Reading Matters Winter 2019

TABLE 1 INQUIRY-BASED LITERACY STANDARDS Standard 1: Formulate relevant, self-generated questions based on interests and/or needs that can be investigated. English 1 - 4 Use a recursive process to develop, evaluate, and

during the discussion. They also collected demographic information on all students in the classroom. While all eight graduate students held Socratic seminars in their clinical placement in an English high school classroom, only the data of six students who were permissioned and who submitted useable recordings are used in the analysis. Design, Collection and Analysis Using a case study approach, the Socratic seminars of the six permissioned students were transcribed by the researchers. Yin (1994) advocated for case study researchers to start with propositions after reviewing the literature. In the research of the literature, we found that Socratic seminars help students learn to more deeply and achieving higher- order thinking on Bloom’s taxonomy (Tredway, 1995). The transcripts were analyzed for questions asked by the preservice teacher and the quality of discussion generated based on Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy (Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001). The researchers did not find literature that made direct comparisons of Socratic discussions and the connections teachers ask students to make in relation to the text. Therefore, the transcripts were coded for connections. Researchers analyzed and labeled questions as text-to-text, text-to-self, and text-to-world, (Keene & Zimmerman, 1997) and whether those questions generated discussion among the students. The transcripts were first analyzed for the level of questions preservice teachers asked and the levels of answers given by students based on Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy (Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001). Discussion was labeled as create, analyze, apply, understand, or recognize . These coding labels were based on the guiding examples given in Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy (Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001). Comments that supported students, redirected conversation, or restated someone’s point for the clarity of everyone hearing the response were labeled a clarifying comment. Examples of the researchers’ coding are in TABLE 2 for review. Once all of the comments were labeled on each transcript, the researcher then tallied the transcript to see how many higher- order versus lower-order comments were made. Comments made by the preservice teachers were distinguished from comments of the students. The comments are abbreviated as: Create = CR, Analyze = AN, Apply = AP, Understand = U, or Recognize = R. Clarifying comments were labeled as C. The discussion was mapped in a table by the order of speaker so that the researcher could follow the conversation and the speaker (preservice teacher [pst] or student) who made the comment. Findings The results of the coding of the transcripts is represented in TABLE 3. Teacher Talk Upon examination of this data, it was clear that the preservice teachers participated in much of the conversation. In examining the transcripts, only one preservice teacher acted as a facilitator

refine questions to broaden thinking on a specific idea that directs inquiry for new learning and deeper understanding.

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Standard 4: Synthesize information to share learning and/or take action. English 1 - 4 • Employ a critical stance to analyze relationships and patterns of evidence to confirm conclusions. • Evaluate findings; address conflicting information; identify misconceptions; and revise. • Determine appropriate disciplinary tools to communicate findings and/or take informed action. Standard 5: Reflect throughout the inquiry process to assess metacognition, broaden understanding, and guide actions, individually and collaboratively. English 1-4

• Acknowledge and consider individual and collective thinking; use feedback to guide the inquiry process. • Analyze and evaluate previous assumptions; test claims; predict outcomes; and justify results to guide future action. • Analyze the process to evaluate and revise plans and strategies; address successes and misconceptions; and apply learning to future inquiry. (South Carolina, 2015)

Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy (Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001), advocates for students to learn at the highest levels, which include analyzing, evaluating, and creating, with creating being the highest. The teacher’s goal during a Socratic seminar is to have students operating at the highest levels possible. It would be unrealistic to imagine that some lower-level discussion would not occur. However, the purpose is to keep students participating in higher-order thinking as much as possible. Method Setting The setting of this study is a mid-sized city in the Southeastern United States. The participants were enrolled in a public university. The University serves 10,663 students (Fall 2017). Undergraduate enrollment was 9,898 students. Female students made up 54% of the total undergraduate enrollment and 71% of the total graduate enrollment. The most prominent ethnic groups represented in Fall 2017 were White/non-Hispanic (68%) and Black/African American (19%). Fifty-one percent of the students enrolled, come from the state where the University resides. Participants The participants in this study were graduate students seeking initial licensure in a Master of Arts in Teaching program. All students were enrolled in an English methods course and as a methods assignment, were directed to hold a Socratic seminar in a high school classroom for 20 minutes.

The preservice teachers recorded the seminar for a 20-minute period and created a discussion map of who spoke

Reading Matters | Volume 19 Winter 2019 | scira.org | 31

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