Research Papers in Education

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Socratic questioning in the Paideia Method to

encourage dialogical discussions

Maree Davies & Anne Sinclair

To cite this article: Maree Davies & Anne Sinclair (2014) Socratic questioning in the Paideia
Method to encourage dialogical discussions, Research Papers in Education, 29:1, 20-43, DOI:
10.1080/02671522.2012.742132

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Published online: 14 Nov 2012.

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Research Papers in Education, 2014
Vol. 29, No. 1, 20–43, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02671522.2012.742132

Socratic questioning in the Paideia Method to encourage

dialogical discussions
Maree Davies* and Anne Sinclair

Faculty of Education, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand

(Received 11 December 2011; final version received 17 October 2012)

This study focused on the impact of using Socratic questioning, based on the
Paideia Method, on the nature of middle-schools students’ patterns of interaction
and on the cognitive complexity of their discussions. The hypothesis is that an
experimental group will increase in both interaction focus and complexity at T3,
which is the face-to-face seminar when compared to T1 (baselines) and that this
increase will be above normative increases compared to a control group. A
quasi-experimental method was employed because, although the Paideia Method
was not controlled by the researchers, the researchers did have some control
over when to measure the outcome variables. Using SPSS 18.0, a series of
t-tests and ANOVAs were conducted to analyse data first for interaction focus
and then for complexity to test for differences between the experimental control
groups. The study was conducted in 12 experimental and 12 control classrooms
across six schools, in New Zealand, totalling 720 students (ages 11–13). Results
suggest that the experimental group increased in student-to-student focus and
complexity of discussion above a normative increase with the greatest level
being in the Paideia Seminar (T3).
Keywords: Paideia Method; Socratic questioning; dialogical discussion

Introduction
As with many countries which have promoted curriculum reform, the principles of
the newly gazetted 2007 New Zealand Curriculum put ‘students at the centre of
teaching and learning, asserting that they should experience a curriculum that engages
and challenges them and is forward looking and inclusive’ (Ministry of Education
2007, 9). Within this document, eight effective pedagogies are outlined which further
illustrate teaching practice, which places students at the centre of their learning. One
of these pedagogies is ‘Facilitating shared learning’. Teachers are advised that

Students learn as they engage in shared activities and conversations with other people,
including family members and people in the wider community. Teachers encourage
this process by cultivating the class as a learning community. In such a community,
everyone, including the teachers, is a learner; learning conversations and learning part-
nerships are encouraged. (Ministry of Education 2007, 34)

The New Zealand Curriculum document was largely uncontested by schools

and some principals of schools began to seek out pedagogy which would be in

*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]

Ó 2012 Taylor & Francis

 Research Papers in Education 21

keeping with its intentions. A timely anecdotal incident prompted one principal to
approach the researchers for advice on such student-centred pedagogy. The present
project partly arose from a practicum visit to an Intermediate school (Years 11–13)
to observe University Graduate Primary Students, where the principal mentioned to
us his concern at the level of teacher talk within the classrooms. Whilst on a recent
school trip to Japan, a student had voiced to the principal how ‘bored’ he was this
year because ‘the teacher talked too much’. The proposition tested in this paper is
that an intervention, the Paideia Method, could assist teachers in providing an
opportunity for more active participation by students through dialogic opportunities
in class discussions. In doing so, the shift in pedagogy towards student-initiated dia-
logue would be meeting the ‘spirit’ of the New Zealand Curriculum document and
increasing complexity of thinking.
Opinions currently differ on the theoretical underpinning of dialogical discus-
sions. Social constructivist and sociocultural theory are routinely invoked to explain
the role of discussion in promoting students’ understandings of discourse and text
(Murphy et al. 2009). However, Alexander (2006) does not think that ‘dialogic’ fits
easily with Vygotskian theory in a broad ‘sociocultural’ paradigm. He argues that it
is Socrates who we should be looking at as a way of explanation of dialogic.
Alexander claims that Socrates’ objection to writing appears to stem from a view of
thinking as essentially tied to the context of face-to-face dialogue such that writing
words down to carry beyond the context in which they are spoken will destroy
living thought, leaving only a kind of shadow or ‘ghost’ of thought (Alexander
2006). Similarly, Rupert Wegerif has had a change of heart when explaining the
theoretical underpinning of dialogism. He developed and proposed a sociocultural
approach to teaching and thinking through teaching ways of talking (Wegerif and
Dawes 2004 in Wegerif 2010). Now, however, he no longer thinks that the
metaphor of learning to use cultural tools that the sociocultural approach (Rogoff,
Gauvain, and Ellis 1991) relies upon can understand the creative kind of thinking
we learn through engaging in dialogue. He, too, proposes that we need a new
metaphor that captures something of what Socrates was saying about the primacy
of the dialogic relationship, but develops the original dialogic account of thinking
in a way that can account for the role of technology in mediating dialogue (Wegerif
2010).
Scaffolding, which is a term first coined by Wood, Bruner and Ross in the
1970s (Wood, Bruner, and Ross 1976) in the context of mother–child interaction
and now more commonly applied to what goes on – or does not – in classrooms.
This is the use of carefully structured interventions to bridge what Vygotsky called
the ‘zone of proximal development’, or the gap between the child’s existing knowl-
edge and ways of solving problems unaided and the understanding, which can be
attained only with the guidance of the teacher or a ‘more capable peer’ (Alexander
2006). That is, one’s reasoning is necessarily a response to what has been said or
experienced as well as an anticipation of future social experiences (Murphy,
Wilkinson, and Soter 2011). Mercer (2000) suggested we turn Zone of Proximal
Development (ZPD) with reference to dialogical discussions into a more open and
multidirectional ‘intermental development zone’ (IDZ) where ‘interthinking’ can
occur between peers without the assumption of a teacher leading a learner. This is
clearly a move in a more dialogic direction, but the notion of ‘dialogic space’ goes
further again, in that it is not primarily conceptualised as a ‘mediating means’ sup-
porting cognitive development but as an end in itself. The point of education is not
22 M. Davies and A. Sinclair

