question 21/take one

This question is not, technically speaking, included on the list of 20 questions included in Take 20, but my answer to this particular question gets, I think, to some of the questions on the list that I've not yet had time to think or work through.

This afternoon, I received an email from a former student. (With the student's permission, I reproduce the question portion of the email along with my reply.) The student writes:

"I wanted to ask you (if you don't mind), what are your reservations about the IRE sequence in the classroom? I am beginning a paper on the topic (observing whether it breeds optimal opportunity for learning richness to occur or not to occur) and I have gathered that you somewhat avoid this sequence in your own teaching pedagogy. Why? You've always presented kind of a decentralized classroom where students take the floor as equally as the teacher (and on some days students take the floor almost completely, as this is what happened on group presentation days) and also, you sometimes juggled the role as playing both teacher and student simultaneously. This is how I have gathered that you generally veer away from the IRE sequence. I guess I'm requesting for some sort of insight you may have about this particular methodology of teaching (of course, if you don't mind sharing your thoughts about it). From reading about it briefly in an article as well as from my own prior experience, I extract that this methodology of teaching promotes individualism and not a sense of community between peers. This brought me to thinking about the happening movement, which idealistically, works to create a sense of community, right? Maybe, I should read more about it. Does this all make sense?"

And I replied:

I’ve not really thought of myself as someone who avoids or particularly dislikes the IRE sequencing though I do think the way this question-posing, turn-taking model is often portrayed in scholarship and/or the way it is taken up in actual practice has gotten (deservedly or not) a bad rap. If anything, much of what I do (I think) can’t help but follow along these “teacher initiates, student replies/responds, teacher evaluates” turn-taking lines: I, as teacher, initiate “X,” students (often having no other choice in the matter, save for avoiding me, and dropping the course) reply/respond in some way, and then I evaluate their responses and decide what to do (or not do) next time. You mention the group presentations, for instance. Long before a group actually presents, I have initiated the assigned readings, the groups, the requirement to meet with me at least one week in advance of the presentation date, and so on. During the pre-presentation meeting I initiate still other things, normally by way of a series of (seemingly never-ended) questions geared, in part, toward helping me better understand what, specifically so, will be happening during the presentation session, how the activities or discussion connects to the assigned readings and so on: “So what are you all thinking about and/or planning on doing? Why that (and not another idea you have come up with)? How will you do that? How much of the class period will it take to do that? What will you do as a back-up plan? How will you construct activities prompts to avoid unnecessary confusion?” Based on what I hear/see, I may make an evaluative statement (i.e., can’t do that, won’t work, I’m not comfortable with that, I don’t see how that connects, sound good, cool beans) or I might ask still other questions. Do these serve an evaluative function? I think so. The questions might be geared toward pushing people to think of other still other consequences of their goals and choices (i.e., a way of saying, “I’m not sure you’ve thought through all the angles”) or they might function of a way of saying, “I’m not sure I completely understand, can you say more or put it another way?” As you well know, once the presentation has been completed, another IRE round begins with me asking group members to revisit their goals in choices in light of what happened during and after the presentation and this is a document that I, in turn, definitely evaluate.

All that said, the distinction I think you may be drawing here could have less to do with the IRE sequence itself than with kinds of questions it’s often associated with. I think now of the distinctions Nystrand makes between “authentic questions,” “quasi-authentic questions,” and “test questions.” Nystrand (as quoted in Wertsch) writes:

“Authentic questions are questions for which the asker has not prescribed an answer. . .Dialogically, authentic teacher questions signal to students the teacher’s interest in what they think and know and not just whether they can report what someone else think or has said. Authentic questions invite students to contribute something new to the discussion that can change or modify it in some way. By contrast, a test question allows students no control over the flow of the discussion. Because authentic questions allow an indeterminate number of acceptable answers and open the floor to students’ ideas, they work dialogically. . .a test question allows only one possible right answer, and is hence monologic (in Lotman’s terms, univocal).”

While it is true that I rarely ask questions that follow along the lines of the state/capital example referenced in this same text (i.e., I don’t typically start class by asking, “Okay folks, who can tell me who wrote Mind as Action?” Student 1: “Kress?” Teacher: “Nope, anyone else have a guess? Student 2: Wertsch?” Teacher: “Good.”), I know you know I do ask, have asked, more than my fair share of “test questions,” questions for which I certainly have a definite, non-negotiable “right answer” in mind: “Will everyone take out their readings?” “Who doesn’t have the readings?” “Why don’t you have the readings?”

So I think the difference you might be picking up on here has less to do with the IRE sequence itself and more to do with the kinds of questions I often ask or the work I see questions potentially doing in my classroom. As the word “authentic” tends to make me giggle (unless Oprah comes to mind first which just sets me off on a rant), I’d prefer the word “earnest” or “interested.” I mean, I am pretty interested in how people are or are not making sense of, complicating, extending, connecting to still other contexts the assigned readings, discussions, tasks and activities. Problem is (as you well know), it’s often the case that when I throw out the first question, regardless of how open-ended I try to make it (i.e., “So what’s the dealio with Wertsch and his properties of mediational means?” "What's the dealio with pogo sticks? Why don't people use them anymore?"), people tend to respond always and only to or through me—perhaps because it was my question/concern/book pick/hobby/whatever in the first place.

For this reason, the sessions I tend to enjoy the most and in which I often learn the most about still other potentials for making and negotiating meaning (i.e., from perspectives other than my own) are the group presentation and the workshopping sessions. Any session, really, when it seems more like we’re almost approximating a “real” discussion/conversation (by “real” I mean when we have dispensed with the hand-raising, when people seem invested in the topic, when they are looking at, talking to—sometimes even interrupting each other—this, as opposed to having any/all comments and questions directed at or funneled through me). I’m not saying that this can’t happen with during the teacher-lead discussion sessions, but with the workshopping sessions, especially, it seems like students come to the class with questions they want/need to have answered, questions about what they are trying to accomplish as opposed, I suppose, to questions about what Wertsch or the inventor of the pogo stick was trying to accomplish. What’s important to underscore though about the group presentation and workshopping sessions (at least as I understand them) is that, save perhaps for online sessions or f2f session where there’s a lot of interruption and cross-talking, they are still patterned on the IRE model. But in these cases, it’s often case that the student (as opposed to the teacher) initiates the questions, the teacher (and/or other students) reply/respond, and then the student evaluates what his/her classmates and teacher have offered.

(PS. Having replied to your question, I await my evaluation. Otherwise put: Was this the right answer? Was this what you were looking for? Is this "A" work, or will I need to revise and resubmit?)