Dialogic Teaching

Dialogic Teaching is a pedagogical approach that harnesses the power of talk to stimulate and extend pupils’ thinking and advance their learning and understanding. It aims to get students to understand their learning through questioning and exploratory discussions.

As defined by Ira Shor and Paulo Freire

Dialogue is a moment where humans meet to reflect on their reality as they make and remake it. It is the sealing together of the teacher and the students in the joint act of knowing and re-knowing the object of study. Instead of transferring the knowledge as a fixed possession of the teacher, dialogue demands a dynamic advancing towards knowledge by both teacher and students.

Characteristics

• Educator and students own the object for study and learn about it together.
• Students are empowered to exercise their own power of reconstruction of knowledge.
• Students have the right to be silent.
• Dialogue takes place within a set programme and context, creating a tension between authority and liberty.

Adapted from Shor and Freire, 1987

As defined by Wells

Wells defines dialogic teaching as the collaborative behaviour of two or more participants as they use the meaning potential of a shared language to mediate the establishment and achievement of their goals in social action.

Characteristics

• Dialogic nature of discourse in ‘communities of enquiry’ enables knowledge to be co-constructed.
• Students have considerable latitude to choose their own specific topics and methods of inquiry.
• Relationship constructed between teacher and students is dialogic but is ‘not a dialogue between equals’.
• Orientation to knowledge and knowing

Adapted from Wells, 1999

As defined by Matusov

Pedagogical dialogue is viewed as a self-contained instructional method and activity among other (non-dialogic) instructional methods (strategies) and activities. Dialogue is an activity directed toward discovery and new understanding, which stands to improve the knowledge, insight, or sensitivity of its participants.

Characteristics

• The teacher is the Learner #1 in the classroom.
• The teacher learns not only pedagogically - how to teach the students better, - but also learns the subject matter with the students.
• Knowledge does not exist. The content of learning is always dialogic, thus, problematic.
• The unit of learning that defines both curriculum and instruction is genuine information-seeking questions that both the teacher and the students ask of each other.

Adapted from Matusov, 2009, 2014

As defined by Alexander

Alexander defines dialogic teaching as harnessing the power of talk to engage students, stimulate and extend their thinking, and advance their learning and understanding. It helps the teacher to diagnose students’ needs, frame their learning tasks and assess their progress. It empowers the student for lifelong learning and and active citizenship.

Characteristics

• Collective: teachers and students address the learning tasks together, whether as a group or as a class;
• Reciprocal: teachers and students listen to each other, share ideas and consider alternative viewpoints;
• Supportive: students articulate their ideas freely, without fear of embarrassment over ‘wrong’ answers; and they help each other to reach common understandings;
• Cumulative: teachers and students build on their own and each other’s ideas and chain them into coherent lines of thinking and enquiry;
• Purposeful: teachers plan and steer classroom talk with specific educational goals in view.

Adapted from Alexander, 2006, 2015

The dialogical approach to learning and teaching has both a long history stretching back to Socrates and a contemporary relevance arising from the elaboration of socio-cultural theories derived from a variety of influences in psychology, linguistics, anthropology and education. At the intersection of psychology and linguistics, Vygostky and Bakthin are recognised as key influences in developing our understanding of the social foundations of learning (Renshaw, 2004).

Any discussion of dialogic approaches to learning and teaching owes a debt to Vygostky (1896-1934) who emphasised social and cultural influences of child development, and especially recognised language as the driving force behind cognitive development. As a result of Vygotsky’s influence, an increasing body of research supports the view that talk is the key to learning. Such work has laid the ground for a close consideration of dialogic talk (Lyle, 2008).

A contemporary of Vygostsky, Mikhail Bakhtin (1895-1975) sees all language as a social practice, all language, indeed all thought is dialogic. Bakthin’s concept of ‘dialogical meaning-making’ allows the learner to play an active roles in developing a personally constructed understanding of the curriculum through a process of dialogic interchange (Lyle, 2008).

Pre-Implementation

1. Designing the the learning tasks, goals and objectives.
2. Dialogic teaching is an approach and a professional outlook rather than a specific method. It is concerned not only with the techniques used but also the classroom relationships fostered, the balance of power between teacher-facilitator and students and the way knowledge is conceived.

Actual Implementation

1. Orientation and Familiarisation of Problem-based learning

This step is strongly encouraged if it is the first time that the students are experiencing dialogic teaching. It sets the stage in terms of the process, roles and hence, expectations of teacher-facilitator and students.

Teacher-Facilitator

Teacher-facilitator orientates students to problem-based learning. The following are provided:

• detailed explanation on process of dialogic teaching.
• teacher-facilitator and students must regard the classroom regard as democratic sites. Knowledge were no longer regarded as personal or objectively true, but as subjective and an entity that students and teacher-facilitators create together.
• detailed clarification on shared group goals determined by students and individual accountability
• clear expectations on how students should collaborate
• conflict management strategies on resolving diverse or conflicting views

Students

To facilitate the different kinds of learning talk, students in dialogic classrooms must learn endeavour to listen well, to think about what they hear, to give other time to think and to respect alternative viewpoints.

1. Dialogic Teaching Repertoires

Talk for everyday life

• Teacher should help students to develop, explore and use each of these:
  • Transactional talk
  • Expository talk
  • Interrogatory talk
  • Exploratory talk
  • Expressive talk
  • Evaluative talk

Learning talk

• Students do not just provide brief factual answers to ‘test’ or ‘recall’ questions, or merely spot the answer which they think the teacher wants to hear. Instead they learn to:
  • narrate
  • explain
  • analyse
  • speculate
  • imagine
  • explore
  • evaluate
  • discuss
  • argue
  • justify
  • and they ask questions on their own.

Teaching talk

• Teachers may use familiar kinds of teaching talk such as:
  • rote (drilling ideas, facts and routines through repetitions)
  • recitation (using short question/answer sequences to recall or test what is expected to be known already)
  • instruction (telling children what to do and how to do it)
  • exposition (imparting information and explaining things)
• But in dialogic classrooms, teachers do not limit themselves to these. They also use:
  • Discussion
    • Discussion entails the open exchange of views and information in order to explore issues, test ideas and tackle problems.
  • Scaffolded dialogue (Fishbowl may be used here)
    • Scaffolded dialogue involves:
      • Interactions which encourage children to think, and to think in different ways
      • Questions which require much more than simple recall
      • Answers which are followed up and built on rather than merely received
      • Feedback which informs and leads thinking forward as well as encourages
      • Contributions which are extended rather than fragmented
      • Exchanges which chain together into coherent and deepening lines of enquiry
      • Classroom organisation, climate and relationships which make all this possible

Classroom organisation

In dialogic classrooms teachers exploit the potential of five main ways of organising interaction in order to maximise the prospects for dialogue:

• whole class teaching
• group work (teacher-led)
• group work (pupil-led)
• one-to-one (teacher and pupil)
• one-to-one (pupil pairs)

The Deliberative Cycle

• Everyone directly involved in its reasoning processes - students as well as teachers - contributes to and helps shape the discourse right from the start.