Teaching Approaches/Dialogic teaching

Introduction to Dialogue

The difficulties of defining dialogue begin with the question of how many can take part before it turns into something else. In ordinary conversation, the managing of turns is a shared responsibility, and competition for 'having one's say' in groups larger than, for example, half a dozen makes a diversion into parallel conversations very likely. Most classroom talk, in contrast, involves a centralised communication system. Teachers direct the talk by doing most of it themselves, combining lengthy exposition with many questions, allocating the right or obligation to answer those questions and evaluating the answers. The transmission of knowledge creates very unequal communicative rights to those who 'know' and those who do not. This is why the sequence of (teacher) initiation - (pupil) response - (teacher) evaluation has emerged from so many research studies as the 'essential teaching exchange'¹ In whole-class questioning, it carries risks that a single right answer will be taken as representing a class-wide understanding and a single wrong answer as a common failure to get the point. ^{(Adapted from Purposes and characteristics of whole-class dialogue, section DialogueIntro).}

Typical Classroom Dialogue

Research in many countries has shown that in whole-class sessions teachers tend to talk much more than their pupils. They also ask the great majority of questions. Moreover, most of their questions will form the first part of an exchange between a teacher and pupil known as an initiation-response-feedback (IRF) exchange.¹ These IRF exchanges give classroom talk its distinctive and familiar form.

There has been much debate amongst educational researchers over the years about the functions and value of this characteristic form of classroom interaction.² In this debate, it was at one time very common to find researchers criticising teachers for talking and questioning too much. However, most classroom researchers would probably now agree that such judgements were too simplistic. One reason is that critics did not properly acknowledge teachers' professional responsibility for directing and assessing pupils' learning of a curriculum, and the ways that they must rely on questions and other prompts to do so. Secondly, they tended to assume that all IRF exchanges were performing the same communicative function. Through the work of sociolinguists, linguistic philosophers and psychologists, we now know that it is dangerous to assume that forms of language have any direct and necessary relation to their functions. By this I mean that, for example, we cannot assume that when someone poses a question to another person, they will always be 'doing the same thing'. At an everyday level, we all appreciate this very well. In a personal conversation we are likely to perceive the question 'Do you really think that you can talk to me like that?' as carrying a very different kind of message from 'Do you want a cup of tea?'. What is more, even an apparently simple and direct question may take on special meanings within a particular setting or relationship.

In the classroom, teachers' questions can have a range of different communicative functions. For example, they can be used to test pupils' factual knowledge or understanding ('Can anyone tell me the capital city of Argentina?'), to manage classroom activity ('Are you all ready now to put your pencils down and listen?') and to find out more about what pupils are doing ('Why did you decide to have just three characters in your play?').

Even the above analysis is an oversimplification, because a question can have more than one function (for example, to find out what pupils are doing and to make them think about it) and because it takes on special meanings in the life of a particular class (have they studied Argentina already or are they about to begin?). But the key point is that the distinction between form and function is important for analysing and evaluating teacher-pupil dialogue. ^{(Adapted from The educational value of dialogic talk in whole-class dialogue, section CommonFindings).}

Dialogic Talk

{{{3}}} ^{(Adapted from The educational value of dialogic talk in whole-class dialogue, section DialogicTalk).}

Why Dialogic Talk?

For children to become more able in using language as a tool for both solitary and collective thinking, they need involvement in thoughtful and reasoned dialogue, inwhich conversational partners 'model' useful language strategies and in which they can practise using language to reason, reflect, enquire and explain their thinking to others. By using questions to draw out children's reasons for their views or actions, teachers can help them not only to reflect on their reasoning but also to see how and why to seek reasons from others. By seeking and comparing different points of view, a teacher can help those views to be shared and help children see how to use language to compare, debate and perhaps reconcile different perspectives. Providing only brief factual answers to IRF exchanges will not give children suitable opportunities for practice, whereas being drawn into more extended explanations and discussions of problems or topics will. This is the valuable kind of educational experience that 'dialogic talk' and 'whole-class dialogue' can offer. ^{(Adapted from The educational value of dialogic talk in whole-class dialogue, section Why).}