to use dialogue to achieve something other than dialogue, as notions of ZPD or

IDZ imply, but to enter more deeply and fully into dialogue (Wegerif 2010).
Dialogic teaching has increasingly been the subject of increasing discussion in
the last few years (Lyle 2008). There have been, internationally, a number of uni-
versity-led attempts to promote dialogical discussions: these projects have differed
in their emphases and in the age range for which they are intended, but all give
central importance to harnessing and building on students’ interests, encouraging
inquiry through practical investigation and the critical use of textual material, and
the adoption of a dialogic stance to the co-construction of knowledge (Wells 2007).
It is worth mentioning that, within these studies, some key findings have influenced
thinking and writing around dialogical discussions. In the 1970s, Barnes and Todd
(Barnes and Todd 1977) undertook an important early study in how children talk
while working together in school. It involved secondary age children but their
insights have informed much other research since, including primary research.
Barnes and Todd (1995) suggest that pupils are more likely to engage in open,
extended discussion and argument when they are talking with their peers outside
the visible control of their teacher and that this kind of talk enabled them to take a
more active and independent ownership of knowledge.
Rojas-Drummond et al. (2006) study in Mexico on writing a joint text found
that the more dialogic relationship in groups thinking better together could be seen
best not through the use of logical connectors such as ‘because’ and ‘therefore’ but
in the increasing prevalence of admissions of uncertainty, asking for advice and
individuals changing their minds in the face of evidence. Rojas-Drummond et al.
(2006) found that, in collaborative reasoning discussions where a text was dis-
cussed, the teacher’s rate of talk is on average less than his or her rate of talk dur-
ing conventional classroom discussions. These studies, (Chinn, Anderson and
Waggoner 2001; Murphy et al. 2009) have also shown that the student rate of talk-
ing almost doubles during collaborative reasoning discussions, as compared to base-
line discussions in the same classrooms. In addition, there is evidence of more
cognitive processes associated with improved learning and problem-solving, includ-
ing a significantly higher rate of providing explanations and elaborating ideas by
linking them to prior knowledge and ideas.
An intensive line of research by Mercer and his colleagues (Wegerif, Mercer
and Dawes 1999) established that exploratory talk is the most effective type of con-
versation to solve problems through cooperation. This type of talk demonstrated its
value for promoting knowledge construction, given that it promoted reasoning
through language, facilitating understanding and problem-solving. In addition,
exploratory talk is associated to ‘educated’ discourse because it gives rise to con-
structive criticism and the formulation of well-argued proposals, which are valued
in many academic and social contexts in many cultures. Groups that became more
successful at thinking together after teaching the ground rules of exploratory talk
shifted away from initial fixed identity positions, where either individuals identified
with a self-image and sought to win the argument (disputational talk) or they identi-
fied with a harmonious group image and resisted any kind of questioning or criti-
cism (cumulative talk) towards something new, which was described as identifying
with the space of dialogue itself (Wegerif and Mercer 1997). This was a feature of
both Barnes and Todd (1995) and Mercer’s (2000) definition of exploratory talk, as
it was less about explicit reasoning than about an improved quality of their group
relationship (Wegerif 2010).
 Research Papers in Education 23

The researchers chose to use the Paideia Method because a meta-analysis of

interventions, which attempted to promote dialogical discussions, namely Philoso-
phy for Children, Collaborative Reasoning and the Paideia Method signalled that
within a critical-analytic stance, Paideia Seminars showed moderate effects on stu-
dent talk, teacher talk and scriptally implicit comprehension in multiple-group stud-
ies (Murphy et al. 2009). It was deemed by the researchers that the Paideia Method
could be used across curricula and was not so bound by text as many of the other
dialogical discussion interventions were. The researchers were cognizant of utilising
an intervention, which would not alter greatly the impact on the prescribed curricu-
lum studies of the school. The teachers in intermediate schools in New Zealand
teach the students most of the curriculum subjects, with the exceptions being Tech-
nology subjects, so it was possible for the teachers to imbed the Paideia Method in
to a curriculum area which did not disrupt the normal programme.
What was of interest to the researchers was the tension between allowing free-
dom within the dialogical discussions for the students and the level of intervention
from the teacher. They were conscious of dialogical discussion as a concept of edu-
cation, which as opposed to say indoctrination or vocational training, implies more
than just the acquisition of knowledge; it also implies some growth in the intellec-
tual freedom of the learner (Biesta 2006). Interventions suggested by some research-
ers are quite specific, such as Nystrand’s (2006) study, which suggests quite
specifically the teacher’s role during dialogical discussions. He contends that, that
in order for a discussion to shift from a ‘recitation’ discussion in to the dialogic
and then maintaining these discussion to what he deemed ‘dialogic spells’ involved
specific intervention from the teacher such as uptake questioning: uptake question-
ing involves follow-up questions that incorporate students responses. However, it
was felt by the researchers that the Paideia Method as an approach is complex and
they did not want to ‘bombard’ the teachers with too much information.
The researchers decided to look at the general use of Socratic questioning within
the Paideia Method as a means of fostering the dialogic within the discussions. Prior
research has provided commentaries on the value of Socratic questioning in develop-
ing these critical thinking skills and enriching thinking through a dialectical approach
of dialogue with peers (Billings and Fitzgerald 2002; Haroutunian-Gordon 1991,
1998; Orellana 2008; Philgren 2008; Robinsson 2006; Robinson and Lai 2006). Cen-
tral to Socratic questioning is the provision of a thought-provoking, open-ended
question, which promotes inquiry and allows ideas to be probed, grappled with and
tested (Adler 1983; Philgren 2008). It is not about arriving at a ‘right answer’ but
rather having students focus explicitly on the process of thinking and, in turn, exam-
ine their own thinking processes. Historically, Paideia Seminars have predominantly
been examined in research through reading comprehension, involving the use of
texts, which all students receive. More recently, there has been a refocusing on Pai-
deia with resources provided by the National Paideia Centre (Roberts and Billings
1999), the notion of ‘rich texts’ has been expanded to include the work of local
authors, a mathematics problem or a piece of artwork. These ‘texts’ are rich to the
degree that they are challenging and allow the development of critical ideas.
Of course, the promotion of dialogical discussions is not new. ‘Discussion is
bringing various beliefs together; shaking one against another and tearing down
their rigidity. It is conversation of thoughts; it is dialogue-the mother of dialectic in
more than the etymological sense’ (Dewey 1916, 194–5). So why is it that schools
have been slow to take them on board? One of the problems that stand in the way
24 M. Davies and A. Sinclair

of schools’ acceptance of the dialogic principle is the typically unrecognised ambi-

