Martin Nystrand

Discussion-Based Approaches to Developing Understanding: Classroom Instruction and Student Performance in Middle and High School English

This study examines the relationships between student literacy performance and discussion-based approaches to the development of understanding in 64 middle and high school English classrooms. A series of hierarchical linear models indicated that discussion-based approaches were significantly related to spring performance, controlling for fall performance and other background variables. These approaches were effective across a range of situations and for low-achieving as well as high-achieving students, although interpretations are complicated because instruction is unequally distributed across tracks. Overall, the results suggest that students whose classroom literacy experiences emphasize discussion-based approaches in the context of high academic demands internalize the knowledge and skills necessary to engage in challenging literacy tasks on their own.

An Organizational Analysis of the Effects of Ability Grouping

Ability grouping appears to be a logical means of organizing a student body with diverse academic skills. Many observers contend, however, that the practice favors students in high-ability groups at the expense of students in lower groups. An organizational conception of ability grouping clarifies the rationale for ability grouping but also illuminates its shortcomings: Grouping students leads to segregation on nonacademic as well as academic criteria, and differentiated instruction may lead to unequal results for students assigned to different groups. These issues are explored with data from 92 honors, regular, and remedial English classes in eighth and ninth grade. We examine the characteristics of students placed in different groups, similarities and differences in the quality of instruction across groups, and the links between instruction and achievement. The data show that rates of student participation and discussion are higher in honors classes, contributing to the learning gaps between groups. Rates of open-ended questions are similar across classes, but honors students benefit more from such discourse because it occurs more often in the context of sustained study of literature.

Where did Composition Studies Come from? An Intellectual History

Composition Studies emerged as a scholarly research discipline during the 1970s as (a) empirical methods became available to investigate the problem of meaning in discourse and, concomitantly, (b) the work of an international writing research community became institutionalized in the form of new journals and graduate programs. Distinguishing their efforts from prior histories of the field, the authors argue that the development of composition studies needs to be understood as part of a broader intellectual history affecting linguistics and literary studies, as well as composition. Reviewing basic tenets of formalism, structuralism (including both constructivism and social constructionism), and dialogism as root epistemologies organizing the recent histories of these disciplines, the authors conclude with a discussion of the dominant and often parallel themes that have characterized evolving conceptions of language, text, and meaning in composition, literature, and linguistics since the 1950s.

Using Small Groups for Response to and Thinking about Literature.

Research has shown that in the small group setting, students develop well articulated understandings and better recall of their readings. One study, however, showed negative results in terms of recall, understanding, and personal response for small group work in eighth-grade literature classes. Those findings led to follow-up research on the ninth-grade level. In an examination of 54 ninth-grade English classes, small group activities occurred in only 29 of 216 classes observed, for an average of only 15 minutes at a time. As in the eighth-grade study, the ninth-grade research showed that overall, small group work actually led to lower student achievement. However, regression analysis demonstrated that in the group setting, the greater the degree of student autonomy, the greater was the production of knowledge and the greater the likelihood that group time would contribute to achievement. The apparent ineffectiveness f small group work overall suggests, therefore, that groups are sometimes used ineffectively. When small group time allows students to interact over a problem, they benefit. For group work to succeed, teachers must carefully design collaborative tasks that are interesting to students, and not just to the teacher. (One figure is included; 26 references are attachee.) (SG) ********************************************************************X** Reproductions supplied Dy EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. *****x***************************************************************** Using Small Groups for Response to and Thinking About Literature MARTIN NYSTRAND, ADAM GAMORAN, and MARY JO HECK Center on the Organization and Restructuring of SchooLs The Wisconsin Center for Education Research The University of Wisconsin-Madison

Tracking, instruction and achievement

Abstract This chapter uses data from 58 eighth-grade English classes in the midwestern United States to study between-track differences in literature achievement. The main purpose of this chapter is to learn whether achievement gaps between tracks can be attributed to variation in the quality of instruction. Indicators of instructional quality included a composite measure of the quality of instructional discourse, and survey and observational measures of student participation in schoolwork. The analyses, using a hierarchical linear modeling approach, yielded three main results: (1) Achievement differences between tracked and untracked schools were not statistically significant. (2) Within the tracked schools, high-track students scored considerably higher, and low-track students lower, than their counterparts in middle or “regular” classes. (3) About a quarter of the high-track advantage and over a third of the low-track disadvantage could be attributed to differences in the quality of instruction and participation in the different types of classes.

