Examining the relationship between teachers’ discussion facilitation and their students’ reasoning

Abstract

ABSTRACTWe conducted a two-year study with four teachers (two mentors and two mentees), one university researcher, and a political science professor focused on improving discussion facilitation. This article examines the facilitation of a collaboratively developed seminar/deliberation discussion by four teachers and the relationship between their facilitation and the reasoning of the students. We found that all four teachers explored the factual questions of the discussion topic, but that two of the teachers led more substantive explorations of the definitional and value questions by purposefully teaching the students norms of behavior in a quality seminar/deliberation, practicing discussion throughout the course, allowing more student-tostudent talk, and focusing students’ attention on the persistent definitional and value issues that connected the case to analogous cases.