guity of the noun ‘knowledge’. In public debates about what should be learned in
schools, the term knowledge is understood as ‘what is known’, that is to say, as
what is taken to be true (Wells 2007). This is not to suggest that the decision to
adopt a dialogic mode of interaction in the classroom is easy, either for the teacher
or for the students. For the teacher, it means partially relinquishing control of the
flow of discussion, giving up the habit of evaluating each student contribution and
allowing students to initiate when they have something that they consider relevant
to contribute. And for students, it means treating their peers’ contributions as wor-
thy of careful consideration and making their own as clear and to the point as
possible (Wells 2007).
In the Bristol study of language development, for example, a representative
sample of 32 children was followed from home to first school, it was found that
not only did children almost cease to ask ‘real’ questions at school, but teachers
also rarely invited them to express and explain their beliefs and opinions – at least
with respect to the official curriculum (Wells 1989). And in the later years of mid-
dle and high school, the situation is not very different. The vast majority of lessons
consist of teacher lecture, followed by episodes of what Tharp and Gallimore
(1988) call the ‘recitation script’, or by individual seatwork; rarely is there negoti-
ated group work or open-ended discussion of ideas put forward by students (Galton
et al. 1999; Nystrand 1997). In other words, while there is a great deal of mono-
logic discourse, intended to ensure the handing on of basic skills and approved
knowledge, there is very little discourse that is truly dialogic in either form or
intent (Wells 2007).
Exchanges between the teacher and the students follow an Initiate, Response,
Evaluates (Mehan 1979) or Initiates, Response, Feedback (IRF) (Sinclair and Coult-
hard 1975) pattern in which the teacher initiates a topic by asking a question, the
student responds, and the teacher evaluates or gives feedback regarding the students
response research. In recitation, the teacher holds interpretive authority and controls
the talk. In recitation, the teacher typically talks almost 70% of the time (Cazden in
Alexander 2008; Littleton and Howe 2010; Murphy, Wilkinson, and Soter 2011).
The reason that IRF are deemed to result in a dialogue of a rather limited kind is
mainly because of a tendency on the part of the teachers to use closed initiatives
(Alexander 2004; Galton et al. 1999; Mercer and Littleton 2007), that is initiatives
(typically questions) that permit a single answer, such as ‘what is the German for
cat?’ Closed initiatives do not necessarily constrain contributions to a single student.
The whole class could respond in chorus, choral responses are actually a well-docu-
mented feature of contemporary classrooms (Alexander 2001; Pontefract and Hard-
man 2005).
Gage (2009) concluded that the ‘model embodies something profoundly funda-
mental in the nature of teaching’ (75). He noted several factors that could help to
account for the longevity of the teacher-centred method of teaching including: (a)
its traditional form and intergenerational qualities; (b) its apparent adequacy and
success in educating the populace; (c) the relative failure of alternative methods
such as progressive education and discovery learning theories; (d) the failure of the
IT revolution to change structural aspects of the classroom; (e) the reality of the
conditions of teaching and the professional demands made upon teachers; and (f)
the lack of incentives and completion to drive significant alterations in educational
delivery.
 Research Papers in Education 25

Gellatly (1997) monitored the implementation of Paideia Seminars and found

that one of the most powerful findings was how important it is for students to be
able to talk in school and be heard. He noted that consideration and value placed
on student input were the major variables that distinguished the Paideia Seminar
experience from the rest of the class experiences.
Because the Paideia Seminar is not a teacher-led instructional method, it is an
opportunity for students to interact and talk with each other, and construct and de-con-
struct ideas together within the classroom environment (Billings and Fitzgerald 2002).
Additionally, the Paideia Seminar encourages dialogue as a ‘group-think’ (Philgren
2007) where students explore ideas together in a dialogic discourse to come to a shared
understanding, rather than having one person’s ideas as the winner (as in a debate).
Research literature (Billings and Fitzgerald 2002; Haroutunian-Gordon 1991,
1998; Orellana 2008; Philgren 2008; Robinsson 2006; Robinson and Lai 2006) pro-
vides commentaries on the value of Socratic questioning in developing critical think-
ing skills and enriching thinking through a dialectical approach of dialogue with
peers. Central to Socratic questioning is the provision of a thought-provoking, open-
ended question which promotes inquiry and allows ideas to be probed, grappled with
and tested (Adler 1983). It is not about arriving at a right answer but rather having
students focus explicitly on the process of thinking and, in turn, examine their own
thinking processes. In the process of cooperative interlocution, no statement is trea-
ted as true or false without examination and it is in the flow of exchanges and the
collaborative interactivity between the individual and the question which leads the
participants closer to a better solution or possibility (Lindström 1995).
The Paideia Method features three complementary teaching techniques or col-
umns of instruction (Roberts and Billings 1999) which include: didactic instruction,
the Coached Project and the Paideia Seminar. The major part of interest in this
research is the Paideia Seminar, which is based on Socratic questioning. This study
aims to evaluate an intervention which considered these theoretical propositions
within classrooms of early adolescents. The Paideia Method was chosen due to its
strong philosophical links with students learning through dialogic exchanges.

The Paideia Seminar

Paideia Seminars were defined by Adler (1982), as a method of teaching intended
to engage students in discussion of ideas and values, involving the use of ‘rich
texts’ which all students received. Over the past decade, however, there has been a
refocusing of the Paideia Seminar and with resources provided by the National Pai-
deia Centre, the notion of rich texts has been expanded to include the work of local
authors, a mathematics problem or a piece of artwork. These texts are rich to the
degree that they are challenging and allow the development of critical ideas. The
teacher becomes the facilitator of dialogue, providing open-ended questions or pro-
vocative statements to promote thinking, but refrains from making judgements or
evaluating student comments. The rich texts are in line with Adler’s ‘Great Ideas’
(1982) such as truth, beauty, liberty, equality and justice.

A history of Paideia
Adler (1982) argued that, although most children experience equal amounts of time
spent in school, they are not receiving a sufficiently high quality of education. He
26 M. Davies and A. Sinclair

stated that, unless we managed to offer all children the same high-quality education,
then democracy itself was in danger. In order to maintain a democratic society,
Adler contended we must simultaneously institute much higher academic standards
and render that intellectual rigour accessible to all students. He proposed the Paideia
Method as a model that might rectify that inequality.
‘The Paideia Proposal: an Educational Manifesto’ (Adler 1982) offered a sys-
tematic critique of American public education and was dedicated to three well-
known educators who had a profound effect on his thinking: Horace Mann, John
Dewey and Robert Maynard Hutchins. Horace Mann (1796–1859) was the early
American educational reformer who articulated the connection between effective
‘common’ schools and democratic well-being. Dewey became the ‘liberal’ influence
on Adler that balanced Hutchins’ focus on traditional academic rigour. Robert
Hutchins stressed the need for academic rigour based on the intellectual traditions
of the human community and became the ‘conservative’ influence on Adler’s think-
ing, leading to the call for academic standards, which have been at the core of the
Paideia philosophy since the early 1980s.

Paideia structure
The Didactic Stage of the Paideia Method provides an opportunity for students to
gain domain and strategic knowledge for them to participate in the seminars from
informed positions (Alexander and Judy 1998; Moore and Young 2001). Domain
knowledge is defined as all types of knowledge including declarative, procedural
and conditional knowledge acquired in a specific field of study and has an impor-
tant role in developing expertise (Alexander 1992). To be expert in a specific area,
learners not only need to know how to deal strategically with the information they
encounter, but they also need to have a considerable amount of information about
the area (Alexander 1992).
Domain knowledge appears to be what distinguishes expert from novice learn-
ers, according to Alexander and Judy (1998). Moving students from surface to deep
learning is predicated on Hattie’s (2009) claim that ‘you need surface [knowledge]
to have deep [knowledge] and you need to have surface and deep knowledge to
have an understanding in a context of domain knowledge’ (2009, 29). Expert learn-
ers have enough information and background knowledge about the area of their
expertise that allows them to consolidate the newly learned information with more
sophistication.
The ‘Coached Project’ stage of the Paideia Method requires students to gain the
necessary skills to be able to participate in a Paideia Seminar. Biggs and Collis
(1982) allude to a tension between students who believe the goal is to memorise
facts and teachers who believe that the goal is to enhance deep learning. To suc-
cessfully participate in a Paideia Seminar, students are expected to go beyond the
mere regurgitation of facts and extend themselves by hypothesising, analysing,
explaining and evaluating. This requires that they organise their facts during the
Coached Project stage and make links between various spheres of science, history,
personality and context. ‘When students can move from idea to ideas and then
relate and elaborate on them we have learning – and when they can regulate or
monitor this journey then they are teachers of their learning’ (Hattie 2009, 29).
Hattie found that many students become disengaged from lessons when they are
encouraged to learn at only surface levels. For the purposes of this study, the
 Research Papers in Education 27

five-stage SOLO taxonomy (Biggs and Collis 1982) was used to categorise the nat-
ure and complexity of the discussions. To this end, the research question was:

What happens to the nature of the interaction and the complexity of the discussion
when students are encouraged to use Socratic questioning in a Paideia Seminar in
varying socio economic classrooms?

