ABSTRACT

Collaborative Reasoning is a teacher-scaffolded, peer-led, small-group discussion approach that provides students with an environment to engage in productive academic talk. In this chapter, we conceptualise Collaborative Reasoning as an organic system in which students simultaneously develop three aspects of academic talk – academic vocabulary, relational language, and pragmatic language. We describe studies of Collaborative Reasoning that document how students learn to use academic language and suggest evidence-based teaching strategies to further promote academic language.