Small group discussions: What students really say when they talk about expository text

Sociocultural theory assumes that students will construct new meaning and develop new knowledge structures when working in a collaborative setting. A common form of such collaborative learning is small peer group discussion. Within community colleges, students who are required to take developmental reading courses to improve their level of academic literacy often participate in small group text-based discussions not only to develop a better understanding of content but also to appropriate the cognitive strategies necessary for understanding complex text.; In this research, I examined what took place during a small text-based group discussion in a developmental reading class at a New Jersey community college to determine if there was any relationship between the discussion content and the content of the post-discussion written work of the students. Data collected included both written and oral texts of students. Students read assigned texts, wrote summaries and responses, participated in discussion groups, and rewrote summaries and responses after discussion. Written texts of students were analyzed for changes in meaning. Oral texts of discussion groups were analyzed for discourse strategies and discussion content.; Data analysis revealed that changes were evident in students' post summary writings as scores consistently improved as students incorporated new ideas into their summaries after discussions. However, no consistent patterns emerged in response writing, as scores remain unchanged or decreased in post-discussion response writings. Analysis of talk indicated that students were likely to stay on task and engage in academic talk, with high-level academic talk increasing during later discussion groups as students became more familiar with discourse strategies that make more focused discussions possible. When analyzing student contributions to talk, no clear pattern emerged that showed a relationship between contributions to discussion and improvement on post-writings. Students who made little or no contributions to the talk still showed improvements in their post-summary writings. Theoretical and pedagogical implications for me as a practitioner are discussed, and further research is recommended.