In the insightful blog post titled ‘How Guided Conversations Enhance Children’s Social & Emotional Skills’ on Questions for Growth, the critical role of structured dialogues, or guided conversations, in fostering children’s social and emotional development is explored. The post highlights how carefully crafted questions can steer conversations with children towards meaningful exploration, enhancing their interpersonal skills, self-awareness, and emotional intelligence. It discusses the use of guided conversations in educational settings through activities like Circle Time, emphasising their importance in creating inclusive, supportive environments for children to express themselves and understand others.

The post delves into the theoretical underpinnings of this approach, drawing on Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Theory and the Zone of Proximal Development to illustrate how social interactions within a supportive framework can drive cognitive growth. Additionally, it touches on the Theory of Mind and its relevance to understanding perspectives and emotions, further supported by insights into Emotional Intelligence and emotional regulation, highlighting the role of guided conversations in developing these competencies.

Empirical studies on questioning techniques are also reviewed, underscoring the value of well-designed questions in promoting deeper learning and engagement. The post concludes by affirming the transformative potential of guided conversations in nurturing children’s ability to navigate the complex social and emotional aspects of their lives.

In the realm of conflict resolution among children, for example, these principles of guided conversations become particularly pertinent. Conflicts, an inherent aspect of childhood, offer ripe moments for practicing empathy, negotiation, and understanding diverse perspectives—skills that are cultivated through guided dialogues. The adult’s role transitions from a direct intervener to a facilitator, guiding children through structured conversations to resolve disputes and understand each other’s emotions and viewpoints.

This nuanced approach to conflict resolution is discussed in ‘How to Resolve Children’s Conflicts’, highlighting the interconnectedness of guided conversations and conflict mediation. By employing well-crafted questions and fostering an environment of open dialogue, children learn to navigate their interpersonal conflicts, thereby enhancing their emotional intelligence and social aptitude.

Over decades of working in educational settings, I’ve witnessed firsthand the transformative power of effective communication and emotional intelligence in resolving conflicts among children. These disputes, ranging from playground tiffs to classroom disagreements are pivotal learning moments where children learn to articulate their feelings and understand others’ perspectives. This process is foundational to developing emotional intelligence, a skill that significantly influences their future interpersonal interactions.

For a deeper dive into how these practices are applied in educational contexts and beyond, enhancing children’s social and emotional capabilities, readers are encouraged to explore the extended discussion on the sister blog, Questions for Growth.

Throughout history, human beings have inherently been social animals.  Our social and emotional well-being are naturally nurtured through making and maintaining human connections.  Unsurprisingly therefore, students’ learning automatically benefits when they feel a human connection with the key people around them – family, peers and of course, teachers.  As I often find myself saying to parents, if students are unhappy (and this is usually to do with a lack of quality human connections), then their learning is stifled.

One need not look far for established research into the importance of human connection for successful teaching and learning.  Work from the child psychologist, Led Vygotsky, in the 1920s and 1930s for example, was firmly rooted in social constructivism, which stresses the significance of both culture and social environment in the way in which we relate to the world around us; it is the systems and processes we employ to build knowledge from our understanding (MacBlain, 2014).  In other words, learning takes place through relationships with others, supported by conversation and language.

Importantly, this means that if a student does not admire or respect the teacher, s/he is far less likely to lean into difficult tasks, be enamoured with the subject or respond well to critical feedback – all natural outcomes from successful teaching.  The rousing TED Talk by educator Rita Pierson (2013), for instance, makes clear this value of human connection for students.  As Rita Pierson eloquently puts it, “Kids don’t learn from people they don’t like”.

Successful teaching requires the ability to connect with and facilitate connections between other human beings.  It is also necessary for teachers and school leaders to build and foster congenial relationships across the school community, with colleagues and parents.  In this way, ideas are shared, support networks are formed and a spirit of camaraderie becomes the norm – all of which benefits teaching and learning.

A related idea to growth mindset and human connection is that of mindfulness.  By its nature, mindfulness practice can help to break the pattern of habitual, self-limiting, and ‘fixed’ mindsets about ourselves and our students.  I do certainly believe that mindfulness can serve as a very effective tool both for helping us to take control of our own inner voice (and consequently, mindset) while also, in the process, helping us to master our emotions .  In the bigger picture therefore, mindfulness practices such as relaxation techniques, breathing exercises and other methods, can help to foster human connection.