The teachers in the control and the experimental classes, which were aligned,
included in their approach a variety of rich texts to act as the catalyst for discus-
sion, such as: ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’, using the proverb: ‘We are the
authors of our own disasters’ and asking the questions: ‘What do you think this
really means?’ ‘How does this relate to the Ancient Mariner, and also to other
disasters that you know about?’ Another set of control/experimental teachers pre-
sented to their classes a YouTube clip of ‘Plato’s Cave’ to provide ideas around
‘identity’, with the statement ‘How can this relate to cultural identity in a changing
world?’ In a different school, the story of the Lorax was used as motivation for dis-
cussion, using the question: ‘Are humans parasites?’ Another class explored the
idea that ‘Expression is a Risky Business’ using quotes from Gandhi: ‘To believe in
something, and not to live it, is dishonest’ and Winterson: ‘What you risk reveals
what you value’.
The three socio-economic groups were chosen to compare results because
though New Zealand 15-year-old students’ overall reading performance in
Programme for International Student Assessment scores is substantially higher than
the average for the 34 Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development
countries; New Zealand has a substantial achievement disparity between students
linked to social class and ethnicities, and is at the very top in international rankings
in this respect. Thus, a large number of students leave school without the necessary
qualifications. There is high interest in New Zealand in studies, which may affect
outcomes for students in the lower socio-economic group.

Methodology
A quasi-experimental method was employed because, although the Paideia Method
was not controlled by the researchers, the researchers did have some control over
when to measure the outcome variables.

Participants
Six schools were selected deliberately for a range of socio-economic demographic
compositions and because of the willingness of principals to participate. The study
was conducted in 12 experimental and 12 control classrooms across six large state
schools in New Zealand, totalling 720 students (ages 11–13). The principals of the
schools were asked to choose four classes of Year eight students (years 11–13) which
were not considered either accelerant or low achieving, had similar numbers of gen-
der groups and were of similar student attributes, i.e. with no extreme behavioural
needs. The researchers did not select the teachers in this study, rather the principals
were asked to select the teachers based on the criteria above. The teachers, ranged
from a beginning teacher to teachers with vast experience. There were three male
teachers and nine female teachers in the experimental classrooms, and four male
28 M. Davies and A. Sinclair

teachers and eight female teachers in the control classrooms. Two of the classes
would be randomly assigned experimental and two would be assigned control.
Importantly, the four classes needed to be doing the same topic at the same time
of the year. Large state schools were chosen because the researchers knew that
schools of this size worked in teams of teachers who taught the same classes for
most of the day and who worked closely in teams. It was essential that the four
classes from each school were learning the same concepts. Schools were chosen
from two low, two middle and two high socio-economic levels. Ethics approval
was gained through the University of Auckland and informed consent was obtained
from the principals, the parents of the participants, the teachers from both the exper-
imental and control classrooms, and assent forms were obtained from the students
due to their age. On average, 95% of the students were given consent by their par-
ents. All teachers from both the experimental and control groups gave their consent,
as did the principals of each of the schools. The students who did not receive con-
sent for this research study went to the library with work related to the study and
were supervised by another adult or teacher. The parents from the middle socio-eco-
nomic schools were the most likely to not give consent, while the parents from the
high socio-economic schools gave the highest levels of consent. The parents did not
state why they did or did not give consent.

Process or approach
The researchers conducted two professional development days for the 12 teachers
involved in the research study. The researchers acknowledged the different stages
the teachers were at, in terms of dialogical discussions and took into account the
work of Bransford, Donovan and Pelligrino (1999) who identified the importance of
having a deep foundation of knowledge in order to learn and so the teachers were
exposed to ideas in many different forms and at different times in the project. The
teachers were given historic and current literature about the Paideia Method to read
before the professional development days. The professional development days
included a background on Paideia and instruction on the three complementary
teaching techniques or columns of instruction: the Didactic stage of teaching, the
Coached Project stage and the Paideia Seminar. In addition, the teachers were
reminded of the principles underpinning the choice of an open, contentious or pro-
vocative statement to begin the discussion in order to engage the students. The
statement needed to address essential human concerns or big ideas in order to pro-
voke different responses from a variety of students. If the statement was not conten-
tious enough, the case study ran the risk of losing the democratic ideal whereby all
students were expected to participate. In line with Adler’s (1982) philosophy, the
topic needed to be thought provoking and address ideas of complexity and ambigu-
ity, which could not be disposed of by simply agreeing or disagreeing.
The teachers were explicitly taught Socratic questioning to help shift the com-
plexity of these discussions from surface to deep thinking. Examples of Socratic
questioning which probe students to provide reasons and evidence such as ‘What
do you mean by’; questions which probe reasons and evidence such as ‘Could you
explain your reasons?’; and questions which probe to provide implications and con-
sequences, such as ‘What are you implying by that?’ The teachers received training
in the use of Moodle, the online coaching device, to prepare the students for the
seminars. They were given ideas on how to introduce their students to working in
 Research Papers in Education 29

