GUIDED CONSTRUCTION OF KNOWLEDGE IN THE

CLASSROOM: TEACHER, TALK, TASK, AND TOOLS

Sarah Michaels M.C. O’Connor Richard Sohmer Lauren Resnick
Clark University Boston University Investigators' Club Pittsburgh University

This paper examines ways that teachers guide the construction of knowledge in the
classroom, using particular norms and forms of talk to support rigorous academic
learning in ethno-linguistically and socio-economically diverse classrooms in the
United States. We characterize the features of this kind of talk, which we call
“Accountable Talk” and the challenges teachers face in bringing students from all
backgrounds into the conversation. We also explore the role of the task itself (and the
participant structure entailed by the task) as well as the cultural tools the students are
using in mediating and scaffolding knowledge construction. We suggest, in the end,
that we have to develop a better theorized notion of a talk/task/tool amalgam, in
understanding guided knowledge construction in complex social arenas.
INTRODUCTION
Over the past 15 years, we have examined how particular norms and forms of talk,
which we call “Accountable TalkSM1 ,” support rigorous academic learning in ethno-
linguistically and socio-economically diverse classrooms in the United States. We see
Accountable Talk as encompassing three broad dimensions: one, accountability to the
learning community, in which participants listen to and build their contributions in
response to those of others; two, accountability to accepted standards of reasoning,
talk that emphasizes logical connections and the drawing of reasonable conclusions;
and, three, accountability to knowledge, talk that is based explicitly on facts, written
texts, or other public information. Combining the three aspects of Accountable Talk
is essential for the full development of student capacities and dispositions for
participation in academically productive discourse. (Michaels, O’Connor, Hall &
Resnick, 2002).
Our work grows out of a Vygotskian theoretical framework which emphasizes the
“social formation of mind,” that is, the importance of social interaction in the
development of individual mental processes (ideas that were also developed in
seminal work by Dewey, 1966, and G.H. Mead, 1967). It emphasizes the importance
of social practices, in particular the careful orchestration of talk and tasks, in
academic learning. Sensemaking and scaffolded discussion calling for particular
forms of talk, are seen as the primary mechanism for promoting deep understanding
of complex concepts and robust reasoning.
We can point to a number of “success stories” in the literature on instructional change
and school reform, where elements of academically productive talk are demonstrated
(c.f., among others, Lee, 2001; Goldenberg, 1992/3; Beck et al., 1996; Chapin,
O’Connor, & Anderson, 2003; Lampert & Ball, 1998; Minstrell, 1989; Warren &
Rosebery, 1996; and Sohmer, 2000). These are all cases of discourse-intensive
pedagogical practices that combine rigorous tasks with carefully orchestrated, teacher-
led discussion. Through talk, students are encouraged to draw on their home-based
genres of argument and explication, while practicing and honing new representational
and discursive tools. These practices have been shown to result in robust, sometimes
1
Accountable Talk is service marked by the University of Pittsburgh.
remarkable, academic achievements for working-class and middle-class students,
alike, and for students from a range of linguistic backgrounds.
In the following sections, we consider each of the three facets of Accountable Talk
separately, beginning with the facet we have found easiest to establish in classrooms
and moving to the most difficult 2 .
Accountability to the Learning Community
This is talk that attends seriously to and builds on the ideas of others; participants
listen carefully to one another, build on each other’s ideas, and ask each other
questions aimed at clarifying or expanding a proposition. This community facet of
accountability seems to be the most straightforward and simplest to implement in a
classroom. Once introduced to the idea, teachers quickly find that a relatively small
number of conversation openers or extenders seem to evoke the desired features of
student talk. These include:
• Who can put into their own words what Keisha just said?
• Does anyone else want to add on?
• Can you explain what you meant when you said…?
• Take your time. We’ll wait…
• Hold on. Let John finish his thought.
When teachers regularly use these and similar conversation guides, it is typical that, a
few weeks later, students can be heard using the following kinds of statements on
their own:
• I disagree with Nelia, andI agree with Jamal because….
• Um, that… can you repeat that question again?
• I wanted to add something. She was probably trying to say…
It is important to note that in order for the students to begin using these forms of talk,
there have to be interesting and complex ideas to talk and argue about. Implicitly or
explicitly, teachers who have implemented these discourse strategies have shifted
away from simple questions and one-word answers and opened up the conversation to
problems that support multiple positions or solution paths.
Once this kind of talk from students appears, another interesting thing happens.
Teachers start to remark that they are amazed at what their students have to say. “I
had no idea they were so smart,” is a commonly heard remark from teachers new to
Accountable Talk. “I was amazed to hear X saying that. He’s never talked before.”
“I was amazed by all the different ideas they came up, and how they justified their
ideas with evidence.” It seems that simply opening up the conversation, with
interesting and complex problems to support the talk, along with a few key talk
moves, gives teachers more access to the thinking, knowledge, and reasoning
capabilities of their diverse students.
Accountability to Standards of Reasoning
This is talk that emphasizes logical connections and the drawing of reasonable
conclusions. It is talk that involves explanation and self-correction. It often involves
searching for premises, rather than simply supporting or attacking conclusions.
Earlier research suggests that this is something that people do quite naturally,

