Evaluating classroom dialogue Reconciling internal and external accountability

In this article we present an instrument to be used by students and professors to evaluate classroom dialogue. We begin with an explanation of the classroom community of inquiry and why we value it as a pedagogical approach. We then describe our different reasons for evaluating classroom dialogue - including institutional, professional and pedagogical accountability - and describe the inherent conflicts among these reasons. We explain how our evaluation instrument was designed to ameliorate these conflicts. We recount a number of theoretical and practical problems we encountered in designing and implementing the instrument and explain how we attempted to overcome these problems. We conclude the article by describing the advantages and disadvantages of our instrument in light of our analysis of data gathered from its first implementation.