Eliciting Initial Ideas, Building Understandings, and Coming to Consensus: Using Different Teacher Moves for Distinct Discussion Types

Whole-group discussions are a key aspect of the NGSS because these activities are where students collectively make sense of natural phenomena. However, curriculum can present all discussions as possessing the same instructional purpose and roles. This can send the wrong message to teachers as to how to engage their students and help develop their science ideas. We present a framework for the three types of discussions—initial ideas, building understandings, and consensus—that occur regularly in NGSS-aligned science classrooms. This framework highlights the different but complementary instructional purposes and roles of these discussions. The Discussion Types Framework can help teachers to better understand, plan for, and teach the different discussion types that are integral to an NGSS-aligned science classroom. When teachers understand the discussion type, they are better prepared to use different facilitation moves that will help them to elicit student thinking, position students' ideas relative to each other, and develop the class's understanding.