Student Discussion from an Evolutionary Perspective

Abstract

Student discussion has been identified as a key ingredient in overall student learning (Flynn & Klein 2001; Safari et al 2006). However, in many classrooms, there is little to no discussion between teachers and students or among students themselves. This may result from high student-teacher ratios, or from the chosen pedagogy of the instructor.
A variety of ideas to increase class discussion have been proposed over time. A number of these ideas have been shown to increase student learning (Freeman et al 2014 for a recent meta-analysis). This paper attempts to analyze student discussion from a human evolutionary standpoint. Such a view may add new insights into how discussion can be effectively used in the classroom.
While looking at discussion from such an evolutionary view, several key questions arise: how and why did humans utilize discussion in the past? What are “natural conditions” for human discussion? How can these ideas help increase the use and effectiveness of discussion within an educational framework? This paper hopes to answer these questions and expound upon the evolutionary origins of productive discussion.