As a speech pathologist, education lecturer, and mother of two school-age children, I greatly appreciated the articles in the February issue of Kappan (“The interpersonal life of schools”), as they offer truly important ideas about creating more caring environments in classrooms, schools, and districts. However, while the articles call for specific outcomes in schools and classrooms (for example, validating student ideas and cultivating a climate of mutual respect), they do not delve deeply enough into the “how” of this work; that is, how children and adults can learn to communicate with each other more effectively, and how their everyday patterns of talk can promote healthier relationships. While researchers have learned a great deal about the types of conversations and verbal “moves” that support student and teacher engagement (as well as learning and mastery), little of this information has made its way into the wider discussion about enhancing classroom climate and improving schools.
Lessons from research
Enhancing our interactions with students is fundamentally, as Teresa Preston notes, about “creating conditions where [students] are able to become the intellectually and emotionally competent adults who will shape the future of our nation and our world” (p. 7). There is no substitute for the organizational and structural changes the articles in the February issue recommend. However, there is also a need to recognize the power of micro-level interactions to support children’s learning; social-emotional skill-building; and development of creativity, empathy, and confidence. Recent research in psychology, neuroscience, and linguistics suggests that conversational turns, or the back-and-forth between adult and child, are critical in both enhancing classroom climate and building relational skills.
Recent research in psychology, neuroscience, and linguistics suggests that conversational turns, or the back-and-forth between adult and child, are critical in both enhancing classroom climate and building relational skills.
For example, a 2018 study by Rachel Romeo and colleagues at MIT found that, for 4- to 6-year-old children, the number of conversational turns those children engaged in was linked to their brain activation in Broca’s area, which is key to many language functions. More recently, her team found that a nine-week intervention could enhance the conversational turns between parents and children in ways that improved children’s language and executive functioning and that were linked to cortical thickening in key language and social regions of the brain (Romeo et al., 2021). This is evidence, as the authors suggest, that back-and-forth conversations strengthen both linguistic and social development.
Beyond neuroscience, other research has converged on the centrality of talk for both relationship-building and skill-building. For example, for children from preschool age through young adulthood, “emotional reminiscing,” or talking in detailed, elaborative, and emotional ways about the past, has been linked to stronger autobiographical memories as well as enhanced self-esteem and well-being (Salmon & Reese, 2016). Such reminiscing, researchers note, encourages self-definition (creating coherent narratives about the self); supports self-relation (creating a shared past); and builds self-regulation (helping children regulate their emotions by discussing coping strategies) (Fivush & Sales, 2006). Other research supports the centrality of talk in learning; for example, the use of dialogic reading, in which children are encouraged to ask questions during a story, has been found to improve children’s reading skills far more than simply reading books straight through.
A framework for rich talk
In their article in the February Kappan, Denise Clark Pope and Sarah Miles hint at some of these practices for encouraging productive talk, such as “offering frequent ice-breakers, check-in questions, and ‘reverse office hours’” (p. 11). Tiffini Pruitt-Britton and colleagues go further by noting elements of conversations — such as the use of humor, remembering student plans, and sharing personal information — that nurtured strong social bonding and enhanced relationships between teachers and students. What we need, however, is a comprehensive framework to encourage deeper and more meaningful conversations with and among students, and among faculty, staff, and administrators. This framework should cover all of preK-12 education and should go beyond giving specific “tips.” While tips are helpful, they miss the full potential of a framework that would support the kinds of conversational turns that help build children’s language skills, confidence, empathy, and creativity over time.
In my book, The Art of Talking with Children, I draw from research in a range of fields; interviews with linguists, neuroscientists, and psychologists; and my own clinical work to define a framework that uses what I call “rich talk” to support this skill-building while enhancing teachers’ relationships with students. This rich talk has as its foundation three key elements — the ABCs of rich talk: It is adaptive, both in the moment and over time, as it responds to children’s temperaments and moods; it is back-and-forth, involving careful attention to the balance between adult and child speech; and it is child-driven, beginning with what interests, engages, worries, or otherwise concerns a child.