an academic online site, in contrast to the students’ familiarity with a social net-
working site. By using an asynchronous online environment, the students would be
able to manage their own time to a large extent and reflect upon what they were
learning. (Garrison, Anderson, and Archer 2003). The two professional development
days and the ongoing professional guidance in the form of an online discussion
forum for the teachers, emails, phone calls and many visits to the schools gave both
the researchers and teachers a chance to come to a shared understanding of the
goals and the processes involved in the principles of the Paideia Method.
Following the Didactic stage of the Paideia Method (which involved the stu-
dents engaging with domain knowledge of their unit of study in the form of guest
speakers, journals, research articles, powerpoints, DVDs, Web 2.0, interviews and
Internet), the teachers set up the Moodle online ‘classroom’. The Moodle classroom
became the Coached Project stage for the Paideia classes, where the students had
opportunities to discuss online the various provocations from the teachers. The pur-
pose of the Moodle classroom was to allow students to practise the use of Socratic
questioning and to practise the art of expressing views with justification and evi-
dence. The researchers had access to all of these online discussions throughout the
study. The students were explicitly taught the skills of Socratic questioning and
examples of this questioning were posted on the Moodle (online) classroom. The
students were expected to discuss the provocation agreed to by the class. The online
discussion would be the same provocative statement that they would be expected to
discuss together during the Paideia Seminar (face to face). Students were able to
participate in these online discussions outside of school hours if they wished. Once
the students had sufficient time to practise discussing their thoughts online, each
teacher sets up a Paideia Seminar in their classroom. This involved the students sit-
ting in a circle facing each other and discussing the various provocations for
30 min. The provocations had been provided either by the teachers or in many
cases, the students and the teacher had agreed on a statement, which would provide
ample contention and ambiguity.
During this study, the control classrooms were studying the same topics as the
experimental classes but without following the Paideia Method. They were asked to
continue teaching the topics with their usual ‘practice’. The researchers observed
teachers during this time using worksheets such as cognitive organisers, which
included venn diagrams and PMI – positive, minus and interesting. The teachers
used a variety of other strategies such as individual writing, peer discussions and
group discussions. The students in the control classrooms appeared engaged in their
work and the teachers were of ‘equal’ ability to the experimental teachers as deter-
mined by the principals for this study. The researchers were impressed by the qual-
ity of the teaching and the discussions held in these control classrooms.

Data gathering
The data for the study were collected at three points in time T1, T2 and T3 for both
control and experimental classes. The timeframe varied slightly across the schools
but was predominately over a 12-week period. Time one (T1) involved gathering
normative practice data of a normal class discussion for both the control and the
experimental classrooms. Each class was filmed and audio taped for 20 min. The
topics for both the experimental and control classrooms were the same in each
school. The topics varied across schools but not within schools.
30 M. Davies and A. Sinclair

Specifically within these varying types of interactions, data were also collected
to find if these interactions included the students asking the teacher a question, stu-
dent responding to another student with a question, student responding to another
student with a challenge, student responding to student with expansion of their
ideas (piggy backing), student expanding on their own statement, student respond-
ing to the teacher with an answer, student responding to a student with an answer,
student responding to a student with further information and a student changing the
subject. The data were coded with a nominal scale.
The data, which gathered information on the complexity of these interactions,
were determined by the use of SOLO taxonomy (Biggs and Collis 1982) with an
ordinal coding system as the numbers represented hierarchy in thinking from sur-
face to deep. The descriptions of classroom discourse and interaction derived from
the transcripts of the videotapes were divided into two main categories (Table 1):
Time two (T2) involved gathering transcripts from the Moodle discussions
online for the experimental classes. This was at the midpoint or just thereafter of
the unit study for the experimental classes (week six or seven). The students were
given a provocative or ambiguous statement to discuss online. This same provoca-
tive or ambiguous statement was given to the control classes. The researchers gath-
ered the data from the experimental classrooms online but went back to the schools
to film and audio tape the normal classroom discussions in the control classrooms.
The control classrooms were filmed and audio taped for 20 min.
Time three (T3) was in weeks 11 or 12 for both the experimental and control
classrooms. The experimental classrooms engaged in a face-to-face Paideia Seminar.

Table 1. Explanation of SOLO taxonomy (Biggs and Collis 1982).

Example (Brown, Irving, and Keegan Ordinal

2008) Why does it get dark at night? coding
Prestructural – students acquire Because the earth spins around 1
unconnected pieces of information,
which have no organisation and do
not make sense
Unistructural – simple but obvious Because the earth is spinning and the 2
connections are made but their sun stays in our place
significance is not grasped
Multistructural – a number of Because the earth is spinning and the 3
connections may be made but the sun stays in one place
meta-connections between them are
missed, as is their significance
Relational – in the relational stage, Because the earth spins round each day 4
students can internalise different and the sun stays in the one place, any
ideas from other sources and make one point on the earth faces towards the
connections sun for about 12 h and faces away for
the other 12 h. The darkness comes
because the point at which we are on
the earth has spun away from the sun
Extended abstract – students make Spherical shapes rotate around an axis 5
connections not only within the in order to stay in balance. This means
given subject area but also beyond it that, relative to any fixed point in space
(e.g. a star), points on the sphere must
systematically face and turn away from
that point
 Research Papers in Education 31

The desks were pushed aside and students sat in a large circle facing each other.
The teacher sat as a member of this large circle and began the seminar by restating
the topic of discussion. The students discussed the same topic, which they had been
discussing on line. The control classrooms engaged in a normal classroom discus-
sion. The students in the control classrooms were also asked to discuss the same
topic as in Time 2.
The hypothesis is that the experimental group in the middle and high socio-eco-
nomic schools will increase in both interaction focus and complexity at T3, which
is the face-to-face seminar when compared to T1 (baselines) and that this increase
will be above normative increase compared to a control group. The experimental
low socio-economic schools may not have a significant increase. There is a lower
level of computer exposure, particularly in the homes of those in lower socio-eco-
nomic areas (McCloskey 2006; Wilcox 2002). This may result in less facility with
the technology, and thus not lead to the full potential of the use of technology in
schools by these students. A quasi-experimental method was employed because,
although the Paideia Method was not controlled by the researchers; the researchers
did have some control over when to measure the outcome variables. Using SPSS
18.0, a series of t-tests and ANOVAs were conducted to analyse data, first for inter-
action focus and then for complexity, to test for differences between the experimen-
tal and the control groups. ‘When students can move from idea to ideas and then
relate and elaborate on them we have learning – and when they can regulate or
monitor this journey then they are teachers of their learning’ (Hattie 2009, 29). Hat-
tie found that many students become disengaged from lessons when they are
encouraged to learn at only surface levels. For the purposes of this study, the five-
stage SOLO taxonomy (Biggs and Collis 1982) was used to categorise complexity
of discussion and nature of interaction.

Focus group
A focus group discussion for the teachers was held at the end of the project. They
were given these questions prior to the focus group: ‘Following your involvement
with the Paideia Method, what do you think if anything needs to change about how
you teach (in general)’; ‘What do you consider are the successes, gaps, and failures
of using Socratic questioning within the Paideia Method?’; ‘How do you know if
the sessions had any impact on the student learning – what evidence have you got
to show this?’; ‘Which kinds of students were better/not so good at learning this
way?’; ‘Were there any surprises?’; ‘If other teachers were to adopt this system,
what needs to be in the training to optimise it, to get to the outcomes faster and
more effectively?’; and ‘What was helpful in terms of your training?’.

