ABSTRACT
In the Dual Objective Model of Cooperative Learning (CL), the majority of the spoken utterances are by thoughtful and emotionally engaged students. This focus on intentional student talk provides a distinction between traditional classrooms, where almost all the talk belongs to the teacher, and classrooms using well-structured CL. Many of the teachers we work with have seldom, if ever, seen colleagues teach, so the opportunity to see students "talking to learn" is limited to their own classroom approach. This chapter provides numerous "glances" into typical and exemplar classrooms to allow one to see how student talk can and does impact understanding, and what this looks like in its most effective form. Students talk more about content in the Dual Objective Model than they do in very powerful traditional lecture/teacher-centered systems. The Dual Objective Model recognizes the equal partnership of the process used by students as the product/task is completed.
