Scaling up ambitious learning practices

This chapter reports on findings from an effort to train teachers to adopt classroom facilitation practices referred to as Accountable Talk (AT) while jointly training students to engage in articulation of reasoning and transactive exchange in the midst of teacher-led classroom discussions as well as in computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) activities with one another in small groups. A key enabler in this work was AI-enabled scaffolding for collaborative discussions in the form of intelligent conversational computer agents that acted as discussion facilitators using the same AT practices that were the target of the teacher professional development. A key finding was that support for student engagement in transactive exchange prior to teacher-led discussion facilitated teacher uptake of AT practices.