Data analysis
The descriptions of classroom discourse and interaction derived from the transcripts
of the videotapes were subdivided into two main categories: complexity of
discussion and nature of interaction. For the first category, it was decided to use
the SOLO taxonomy developed by Biggs and Collis (1982) to determine the
complexity of the discussion, and to illustrate and analyse what surface and deep
learning looked like. The five stages are: prestructural; unistructural; multistructural;
relational; and extended abstract. At the prestructural stage, students acquire
32 M. Davies and A. Sinclair

unconnected pieces of information, which have no organisation and do not make

sense. At the unistructural stage, simple but obvious connections are made but their
significance is not grasped. At the multistructural stage, a number of connections
may be made but the meta-connections between them are missed, as is their signifi-
cance. In the relational stage, students are able to appreciate the significance of the
parts in relation to the whole, and can internalise different ideas from other sources
and make connections. At the extended abstract level, students are able to make
connections not only within the given subject area but also beyond it. The
responses involve the student going outside the known, and being able to elaborate
and transfer the principles and ideas underlying a specific instance. ‘Relational’ and
‘elaborative’ processes involve a change in the quality of thinking that is cogni-
tively more challenging than surface learning. The implications are that active learn-
ing and deep-level processing are central to success and to the transfer of
information where the learner is active in the process of learning.
The audio tapes were professionally transcribed and the resulting protocols were
then analysed by two research assistants working independently. The transcripts of
these seminars were analysed according to SOLO taxonomy. These assistants were
asked to analyse every identifiable interaction that occurred using this taxonomy as
a coding tool. Both individuals had had extensive experience in the use of the tax-
onomy, and were blind to treatment group allocation. They were asked to code the
complexity of the interchange using the taxonomy, from prestructural to extended
abstract. These codings were reviewed by the research team and disagreements
between the raters were then reconciled through discussion and consensus. Time
was spent with the coders to ensure a mutual understanding of the complexities of
the coding tables. The overall agreements were divided by the agreements plus dis-
agreements. This resulted in an overall inter-observer agreement of 84%.
Codings were also done by classifying each interaction in terms of whether it
was: (a) a teacher-to-student interaction; (b) a student responding to a teacher; or
(c) a student responding to a student. Furthermore, interactions were coded as to
whether they were questions, expansions of ideas, challenging others’ views or
answering questions. Codings to analyse the information from the focus groups with
teachers were simply categories, which determined the successes, gaps and limita-
tions of the use of Socratic questioning within a Paideia Seminar.

Results
In all, the raters reported a total of 3859 codings, of which 2035 stemmed from the
traditional classes, and 1824 from the Paideia classes. Of the total, 2023 codings
stemmed from the baseline data, and 1836 related to the final seminar periods. The
raw tallies, broken down by treatment group and SOLO level are depicted as a pyr-
amid panel graph in Table 1, with seminar time as the panel variable (Figure 1).
For analysis purposes, it was decided to collapse the SOLO levels into two lev-
els: surface and deep. The researchers were interested in whether or not the use of
Socratic questioning within the Paideia Seminar shifted thinking from surface to
deep. Surface-level responding was determined by aggregating levels 1, 2 and 3,
while deep-level responding was determined by summing levels 4 and 5. The fre-
quencies generated by this procedure can be seen in Table 1 which also depicts the
breakdown concerning the nature of the interactions (teacher-to-student [TS]; stu-
dent-to-teacher [ST]; and student-to-student [SS]) pattern as coded.
 Research Papers in Education 33

Figure 1. Frequencies of SOLO level codings across two groups and two time periods.

Table 2. Over-time data comparing traditional and Paideia classes’ total interactions/deep
interactions for each type of interaction.

Traditional classes Paideia classes

Initial seminar Final seminar Initial seminar Final seminar
Total Deep Total Deep Total Deep Total Deep
Overall tallies 1207 66 828 62 816 61 1008 175
TS 601 31 322 21 405 43 167 6
ST 526 32 288 17 367 14 154 20
SS 79 3 210 24 38 4 686 149
Note: ‘Total’ refers to the total number of ratings made, whereas deep refers to the frequencies made at
SOLO levels 4 and 5 combined. The second, third, and fourth row will naturally tally with the level of
the first row except in the case of 24 missing values where raters failed to agree on the interaction
focus dimension.

For purposes of data description, the available frequency data were interpreted
in terms of the percentage of interactions coded at the deep-processing level, since
this constitutes a meaningful dimension. Table 2 depicts the percentage of respond-
ing coded at the deep level across the two time periods within each of the two treat-
ment groups (Figure 2).
As can be seen in Table 2, in the final seminars for the Paideia classes, 175 of
1008 responses (17.4%) were at the deep level, in contrast to the traditional classes
where 61 out of 816 responses (7.5%) coded at this level. This represents a signifi-
cant difference between the two groups, X2 (1) = 39, p < 0.01. It was apparent that,
at the baseline, the frequency level of deep responses evident within Paideia classes
was not significantly higher than the traditional classes (7.5 against 5.5%)
34 M. Davies and A. Sinclair

Figure 2. Percentage of responses codes at a deep level across groups and seminar session.

(p = 0.07). However, the relative increase across sessions within the Paideia classes,
from 7.5 to 17.4% (Fisher exact test, p < 0.001), was significant while this was not
within the traditional classes, changing from 5.5 to 7.5% (Fisher exact test,
p = 0.07).
Figure 1 also shows the frequency breakdown according to the type of interac-
tion pattern. The data are shown in Figure 3 in terms of the three categories with
baseline data in the top panel, and final seminar data in the lower panel.
As can be seen in Figure 3, in the final Paideia Seminar, for SS discussions,
686 responses were tallied, of which 149 (22%) were coded at the deep level. In
contrast, in the traditional group, there were 24 deep responses within SS discussion
out of 210 responses (11.4%). Thus, the level of SS interaction at the deep level
was significantly higher in the case of the Paideia classes, X2(1) = 10.9, p < 0. 01.
Further, it was apparent that in the Paideia classes, the level of ST interaction at the
deep level (at 13%) was significantly greater than for the traditional classes (6%),
X2 (1) = 6.6, p = 0.01. However, the difference between groups was not significant
when considering TS frequencies (p = 0.18). Hence, the significant overall differ-
ences in deep-level discussions between the two types of classes appear to be due
to student-initiated (SS and ST) discussions, and not teacher-initiated interactions
(TS).
A 2  3 Chi-square test found a significantly different pattern to types of interac-
tions (TS, ST and SS), between the Paideia and traditional classes, X2 (2) = 58,
p < 0.01. This result suggests that the impact of Paideia clearly differed in accord
with the type of interactions, with far stronger impacts being evident in the case of
the student-initiated response categories.
The final set of analyses compared nature and type of classroom interactions
across the three school socio-economic level classifications: low, middle and high.
The percentage figures associated with these levels are shown in Figure 3. In the
 Research Papers in Education 35

Figure 3. Percentage of responses coded at deep level as a function of interaction focus.