2
This section of the paper includes a description of Accountable Talk that appears in “Deliberative
Discourse Idealized and Realized: Accountable Talk in the Classroom and in Civic Life,” by Michaels,
O’Connor, & Resnick, in press.
although it is necessary to use tools of linguistic and logical analysis to detect the
rationality of ordinary conversational discussions (Resnick et al., 1993).
Even very young children, in trying to understand and influence the world around
them, can build arguments or question the premises of others' claims. These ideas
may be undeveloped, incomplete, or even incorrect. But young children have far
more to build on than was recognized in the past (Michaels & Olson, in press). This
kind of reasoning skill may well be in our genes.
Accountability to Knowledge
The most complex and difficult of our three accountabilities — accountability to
knowledge — is talk that is accountable to knowledge is based explicitly on facts,
written texts or other publicly accessible information that all individuals can access.
Speakers make an effort to get their facts right and make explicit the evidence behind
their claims or explanations. They challenge each other when evidence is lacking or
unavailable. When the content under discussion involves new or incompletely
mastered knowledge, accountable discussion can uncover misunderstandings and
misconceptions. A knowledgeable and skilled teacher is required to provide
authoritative knowledge when necessary and to guide conversation toward
academically correct concepts.
The following example comes from a third-grade mathematics class. It is taken from
Chapin, O’Connor, & Anderson (2003).
Ms. Davies has given her third-grader students a series of numbers, and in a whole
group discussion has asked them to say whether the numbers are even or odd. The
day before they had established that if you can divide a number by two with no
remainder, then it is an even number. Paulo has tackled the number 24. His
contribution is less than completely clear.
1 Ms. Davies: So Paulo, is twenty-four even or odd? What do you think?
2 Paulo: Well, if we could use three, then it could go into that, but three is
odd. So then if it was … but … three is even. I mean odd. So if
it’s odd, then it’s not even.
Ms. Davies “revoices” Paulo’s contribution, making it clear that he
is claiming that 24 is an odd number.
3 Ms. Davies: OK, let me see if I understand. So you’re saying that twenty-four is
an odd number?
4 Paulo: Yeah. Because three goes into it, because twenty-four divided by
three is eight.
What follows might surprise (or even shock) many educators.
Rather than rejecting Paolo’s claim, Ms. Davies asks if anyone in
the class understood what Paulo has said and can restate it in their
own words.
5 Ms. Davies: Can anyone repeat what Paulo just said in his or her own words?
Cyndy?
6 Cyndy: Um, I think I can. I think he said that twenty-four is odd, because it
can be divided by three with no remainder.
Cyndy’s response makes Paulo’s reasoning about “evenness” even
more explicit by bringing up the fact that there are no remainders.
By this point, all the students have likely heard that 24 is an odd
number!
7 Ms. Davies: Is that right, Paulo? Is that what you said?
 8 Paulo: Yes.
The next step for the teacher is to actively solicit other opinions and
set the two views side by side.
9 Ms. Davies: Miranda, do you agree or disagree with what Paulo said?
10 Miranda: Well, I sort of … like, I disagree?
11 Ms. Davies: Can you tell us why you disagree with what he said? What’s your
reasoning?
12 Miranda: Because I thought that we said yesterday that you could divide even
numbers by two. And I think you can divide twenty-four by two.
And it’s twelve. So like, isn’t that even?
Miranda refers back to “authoritative” knowledge, without
mathematical support.
13 Ms. Davies: So we have two different ideas here about the number twenty-four.
Paulo, you’re saying that twenty-four is odd because you can divide
it by three with no remainder?
14 Paulo: Uh huh.
15 Ms. Davies: And Miranda, you’re saying that it’s even because you can divide it
by two? Is that correct?
16 Miranda: Yes.
Finally, the teacher returns the argument to the whole group, using
wait time in order to encourage broader participation.
17 Ms. Davies: OK, so what about other people? Who would like to add to this
discussion? Do you agree or disagree with Miranda’s or Paulo’s
ideas? Tell us what you think, or add on other comments or
insights.
One student raises her hand. 45 seconds go by as Ms. Davies
waits; slowly nine other hands go up. One is Eduardo’s, a student
who is learning English as a second language, and who rarely says
anything.
18 Ms. Davies: Eduardo. Tell us what you think.
15 more seconds go by.
19 Eduardo: Yes, I agree with Miranda’s idea, because the only way you told us
to find out if something is even is to divide by two. And we can
divide twenty-four by three, and we can also divide it by four. And
we can divide it by six, too. And you don’t get no extras, um…
remainders. So I think we should stick with two only.
Some will see in this example a productive attempt at sense making. Others will see a
wrongheaded decision to grant class time to an incorrect idea or misconception. In
our view, this opposition is itself misleading.
We argue for a productive middle ground, where robust reasoning and systematic
organization and accumulation of knowledge can develop symbiotically, evident in
the example with Ms. Davies’ students, as the students participate in carefully
designed forms of classroom talk. In understanding such talk, it helps to distinguish
between knowledge that requires direct transmission and authoritative sources (e.g.,
conventional and thus wholly arbitrary mathematical symbols or definitions) and
knowledge that can be acquired by “figuring things out.” (cf. Chapin et al. 2003). A
similar idea has been discussed by a number of socioculturalists (Wertsch (1991),
Wells (ms.), building on the distinction Lotman (1988) develops in describing two
functions of text: monologic versus dialogic text — ideas to take without challenge
versus ideas to think with. In Accountable Talk, both monologic (authoritative) and
dialogic discourse have their place.
Interdependencies of the three facets of Accountable Talk
The distinctions among the three facets of Accountable Talk — community,
knowledge, and reasoning — are analytically separable. Imagine a discussion in a
classroom where the students are politely listening to one another and saying things
such as, “I want to add on to what Everett just said,” but where there is no
accountability to knowledge or reasoning. Students say whatever they want, and one
opinion is treated the same as any other. It is also possible to imagine a discussion
where accountability to reasoning is in evidence, i.e. where the students are building
an argument, with premises and evidence and counterexamples, but where their facts
are simply wrong. In practice, however, the three facets are inextricably intertwined,
interdependent, and must co-occur if discourse is promote academic learning. (This is
explained further in the full paper.)
BEYOND ACCOUNTABLE TALK: A CONSIDERATION OF THE ROLE OF
PARTICIPANT STRUCTURES AND TALK FORMATS
While the work examining talk in classrooms is quite extensive, far less has been
done on the role of participant structures and cultural tools in guiding knowledge
construction. In the full paper, we examine a particular episode of guided knowledge
construction. It takes place in an after-school program known as The Investigators
Club, which supports the teaching of physics to inner city middle school students,
most of whom are failing in school. The example focuses on the physics of air
pressure and a particular “tool” which we have developed to help students understand
and explain counterintuitive phenomena.
In analyzing the use of tools in guiding knowledge construction (scientific
explanation) in the Investigators Club, we ask: What are the tools which help students
see, speak, and reason in new and powerful ways? How do you get middle school
students who hate school, and who (by and large) are failing at school to pick up these
