Perspectives in Practice: Using Dialogic Teaching to Help Students Think Deeply

How do you teach perspectives?

During one of our sessions in our W.I.N.G.S Program, a sixth grader, in her in-class creative writing assignment, wrote about rescuing a deer from a tiger by calling the hunter. I was surprised we would call a hunter. She replied, “Because the tiger is bad; he would eat the deer.”

Upon hearing her response, I just asked her to rewrite that portion. Later on, when I sat with her and discussed her story, I told her, “Just because the tiger hunts deer, it does not make him a bad animal.” She sat for a while thinking about what I said.

I continued, “For the tiger, deer is his food.” And what would happen if tigers don’t hunt deer? Another student, a 5th grader, answered, “Ma’am, if tigers don’t hunt deer, it will cause overgrazing in the forest.” “And what would happen if there’s overgrazing?” I asked?

As the students looked at me with anticipation, I explained, “Overgrazing in the forest could wipe out a whole lot of vegetation, leading to poor quality of soil, loss of plants and trees that are vital for the survival of the jungle and cause soil erosion. When a tiger or lion hunts deer or other herbivores, they help keep this balance in check.”

Now, this was a ‘shift in perspective’ for the children – from a ‘bad’ tiger to just a tiger. The tiger does not hunt for pleasure; it hunts for food, and that does not make the tiger a villain. This is one of the learning essence/ outcomes in our W.I.N.G.S Program.  

Dialogic practice

This exchange of ideas and understanding different points of view is called ‘Dialogic practice’, developed by Robin Alexander. This kind of teaching practice involves structured, purposeful classroom conversations to help students reason aloud, build on each other’s ideas, and challenge thinking respectfully.

In the paper What is dialogic teaching? Constructing, deconstructing, and reconstructing a pedagogy of classroom talk – Dialogic teaching is a pedagogical approach that capitalizes on the power of talk to further students’ thinking, learning, and problem solving.

This method takes the load off the child to always give the right answers. It encourages healthy group discussions, learning new ideas and concepts from classmates, and accepting or acknowledging different perspectives.

It starts with a prompt and offers many open-ended questions that allow all children to feel included and share their opinions, without the pressure of their answers being incorrect ,and eventually arrive at evidence-based answers.

Hence, from perceiving the tiger to be a ‘bad’ animal, at the end of the session, the children learnt to rewrite the jungle adventure narrative and just refer to the tiger as an ‘animal’, with no value judgements.

Learning through practical examples

In our sessions, children are taught not to waste paper. So whatever cutouts we may have been left with, the children consciously collect them and keep them in folders to be used later in any of our activities.

A few months ago, during a visit to Himachal Pradesh, we were given a small travel dustbin at a petrol station with a request to all not to throw plastic or wrappers on the roads. I have kept it in The Write Compass classroom and shared this story with my students. Now, as if it is second nature, the children, even without being told, keep the little dustbin handy and drop their pencil shavings or waste paper inside it.

Through this simple yet powerful habit, we learnt that cleanliness and civic sense can start small in one classroom and magnify into a bigger, more positive social and environmental impact. We talked about climate change and pollution in the mountain states of our country and how it impacts us living in the plains. The children (as young as 3rd graders) start asking questions, and we discuss possibilities and solutions for curbing pollution.

This is how we plant a more ‘glocal’ and ‘global’ perspective in children who will be our future leaders, and it all begins with the seed of one positive idea.

Perspectives in I.N.S.P.I.R.E Program

During one of the sessions in I.N.S.P.I.R.E, while working on a segment on photo essays, I asked one of my IGCSE students to describe a picture. It was a black-and-white picture of two children sitting on the floor colouring. We couldn’t see the faces, but it looked like someone, like a parent or a caregiver, standing above them had taken the picture.

This was a perspective that we look for in students – what do you see in the picture? What is the perspective or the lens through which you are viewing the picture?

I explained that perspectives allow you to view a scenario from various and neutral angles.

In IB and IGCSE, there is a paper on Global Perspectives, which is an excellent subject, but how do you plant the concept of perspective? Perspectives have to be planted with a seed of thought – just like the idea of the tiger.

Cubism

In our previous sessions at the W.I.N.G.S Program, we have explored the concept of ‘cubism’. What we may perceive right from one angle may be perceived differently by someone else. Hence, the two-faced art – that shows two different perspectives yet culminating into a whole picture, thereby signifying that respecting others’ opinions, acknowledging other people’s opinions or perspectives, while holding your ground if you have the facts or sound reasoning for it.

According to The Cubist Revolution: A Guide for Art Educators, cubism allows us to break down or chunk a traditional representation of a viewpoint/art/form to learn to embrace various perspectives or viewpoints by fragmenting the picture into geometric shapes. Of course, cubism as a concept is far more complex and multi-layered, but we just touch upon the very tip of the iceberg as an example to help our learners understand what perspectives mean.

Through cubism, we also mentor children that the ‘idealist’ or ‘perfect’ picture or a ‘certain expected’ outcome that we hold at times, cubism teaches us that our experiences make the picture whole, even if it takes a detour from the plans we had started with.

Let’s connect

For school and college principals, teachers, and student coordinators, if you’re looking to add value to the existing school/college curriculum, let’s connect. Because perspectives are not only about securing marks in an exam or writing a school or college application; it is about instilling the right values in young minds who will be future leaders of our country and across the world. Let’s connect to discuss how The Write Compass can collaborate with your institute through sessions and workshops to help students and educators.

Reference:

Dialogic Teaching: A Classroom Guide for Better Thinking

Integrating Global Perspectives in Your Classroom: Full Guide

What is dialogic teaching? Constructing, deconstructing, and reconstructing a pedagogy of classroom talk – ScienceDirect

The Cubist Revolution: A Guide for Art Educators

Unlocking Creativity: The Transformative Power of Cubism

[ #TheWriteCompass #CreativeThinkingCoach #DialogicTeaching #ChildMentorship #PerspectiveBuilding , writing mentorship India, Noida learning programs, WINGS Program, student creative writing India, educational workshops Noida ]