ABSTRACT
This chapter highlights the importance of teacher and student roles in fostering student talk and delineate specific teacher roles and student roles that are essential to conducting high-quality, productive discussions in small groups. It explores teacher and student roles that support quality talk in classrooms, resulting in the enhancement of students' critical thinking and reasoning. When a teacher plays the role of a fading facilitator, it is expected that students take on more interpretative authority and control over the discussion, thus obtaining ownership of their knowledge. A teacher plays multiple, complex roles in productive, small-group discussions. Taken together, small-group discussions that promote students' high-level comprehension require multifaceted teacher and student roles. As delineated throughout the chapter, teacher and student roles have a tremendous impact on the outcomes of small-group discussion and determine the extent to which students enhance their high-level comprehension.
