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Designing Discussions: Four Ways to Open Up a Dialogue

Discussion-based teaching has long been recognized as a way to promote civic engagement. However, increasing the amount and quality of student talk in social studies classrooms has proven very difficult in practice. This article's purpose is to show how teachers can design a discussion to increase student involvement. A well-designed discussion will satisfy the following three conditions: the topic will be arguable, located within the students' existing knowledge base, and educational in purpose. These conditions can be met by using the four discussion designs featured in this article, including responding to a problem, responding to an observation, responding to a narrative, and reflecting on classroom activities. Each of these designs is fully described and illustrated with examples. The article concludes with a teacher's description of how he designed and implemented a discussion in his classroom.