Discussion Protocol Selector & Facilitation Guide

What This Skill Does

Selects the most appropriate discussion protocol for a given purpose, topic, and class — then generates a complete facilitation guide including setup instructions, teacher moves during the discussion, sentence stems for students, timing, and a debrief structure. Protocols include Socratic seminar, Harkness discussion, fishbowl, think-pair-share, Philosophical Chairs, and structured academic controversy. AI is specifically valuable here because selecting the right protocol requires matching discussion format to discussion purpose (a debate protocol for consensus-building is counterproductive), and effective facilitation requires planning teacher moves in advance — knowing when to intervene, when to stay silent, and how to redirect without dominating.

Evidence Foundation

Resnick et al. (2015) established "accountable talk" as a framework for productive classroom discussion: talk that is accountable to the learning community (respectful, builds on others), to standards of reasoning (evidence-based, logically coherent), and to knowledge (accurate, well-founded). Michaels et al. (2008) operationalised accountable talk into specific teacher moves — revoicing, pressing for reasoning, challenging, and inviting — that maintain the quality of dialogue without the teacher dominating. Howe & Abedin (2013) conducted a systematic review of 225 studies on classroom dialogue and found that productive discussion requires: a clear structure (not "just talk about it"), explicit talk norms, and a genuine question with multiple valid perspectives. Alexander (2008) distinguished five talk types (rote, recitation, instruction, discussion, dialogue) and argued that genuine dialogue — where participants build on each other's ideas toward shared understanding — is the rarest and most valuable. Mercer & Dawes (2014) identified that without explicit teaching of discussion skills (ground rules, talk moves, sentence stems), classroom discussion tends to degenerate into disputational talk (assertion and counter-assertion without reasoning) or cumulative talk (uncritical agreement without challenge).

Input Schema

The teacher must provide:

• Discussion purpose: What the discussion should achieve. e.g. "Explore multiple perspectives on a controversial issue" / "Build a shared interpretation of a text" / "Argue for and against a proposition" / "Reach consensus on the best solution to a problem"
• Topic or question: The driving question. e.g. "Was the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima justified?" / "What does the ending of Lord of the Flies suggest about human nature?" / "Should genetic modification of human embryos be permitted?"
• Student level: Year group and discussion experience. e.g. "Year 10, experienced with think-pair-share but haven't done longer structured discussions"

Optional (injected by context engine if available):

• Class size: Number of students