussionsand are quite disappointed when a discussion is de-signed in a way that seems less than productive to them.As we listened to their words, we realized how helpfultheir comments were to our own perceptions of text-based discussions and, in a larger sense, to our under-standings of negotiation, position, and ways of partici-pating. We realized too that we wanted to hear more,and we plan more studies to do so.

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Received May 15, 1995Final revision received July 19, 1995

Accepted July 24, 1995


AUTHOR NOTESThis study was funded in part by the National Reading Research

Center of the Universities of Georgia and Maryland. It was supportedunder the Educational and Development Centers Program(PR/AWARD NO.117A20007) as administered by the Office of

Educational Research and Improvement, U.S. Department ofEducation. The findings and opinions expressed here do not necessar-ily reflect the position or policies of the National Reading ResearchCenter, the Office of Educational Research and Improvement, or theU.S. Department of Education.


(Written after the first 2 months of the study)Across cycles of events, the focal students in Pat’s

room believe that peer-led small-group discussions workwhen all individuals in the group do their part, ratherthan rely on one or two people to carry the load.Interestingly, “doing your part” seems to relate directly towhether or not you talk. Simply doing the work individ-ually and writing down individual answers does notcount. For example, after viewing a videotaped discus-sion (VT/KH/10/26/93) on the day Pat’s students beganworking on group reports related to their study of theMiddle East, Jennifer announced, “I think my groupdoesn’t work together very well because they don’t say anything, and I feel like I do all the work”(FGI/KH/11/4/93, p. 1). And, on another day, as stu-dents viewed a videotaped discussion (VT/KH/12/9/93)involving a review of vocabulary (they had to use thewords to make a story about Russia’s history through theearly 1900s), Jennifer complained that Elaine didn’t sayanything:

See, look. She writes stuff down, but she doesn’t say any-thing. ’Cause every time I would write down a word, shewould cross it out, but she wouldn’t say anything. Then,Mrs. Zalewski would come over and say let someone elsesay something, and she still wouldn’t say anything.(FGI/KH/12/9/93, p. 11)

When Kathy asked the focal students what shewould have to do if she were in the 10th grade at MHSand was put in their group, Joseph replied, “Do yourpart.” The other students chimed in with “Uh, huh,” andJustin added, “Put some effort in, instead of just sitting

there saying, ‘What is your answer?’ or ‘What did youget?’ ” (FGI/KH/11/4/93, p. 9).

During the first 2 months of the study, focal stu-dents appear divided in their beliefs about the impor-tance of having the right to select their own groupmembers. Although some felt they would feel responsiblefor each other and would share ideas better if they had achoice about group membership, others seemed contentto work in the groups the teacher formed for them.

Jennifer noted that one reason why members of hergroup who worked on the Middle East project did nottalk to one another and did not try to help each otherwas that they were not compatible. In her words: “I think if we can pick who we would like to work with, it would be better. I don’t like the people I work with”(FGI/KH/11/4/93, p. 2). At a later point in the interview,Jennifer returned to the issue of how discussion groupswere formed:

Like our teacher, she just puts us in these groups, like be-cause she didn’t want the main people she knows thatwere, to work together, and I think if she would let uspick our own groups, we would pick the people that weknow can work together. I know, even if it were peoplethat were outsiders, like we picked each other, youknow, I mean like then we knew we had to get the pro-ject done, and we could all say since we were friends,come on we have to do this. (FGI, KH/11/4/93, pp. 7–8)

Tammy, however, did not feel that group participa-tion depended on being with one’s friends. In her words:“I think that we motivated each other because like with....We used like, come on guys, we have to get this done,you know, and everything” (FGI/KH/11/4/93, p. 7).

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