Using Literature Discussions to Reason Through Real-Life Dilemmas: A Journey Taken by One Teacher and Her Fourth-Grade Students

This chapter traces one veteran teacher’s implementation of a new discussion method called Collaborative Reasoning (CR) in her classroom. It describes a typical language arts session in Mrs. Rogers’s classroom, followed by a synopsis of the CR model. The overarching goal of CR is “inculcating the values and habits of mind to use reasoned discourse as a means for choosing among competing ideas”. The CR approach was so different from Mrs. Rogers’s regular language arts lessons that both teacher and students had to learn new ways of talking and thinking. In CR, when students all line up on one side of an issue, the teacher is supposed to play the devil’s advocate to challenge students to consider other perspectives. Despite her avowed intention to enable free-flowing, student-centered discussion, Mrs. Rogers unwittingly continued to control the topic and turntaking in the first few CR discussions.