tools willingly and use them effectively? When a tool – such as “the Two Puppies
story” to be described below – works extraordinarily well, we are especially curious.
We observe that it works – but how does it work?
The Investigators Club (“I-Club”) setting is an after-school program that meets three
times a week for 15 weeks. Participants are inner city middle school students (7th
graders) from a wide range of cultural and linguistic backgrounds, predominantly
those who are struggling and/or failing in school.
The I-Club recruits students’ everyday ways of speaking about the world – while
gradually scaffolding them into the use of new discursive tools (new ways of giving
scientific explanations and using representational tools). In this program, the
activities (“tasks” or “demos”) are designed to promote active theorizing, prediction,
and argument about puzzling physical phenomena, often called “discrepant events.”
In the process, having a well-argued theory is the name of the game. If a student’s
prediction, or theory, or both are in the end disconfirmed by the evidence, that is OK:
the job of the scientist is to make cogent predictions and theories so that they may be
cogently disconfirmed. The goal is to make one’s claim as explicit and persuasive as
possible. Everyone benefits from seeing the (ultimately) best theory in the field of
contesting, less effective theories, and everyone can appropriate the results for their
own use in the next task.
The Investigators Club program presumes that students come to class with very well
developed theories of how the world works. Students are, in our view, already
successful investigators of the physical world – they know how to jump out of the
way of an on-coming bus, transfer liquids, move heavy or clumsy objects around, deal
with friction and force, etc.; they have (implicit) theories of invisible, underlying
forces (suction, heat, pressure, gravity) in their environments. In contrast, what we
call “Textbook Science” deprecates students’ already-existing knowledge. At one
extreme, the existence, extent, complexity, and utility of students’ knowledge are
simply not acknowledged. At another extreme, students’ knowledge is framed as
comprised of baleful misconceptions which are to be removed and replaced - like
getting one’s teeth swapped out for dentures - by canonical counterparts (Varenne and
McDermott, 1999).
I-Club students (‘Investigators”) use their diverse, culturally derived, everyday ways
of speaking about discrepant events made from everyday objects (balloons, soda cans,
drinking glasses, candles, water, fire, etc.) but the phenomena to which they refer are -
- under a central assumption of physics -- the SAME phenomena. In the process of
explicating contesting predictions and theories with reference to shared observable
physical events (i.e., in the process of doing physics), the students are guided by the
teacher, using the norms and forms of Accountable Talk, as described above. They
are scaffolded toward the Discourse of physics, which is not anybody’s primary
discourse. In the process of doing science, the students take on a new identity
(scientist) – which does not conflict with and in fact builds upon (and transforms)
their current understandings and ways of speaking as the basis for new ways with
words.
THE ROLE OF THE TASK/PARTICIPANT STRUCTURE IN GUIDING
KNOWLEDGE CONSTRUCTION
Investigators Club tasks are embedded in a set of participant structures and
expectations which model the way scientists actually talk, think, and act. Students
accomplish both identity work and cognitive work in the practice of these activities –
and it is the students who are doing the science. Two primary and recurring talk
formats in the I-Club are what we have come to call “position-driven discussion” and
“student presentation and critique.” In a position-driven discussion, students focus
on a single problem or question, often with a set of likely or even pre-selected choices
as outcomes. In these position-driven discussions everyone is focused on the same
phenomenon, situation, or problem, but encouraged (indeed required, at times) to
commit to one position or another and to argue for their respective predictions or
theories. At the same time, participants are free to change their position on the basis
of another's evidence or arguments, typically with the proviso that they explain what
it is in the other's position that they find useful or persuasive.
The teacher’s job is not to provide “right answers.” Put somewhat more positively,
one of the I-Club teacher’s major concerns is to avoid shutting down the discussion by
prematurely “telegraphing” (indicating in any way) which theory is closest to being
canonically correct. Rather, in position-driven discussions, the teacher typically
scaffolds students by "revoicing" their contributions and pushing for clarification, so
that everyone has access to everyone else's reasoning (O’Connor & Michaels, 1996).
The teacher might say, "OK, so let me see if I've got your theory right. You're saying
that the volleyball will weigh less when I put more air into it because balloons are
lighter when full of air?" Having a good "sayable" theory (conjecture, or position) is
more important than having the right theory, until the final phase of the discussion,
where, for example, the science demo is run and there is consensus on the outcome.
(At that point, typically the teacher's role changes, and a focus on correctness, getting
the right solution, and actively explaining to the students how to think about the
situation takes place.) The teacher is primarily a coach, whose job is not to talk the
students out of their home-based knowledge and the theories implicit in that
knowledge, but rather to help them to explicate, clarify, and sharpen their theories.
(See O’Connor, 2001; Michaels & Sohmer, 2001; Michaels, O’Connor, Hall, &
Resnick 2002 for more discussion of position-driven discussions.)
A second productive participant structure/ talk form takes the form of a student
presentation followed by critique by one’s peers. The teacher has several pedagogical
purposes for getting the students to present and for getting the audience to critique the
presenter. In the words of Sohmer, the teacher:
First, presenting to their peers helps prepare them for public presentations and questions
from an audience, such as science fairs or teaching younger students [both valued
activities the students work toward in the I-Club]. Second, giving presentations to the
group helps both presenter and audience take on the identity of an expert – an expert
investigator, far different from their identities in school, where many of these students are
failing. The student presenting stands up as an expert, even if she has to try a couple of
times to get it just right. The feedback, from peers and from me, provides the presenter
with guidance and practice so that she can improve as an explainer. At the same time, the
members of the audience are positioned as “expert enough” to critique the presenter. I’ve
put them in the position of the coach or teacher. … This is a task shared by the entire
group, no one of them has to do it all. I’ve shown them I know they can do it, but, at the
same time, I haven’t given them a blank check. They have to do my job credibly in order
to keep playing it, and I’m right there to step in to assist, if need be, either the presenter or
her critics.
THE ROLE OF CULTURAL TOOLS
At strategic points – when experience has motivated its appreciation, and where it
would be unproductive to demand that students “re-invent the wheel” – the I-Club
teacher provides new “explanatory tools” (often in the form of analogies and
narratives). The “Two Puppies” story (Sohmer & Michaels, 2005), for example, is a
narrative form of the Ideal Gas Law. In the “Two Puppies” story 3 , the “puppies”
referred to are mythical or fictional beings – “Air-puppies” – combining some of the
properties of real, live puppies with the behavioral characteristics of air molecules.
The air-puppies are the bumbling (mindless) agents in a modifiable story with a
particular setting (always including two rooms separated by a moveable wall-on-
wheels), participating in a series of events, always resulting in some kind of lawful

