Dialogic Skills in RE

Dr Antony Luby

Research Summary

Sixty-five secondary school students are encouraged to develop the dialogic skills of consensus building through cumulative talk and constructive criticism through exploratory talk. With a stimulus of two texts – one based on science and the supernatural and the other on New Testament scholarship – the students from ten UK secondary schools engage with paired conversations. Their conversations are recorded and transcribed and subsequently analysed for quality.

Researchers

Dr Antony Luby

Research Institution

University of Glasgow

What is this about?

Research Question 1
To what extent do the students remain on task when their conversations take place out with the visible control of the teacher?

Research Question 2
To what extent does this intervention promote participation in cumulative talk and exploratory talk by the students?

Research Question 3
To what extent does dialogic RE promote a deep approach to students’ learning?

Research Question 4
How might the development of dialogic skills become a regular feature within classroom life?

What was done?

10 secondary schools selected by opportunity sampling – 9 in England (East Midlands & South Yorkshire) and 1 in Scotland.
4 are faith schools (2 Anglican; 2 Catholic); 5 are academies and 1 is a comprehensive school.
Overall then, taking together the four criteria of type, location, affluence of catchment areas and performance levels, the opportunity sample can be criticised on three grounds:
1. There is an over-representation of faith schools and academies;
2. The school locations are biased towards cities and towns; and
3. It skews towards schools performing at the lower end of the Ofsted spectrum.
Nonetheless, there is still a broad representation of schools given that:
a) The three most common types of schools are well represented;
b) All four kinds of location (city, town, semi-rural and rural) are represented;
c) There is a broad diversity of catchment areas spread throughout the deciles spanning from ‘most deprived’ to ‘least deprived’; and
d) All four categories of Ofsted performance levels are covered within the sample.

65 students were selected by the heads of department for paired conversations. 61 students participated from Y10-Y13 and 4 students from Y9. There was a wide range of religious and non-religious backgrounds i.e. the students self-declared as:
Agnostic = 22
Atheist = 14
Christian Catholic = 8
Christian Other = 12
Deist = 2
Muslim = 2
Non-religious = 4
Sikh = 1

The paired conversations were recorded, transcribed and then analysed for quality.

Main findings and outputs

The findings from the academies are particularly encouraging in that twenty-seven out of twenty-eight conversations are rated as either high quality or mid quality. High quality requires a minimum of 700 words and 70% cumulative talk and exploratory talk.

Further, using a series of 10 test items for the survey questionnaire it was ascertained that, to a high degree of statistical significance, the students claim that paired conversations promotes a deep approach to learning.

Also, the students clearly enjoyed the experience since from the sixty-two responses only two are negative; seven are mixed; and fifty-three are positive. Typical students’ comments include –

“I think this approach is generally helpful for learning in RE as it makes me question my opinion and the opinions of others when learning.”

“Useful for reinforcing information and critically analysing the information.”

“I think this way of learning is beneficial as it makes you engage in a subject and broadens your understanding through worked examples; it encourages openness.”

Some transcripts were viewed by two experienced heads of department of RE and elicited the following:

“You are getting pupils to really engage in the topic and I think it’s very difficult in a class situation where pupils can express their views clearly… I think honestly it’s just excellent, it’s so nice to see them doing critical thinking…”

With regard to future research –
The community of enquiry identifies software like Book Creator, GarageBand and i-Tunes U as having the capacity to offer pedagogic strategies whereby students can have a degree of privacy for their conversations before sharing these with teachers and peers. Such technologies should feature in future interventions and research intended to promote the development of dialogic skills in RE.

Relevance to RE

A good place to start would be with A-level students and 6th formers. With no safeguarding issues to consider, they can be assigned easily to a room / place in the school to undertake their paired conversations.

Alternatively, tech savvy RE teachers could use GarageBand, Book Creator or i-Tunes U for paired conversations within the classroom that can then be shared with the rest of the class.

Generalisability and potential limitations

The research findings are both indicative and relatable as they are based on a sample of 10 schools that skews towards the lower end of both the socio-economic spectrum and Ofsted ratings. The 65 students who participated are primarily in KS4 and KS5.

Find out more

Luby, A. 2019. Dominican Thomist Pedagogy for a Post-Secular Society: Developing Dialogic Skills in RE for Students in UK Secondary Schools. Unpublished PhD thesis. Glasgow: University of Glasgow.

http://theses.gla.ac.uk/41201/