Research School Network: Accountable Talk Director Chris Runeckles shares one aspect of a literacy focused partnership with Brighton and Hove schools

Central to our work as a Research School this year, is an ongoing partnership we have with Brighton and Hove City Council. The aim of the partnership is to improve outcomes for disadvantaged pupils in the city, and the current focus is developing approaches to spoken language & communication (oracy) and vocabulary with a group of around 20 schools. This narrowed literacy focus was established following a year-long scoping and exploration phase working with leaders from across the city.

It is tremendously engaging and exciting work to be involved with, and we are lucky to be working with professionals so committed to improving the attainment of the disadvantaged pupils they serve.

The breadth of the project is too large for a single blog, but I thought it would be useful to highlight just one aspect that we have explored so far to exemplify how our research school partnerships support the participant schools.

Back in November was spent a day together exploring spoken language and communication and why this connects so directly to addressing educational disadvantage. All pupils benefit from being taught how to talk, being taught through talk and being taught about talk but disadvantaged pupils benefit from this disproportionately.

We explored many facets of spoken language & communication and with the partnership being cross phase, different aspects will resonate more with different schools and we are at the point of adoption decisions being made. 

The area of discussion I have chosen to highlight is accountable talk, developed by the academic Lauren Resnick. This framework highlights:

Accountability to knowledge: for example, by seeking to be accurate and true.

Accountability to reasoning: for example, by providing justifications for claims.

Accountability to community: for example, listening and showing respect to others.

Using this framework, we spent time exploring each aspect in more detail, giving some specifics that we could discuss in more detail. These are summarised below.

Accountability to knowledge:

• The subject-specific features of talk are important to recognise, i.e. prioritising the facts in science.
• When speakers make an observation or claim in class, they should try to be as specific and accurate as possible, not just saying anything that comes to mind. Ways of validating claims will be subject specific, e.g.:
  • referring to knowledge attained in previous lessons or outside the classroom;
  • citing a specific passage from a text or historical facts.

• Teachers need to step in with knowledge when unvalidated claims are made, misconceptions are used to support claims, or claims are inaccurate.

Accountability to reasoning:

• Support students to build a line of argument by linking claims in a logical and coherent manner
• Having the knowledge is not enough: the knowledge has to be examined in order to build thought:
  • Is it sufficient?
  • Is it credible?
  • Is it relevant?
  • Is it qualified in terms of supporting the idea?

Accountability to community:

• Students listen and attend to each other so that they can use and build on one another’s ideas
• Students ask for clarification and disagree with claims (not people) respectfully
• Students move the talk forward – sometimes with the teacher’s help
• The teacher has to balance maintaining focus and incorporating ​‘teachable moments’. This involves enabling students from all cultural and linguistic backgrounds to participate
• Teachers will have carefully laid the groundwork for cultural norms that support accountability to the community

The discussions that accompanied these points are vital in contextualising this corner of evidence-informed practice and allowing schools to consider how to support changes in teacher practice to incorporate accountable talk in their classrooms.

This is just one of several aspects of spoken language & communication we focused on in relation to better supporting disadvantaged pupils, and we are now in the process of narrowing school foci based on schools’ particular needs and priorities.