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By Carole Geneix, guest author on May 04, 2021

Devon Wilson is a Research Assistant at Project Zero, where he works on the Out of Eden Learn project and the ID Global project. This blog post reflects work that Devon undertook in collaboration with Carrie James.

Author’s note: In this piece, I describe insights from a series of interviews with educators who creatively utilize the Dialogue Toolkit to support thoughtful dialogue amongst students. I identify six powerful teacher moves and provide more details about how these moves are enacted in these teachers’ classrooms and contexts. For a distilled version of the six powerful teacher moves, click here.

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It can be easy for students to like something on social media or digital learning platforms, but how can we encourage students to expand their repertoire of skills for online commenting and exchange?

The Dialogue Toolkit (DTK) was designed to promote thoughtful commenting and meaningful discussions in online learning communities (including Out of Eden Learn (OOEL), the digital exchange program for which the DTK was originally designed). By highlighting specific moves that students can use in their comments, the DTK aims to slow down the process of responding and exchanging ideas with online peers. It also helps direct students’ thinking, and ideas for comments, in different directions in order to support a higher quality of exchange and mutual understanding between students.

Even with the Dialogue Toolkit as a resource, without teacher support, many students may still rely primarily on “liking” an online post or providing quick comments that do not move the conversation forward. The following strategies for enhancing student dialogue, using and extending the Dialogue Toolkit, emerged from a series of interviews with educators. In these teacher’s classrooms, we observed students using the Dialogue Toolkit effectively and seeing the value of using the Toolkit’s moves to support thoughtful dialogue. Specifically, in these teacher’s classrooms, we observed one or more of the following moves:

1. Model and Practice Different Dialogue Toolkit Moves 
2. Reinforce Physical & Electronic Presence of the Toolkit
3. Coach and Provide Feedback on an Individual Basis
4. Connect to In-Person Communication Strategies
5. Use DTK Moves in Delivering Feedback on Student Work
6. Discuss the Purpose and Value of Thoughtful Dialogue in Digital Exchange and Beyond

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1. Model and Practice Different Dialogue Toolkit Moves 

In Angelia Crouch’s Middle School World History class at St Joseph Catholic School, an emphasis on dialogue moves starts right away, in the initial footsteps (learning experiences) of their OOEL learning journey. After giving students an opportunity to look closely at the Dialogue Toolkit, she guides them in looking together at images and text from a few sample posts, asking them to consider some of the ways they could respond.

Sample Photographs from OOEL students Neighborhood Walk Posts

As she guides students in looking closely at a single post, she asks questions such as:
“What is one thing that we can notice about these pictures that stands out to you?”
“Can you tell from this picture what this student really wanted us to know? Based on how they’re taking the picture?”
“What questions does this raise for you?”

In addition to looking and thinking about a few posts together, students have the opportunity to look back at the Dialogue Toolkit and consider the different moves and ways to engage with other students’ posts. Later on, in the course of digital exchange, we see Angela’s 6^th grade students continuing to comment in ways similar to the shared discussion questions described above. 

Looking closely and sharing details from other students’ posts: 
“I love your map. I like how much color you put into it and all of the trees” (Dog Lord) 
“I noticed all of the foot prints in the snow” (Kathleen) 
“I noticed, when you look out of the window, you can see amazing views. https://s0.wp.com/wp-content/mu-plugins/wpcom-smileys/twemoji/2/72x72/1f..." alt="

I’m a relatively new addition to the Out of Eden Learn (OOEL) team, although I’ve been working at Project Zero for almost a decade.  Part of my background is in museum education, so I’m particularly interested in learning experiences that incorporate objects, whether works of art on a gallery wall, natural history specimens under glass, fish in an aquarium, or commonplace items that surround us.  I’ve thus been especially curious about elements of the OOEL curriculum that invite students to explore objects around them, like the Connecting Everyday Objects to Bigger Systems footstep in the Core Learning Journey 2 curriculum.  I recently set out to see what was happening in that footstep and how students might be exploring systems using objects as inspiration.  In this post, I share a bit about my process and one set of findings, and in the next post, I’ll share a second set of findings as well as some overall questions and implications.

Exploring Student Work in a Footstep of their Learning Journey

The Connecting Everyday Objects to Bigger Systems footstep, like most OOEL activities, is framed quite broadly to allow space for students to explore their own interests. However, as the name of the Core Learning Journey: The Past and the Global suggests, its intent is to help students recognize that everyday objects can be seen as part of a web of larger, often global, connections.  The footstep (which is also available as a stand-alone activity) also engages students in all three of the overarching OOEL learning goals:  students slow down to look closely at an object, they consider the stories it might be a part of, and they make connections between the object and the wider world.  

The footstep invites students “to look closely at an everyday object and then make connections between what you notice and bigger systems that the object might be part of.”  They are prompted to engage in a sequence of activities to explore an object and related systems: they select an object, look closely and slowly at it, write questions they have about it, consider different systems that could relate to it, and draw a diagram of the different parts of one relevant system.  Students are then asked to share their diagram with peers in their walking party, with a picture of their chosen object if possible.  Many students also posted text explaining their diagram, and some only posted a written description, without any visual diagram or object image.

