Research Discussion Discussion Strategy: Explanation

This activity involves learners using discussion as a research tool.

By talking to other members of the class and eliciting their thoughts, learners are creating data they can record, summarise and analyse.

It works as follows:

The teacher introduces the topic and explains why it is to be studied.

They then indicate that learners will be researching the views and opinions of their peers.

For this reason, the topics you can use for the activity fall into one of two categories:

1. Something learners have studied for several lessons and which, as a result, they already know a lot about.
2. Something learners already know about, or have opinions about, despite not having studied it (for example, a moral issue).

The teacher asks learners to work in pairs. Their task is to come up with five questions they could ask their peers to find out what they think about the topic.

These questions should be open-ended to encourage in-depth responses.

It is helpful if you model a couple of exemplar questions for the whole class, leaving these on the board so learners have them as a reference.

You will also need to make it clear that learners should engage their interviewees in discussion.

This is so that further ideas and opinions can be elicited. Elaboration is to be encouraged!

Next, the teacher asks all learners to stand up and to find between three and five peers to interview (the exact number will vary depending how much time you have available).

Notes should be taken during the interviews, with learners recording the key points they hear. (You might want to provide learners with a handout they can use, but it really depends on your class and is by no means essential.)

When the interviews have been completed, learners return to their seats and discuss what they found out with their partners.

The teacher concludes the activity by asking a few pairs to share what they discovered with the whole class. (If you have time, you can use this as a springboard for a new whole-class discussion.)

Research Discussion Discussion Strategy: Example

Topic: Government Spending

The teacher introduces the topic and asks learners to work in pairs to develop five questions.

For example:

• How do you think public money should be spent?
• How would you prioritise different public services?
• What do you feel is the right level of taxation and why?
• What is your opinion of current government spending plans?
• What do you think about proposals to measure the effects of government spending?

As mentioned above, questions should be open-ended to encourage discussion, exemplified in these examples.

This ensures there is plenty of scope for interviewees to talk and for interviewers to ask follow-up questions or to make comments of their own to generate further discussion.

Having interviewed a suitable number of their peers, learners return to their seats and discuss their findings with a partner.

The teacher then decides to extend the activity by asking learners to write a short summary of their findings.

They provide some questions as a scaffold, to help keep learners on track:

• Can you see any trends or patterns in your results? How might you explain these?
• Are any of your results particularly surprising? Why?
• How were people’s responses similar and how were they different?

Alternatively, the teacher could provide something like this:

1. Write a three-sentence summary for each of your questions.
2. Identify what you believe to be the most interesting thing about your results and explain why you think it is interesting.
3. Compare two or more of your summaries. What similarities and differences are there?

Having written up their results, learners are in a position to share their research findings. A whole-class discussion can develop from this point, based on what learners have discovered.

Research Discussion Discussion Strategy: Extensions and Developments

1. A great way to use this activity is to bookend a unit of work. Using our example above, the economics teacher might do it at the start of a unit on government spending and then do it again at the end of that unit. The purpose is to help learners reflect on how their thinking, and the thinking of their peers, has developed because of what they’ve learned.
2. You can increase the level of challenge by asking learners to come up with specific types of questions. For example: a what if …? question; a counterfactual question; a question that includes an analogy; a question they themselves would find hard to answer; and a question that demands evidence and examples in any answer.