Ask Dr. Victor Sampson: What Should Students Actually Do During a Group Discussion?

This week’s question comes from a high school science teacher who writes:

“You showed a matrix during your presentation with processes across the top (generate, critique, support, refine, problematize) and products down the side (model, explanation, argument, and so on). Can you explain what each of those processes and products actually means, and give some examples of what the tasks look like when you pair them up to assign group discussion tasks?”

Thank you for sending this in. It is a question I get often after sessions, and one I always wish I had given more time to in the presentation itself. There is a lot of ground to cover in a single session, and the matrix tends to fly by. So I am glad to slow down here and unpack it the way I would if we were sitting at a table together planning a lesson.

The basic idea, as a quick refresher, is this: a group discussion task has two parts. There is a product — something concrete the students are working on or with — and there is a process — what students are doing to that product. When you choose both intentionally, you give students something to talk about and a reason to engage with each other’s thinking. When you do not, you tend to end up with a discussion that drifts, stalls, or becomes a guessing game about what the teacher wants to hear. Let me walk through the products first, then the processes, and then show you what it looks like to pair them up.

The Seven Products

A product is the thing in front of the group. It is what their talk is about. There are seven I find useful, and they show up across every science discipline.

A model is a representation of how a system works — usually a labeled drawing, a diagram, or sometimes a physical or computational representation. Models show components, the relationships between them, and often a mechanism. A student’s drawing of what is happening inside a sealed bottle of decaying leaves is a model. So is a diagram of how energy moves through an ecosystem, or a sketch of the forces acting on a skydiver.

An explanation is a piece of writing or talk that accounts for why a phenomenon happens. Explanations describe a cause-and-effect mechanism. “The bottle felt warm because cellular respiration in the bacteria released energy as heat” is an explanation. Explanations are different from models in that they are usually written as connected prose, and they emphasize the causal story rather than the structure of the system.

An argument is a claim backed by evidence, where the choice of evidence is itself defended with a justification. The justification is the part that says why this evidence is appropriate for supporting this claim — what assumption, principle, or disciplinary idea makes the evidence count. For example: “Our claim is that mass is conserved during this reaction. Our evidence is that the mass of the sealed flask did not change from before to after the reaction. We chose this evidence because the law of conservation of matter says that atoms are neither created nor destroyed in a chemical reaction, so if all the atoms are still in the flask, the total mass should be the same.” Arguments are what students produce when there is more than one defensible answer and they need to commit to one — and the justification is what makes the argument genuinely scientific rather than just an assertion with a data point attached.

An analysis of data is what students produce when they take raw data and do something to it — calculate an average, make a graph, identify a pattern, run a statistical test, organize observations into categories. The analysis is the move from numbers or observations to a summary or visualization that makes a pattern visible.

An interpretation of an analysis is the step that comes after. Once you have the graph or the summary, what does it mean? “The graph shows that as temperature increases, the rate of the reaction increases up to about 40°C and then decreases” is an interpretation. The analysis produced the pattern; the interpretation says what the pattern is telling us.

A method is a plan for collecting data or carrying out an investigation. It includes what variables to measure, how to measure them, what to hold constant, and what comparisons to make. A method might be a numbered procedure, a labeled diagram of an experimental setup, or a short paragraph describing how a team will gather evidence.

Feedback is what students produce when they review someone else’s work. A piece of feedback names what is working in another group’s model or argument, what is unclear or missing, and what the author might consider doing next. Feedback is a product in its own right because writing useful feedback is hard, and the talk that produces good feedback is some of the richest talk students do.

The Five Processes

Now for the processes. A process is what students are doing to the product. There are five that come up over and over.

Generating is producing something new. Students are generating when they are drafting a first model, writing an initial explanation, designing a method from scratch, or proposing a claim they have not yet defended. Generation is the most open of the processes; there is no existing thing to react to, only a phenomenon or question to respond to.

Critiquing is examining something for weaknesses. Students who are critiquing are looking for what is missing, what is unclear, what is unsupported, and what does not fit the evidence. Critique is not the same as criticism. The goal is to improve thinking, not to score points.