In fact, for quite some time now, there have been a vast array of mindfulness interventions and initiatives around the world in education.  Some notable examples include the ‘Mindfulness in Schools Project’, ‘Mindful Schools’, ‘MindUP’ and ‘Smiling Mind’.  At the time of writing, mindfulness has also been introduced as an official subject in several hundred schools in England in an effort to teach children about the importance of looking after their mental health.

These moves reflect recognition of the fact that mindfulness practice can be an important part of successful teaching as well as the overall health of students.  Recent scientific advances, for instance, allow us to see that the parts of the brain associated with such positive emotions as happiness, empathy and compassion actually become stronger and more active as people engage in mindfulness practice (Williams et al., 2001).  Studies also show that mindfulness helps us with the regulation of emotion, attention, thought and behaviour (Jennings & Siegel, 2015).

However, I am aware that there exists some confusion and misconceptions related to mindfulness, which I would like to clear up.  Often, for example, mindfulness can be confused with meditation.  While there is certainly overlap between the two terms, there are some important differences, which should be clarified.

According to the authors of ‘Mindfulness – a practical guide to finding peace in a frantic world’, Mark Williams and Danny Penman state that,

‘Mindfulness is about observation without criticism; being compassionate with yourself… In essence, mindfulness allows you to catch negative thought patterns before they tip you into a downward spiral.  It begins the process of putting you back in control of your life.’ (Williams & Penman, 2011, pp. 5)

In other words, mindfulness is both the state itself of mastering emotions and it is the tool to achieve this mastery.  As a form of meditation, mindfulness is about focusing on being in the present, such as focusing completely on eating soup, taking in its scent, warmth, and taste and letting go of unwanted emotions from your mind in the process.  In this way, you are monitoring, in real time, your experience, and doing so in a nonjudgmental way.

My personal journey and understanding of mindfulness began back in 2009, when I went to northern India to do a 10-day silent Vipassana meditation retreat.  Up until that point, I had, like most people, become accustomed to distraction.  For the first time ever though, all that distraction was quite literally taken away – no mobile phone, no one to talk to, no reading material – literally nothing to do except attend scheduled meal and meditation times.  The experience was an arduous one; even by the end of the 10-days, I never really felt that I had been able to meditate successfully.  Instead, I would just close my eyes, try to concentrate on my breath and then be bombarded with thoughts darting back and forth – thoughts about the past and thoughts about the future.  I could not escape them.  When those 10-days were finally up, I felt it had all been a waste of time and I had achieved nothing more than a disdain for meditation.

Since then, however, I have gained a new understanding of this experience.  For a start, the experience taught me just how powerful and repetitive our thoughts can be.  Most of us, most of the time are operating unconsciously on autopilot; our minds are dragged around from one thought to the next like wild horses.  As Williams and Pennman (2011, p. 9) explain, when we feel even a little unhappy (which is perfectly normal), our thoughts rush in, trawling through memories to find those that echo our emotional state.  This can draw us into an emotional quicksand because our state of mind is intimately connected with memory.  One thought or feeling triggers the next, and then the next.  Before long, the original thought – no matter how fleeting – has gathered up a raft of similar thoughts and you have become immersed in a particular feeling.  This was certainly the experience that I felt in India.

Some years later, in 2012, I discovered – without realising it at the time – mindfulness meditation.  I had embarked on The Camino de Santiago, a long pilgrim route stretching across Europe to the town of Santiago in Spain.  Over the space of just a couple of weeks, I walked almost 200-miles – more than I had ever walked in such a short amount of time before.  Unaccustomed to such long walks, my feet quickly became covered with blisters and upon my arrival at Santiago, I had tendonitis in both ankles.  I did, however, love the experience.  During those log walks, I would get into a rhythm and become acutely aware of my surroundings – including the sights, sounds and smells of the experience. In other words, I was experiencing the very essence of mindfulness meditation.

The state that I had unsuccessfully been trying to reach through Vipassana meditation was a state of mindfulness.  While mindfulness is involved in most forms of meditation, mindfulness is itself a form of meditation, which simply requires you to remain aware and present in the moment.  Rather than dwelling on the past or worrying about the future, mindfulness encourages awareness of your present surroundings – as I experienced on The Camino de Santiago.  In a state of mindfulness, we are no longer operating on autopilot and instead have a space of mind that gives us the ability to pause before reacting mindlessly.  The beauty of mindfulness, however, is that it is something we can practice almost anywhere – including in the classroom.