3
‘Two Puppies” is the abbreviated name for an otherwise impossibly clumsy story title: “The Room
that’s been divided by a moveable wall-on-wheels into 2 rooms in each of which there is a group of
constantly-bumbling-around Air-puppies, so that there is always a pushing match going on between the
Two sets of Puppies, even though the Puppies are never thinking about anything, never trying to do
anything, and never even aware of anything at all.”
effect – that is, the wall moves as it must, given the air-puppies’ opposing impacts
upon both sides.
We typically introduce the Air-puppies story to the kids (in a 10- to 20-minute
session) by telling them the basic story, followed – always - by several variations. As
the story progresses, the situation and changes in it are illustrated with simple,
freehand drawings (on whiteboard, paper, or chalkboard). We begin by asking the
kids to imagine a big room divided into two smaller rooms by a wall on frictionless
wheels (like roller skates). In each of the rooms on either side of the wall-on-wheels
there are air-puppies – initially, (equal numbers and kinds of air-puppies – mindlessly
bumbling around. (Figure 2 below shows a top-down view of the situation.) The
dividing wall-on-wheels moves 4 whenever a puppy bumps into it (not intentionally,
just mindlessly moving around). As the puppies bumble around and mindlessly bump
into things (all the walls and each other), “What,” we ask the kids, “will happen to the
wall?” Even at this point, in this first session, one or more kids will confidently
“read” the situation to predict that “the wall [on wheels] will stay in the same place.”