Supporting is the mirror image of critiquing. Students who are supporting are looking for what is strong about an idea and what additional evidence or reasoning could be added to make it more convincing. Supporting is what students do when they say, “I think your claim is right, and here is another piece of evidence that backs it up.”

Refining is improving something that already exists. Students who are refining take a draft model, explanation, or method and make it better — adding a missing component, clarifying a label, fixing a flaw in the reasoning, tightening a procedure. Refining usually follows critiquing or supporting, though it does not have to.

Problematizing is the move that gets the least airtime in most classrooms and is, I would argue, the most important. Students who are problematizing are taking something that seems settled and asking, “But what about…?” They are surfacing edge cases, raising counterexamples, and noticing assumptions the author did not realize they were making. Problematizing is what keeps groups from converging too quickly on an answer that is mostly right but missing something important.

Pairing Them Up: What the Tasks Actually Look Like

Now the interesting part. When you pick a product and a process, you have a discussion task. Here are some examples drawn from across the science disciplines so you can see how flexible the matrix really is.

Generating a model. “On your own paper, draw what you think is happening inside the sealed bottle of decaying leaves. Then, in your group, share your drafts and decide on one model your group thinks best explains what is going on.” This is a high school biology task, but the move works equally well in physics (draw what you think is happening to the air pressure as the balloon rises) or earth science (draw what you think is happening in the rock cycle).

Critiquing an argument. “Read the three arguments on the board about whether mass is conserved in this reaction. In your group, identify which argument you think has the strongest evidence and reasoning — and which has the weakest. Be ready to say why.” Critique works especially well when students have multiple drafts to compare, because the comparison gives them something to say.

Supporting an explanation. “Group A’s explanation for why the cup of hot water cooled faster than the cup of warm water is on the board. Your job is to find at least two pieces of evidence from our class data that support their explanation, and one additional piece of reasoning that would make their explanation even stronger.” Supporting tasks are particularly useful when one group has done strong work and you want the rest of the class to engage with it productively rather than just hear it and move on.

Refining a method. “Here is your group’s draft procedure for measuring reaction rate. Trade with another group. Read their procedure carefully and suggest at least two specific changes that would make their data more trustworthy.” Refining tasks are great mid-investigation, before students collect data, because the talk catches problems that would otherwise show up in messy results.

Problematizing a model. This is the move from the Lake Malawi lesson I used in the session. “Here are three models that have been proposed to explain the diversity of cichlids. In your group, your job is to figure out what each model gets right, what it might be missing, and what questions it does not yet answer.” Problematizing a model invites students to take ideas seriously and push on them, which is exactly the disposition we want them to develop.

Critiquing an analysis of data. “Here is the graph another group made from the temperature data. In your group, decide whether the graph shows what they say it shows, and whether there is a better way to display the data.” This task gets students reasoning about how analytic choices shape what we can see in data — an authentic disciplinary practice that rarely gets explicit attention.

Generating feedback. “Read the explanation that the group at the next table wrote. In your group, write a piece of feedback that names one thing they did well, one thing that is unclear, and one question they should consider before they revise.” Feedback is a product, and generating it is a process, and the pairing produces some of the most careful reading students do all year.

I could keep going, but the pattern should be visible by now. The matrix is not a checklist you have to march through. It is a planning tool that helps you ask, before the discussion starts, “What is the product my students are working with, and what process am I asking them to use?” When you can answer both questions specifically, you almost always end up with a task that students have a reason to talk about.

One Last Thought

If you take only one move away from this post, let it be this: before you plan your next discussion, look at the lesson and ask yourself which cell of the matrix you are in. If you cannot say, that is useful information — it usually means the task is asking students to talk about something rather than to do something with it, and students will feel that ambiguity even if they cannot name it. Picking a cell, even tentatively, will sharpen the task and, more often than not, sharpen the talk that follows.

Thanks again for the question. Keep them coming.