The Skillful Teacher

participate, means that no one person dominates unfairly, and
ensures that individuals cannot hijack the topic for their own ide-
ological conversion of other participants without themselves being
open to listening to others’ points of view. Indeed, unless the
teacher deliberately intervenes to guide the process of discussion to
prevent these things happening, the patterns of conversational
dominance that exist outside the classroom will immediately repro-
duce themselves inside. Those learners with intellectual capital, cul-
tural prestige, and command of the dominant linguistic discourse
will be listened to seriously, while those who are quiet, marginal-
ized, unconfident, or whose first language is not English will remain
on the conversational periphery. In the next chapter I provide sev-
eral examples of how teachers can deliberately intervene to guide
the creation of processes that ensure participatory discussions.
Preparing Students for Discussion
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8
F
or the social and cognitive reasons mentioned in Chapter
Seven, most teachers who use discussion put a premium on stu-
dent participation. As that chapter argued, however, participation
should not be equated with frequent speech. The performance anx-
iety induced by thinking that good participation requires one to be
a continuous and brilliant conversationalist can kill, rather than
enhance, learning through discussion. For this reason, the criteria
that teachers use to assess students’ participation should include
silent, or at least less verbal, measures. Students should know that