PRINCIPLES:
- Responsibility lies with both the teacher and the student, and efficient learning is finding an equal balance between the roles of both.
- Dialogue between the teacher and the learner is the heart of any educational process.
- Large group teaching environments such as lectures, are places where effective learning cannot take place.
1. Overview:
Diana Laurillard’s Conversational Framework strives to overview the learning theories developed over the last few years and compress the main concepts into one schema allowing for educators to test new methods against them.
The framework itself elaborates on Pask and Scott’s conversation theory and highlights the role of dialogue in learning, expressing the necessity of conversation between teacher and student, over transmission of information from teacher to student.
Laurillard argues that the nature of much academic learning is largely defined by the acquisition of complex concepts and the creation of conceptual distinctions. The four components for efficient learning are considered to be: teacher’s concepts; teacher’s constructed learning environment; student’s concepts; and student’s specific actions; furthermore the necessity of a two-way dialogue between teacher and student at each of these conceptual levels is emphasized.
The premise of this framework focusses on producing an information-rich environment whereby the student is granted the opportunity to acquire knowledge, and this acquiring of knowledge is supported and enhanced through the guidance of teachers. The symmetrical nature of the model above further highlights the view of both the teacher and the student having an equal role in learning. This equality is a step forward from past theories of learning that lead to distortions by focussing solely on the teacher (tutor-centred learning) or the student (student-centred learning).
Important to remember:
The underlying processes of the conversational framework are categorized into four conversational phases outlined as follows:
2. Conversational Phases:
Discursive Phase: after the initial presentation of a new concept by a teacher, the learner and the teacher enter dialogue and collaborate to understand the concept.
Interactive Phase: the teachers formulate tasks incorporating the new concept and learners interact with these tasks receiving continuous feedback on their performance.
Adaptive Phase: further understanding is gained as the learners put the original concept into practice by relying on what they have learned to adapt their actions appropriately.
Reflective Phase: learners reflect on the above stages and further adjust their thinking as a result of such reflection.
KEY POINT:
It is evident through the above that this is a very interactive model focusing strongly on feedback,which may make it difficult to apply into higher education classes where there are large numbers of pupils to one teacher.
After identifying the conversational phases of learning, Laurillard outlines the main media types involved in prompting knowledge accumulation through this framework.
Easy to remember summary of the main media-based processes involved:
3. Media Types:
Media Form | Action | Learning Experience | Appropriate Media Technology | Use |
NARRATIVE | Tell/show the learning something | Attending, apprehending | Talk, print, video, broadcast, podcast | Present only teachers ideas, not learners reaction/reformulation of them |
INTERACTIVE | Media responds in a limited way to what the learner does | Investigating, exploring | Library, CD-ROM, simple learning objects, web | Allow students to make their own links and form their own inquiries |
COMMUNICATIVE | Facilitates exchanges | Discussing, debating | Seminar, online collaborative environments | Allow for continuous feedback |
ADAPTIVE | Learner changes behaviour based on learning | Experimenting, practicing | Lab, field trip, simulations, virtual environments | Can experiments with different parameters and put new learning into practice |
PRODUCTIVE | Allow learner to produce something | Articulating, expressing | Talk, print, model, digital files | Learner can share what ideas they have learned |
4. Summary and Limitations:
Laurillard describes the framework as ‘ a continuing iterative dialogue between teacher and student ,which reveals the participants’ conceptions and the variations between them’(Laurillard, 2002). It is asserted that there is no avoiding the need for dialogue, and that information cannot merely be passed from teacher to student without the components highlighted throughout the framework: discussion, interaction, adaption and reflection. This want for continuous dialogue/feedback may be considered idealistic when concerning higher education onwards. As there are a large number of pupils/students in one class/lecture theatre, it would be unrealistic to expect the teacher to interact individually with each. While dialogue and continuous feedback throughout activities may substantially improve learning, it may also be unrealistic to apply such teaching methods.
The conversational model highlights dialogue as the key to academic learning. The creation of interactive ‘micro-worlds’ (learning activities) is noted to support this learning process and allow the student to actively engage in practice that augments and strengthens the ideas that have been conveyed through discussion (the teachers concepts). The model emphasises that these activities should be created and adapted on the basis of the conceptual dialogue, rather than pre-set in advance. The final key aspect of the model is that opportunity for reflection/feedback is provided as part of the teaching and learning process ,which again may prove difficult in large classes/lectures.
The idealistic nature of this model may be criticised but simultaneously, as education is an applied science, it is important to create idealistic concepts when aiming to change and improve current methods.
5. Recommended Points of reference:
IF YOU ARE GOING TO READ ONE PAPER READ THE FOLLOWING:
· Cutts, Q., Kennedy, G., Mitchell, C., et Draper, S.(2004). Maximising Dialogue in lectures using group response systems. Conf. on Computers and Advanced Technologyin Education, Hawaii. Also available at http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/~quintin/papers/cate2004.pdf
The above paper discusses Laurillard’s model and pinpoints the difficulties in applying it to large teaching environments, namely lecture halls, and offers methods to overcome these difficulties through the use of different techniques, expressly GRS (Group Response Systems).
6. References:
· Atherton J S (2005) Learning and Teaching:Conversational learning theory; Pask and Laurillard On-line UK: Available: http://www.learningandteaching.info/learning/pask.htm Accessed: 20 March 2012.
· Hannon, P.A., Umble,K.E., Alexander, L., Francisco, D., Steckler, A., Tudor, G., and Upshaw, V.(2002). Gagne and Laurillard’s Moders of Instruction Applied to DistanceEducation: A theoretically driven evaluation of an online curriculum in publichealth. The international review ofresearch in open and distance learning. Vol 3, No 2.
· Laurillard, D. M. (1993). Rethinking UniversityTeaching: A Framework for the Effective Use of Educational Technology.Routledge, London.
· Laurillard, D. (2002). Rethinking UniversityTeaching. A conversational framework for the effective use of learning technologies.London: Routledge
· Miller, J. (2008). Learning as conversation. WorldPress.