If a teacher is not mindful of what they are doing, the classroom environment can be a setup for stress-related health problems:

‘Under pressure, some students become disruptive, distracted, and even defiant, and teachers may become anxious, frustrated, embarrassed, and hopeless.  From this perspective, it’s easy to see why teachers are burning out and students aren’t learning.  The stress response is derailing our teaching and students’ learning.     

The idea of applying a mindfulness-based approach to supporting teachers’ well-being make perfect sense.  Furthermore, if we could give teachers the skills to better manage these social and emotional demands, the classroom climate would improve and so would student behavior and learning.’ (Jennings and Siegel, 2015, xix)

Mindfulness has not only been shown to benefit social relationships (Karremans et al. 2017), but it can also be practised specifically in the context of social relationships (Kok and Singer, 2017).  Being mindful while interacting facilitates effective communication (Burgoon et al. 2000).  Specifically, this is known as interpersonal mindfulness.  According to Jennings and Siegel (2015, pp. 6-7), interpersonal mindfulness involves the development and practice of the following behaviours:

• Listening with full attention to others
• Present-centred awareness of emotions experienced by oneself and others during interactions
• Openness to, acceptance of, and receptivity to others’ thoughts and feelings
• Self-regulation: low emotional and behavioural reactivity and low automaticity in reaction to the everyday behaviours of others
• Compassion for oneself and others

It is not difficult to see how such qualities can be invaluable to the school-context, when dealing with students, parents and colleagues.  When we encounter a disruptive child, an enraged parent or an obnoxious colleague for example, we can sense and observe our own emotional states without becoming reactive or impulsively acting on them.  In this way, we achieve a state of equanimity and are in a much better position to teach successfully, as our ability to handle difficult situations improve.  For further information and practical exercises to develop your mindfulness practice, I highly recommend ‘Mindfulness for Teachers’ by internationally recognised leader in the field, Patricia Jennings.

References

Burgoon, J. K., Berger, C. R. & Waldron, V. R. 2000. Mindfulness & interpersonal communication. Journal of Social Issues. 56(1), 105-127.

Jennings, P & Siegel. 2015. Mindfulness for Teachers: Simple Skills for Peace and Productivity in the Classroom. 1^st Edition. W. W. Norton & Company.

Karremans, J.C., Shellekens, M.P., & Kappen, G. 2017. Bridging the sciences of mindfulness and romantic relationships: a theoretical model and research agenda. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 21(1), 29-49.

Kok, B. E. & Singer, T. 2017. Effects of contemplative dyads on engagements and perceived social connectedness over 9 months of mental training: a randomized clinical trial. JAMA Psychiatry, 74(2), 126-134.

MacBlain, S. 2014. How Children Learn. London: Sage.

Williams KA, Kolar MM, Reger BE, Pearson JC. 2001. Evaluation of a wellness-based mindfulness stress reduction intervention: A controlled trial. American Journal of Health Promotion.  15: 422–432.

Williams, M & Penman, D. 2011. Mindfulness: A Practical Guide to Finding Peace in a Frantic World. Piatkus.

Google Docs is an online word processor and one of Google’s free suite of tools, which many students and teachers all over the world now use.  My experience with Google Docs is that it makes a very significant contribution to social constructivist learning.  Social constructivism is the idea that learners construct their own mental models, and these models develop through collaboration with others.

The concept of social constructivism began from the work of psychologists, namely Lev Vygotsky and Jerome Bruner.  Vygotsky came up with the idea he referred to as the ‘zone of proximal development’ – the notion that there is an area of activity just a little bit beyond what a child can already do – it is what they can do with help.  Bruner gave educators the analogy of ‘scaffolding’ the new skills that the child was learning, by providing support and guidance to get to the next point.

Google Docs not only makes these elements of social constructivism possible, but it actively promotes this type of pedagogy.  One of the most important benefits of Google Docs is that documents can be shared, which means several users can work on the same document from different computers – synchronously or asynchronously.  In my experience, this gives a feeling of shared ownership and collaborative effort, helping to increase student motivation.  The document below is an example of a 4th grade group project in which groups of three students work as a team to research and answer the following questions about oil.