Figure 2. The view from above of the beginning of the “Two Puppies” story. In this
version of the story there are equal (numbers and kinds of) air-puppies on each side of
the wall-on-wheels.

Once the scenario in Figure 2 is set in motion the wall-on-wheels (henceforth simply,
as the kids say it, “the wall”) is pushed a little bit to one side or the other each time a
puppy bumps into it. Because the wall gets, on average, the same number and kind of
bumps from each side, the wall stays over time in approximately the same place,
oscillating about the centerline (Figure 3).

4
The wall-on-wheels can move to the left or to the right, but is constrained so that it always maintains
its orientation perpendicular to the long walls of the room.
Figure 3. With equal (numbers and kinds of) air-puppies on each side, the wall-on-
wheels is continually bumped from side to side. The net impact of the puppies on one
side of “the wall” (the wall-on-wheels) is, on average, equal to the net impact of the
puppies on the other side, making the wall oscillate about the center-line.

A number of variations on this basic story are possible:

Story Variation #1
Storyteller: “What if we start out with the same number of air-puppies – twenty –on
this [right-hand, e.g.] side of the wall, and more air-puppies - say, a hundred – on the
other [left-hand] side? What do you think will happen to the wall-on-wheels?”
Kids will say (something like): “The wall’s gonna move towards the twenty puppies
side [i.e., the wall will move to the right] because there’s more puppy hits on the other
[hundred-puppy] side.”
Story Variation #2
Storyteller: “What if we start out with the same number of air-puppies on both sides
of the wall, but we get the puppies on one side really excited – so that they bumble
around much faster than the puppies on the other side… What do you think will
happen to the wall-on-wheels?” Kids will say (something like): “The fast puppies are
gonna bump into the wall faster and more times and harder so the wall is gonna be
pushed away, towards the slow puppies.
But if, say, some of the puppies on the right side of the wall leave the room (by a
door), what will happen? Figure 4 illustrates this situation.

