Most classrooms have the following structure:
- One teacher who spends most of their time at the front of the room either stood up or sat down. They may also move around the room (circulate) to look at learners’ work, to talk to individual learners, or to manage behaviour.
- A number of learners, often between 14 and 30, but always outnumbering the teacher, who usually spend most of their time sitting down. Exceptions to this are lessons like drama, PE and design and technology; practical lessons like an experiment in science; and lessons where the teacher uses activities that involve learners standing up and moving around.
- At the front of the room there is a means of displaying information. In most schools, this is an interactive whiteboard. It could also be a traditional whiteboard, a blackboard, or an overhead projector.
This structure commonly results in the teacher spending some of their time standing at the front of the room, conveying information to their learners.
Students, in turn, switch their attention between the teacher and any information displayed on the board.
A less effective form of this method sees the teacher talking at length, with learners expected to ingest and assimilate what is said and shown.
The approach treats the human mind like a bucket and imagines that the teacher’s job is to fill up the bucket.
It is teaching from the front in its crudest form, without the use of questioning, discussion and other strategies intended to get learners engaging more actively with the learning.
A more effective approach sees the teacher talking for a shorter period of time or interspersing their exposition with opportunities for learners to discuss and think about what has been said.
Teaching from the front isn’t bad in itself.
But there are different ways to do it.
And some are undoubtedly more engaging than others.
Common to all approaches is the structural relationship that exists in the classroom whereby the teacher is at the front, with the ability to stand up and sit down at will, while the learners fan out from near the front to the back and are not allowed to stand up unless given permission.
I don’t have any problem with this arrangement.
The reason I bring it up, is because of a particular behaviour it tends to encourage during whole-class discussion.
That behaviour is the narrowing of debate, such that it becomes a repetitive cycle of teacher-learner interactions.
This involves the teacher posing a question, a learner responding, the teacher responding to what has been said, another learner responding to the teacher’s comment and so on.
A back-and-forth dynamic in which all exchanges go through the teacher.
There’s nothing wrong with this, per se.
But if overused (and overuse commonly happens, in part because of the classroom layout), it does tend to stymie discussion and lower engagement.
The traditional layout of the classroom is more likely to engender this situation.
The teacher, standing at the front, asks the whole class a question.
Learners, who are all looking at the teacher, think of a response.
The teacher picks out a learner.
They respond, telling the teacher what they think.
The teacher comments on this.
They then return the discussion to the class by picking another learner.
And on it goes.
If overused, such an approach risks diminishing the efficacy of whole-class discussion for the following reasons:
- The flow of the discussion is stifled. It becomes formulaic due to the repeated imposition of the teacher’s voice and thoughts.
- It is harder for learners to comment on what other learners have said because all learner-comments are compressed between teacher-comments.
- A single discussion is not really taking place. Instead, there are a series of mini discussions happening between the teacher and individual learners. The rest of the class listen to these (or pretend to listen).
A simple way to avoid these pitfalls and to encourage more learner-learner interactions is through the technique of bouncing.
Imagine the discussion is a ball that is passed from one speaker to the next.
Instead of always accepting the ball from a learner, the teacher can pass it to someone else.
Here’s how:
- Learner A: So, in my opinion, I think longer prison sentences are good because they put people off committing crimes.
- Teacher: That’s an interesting idea. Learner B, do you agree with Learner A’s opinion?
- Learner B: Well, I’m not sure that they do deter people, because if you commit a crime, it might just be in the heat of the moment, and you wouldn’t have time to think about prison sentences.
[At this point it’s clear that Learner A wants to respond. The teacher makes a non-verbal signal for them to do so]
- Learner A: Yeah, I take your point, but if they know that there are long prison sentences, then even in the heat of the moment there will be something in their mind telling them that they’re taking a big risk.
[A third learner, Learner C, has put their hand up. The teacher indicates that they can speak next]
- Learner C: Longer prison sentences make the public feel better and recognise the impact on victims. They’re not really about putting people off crime because people are going to commit crime anyway.
This technique – of bouncing the discussion to another learner – sees the teacher as a facilitator rather than a leader.
It takes time to develop the skill.
You must develop your judgement about when to step in and redirect the discussion or when to recapitulate what has been said.
As is evident from the sample dialogue above, bouncing frequently leads to discussions that draw in more learners and that promote a more active engagement with the discussion topic.
And those are two things every teacher is looking for.