It’s easy to see what each individual student contributes to a document like this because Google Docs assigns every contributor a unique colour. My advice though, would be to keep the groups working on the same document small.  You don’t really want too many students working on the same document because it does become difficult to disentangle who has made which changes, and as with any online collaborative tool, it simply becomes more of a challenge to coordinate who should be doing what.

In small online working groups, it’s also easier to keep track of different comments made on the work by others.  This brings another benefit of Google docs documents, which is the ability to add comments on the side of the work.  To insert a comment, highlight the text, then choose Insert a Comment under the Insert Menu.  You just highlight some text in the body of the document and the comment will appear on the right side of the page. It’s basically a digital post-it note on the side of your document.  Click on any comment and watch the highlighted text in the document change colour to quickly pinpoint the suggested revision. Comments are clever and they disappear after the issue has been addressed by the author so students feel a sense of accomplishment as they work their way through the suggestions of their peers.  I would also say that students are more likely to revisit their work if they know someone else will be commenting on it.

This feature of comments can be particularly good for documents shared just between a teacher and student – the teacher can use the comments to bring the student’s attention to mistakes, and to facilitate a form of scaffold questions to improve the student’s writing.

The comments also remove barriers between writers and further creates a sense of class community.  In addition, Docs provide support for collaboration in real time so students and teachers can have a virtual mini-conference about the work in front of them from any location if the timing is right.  This can be done by instant messaging chat, in which users shared into the document can chat synchronously about their project.  By adding this synchronous communication medium into the tool, it also gives a feeling of social presence, which adds to student engagement.

These features of Google Docs gives rise to what I consider to be the most valuable of all pedagogical benefits – small group work.  By producing the conditions of small group work, concepts, skills and attitudes such as cooperation, collaboration and rational argument can be developed. Exploring and valuing the contributions of others is excellent preparation for life in a culturually diverse society.  According to the ideas of Brown, Barnfield & Stone (1990), small group work can lead to:

– a secure environment that some less confident students need in order to express their ideas;

– some children accepting responsibility to help others;

– full involvement of all the children in the task;

– children recognising the contributions of others as important as their own; and,

– children being able to recognise the individuality of others.

Small group work that is faciliated through the use of Google Docs naturally leads students to pool their ideas, listen to each other and to have respect for each person’s contributions to the work of the group.

When students are at the planning stage of an assignment, they can use the Word Art feature (as shown below) to make mind maps and do collaborative brainstorming.  The asynchronous nature of digital brainstorming sessions provides all students with an opportunity to contribute, unlike traditional brainstorming sessions which encourage contributions from the “quick thinkers” in the room. Students can use shapes, arrows, text, and imported images to build a visual map for any task. Again, the revision history uses colours to highlight and track changes to the Google Doc, making it easy to see what each student has contributed to the big picture.

Another big advantage for students and teachers is the use of templates.  You can provide students with a starting point for digital writing by creating templates. This saves time and guides the learning by giving students a consistent page format which can include links, images and directions, all helping to jump start the learning. All you have to do is just create a Google Doc and then save it as a template. Students can pick up a copy of a template and instantly store it in their own list of Google Docs.  The Google Sheet below is a brilliant example of a template for a maths project in which students need to complete the information about regular polygons.

As you would expect for a word processing tool, there is a built in smart spell-checking system that identifies spelling errors as you type. There is also a context-sensitive grammar checker, which can make appropriate suggestions for corrections. While Word uses color coding to make distinctions between spelling and grammar errors, Google sticks with one colour (a red wiggly line), but the suggestion box offers smart and appropriate suggestions.  There is also a built-in dictionary and thesaurus, allowing learners to look up words without leaving the document.

This is a video I made to summarise some of the benefits of Google Docs:

Google Docs at a Glance:

• Google Docs enables the creating, uploading and storing of documents
• It facilitates collaboration with others in real-time or asynchronously
• It is a free tool available anytime anywhere
• There is no worry of losing your work because it is continually and automatically saved
• There are many useful features for teachers and students, for example:
• Word Art facilitates collaborative brainstorming
• Templates save teachers time and help guide students’ learning
• There is a Smart Spell Checker with Grammar Support
• And, there are Integrated Reference Tools, which are ideal for research

Remember though, to get the best out of Google docs, you and your students need to:

• Have a google account and reliable high speed Internet access
• Use folders to keep documents organised and easily accessible
• Keep student online working groups small – especially important for the editing of documents and discussions
• Finally, think carefully through the levels of sharing – what roles do you want your students to have for specific documents and folders? When should your students be editors, viewers, or commenters?

