Research School Network: Supporting disadvantaged learners through structured talk Director Chris Runeckles discusses how structured talk can be used to tackle educational disadvantage

Last month all the Research Schools across London and the South East collectively hosted a conference focused on how literacy in schools can tackle educational disadvantage. It was a great day, and showcased how the expertise our network contains can support leaders and teachers across all phases with how to shape their schools to best support those children experiencing socio-economic disadvantage.

The session I delivered was titled ​“Structured talk in the secondary classroom” and this blog will share some of the messages it contained. It started with a quote from Kate Atkins, headteacher at Rosendale Primary School and former Research School director, that I think speaks for itself:

“Many teachers, senior leaders and researchers are more and more convinced that educational disadvantage stems from language poor environments, from the lack of access to vocabulary and a lack of ability to play with language. Children from language poor environments do not develop the skills to create ideas in each other’s minds. As Pie Corbett, headteacher, former Ofsted inspector and well known promoter of language in classrooms, offers this simple explanation ​“You cannot write it if you cannot say it; you cannot say it if you haven’t heard it.””

As with any intervention that uses pedagogy to address disadvantage there has to be a word of caution around potentially dangerous assumptions. In this case that our disadvantaged learners are, individually, less equipped to engaged in effective talk in the classroom. This is of course not true and treats these children as what they are not; a homogenous group with the same characteristics. However, we know that great teaching advantages all, but disproportionately benefits disadvantaged learners. Getting talk right in the classroom is part of that.

As the recent Oracy Education Commission report ​“We need to talk” describes, this is not simply about talk being a way to learn, but is also about us explicitly teaching learners both how to talk in different domains and what the core components of effective talk are (this uses talk in its broadest possible sense and takes in listening and other forms of communication). By doing so we aim to level the playing field and bring an equity of experience through our enacted curriculum that takes children beyond their lived experience.

Building on these foundations my session explored what this may look like in the classroom. Within this I looked at three strategies: paired talk, metacognitive talk and accountable talk. I’ve blogged previously about metacognitive structured talk, you can find that here and I think I’ll save accountable talk for another blog. What I want to do is unpick paired talk a bit more. This is not particularly to prioritise this strategy over other forms of structured talk, but it is, in the secondary classroom, perhaps the most common form of talk that learners experience.

For paired talk to really benefit disadvantaged learners, the devil is in the detail. It could, quite easily, become a gap-widening activity, amplifying differences rather than overcoming them. For example, in history you could start a unit on the First World War by showing an image of the Menin Gate bugle call in Ypres and ask students to discuss in pairs how the image connected to the war. There may be a pair where one child has been taken to Belgium, toured the battleground and trenches and discussed the destruction and death toll with their parents. The other child may never have been abroad and while they might have some understanding of war in general, have no prior knowledge of WWI to connect to what is ultimately quite an abstract image. It is easy to imagine which child dominates the discussion in that scenario and therefore benefits from the activity.

A reimaging of that task would be to first teach the necessary background knowledge to ensure an equity of opportunity to discuss ideas before any talk took place. This would mean the knowledge the students happened to arrive at the lesson with need not dictate their ability to engage effectively with paired talk.

Further to this would be to ensure the instructions and expectations of how the talk happened were unambiguous and carefully structured. Part of this is the understanding that the task was teaching the conventions of discussion and sharing of ideas as well as teaching historical content. Another part is ensuring a child with high self-efficacy when it comes to structured talk does not take charge at the expense of the learning of their partner who may not feel the same. To help our staff at Durrington with this, we provide clear guidance on the instructional part of paired talk. It looks like this:

There is nothing particularly revolutionary in this guidance, but at its core is an intention that the paired talk that happens does not unintentionally fall into the pitfalls discussed above. This is not to remove teacher agency, but it is to say that unless paired talk follows a recognisable structure there is the real risk that it excludes some of our most disadvantaged and vulnerable learners from meaningfully participating in it. An example would be the second bullet point around means of participation where the visible and procedural aspects of the talk that is to come are explicitly taught. These are ultimately scaffolds and should of course be removed once embedded, but must be explicitly taught until all students are confident with them.

As such, here is the intersection of tackling educational disadvantage and structured talk. For talk in the classroom to achieve this end there needs to be the structure. Just getting talk happening is not enough, it could in fact be worse for disadvantaged learners than not doing it. However, with clear structure and the necessary prior knowledge is can be a cornerstone strategy in equipping our disadvantaged learners with the tools they need to be successful.