Oral Narrative Genres as Dialogic Resources for Classroom Literature Study: A Contextualized Case Study of Conversational Narrative Discussion

Five questions guided a case study exploring the relationship between oral narrative and discussion in middle school literature study: (a) Relative to similar classrooms in a large-scale study, how can overall literature instruction be characterized? (b) Relative to similar classrooms in a large-scale study, how well do students achieve in the focal classroom? (c) What, if any, are the links between oral narrative and discussion? (d) If discussion and narrative co-occur, what sorts of oral narratives do narrators tell in discussions? and (e) If discussion and narrative co-occur, how can we characterize the overlap in terms of interaction? In the frequent conversational narrative discussions, where oral narrative and discussion discourse overlapped, teacher and students used various kinds of oral narrative genres to prime, sustain, ratify, and amplify discussion.

On the Ecology of Classroom Instruction

Drawing from research on emergent literacy and activity theory, this chapter explains an ecological perspective on classroom instruction and literacy development distinguished by the reciprocal and epistemological roles of teachers, students, and peers as these roles are shaped through their interactions. The resulting activity networks involve both oral and written discourse, providing a research window on the potential interactions of classroom discourse and writing. This chapter explores such interrelationships with quantitative data from 54 ninth-grade English classes and 48 ninth-grade Social Studies classes. The main finding is that classroom discourse contributes to student writing performance to the extent that writing and talk each extend the scope of one another. Evidence from observations and questionnaires revealed many superficial similarities between the two subject matters. Students wrote about as frequently in English and Social Studies, and classroom discourse pattems in both subjects tended heavily towards lecture, recitation, and seatwork. Beyond these similarities, the research uncovered striking differences in the two contexts as they affected student writing. Though frequent writing activities enhanced writing performance in English, they had the opposite effect in Social Studies. Further probing of writing activities and assignments revealed that writing served different purposes in the different subject areas. With an emphasis on rhetoric and form, English classes displayed more attention to writing as writing. In Social Studies, by contrast, writing was used to teach students methods of close reading. Such differences show that the curricular landscapes of English and Social Studies affected writing performance very differently, producing two different environments for literacy development.

Written Text as Social Interaction.

The purpose of this article is to explore the nature of meaning as developed by human beings through interaction with each other. This interaction is obvious enough in the give and take of talk where conversants make themselves understood. But it is true of writing too. When readers understand a text, an exchange of meaning has taken place. Writers have succeeded in speaking to readers. Because the concept of text is central to this interaction-it is the bridge between producer and receiver in both spoken and written communication-we have chosen to focus on elements of text

Distinguishing formative and receptive contexts in the disciplinary formation of composition studies: A response to Mailloux

Abstract In his essay “Disciplinary Identities: On the Rhetorical Paths between English and Communication Studies,”; Steven Mailloux notes that “many compositionists in the seventies and eighties did not find it necessary to claim to be a scientific discipline “(16). I respond to this claim by focusing on the new discourse about writing that emerged in the 1970s in work by Emig, Shaughnessy, Flower & Hayes, and others. Distinguishing between the “formative “ (intellectual) contexts from which this work drew, and the “receptive”; contexts in which it came to valued, used, and resonate, I show that whereas the roots of this work were almost exclusively empirical, their effects in the receptive context, including beyond the academy, were deeply rhetorical.

A Study of Automatic Speech Recognition in Noisy Classroom Environments for Automated Dialog Analysis

The development of large-scale automatic classroom dialog analysis systems requires accurate speech-to-text translation. A variety of automatic speech recognition (ASR) engines were evaluated for this purpose. Recordings of teachers in noisy classrooms were used for testing. In comparing ASR results, Google Speech and Bing Speech were more accurate with word accuracy scores of 0.56 for Google and 0.52 for Bing compared to 0.41 for AT&T Watson, 0.08 for Microsoft, 0.14 for Sphinx with the HUB4 model, and 0.00 for Sphinx with the WSJ model. Further analysis revealed both Google and Bing engines were largely unaffected by speakers, speech class sessions, and speech characteristics. Bing results were validated across speakers in a laboratory study, and a method of improving Bing results is presented. Results provide a useful understanding of the capabilities of contemporary ASR engines in noisy classroom environments. Results also highlight a list of issues to be aware of when selecting an ASR engine for difficult speech recognition tasks.