I looked at student discussion board posts from this footstep that were shared on the OOEL online platform from two 2019 walking parties (groups of classrooms with similarly aged students from different countries around the world).  The 2021 posts were still in progress as I began, and the 2020 work was disrupted, like so much else, by COVID-19, so I went back to 2019 posts to get a sense of what might be more typical student work for this particular footstep.  I selected two walking parties with students in diverse geographical locations that had students aged 10-14, although students of other ages also engage with this material.  There were just over 90 students who posted work for this footstep across the two walking parties.  

I started looking through students’ posts, including their written descriptions and diagram images, with some possible questions in mind:

• What kind of objects do students select?
• What systems do students connect objects to?
• Do students discuss their rationale for selecting the object, and, if so, what are the rationales?
• What kinds of questions do students ask about the object?
• What objects/systems seem to spark the most student dialogue?

While the answers to these questions may be interesting and generative, two unexpected patterns really stood out to me as I began investigating students’ work.  These patterns raised questions that I hadn’t gone into the exploration even considering: 1. What did students focus on when diagramming their object-based system? and 2. How were students representing the relationships between system elements in their diagrams? Below, I discuss my observations around the first question, and the next blog post will explore the second question.

What Did Students Focus on When Diagramming Their Object-Based System?

I noticed that the focus of students’ work in their systems diagrams generally fell into one of three categories: parts of an item, a process without human involvement, and people’s involvement in a process.

Parts: Although this was not an especially common area of focus, a few students illustrated the object itself as a system, identifying different parts of the object as the elements of the system.  Students focused on the parts of both natural objects, like this date plant:

as well as human-created objects, like this soccer ball:

Processes: More commonly, students focused on a process in their diagram.  This was most often the process of manufacturing the selected object.  Some of these diagrams illustrated the process without explicitly incorporating people who might be involved in particular elements.  Such diagrams visualized, for example, various parts in the process of transforming raw materials into a finished product, such as this diagram showing steps in the process of transforming sheep’s wool into a sweater:

Other students illustrated the steps in the distribution or sale of their chosen object, like this system of car transport to a dealer:

People: Students who created system diagrams of a process frequently incorporated human contributions to the system, unlike the examples illustrated above.  Some students just identified people as an end user or consumer of the object, like the student below:

Other students identified people involved in the creation, as well as the consumption, of an object, like the bracelet maker and buyer illustrated below:

Although it wasn’t something I went into my preliminary investigation of student work considering, it was interesting to observe students’ focus on the parts of an item, a process without human involvement, or process with people’s contributions in their object-based system diagrams.  In the next post, I’ll discuss the second set of findings from my exploration.

Note: 1. Students select anonymous usernames to represent themselves to peers on the OOEL online platform, and those usernames are provided here when attributing work to students.

This piece was co-authored by Liz Dawes Duraisingh, Sheya, and Nir Aish from the Out of Eden Learn team.

Overgeneralization. Overconfidence. Othering. These three overlapping behaviors make up the Three O’s.

• Overgeneralization: making comments about whole groups of people as if everyone’s experience or perspective were the same.
• Overconfidence: overestimating how much one knows or understands about a phenomenon or group of people, leading to a lack of curiosity or appropriate humility about the limits of one’s knowledge.
• Othering: implicitly or explicitly conveying that one does not consider people from another group to be quite one’s equal, perhaps through a dismissive or overly pitying tone.

This framework emerged from a close examination of what students were generally learning about culture(s) on the Out of Eden Learn platform, as well as what they were learning more specifically about migration from the Stories of Human Migration curriculum. Data from these studies (including student work, dialogue, surveys, and interviews) displayed for the most part highly positive learning outcomes: for example, showing great interest in and concern for one another’s stories; developing more nuanced understandings about culture(s) and/or migration; and exhibiting greater self-awareness regarding their own identities and perspectives on the world. However, we also identified some subtle and occasionally not-so-subtle behaviors that felt less aligned with the underlying philosophy and intent of Out of Eden Learn: the Three O’s of overgeneralization, overconfidence, and othering (read more about these promises and pitfalls).

When we started to talk about these opportunities and challenges, educators unsurprisingly showed interest in the Three O’s: trying to help young people understand and navigate the cultural complexities of our contemporary world can be challenging and complicated. We wondered what further resources we could develop for students and educators and whether explicitly naming the Three O’s upfront would be helpful. During a recent OOEL launch, we piloted a video that attempted to explain the Three O’s to students before they engaged on Out of Eden Learn and asked a group of educators to explicitly discuss the Three O’s with their students in class.

Over recent weeks we held informal Zoom-facilitated focus groups—some with students aged 10-13; others with students aged 13-18. The students came from a range of family backgrounds and geographic locations: Adelaide in South Australia; a village in Bihar, India as well as the city of Thane—and in the United States, small towns and big cities in: Massachusetts, Illinois, Connecticut, Wisconsin, New Hampshire, and the Hawaiian island of Hawai`i.