Three research-based strategies act as the backbone of rich talk. We need talk that expands on children’s utterances; that explores their thoughts and questions in a way that goes beyond the here-and-now; and that helps them evaluate their strategies and ideas, considering next steps through an optimistic lens. This rich talk framework and strategies are simple tools teachers can use to encourage student learning and social-emotional growth. This framework is not a recipe or script, however, and it does not suggest that there is one “right” way to talk in the classroom. Quite the contrary: It enables teachers to celebrate their individual strengths and conversational styles and meet students where they are, while employing consistent, research-based strategies.
Rich talk for adults
Of course, rich conversations between adults are also important. However, in times of increased focus on academics and children’s social-emotional development, there is ever less time and attention paid to the specific kinds of conversations and verbal practices that support adult engagement, motivation, and continual learning. Conversations using the rich talk framework recognize all aspects of teachers’ personalities as valid and view both introverted and extroverted temperaments as worthy of celebration, encouragement, and support.
We owe it to both students and teachers to support them in having deeper and more satisfying conversations.
Such close attention to how we talk to each other can also help teachers reflect on the goodness of fit between their own temperaments and those of the children they teach. This concept of “goodness of fit” (introduced by Alexander Thomas and Stella Chess in 1977 to discuss how well children’s temperaments match their environments) has been explored in the research literature for decades. Yet, little has been done to support teachers to reflect on their own temperaments or those of their fellow adults and how they interact with those of the students they teach.
Clearly, there is a demand for this type of reflective conversation. For example, the article by Kristabel Stark and colleagues (2022) explores how willing teachers often are to discuss issues of anxiety and mental health. A preschool teacher “found her colleagues’ willingness to jump right into these types of conversations refreshing” and noted that there seemed to be a focus on teachers having “a specific personality type [that is] kind, patient, caring, saint-like” (p. 28). In my own work as a speech pathologist and academic learning specialist, I have seen many teachers who feel sidelined for being quieter or more introverted than peers or for having mental health challenges. Conversations that guide teachers to expand, explore, and evaluate their ideas in a compassionate and reflective way can give teachers support for their needs.
We are at a time when we know so much about the power of healthy back-and-forth conversation to support both students and teachers. Especially as we move back to a sense of normalcy after more than two years in a pandemic, we owe it to both students and teachers to support them in having deeper and more satisfying conversations. Such conversations aren’t the only cure to all that troubles us in preK-12 education; however, they offer an important tool that we can use, right now, to improve learning, social development, and school climate.
References
Fivush, R. & Sales, J.M. (2006). Coping, attachment, and mother-child narratives of stressful events. Merrill-Palmer Quarterly, 52 (1), 125-150.
Pope, D.C. & Miles, S. (2022). A caring climate that promotes belonging and engagement. Phi Delta Kappan, 103 (5), 8-12.
Preston, T. (2022). A look back: Caring about caring in Kappan. Phi Delta Kappan, 103 (5), 5-7.
Pruitt-Britton, T., Wilhelm, A.G., & Wilson, J. (2022). Nurturing students through social interactions. Phi Delta Kappan, 103 (5), 18-23.
Romeo, R.R., Leonard, J.A., Grotzinger, H.M., Robinson, S.T., Takada, M.E., Mackey, A.P., . . . & Gabrieli, J.D.E. (2021). Neuroplasticity associated with changes in conversational turn-taking following a family-based intervention. Developmental cognitive neuroscience, 49.
Romeo, R.R., Leonard, J.A., Robinson, S.T., West, M.R., Mackey, A.P., Rowe, M.L., & Gabrieli, J.D.E. (2018). Beyond the 30-million-word gap: Children’s conversational exposure is associated with language-related brain function. Psychological Science, 29 (5), 700-710.
Salmon, K. & Reese, E. (2016). The benefits of reminiscing with young children. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 25 (4), 233-238.
Stark, K., Daulet, N., & King, S. (2022). A vision for teachers’ emotional well-being. Phi Delta Kappan, 103 (5), 24-30.
Thomas, A. & Chess, S. (1977). Temperament and development. New York: Brunner/Mazel.
This article appears in the May 2022 issue of Kappan, Vol. 103, No. 8, pp. 66-67.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Rebecca Rolland
Rebecca Rolland is an adjunct lecturer at Harvard University, Cambridge, MA. She is the author of The Art of Talking with Children.
