Discussion as a way of teaching

I’m going to be a nice guy and start off with what I liked about the article. The idea I like the most was the circle of voices; I like the idea of small group discussion over large whole class discussions. I’ve had some positive experiences with entire class discussions, but for the most part, whole class discussions typically turn into a situation where four or five people provide the bulk of the conversation with a handful of others chiming in from time to time. In my opinion, small group discussions are easier for the group to “self” maintain as it were, and they allow everyone who is involved the opportunity to be heard. I liked the idea of starting the group discussion off with a few minutes of silent reflection and then following this with an opening go-round where everyone gets to give his or her thoughts on the subject without interruption from other member’s. This grace period allows everyone to get their bearings, and it keeps the group from derailing a discussion with half-cocked answers and opinions. Another area I liked was the conversational moves. I thought this was a great way to teach students how to participate in a group discussion effectively. I also dug the idea of having a few members of the group demonstrate the moves during the discussion and then handing out the list to students so they can see the many ways to help keep a group discussion rolling. Now it’s time to talk about what I didn’t think would work well in a real-world setting. I don’t know how well the conversational roles would work in a real class discussion. My biggest concern is twofold. The first is that students would be more concerned with fulfilling their conversational role rather than genuinely participating which would lead to a lackluster debate overall, and the second is that some of the shyer students would use their roles as a way to justify not actively participating in the discussion. Some of the ideas on how to deviate from standard group discussions seem good in theory, but regarding practicality, I don’t think that they are achievable. A great example of this is the rotating station's idea; I like the idea of having the student’s going from group to group responding to each other, but I don’t think that this format allows students much time to prepare or discuss the result as a class.