Interpretive discussion is an approach to teaching and learning that professor Sophie Haroutunian-Gordon, director of SESP’s Master of Science in Education program, first tried as a sixth-grade teacher. “Ten minutes and I was hooked!” she exclaims. Now she has written a new book, Learning to Teach Through Discussion: The Art of Turning the Soul, to present the story of what happens when two of her master’s students apply the method in two very different schools, one urban and one suburban.The two Northwestern graduate students at the center of the book had read Haroutunian-Gordon’s first book, Turning the Soul: Teaching Through Conversation in the High School, and were interested in interpretive discussion, which probes the meaning of a text. As they student-taught fourth graders in both urban and suburban schools, they wanted to explore whether the groups would be more open-minded and engaged in understanding the text if they discussed works from different cultures.
The book shows the novice teachers becoming better discussion leaders and listeners as they learn to prepare and clarify interpretive questions about the meaning of texts. “Their thinking went through a lot of refinement,” Haroutunian-Gordon notes. The climax of the book comes when the teachers mix the two different groups of students. The reader sees how the groups come to listen to each other and how barriers of race and class between them seem to break down.
Interpretive discussion arises from genuine questions that the group members have about the meaning of a text. The text may be a poem, story, film, set of empirical data or any other object that has enough ambiguity to permit exploration of its meaning. The approach, which has three phases: preparation, leading and reflection, is similar to what Great Books calls Shared Inquiry®. It is “powerful” and “exciting,” according to Haroutunian-Gordon. “We have evidence that even in the hands of novice teachers, it can be a satisfying, productive orientation.”“It is the kind of discussion that people need to do with their students,” she emphasizes. “It’s a lot of work, but the discovery that people make when they do the work is that they can do it and there’s a great payoff.”
Because the teachers are asking questions they cannot answer themselves, they are coming to the discussion as seekers. “They are ready to listen and think and are familiar with the text — ready to help the group explore,” says Haroutunian-Gordon.
Haroutunian-Gordon has led interpretive discussions with people in kindergarten through graduate school, with groups of children and older adults — with the same results. “You have to have a text that has some ambiguity and is suitable for the age and experience of the discussants. If you have such a text and know how to engage people in sustained reflection about it, they can discuss its meaning with one another and gain an enormous amount from the experience,” she asserts.
Although today’s schools are preoccupied with testing, getting correct answers on standardized tests doesn’t necessarily mean that students have gained analytic and interpretive skills that they recognize, practice and value, says Haroutunian-Gordon. She maintains that interpretive discussion is “a way to help students acquire reflective habits of mind, learn to present evidence for their claims, speak clearly, cultivate sound listening practices, form questions they care to resolve, and in so doing discover more and more about the meaning of the text and their personal experiences.
Teachers benefit from interpretive discussion as much as students, according to Haroutunian-Gordon. “It’s a gratifying form of self-education and renewal. It keeps the teacher alive in a vital way,” she says. “There’s a healthiness about this. This is why I’ve stayed with it.”
The experiment at the heart of Learning to Teach Through Discussion was a learning experience even for Haroutunian-Gordon. “The importance of listening was terribly striking. … I didn’t realize how critical listening is,” she says. “The case study shows how this approach helps students and teachers learn to think, question and listen.”
Learning to Teach Through Discussion: The Art of Turning the Soul, which is published by Yale University Press, is intended for teachers at all levels and with all kinds of groups.
Last Modified: 4/9/10