initial baseline data, effects associated with socio-economic level did not emerge as
significant. However, in the final seminar, significant differences between the tradi-
tional and Paideia classes were evident at the high socio-economic level (X2(1) = 40,
p < 0.01), and at the middle socio-economic level (X2 (1) = 8.3, p < 0.01), Although
the low socio-economic students did not make a significantly greater percentage of
deep responses in the final seminar Paideia classes than the traditional classes (X2
(1) = 1.6, p = 0.2), the low socio-economic students did significantly increase their
percentage of deep responses in the final seminar relative to the percentage shown
in the initial classroom discussion, X2 (1) 3.7, p = 0.05 (Figure 4).
This graph shows the nature of interaction, which occurred during Episode three
for both groups. Episode three for the traditional classrooms was a ‘normal’ class-
room discussion based on the same unit study as the Paideia Group. Episode three
for the Paideia Group was a Paideia Seminar. Students sat in a circle facing each
other and discussed the provocative statement.
As previously identified, the Paideia Seminar resulted in higher SS interactions.
This graph identifies specifically which type of SS exchanges seemed to generate
deep thinking (Figure 5).
Here is an extract of a Paideia Seminar from the group whose rich question was
‘Expression is a risky business’. The students were seated in a circle, facing each
other and the teacher had stated the topic at the start of the seminar. This extract is
five minutes into the seminar and demonstrates that the nature of the interaction is
36 M. Davies and A. Sinclair

Figure 4. Percentage of responses at deep level as a function of school socio-economic

level.

mostly SSAE (Student responds to student with expansion of their idea), where stu-
dents agree and then expand on their ideas with further information. This was ‘typi-
cal’ in that the teacher’s voice is not apparent and the dialogue continues for some
time between students.

Student Three: I want to build on Jill’s opinion because for example in North Korea if
you say something bad about their leader or government you will prob-
ably going to be killed or punished or something. (SSAE – Student
responds to student with expansion of their idea, Relational, many
ideas)
Student Four: I agree with Won about the culture, like some, it usually comes and like
some people will get this cause they’re like different culture and how
they express themselves, through their culture. (SSAE – Student
responds to student with expansion of their idea, Multistructural, many
ideas)
Student Five: The people that went to Vietnam, they wanted to help the people in
Vietnam, like the Eye Clinic, and it was very cheap. But they also got
killed at the end because they were reading a bible or something. And
this, expression is a risky business with religion as well. In some coun-
tries like in India they are Muslims and Christians fighting. (SSAE –
Student responds to student with expansion of their idea, Relational,
many ideas)
Student Six: It also depends on whom you’re dealing with. So if it is in World War
II and your expression was to disagree with Hitler, then you would
probably get killed and punished. (SSAE – Student responds to student
with expansion of their idea, Relational, many ideas)
 Research Papers in Education 37

(SS) = student to student

SSQ = question
SSDC = disagreement & expansion
SSAE = answer & expansion of ideas
SSDE = responds to disagreement &
expands on own statement
SSDE = responds to challenge &
expands
SSA = agree
SSN = new idea
SSD = responds with disagreement
SSAN = responds with answer
SSAG = responds with agreement

Figure 5. Type of SS exchanges which generated deep thinking.

Student Four: I’m thinking back to Joe’s point, I definitely agree that education on
everyone’s belief and culture and the country and everything, so that
was how people expressed themselves, so they would keep their emo-
tions inside, they were scared or something. (SSAE – Student responds
to student with expansion of their idea, Relational, many ideas); (SSN
–Student to Student with New Ideas)

The following is an example of SSDC interactions (SS with a disagreement and

then challenging the student with why they disagree). This exchange occurred dur-
ing the Paideia Seminar when the topic was ‘How can this can relate to cultural
identity in a changing world?’ (Plato’s Cave).

I disagree with Josh’s point when he said like the woman was wearing yellow to stop
with the heat and everything. I think it’s just a metaphor, like staying with the dark-
ness of the cave and then the brightness of the outside world.

Data from these students in their normal classroom discussion had indicated that
although students might have disagreed with a fellow student they did not elaborate
on why they disagreed.
Transcript data analysis showed that not only were more questions generated
from student-to-student (SSQ) but they were at a higher complex level during the
Paideia Seminars than in the normal classroom discussion. For example, one student
posed the following question: ‘But do you agree that America was the start of ste-
reotypes in movies and television?’ This question, posed by the student, not the tea-
cher, stimulated a robust discussion between the students.
38 M. Davies and A. Sinclair

Students who were interviewed as part of a focus group experience indicated

that they found that the opportunity to express their ‘voice’ was motivating and a
positive experience, similar to the following comments by students:

It’s a lot friendlier and a lot more interactive with all of your peers. It wasn’t just
straight out of a textbook. (Pasifika male, low socio-economic)

The students (us) we drove the conversations and we understand better from each
other than if a teacher were to stand up there and get us to speak. (Asian female, high
socio-economic)

Another student noted how the seminars changed the dynamics in the classroom:

A lot of people in our classroom don’t usually speak to each other, like there is a
group of boys and a group of girls and then a group of both and they don’t really
communicate with each other but I think the seminar was a great way of sharing ideas
between different people. (European male, high socio-economic)

In terms of fairness and ‘voice’, two students made these observations:

We all respect each other and we respect each other points of view. Even if you dis-
agreed with someone it was good to be able to understand where they are coming
from and just to be able to see two points of view is important, even if you disagree.
(European female, high socio-economic)

When people don’t understand what people are saying, other people come in and help.
(Maori male, low socio-economic)

A student in the low socio-economic school compared the difference between a nor-
mal classroom discussion and a Paideia Seminar:

If Mrs. Earnshaw asks us a question in a class discussion, then the students just say
yes, no, yes, no with no reason and that’s why we aren’t learning. But with the semi-
nar we still say if we agree or and not agree, but we have to say why.

The results of the focus group with teachers found the following repeated theme.
Successes with the use of Socratic questioning within the Paideia Seminar were
identified: a low socio-economic teacher whose class was English for Speakers of
Other Languages remarked that this method allowed and encouraged the children to
dig deeper into the many layers of an idea.

The thinking and the speaking feed off and enrich each other with many children
entering into the discussion offering lots of different thoughts which dug deeper and
deeper into the original idea, exposing multiple layers of connected and related ideas
which would never have been considered or even thought of during an ordinary class-
room discussion.

A middle socio-economic teacher concurred by adding that she believed the quality
of what they were saying was at a much higher level when they started to respond
to each other, rather than to her. ‘They started to question each other, which meant
students had to justify their thinking’. Several teachers commented that they noticed
 Research Papers in Education 39

the students needed to listen to each other as the thinking was at a deeper level.
‘Class discussions were richer, because they were listening to each other and not
just me’. Another middle socio-economic teacher identified that Socratic questioning
had shifted in to other curricula:

We are currently doing Literacy Circles in reading and the students are continuing to
use the Paideia Language when they interact. They always want to add to each other’s
ideas or question and disagree. It’s great that they are more willing and able to justify
their ideas.

A drawback over the use of Socratic questioning was that one of the teachers in the
lower socio-economic school believed it suited only the students with good self-
management as they liked having some control over what direction their learning
was taking. A middle socio-economic teacher was surprised that some of her ‘top
end kids’ struggled with the freedom that this type of learning entailed and they
really seemed to flounder. She observed: ‘Obviously after years of trying to guess
what the teacher wants or is thinking they were stuck when expected to think on
their own’.