Figure 4. View from times 1, 2, and 3. As air-puppies in the right room “bumble” out
the open door, there are fewer and fewer air-puppy impacts from the right upon the
wall-on-wheels. Increasingly unopposed air-puppy impacts from the left push the wall
away – to the left.

In this case, the wall on wheels is pushed to the right, as puppy bumps on the left side
are less and less opposed by puppy bumps on the right side.
Most people see, use, and accept “suction” as a perfectly adequate explanation of
ordinary actions like using a vacuum cleaner to clean a carpet or drinking a milkshake
through a straw. An ordinary person who doesn’t know much physics sees sucking
(or, what sounds more scientific, a “vacuum”) at work when they see a person
drinking a milkshake through a straw. A physicist, in contrast, sees pushing. The
actual forces of pulling and pushing are both invisible, but practitioners of physics see
pushing: atmospheric pressure pushing the milkshake up into the straw. The full
paper shows an episode of discussion in the I-Club where all three factors — talk
moves, participant structures, and tools — are critical features of guided knowledge
construction. The I-Club members take on new tools, such as the Two Puppies story,
and new ways of arguing (building and weighing scientific arguments).
WHAT EVIDENCE IS THERE THAT LEARNING TAKES PLACE?
From a variety of perspectives and using a number of indicators, we have been able to
show that students who were failing in school became capable, in the course of
participation in I-Club activities, of demonstrating impressive intellectual abilities —
in understanding and theorizing difficult problems in physics, and in demonstrating
that understanding to others. Evidence includes (but is not limited to): pre- and post-
tests of science knowledge; questionnaires of I-Club students and matched controls’
motivation, participation, and sense of efficacy in school; teacher judgments of
students in school; Investigators’ successful participation in the school science fair;
Investigators’ demonstrated ability to present, conduct discussions about, and teach
the physics of air pressure to younger (fifth-grade) students.
We have both quantitative and qualitative evidence that these students did in fact
come to take on expanded identities as “Science Investigators.” They participated as
effective members of a specific Discourse, the Investigators Club, which embodies
skills, attitudes and knowledge valued by the Discourses of science and school. We
can also show that the I-Club Discourse did not resonate with their previous negative
experiences in school, and that it consisted of practices that allowed these students to
voluntarily acquire and demonstrate competence in knowledge, skills and attitudes
valued in scientific contexts (and schools). 5
We also assessed changes in students’ scientific reasoning. Repeated measures
analyses showed that I-Club students increased in the complexity of their responses
over time relative to control children who decreased. I-Club students were less likely
than control participants to use anthropomorphic or volitional causes (“the fire wanted
to escape from the bottle and so it sucked the egg in”) as explanatory devices.
Our studies of the motivational structure and impact of the Investigators Club have
also provided significant results. Relative to their matched controls, the I-Club

5
We assess the language use and development of scientific explanations over time from videotapes of
all I-Club sessions (coding participation structures, individual participation, and looking closely at
transcripts) but we also administer pre- and post-tests of science learning (multiple choice and open-
ended answers). We make extensive use of self-report questionnaire data – about motivation, academic
efficacy, and engagement – after each session of the I-Club, as well as administering general
questionnaire surveys about school, home, academic efficacy, theories of intelligence, parents, and
teachers twice a year. We have questionnaire data from teachers of the students, how they perform in
school. And we have a randomized, matched control group for all I-Club students and we follow all of
the students over 2 years after their I-Club semester to assess both durability and transportability of I-
Club effects. This more controlled, longitudinal study includes 3 different cohorts of I-Club/controls,
taught by three different I-Club teachers.
participants increased more from pre- to post-assessments in school engagement and
learning orientation (working to actually learn something rather than just to look
smart) and decreased more from pre- to post-assessment in their performance
orientation and external motivation for school (doing school work just to look smart
or because you have to). Further, the I-Club students described their teachers and
parents as more autonomy supportive over time relative to the controls (an interesting
and unexpected result). These results show that the I-Club was successful in creating
positive changes which were evident even outside of the I-Club setting.
Through a complex practice that relies on the strategic and highly orchestrated
interplay of talk, task, and tools, I-Club students learn new ways to model and
theorize about complex phenomena and new ways to make their thinking visible to
their peers and to themselves. This makes it possible for them to critique and improve
their ideas and present them to others as experts (as teachers of younger students or to
judges at science fairs). In the process, these students do indeed begin to “re-see” the
world — and they come to see themselves as competent and powerful agents within
it.
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