Silent Voices: What Happens to Quiet Students during Classroom Discussions?

Abstract

Whether Gertrude, the queen, was an accomplice in her first husband's murder, a conniving instigator in the tragedy, or whether she was an innocent victim, buffeted by events not of her making, became then a subject of considerable interest in the discussion, sparking many different perspectives and possibilities. However, though many students were excitedly vocal in their responses to the question, a number of other students spoke not a word. What were those quiet students thinking and feeling? I had the opportunity to interview some of those students during a case study of one teacher's classroom literature discussions (Townsend 1991). Even though many studies of classroom discourse have documented