Educational Leadership - September 2015

Like so many conversations when two people are equally interested in talking to one another, this one covers a lot of ground, and there are several invitations for further inquiry and thought. Instead of using the quiz model captured in the previous example, the teacher uses the exchange to broaden Colm’s horizons by linking his own reactions to literature about human fear of snakes. Colm gets access to a body of literature he might not know about, and he learns that people can connect their own immediate experience to the lives of other people through books. This spontaneous exchange about a snake skin provides hefty academic lessons.

Making Time

Needless to say, teachers don’t have the chance to pursue every conversation, and not every conversation leads to such valuable inquiry. However, it’s worth considering how to structure a classroom so that there are more opportunities for such inquiry to emerge.

Too often, in their eagerness to get through the material they’ve planned, teachers don’t allow themselves and their students to talk informally. One thing teachers can do is allow more time for each activity and each transition. Children who don’t have to rush through snack time or who can dawdle while standing in line are more likely to use the time to begin a conversation.

Another small change that makes a
big difference is to allow children to
deviate from a task when the conver-
sation seems interesting. For instance,
while the teacher is helping a child
solve math problems or write some-
thing, the child might bring up an
ancillary topic that provides as much
or more educational value as finishing
the math or the page of writing.
Finally, teachers can bring up
interesting topics with small groups
of children without any clear aim
or pressure to “cover” material, but
simply with the goal of a satisfying
conversation.
As I said earlier, researchers have
long known that one of the primary
reasons middle-class children tend to
do better than low-income children in
school is because of their experiences
with language at home. This finding
extends to a wide range of informal
learning experiences that middle-class
children commonly have access to.
Why not spend more time in school
offering similarly rich informal
learning experiences and conversa-
tions to all students? Such conversa-
tions, however unplanned and
wandering, contain many questions
that are the sine qua non of real
learning. Even in school, nothing beats
a good conversation. EL

References

Engel, S. (2015). The hungry mind: The
origins of curiosity in childhood. Cam-
bridge MA: Harvard University Press.
Hart, B., & Risley, T. R. (1995). Meaningful
differences in the everyday experience of
young American children. Baltimore, MD:
Paul H. Brookes.
Tizard, B., & Hughes, M. (2008). Young
children learning. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.
Wells, G. (1986). The meaning makers:
Children learning language and using
language to learn. Portsmouth, NH:
Heinemann.

Susan Engel ( sengel@williams.edu) is senior lecturer in psychology at Williams College, Williamstown, Massachusetts. Her books include The End of the Rainbow: How Educating for Happiness—Not Money—Would Transform Our Schools (The New Press, 2015) and The Hungry Mind: The Origins of Curiosity in Childhood (Harvard Educational Press, 2015).