ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses a curricular conversation that will span a two-quarter inquiry course series, concurrent with five months of extended student teaching. It prompts 27 preservice teachers (PSTs) to recall and write about positive and negative memories of class discussion across their years of schooling. Across subjects and grades, classroom talk typically occurs as recitation of answers in a transmission model of instruction. Structuring dialogic interaction remains a problem of practice and a core challenge of learning to teach. In Arthur Noble Applebee's conception of curricular conversations in English language arts (ELA), literary works are sources to stimulate thinking and prompt evolving understandings. PSTs need a range of learning opportunities in which knowledge is not transferred, but developed. A curricular conversation provides one such opportunity to explore complexity within a domain. Applebee's criteria for curricular resources to enable extended conversation include quality, quantity, and relatedness.