References:

Brown, Barnfield & Stone, 1990, ‘Working toward social justice’ in A Spanner in the Works

Last year I completed my MA in Digital Technologies, Communication & Education with the University of Manchester.  Living in El Salvador had made it necessary to study this course by distance, and I was very satisfied with the guidance, course materials and teaching that I received online.  As a result, I enjoyed the whole course from start to finish, as it was challenging and kept me engaged all the way through.  I credit much of the success of this course to be down to the right combination of asynchronous communication, in which students are separated by time and space, and also synchronous communication, in which students can participate simultaneously.

Using Google Docs and Google Hangout, I discussed with two of my fellow students, Susan Johnson and Nick Kiley, who were based in Ireland and Latvia respectively, what is the best approach to delivering a distance learning course.  Together we wrote a Paper titled, The Best Combination of Asynchronous & Synchronous Communication.  I include an abridged version of our Paper below:   

The primary purpose of any online communication tool for education is to provide a means of discussion and collaboration between participants, thereby enabling the sharing of knowledge. For Vygotsky (1962), discussion and collaboration are fundamental to learning because the act of articulating an idea is itself a contribution to what it means to know that idea – this has formed the basis of an approach that is now referred to as “social constructivism” (Laurillard, 2012, p. 49). Swan (2005) summarises the importance of social constructivism for online practices by making the suggestion that “learning is essentially a social activity, [and] that meaning is constructed through communication, collaborative activity, and interactions with others” (p. 5).

Both synchronous and asynchronous tools can serve to promote an exchange of ideas between participants.  However, the nature of the ideas exchanged varies according to the communication tool used.  Synchronous communication brings a much greater level of social presence onto an online course, which helps to maintain student motivation and engagement.  Asynchronous communication on the other hand, by having a time lag between responses and thus allowing thinking time, can facilitate deeper understanding of the subject matter.  By combining the two modes of communication in the right way therefore the benefits of both modes can be maximised, and the potential pitfalls minimised.

In order to strike the best balance in the complementation of these two distinct modes of communication, my peers and I came up with a sequence to follow for when to use the different modes of communication.  This is because we believe that the best way to combine synchronous and asynchronous communication tools to maximise student learning should be determined according to the stage in which learners find themselves on an online programme.

[embeddoc url=”https://technologyforlearners.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/The-Best-Way-to-Combine-Asynchronous-Synchronous-Communication.docx”]

Without conducting research to test our hypothesis, it can be argued that, although rooted in a review of relevant literature, the effectiveness of the above outline is based on conjecture. However, the outline attempts to establish a sequence that most effectively balances the positive and negative features of synchronous and asynchronous communication, to determine the best way to combine these modes.

At the beginning of an online learning programme, the first type of interaction between participants should be synchronous in the form of a video chat in order that faces can be put to names and to enable a learning community to be created.  After this stage, we suggest that the subsequent progressive stages should alternate from asynchronous to synchronous communication and then back again.  The asynchronous communication, be it in the form of discussion boards, emails, or wikis all serve to afford the learner time to process information in which to plan, coordinate and share ideas with others.  Intermittently, synchronous communication should be used, which by this stage can be video chat again or an instant messaging tool.  This type of communication then offers the benefits of immediacy for the learner, enabling the learner to collaborate in real-time and therefore receive instant feedback from the instructor and peers.  When used in this way, synchronous communication also helps to maintain learner engagement and motivation by maintaining a sense of social presence, which can be particularly important for many learners.

We acknowledge that flexibility needs to be afforded to online learners, due to the diverse range of personality types that come onto a course, ranging on a spectrum of extroverts to introverts. Given the myriad of different factors then that can affect a learner’s preference for either synchronous or asynchronous communication, as well as the apparent benefits of combining both, it is our conclusion that following the sequencing pattern presented in this paper is the best way to combine asynchronous and synchronous tools, in order to encourage collaboration, cognitive processing, and engagement – and therefore maximise student learning.