Did students find it useful to have the Three O’s named before interacting with peers living in different contexts to their own? What did each of the Three O’s mean to them? What connections did they make between the Three O’s and other aspects of their life? Have they Three O’d others? Have others Three O’d them? We also separately interviewed teachers to learn from their experiences and perspectives.

What we have been learning reflects the stark realities of our time and offers a good deal of hope. Students expressed a genuine desire and commitment to learn about—and talk about—the Three Os. They shared experiences and observations from their daily lives in ways that indicated multidimensional applications of the Three O’s. In upcoming blog posts we will share their insights along with practical classroom tools we are in the process of developing. We believe these tools and insights might help other students–and indeed all of us–to interpret and navigate our complex world, both on- and offline.

If you are interested in learning more about the Three O’s framework, join OOEL team members for an upcoming two-part Project Zero online virtual workshop on August 10th and 12th.

We hope to see you there!

Greetings to our Out of Eden Learn Community and other readers of this blog,

We have been thinking about our community members in different places and contexts at this extraordinary time.

As you know, the Out of Eden Learn team is physically situated in the United States, where recent and ongoing events connected to police brutality and racial injustice have reverberated around the world. We recognize the importance of speaking out in solidarity with communities of color—and in particular, the African American community within the US. We did not rush to put out a statement about our values and support for the wave of protests and what feels like a real opportunity for social and political change. As a predominantly white-presenting team situated within a predominantly white research organization, we’ve been focusing our team’s energies on listening rather than speaking, while individually participating in local Black Lives Matter protest events and other advocacy. We’ve also shifted some of the ways we use our social media and have been sharing posts from trusted organizations that more squarely address matters of social and racial justice. It now feels time to open up a more direct conversation with our community.

We believe that our collective work is as relevant as ever at this time—namely, breaking down barriers among young people and encouraging them to learn thoughtfully both with and from one another by slowing down, sharing stories, and making connections. During the past several weeks, for example, we have been conducting virtual focus groups with young people who have been working with our Three O’s framework of overgeneralization, overconfidence, and othering, which supports young people to both reflectively and critically engage with the world—online, in person, when reading the news, etc. Students’ thoughtful responses to our questions reveal that they are finding this framework to be a salient and powerful tool for interpreting and navigating the fraught and complicated world in which we all live. We invite you to scroll through some of their comments in the gallery below, and we look forward to sharing more about this work with you soon.

We have also been learning from educators about best practices for using our Dialogue Toolkit in order to promote thoughtful online and in-person interactions, including among youth who would not ordinarily encounter one another or who know little about each other’s lives. And we have been working on a video that captures what students have been learning about the interdependency of systems related to environmental and human health via our Planetary Health curriculum. We will share these new resources with you soon.

Nevertheless, while we believe all this work to be relevant and worthwhile, there are some genuine puzzles associated with doing international work focused on intercultural exchange across very different settings. Some questions on our mind include: Is OOEL paying too little attention to global inequities, including ones related to racial injustice? Is the project effectively upholding the status quo by not directly promoting activism or more critical debate? Because of the pseudonymous nature of the platform—and the extremely limited sharing of demographic information (e.g. race, gender, etc.)—are OOEL students and teachers steering clear of potentially uncomfortable and complicated, yet ultimately important conversations? As a research team, we recognize that we do not fully understand the specific learning experiences of students who experience various kinds of marginalization in their daily lives, nor have we persistently asked how we might serve them differently or better. Given the composition and geographic location of our research team, we undoubtedly have blindspots and biases in the most fundamental ways in which we develop the program and conduct our research.

As we reflect on what we need to do both in the short term and long term to improve our work, we recognize that we need our community’s help. One first step will be to send out a short survey to our educators in the coming days. The survey will ask the following four questions. We invite you to consider them now, and we warmly—and humbly—look forward to your survey responses.  Stay tuned for an email with the link to the survey.

1. Consider one or more students in your classroom who might experience some type of marginalization and/or inequities—perhaps for different reasons, such as racial-, ethnic- or gender-based marginalization or inequities due to cognitive or physical differences. How, if at all, are they already experiencing safety and inclusivity on OOEL? For example, are there specific footsteps or activities that work particularly well for these students?
2. What additional resources or strategies are you using to help support these students to participate in OOEL?
3. How could the OOEL program be more inclusive for students who experience marginalization or inequity in their daily lives? How might specific features of our program, platform, or curricula be modified to better support these students?
4. Some aspects of the OOEL curriculum encourage students to explore connections between their everyday lives and bigger systems. Are there specific ways that you think OOEL already helps students explore how systemic racism or local and/or global systems that promote different kinds of injustices such as economic, health, or environmental injustices?
5. Would you like OOEL activities to do more to help students delve deeply into how local and global social and economic systems work, and how students themselves might be connected to such systems?  If so, what would you like to see?  What ideas would you like to share with us?     

If anyone reading this blog would like to leave a comment or email us at learn@outofedenwalk.com, we would welcome your thoughts. With resolve, intentionality, and humility, we hope to take the necessary steps to move onward and upward together.

With love,

The Out of Eden Learn Team