Discussion and conclusion

The main findings showed the nature of the interactions changed from predomi-
nantly teacher-initiated interaction in a traditional classroom discussion, to student-
initiated interaction during the Paideia Seminars. As demonstrated by the results in
the study, the complexity of the discussions was deeper during the Paideia Seminars
than in a traditional classroom context where students were working at a greater
relational and extended abstract (deep) level. Significantly, the types of interactions
which generated higher complexity of thought were: students agreeing with each
other and then expanding with further information; students disagreeing with each
other and then expanding on why they disagreed with each other; students respond-
ing back to the student who had disagreed with them and explaining themselves
further and students asking another student a question. The greatest shift in thinking
from surface to deep occurred in the high socio-economic classrooms. Intervention
from the teachers in the high socio-economic classrooms was minimal, and the dia-
logue almost predominately student initiated. Perhaps, this indicates that the stu-
dents who were from the lower socio-economic classrooms require greater teacher
input as Nystrand (2006) recommends. Of course, it is not that all students in the
lower socio-economic classrooms were low-achieving students and that all students
in the high socio-economic classes were high achieving but in general the literacy
levels for the low-achieving classes were considerably lower than the students in
the high socio-economic classrooms. Nystrand (2006) argues that what is difficult is
not only shifting discussions in to the dialogic but then keeping them at the dialogic
with what he terms ‘dialogic spells’.
Though the use of Socratic questioning during the seminars was relatively low,
more complex discussions were held throughout the seminars than the traditional
classroom discussions within the control classes. A ‘spin-off’ from the teachers
explicitly teaching the students Socratic questioning appeared to be that the students
recognised the importance of having evidence and justifications for their thoughts.
Without prompting from the teachers, the students not only initiated discussions
40 M. Davies and A. Sinclair

with their peers but also invariably made a statement and supported this statement
with evidence and justification. These exchanges resulted in a change in the nature
of the interactions, i.e. more SS dialogues and the change in the complexity of these
interactions meant they engaged in a greater percentage of deep-level discussions.
Gaining skills in the use of Socratic questioning is likely to take far longer than
the duration of this project. For many students, it was a major shift: to be given
autonomy to have student-initiated discussions and to be expected to provide evi-
dence and justification for their statements. The positive outcomes of this study,
however, indicate that teachers explicitly teaching Socratic questioning and provid-
ing opportunities for students to practise this type of questioning and reasoning are
worth pursuing. This study showed that there were differences in the students’ lev-
els of complexity within the discussions between the socio economic groups.
In contrast, results of (Murphy et al. 2009) meta-anaylsis of dialogical discus-
sions interventions suggested that the approaches exhibited greater effects for
students of below-average ability than for students of average or above average abil-
ity. But what was similar to this study was their suggestion that the students in the
high socio-economic groups appeared to need little intervention from the teachers to
keep the discussions at the ‘dialogic’ (Murphy et al. 2009). This finding was inter-
preted to mean that the higher ability students might be able to read a text and think-
ing independently about the nuances of meaning even without participating in
discussion (Murphy, Wilkinson, and Soter 2011). In general, the low socio economic
students dialogical discussions returned more quickly to that of recitation discussions
than the high socio economic students dialogical discussions. Therefore, the
researchers wish to pursue greater degrees of explicit intervention from the teacher
in the lower socio economic schools. Specifically, one researcher wishes to further
investigate the work of Quality Talk (summary) (Wilkinson, Soter, and Murphy
2010) with students within the lower socio-economic schools. Quality Talk involves
the following steps:

(1) Use ground rules to establish the norms of productive talk.

(2) Use authentic questions and follow-up, uptake questions to give students
opportunities to engage in productive talk.
(3) Use informal assessment strategies during discussions, listening for evidence
of the elements of talk that indicate higher level thinking.

One limitation of this study was the inequitable access to the Internet for the
students in the low socio-economic schools. Many of these students did not have
the benefit of being able to go online and discuss the provocative statement for the
Paideia Seminar out of school hours and had limited exposure to the use of comput-
ers when they were at school. The teachers within the low socio-economic schools
lacked confidence and expertise in using the online discussions with their students
and so the students had less exposure to the online discussions than the middle and
high socio-economic students. Ensuring a closer alignment with exposure to the use
of the online discussions for all socio-economic groups of students could possibly
have affected the outcomes of this study. There is a lower level of computer expo-
sure, particularly in the homes of those in lower socio-economic areas (McCloskey
2006; Wilcox 2002).
The results of this study show a significant shift in student-initiated dialogue,
from teacher-initiated dialogue in normal classroom discussions to increased stu-
 Research Papers in Education 41

dent-initiated dialogue in the Paideia Seminar. Furthermore, these shifts generated a

higher complexity of thinking. What emerges from this study is the potential of the
Paideia Method to increase depth of thinking and achieving greater autonomy for
early-adolescent students. The increase in student-initiated dialogue demonstrates
that this pedagogical approach can give rise, not only to student voice, but opportu-
nity for student voice, which may help to realise these young people’s potential.
All students, not just those from marginalised groups, seem more eager to enter
energetically into classroom discussion when they perceive it as pertaining directly
to them (Hooks 1994, 87).

Authentic help means that all who are involved help each other mutually, growing
together in the common effort to understand the reality, which they seek to transform.
Only through such praxis – in which those who help and those who are being helped,
help each other simultaneously – can the act of helping become free from the distor-
tion in which the helper dominates the helped (Freire 1994, cited in bell hooks, 54).

Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank the school staff and students who were involved in this
project. The North Shore Teachers Trust Fund funded the study. The authors would like to
thank Professor John Hattie, Associate Professor Richard Hamilton and Senior Lecturers
Greg Yates and Tony Hunt for their assistance and support.

Note
1. A professional DVD has been made of this research project with ethics approval from
the University of Auckland. The full DVD is available for purchase from CEDD@auck-
land.ac.nz.

Notes on contributors
Maree Davies is a senior lecturer in the School of Learning, Development and Professional
Practice, University of Auckland, Faculty of Education, 74 Epsom Avenue, Epsom,
Auckland. The author is currently continuing to research dialogical discussions both online
and face to face. The research focuses on why the psychological mechanisms of ‘quality
talk’ and evidence-based argumentation affect the quality of thinking. The research is quasi-
experimental and is being conducted in secondary schools in Auckland, New Zealand.

Anne Sinclair is an honorary research fellow in the School of Learning, Development and
Professional Practice, University of Auckland, Faculty of Education, 74 Epsom Avenue,
Epsom, Auckland. She has expanded the Paideia research and is working on developing
adaptive expertise amongst teachers and students, to promote higher metacognitive thinking
and self-regulation both online and face to face. She is considering the effects of large class
teaching at the University level and how this could be mitigated through developing the
adaptive capacity to utilise effective pedagogies and the principles of Paideia in this new
approach.

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