Abstracts - Earli

stances needs to be in place in order for discussion to foster a high critical-analytic response totext. We speculate that the shared control between teacher and students is the group-level substratethat helps give rise to efferent and expressive responses; further, at least a moderate degree ofemphasis on the efferent and expressive stances seems to be necessary for the critical-analyticstance to achieve prominence.A meta-analysis of the effects of classroom discussions on students’ comprehension of textP. Karen Murphy, The Pennsylvania State University, USAMaeghan N. Edwards, The Pennsylvania State University, USADiscussions about and around text have the potential to increase students’ comprehension,metacognition, critical thinking and reasoning, as well as students’ ability to state and supportarguments. To date, however, no studies have comprehensively reviewed the vast body ofliterature on classroom discussions to examine the effects of various discussion approaches onstudents’ comprehension and learning. The purpose of this presentation is to overview results of acomprehensive meta-analysis of empirical studies examining evidence of the effects of classroomdiscussion on measures of teacher and student talk and on individual student comprehension andreasoning outcomes. Results showed that several approaches produced very strong improvementsin the amount of student talk and concomitant reductions in teacher talk, as well as substantialincreases in comprehension. The effects were moderated by the nature of the outcome measuresand study design. Finally, the approaches exhibited greater effects when employed with belowaverageability students and weaker effects with above-average students. Implications for researchand practice will be offered.Analysis of the discourse of classroom discussions about textAnna O. Soter, The Ohio State University, USALucila Rudge, The Ohio State University, USAIn this study, we sought to identify features of the discourse arising from discussion that mightserve as proximal indices of students’ learning and comprehension, and to evaluate variousapproaches to discussion on these indices. Our intent was to identify discourse features for whichthere was good theoretical warrant for believing they were linked to high-level thinking andcomprehension and good empirical research demonstrating that connection. Transcripts thatrepresented ‘typical’ discussions were solicited from proponents of 9 discussion approaches,namely, Grand Conversations, Literature Circles, Book Club, Instructional Conversations,Questioning the Author, Junior Great Books Shared Inquiry, Paideia Seminar, CollaborativeReasoning, and Philosophy for Children. Discourse features coded were: authentic questions;uptake; questions that elicited high-level thinking; questions that elicited affective, intertextual,and shared knowledge references; elaborated explanations; exploratory talk; and reasoning words.Authentic questions, uptake, and questions that elicited high-level thinking were prevalent in thediscourse of most of the approaches, most notably in Collaborative Reasoning, and less so inInstructional Conversations and Questioning the Author. Contrary to our expectations, questionsthat elicited affective, intertextual, or shared knowledge references were not prevalent; indeed,intertextual references and shared knowledge references were virtually nonexistent. Thoseapproaches that give prominence to a critical-analytic stance toward text (CollaborativeReasoning, Paideia Seminar, Philosophy for Children) tended to show the highest incidences ofelaborated explanations and exploratory talk. While some researchers appear to be unsure aboutwhich measures are appropriate for assessing student’s high-level thinking and comprehension oftext, our analyses of discourse suggest that authentic questions, uptake, elaborated explanations,– 504 –