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Great discussion in the English classroom

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A countdown of the top five ways to have purposeful class discussion with high levels of engagement.

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During the past two decades Robin Alexander has developed and progressively refined a framework for explicating dialogic teaching and supporting teachers who wish to enhance the quality and power of classroom talk - their own as well as their students'. The framework comprised justifications, principles, repertoires and indicators, and placed particular emphasis on teacher agency, or the need for teachers to develop and draw on a range of pedagogical techniques according to circumstance and need rather than use all-purpose teaching formulae.

Early iterations were applied and evaluated in school-based development projects in Barking and Dagenham, North Yorkshire and Bolton and formed the basis for Towards Dialogic Teaching: rethinking classroom talk (1 st edition 2004, 5 th edition and 22 nd imprint 2017). This was widely taken up in schools and teacher training courses across the UK and in several other countries. Then, from 2014-17 and with the support of the Education Endowment Foundation, a revised version of the framework was linked to a bespoke professional development programme and successfully trialled with 5000 students in schools in Birmingham Bradford and Leeds.

Now, building on all this work and on recent research in what is now a fast-expanding field, Robin Alexander's dialogic teaching framework has been completely revised for his new book A Dialogic Teaching Companion, to be published by Routledge early in 2020. The book also includes a suggested professional development programme for implementing dialogic teaching, and it explores recent developments that have expanded and enriched the evidence and debate about classroom talk in relation to oracy, literacy, argumentation, student voice and philosophy for children as well as dialogic teaching itself.

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During the past two decades Robin Alexander has developed and progressively refined a framework for explicating dialogic teaching and supporting teachers who wish to enhance the quality and power of classroom talk - their own as well as their students'.

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CIE | Making the most of educational dialogue | Neil Mercer

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Too much talking in class is often seen as something negative - a sign of low-level disruption. But at our school children's talk is at the centre of everything we do. We believe that classrooms should place more emphasis on children's talk than teacher talk.

This approach, known as "dialogic teaching" impacts positively on all children. However, it has a significant and sustained impact on low prior attaining children, who are already facing the greatest challenges in our education system.

Of course, dialogic talk is not just any talk; it breaks away from the question-answer and listen-tell routines that typify traditional teaching practices. In a dialogic classroom, the teacher acts as a facilitator to encourage children to think deeply and to justify their responses, enabling them to build on each other's ideas.

What is dialogic teaching?

As a staff team, we have engaged in collaborative action research to identify how best to develop a learning environment that authentically values and promotes children's talk.

Here are the key principles we identified:

1. Give children confidence and opportunities to ask questions

Children need to experience a rich diet of spoken language, and this includes asking plenty of questions. If we want our children to be talking about their learning and posing questions, we need to provide them with the opportunity - and the skills - to do so.

2. Allow time for paired and group discussion

We believe that it is essential for children to have opportunities to work collaboratively and to learn from each other. Planning time into lessons for "mini-reviews" where children can use discussion to summarise and link learning is a good way to get groups, or the whole class, talking.

3. Use a range of questioning strategies

Lessons should provide a range of opportunities to talk are provided, through the use of the following questioning strategies:

Wait time - all pupils are given the chance to think before answering a question

Hands should not be raised; instead, the teacher selects pupils to answer

Pupils are encouraged to discuss with a group or a partner to help them formulate an answer.

The teacher involves a number of pupils in the answer to a single question, creating the opportunity for discussion through phrases such as "What do you think?" and "Do you agree with that answer?"

Incorrect answers are discussed to develop understanding

Time is given for pupils to formulate questions

4. Ask children how they feel

It is always important to ask our pupils how they feel about their learning, as this gives us an idea of how they see what they do and don't know. Regular reflection points in lessons are invaluable to support pupil progress.

5. Ask open-ended questions

Teachers should ask open-ended questions that have more than one possible answer. These deepen children's understanding and require them to reflect, rather than restricting them to searching for the "right answer".

We can use the following:

6. Promote a balance of talk between teacher and pupils

Traditionally, in most situations in the classroom, either the teacher or the pupil is passive. But in a dialogic classroom pupils actively engage and teachers constructively intervene.

7. Introduce a 'talk charter'

At the beginning of the year, the teacher discusses with pupils why they feel talk is important to their learning. What skills demonstrate excellent talk and dialogue? Children are given interactive activities to help identify these skills. The key findings are put on display and regularly referred to.

8. Keep scaffolding to a minimum

Pupils need the opportunity to explore and discover new learning for themselves. They need to have the time to think things through rather than have constant scaffolding and prompting.

9. Discuss misconceptions

Pupils need to be able to identify their own misconceptions and be given the opportunity to talk these misconceptions through. This must be within a climate where all pupils feel safe to make mistakes and develop from these.

10. Model thoughts out loud

It is essential that we act as role models for our pupils, demonstrating critical-thinking skills and effective use of language. Pupils especially benefit from the modelling of inter-thinking between adults in the classroom.
Kulvarn Atwal is headteacher at Highlands Primary School in London

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Dialogic teaching: 10 principles of classroom talk

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Too much talking in class is often seen as something negative - a sign of low-level disruption. But at our school children's talk is at the centre of everything we do. We believe that classrooms should place more emphasis on children's talk than teacher talk.

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Abstract

Dialogic teaching is a pedagogical approach that capitalizes on the power of talk to further students' thinking, learning, and problem solving. The construct is often invoked when describing various pedagogies of classroom talk and is the focus of much research in the United Kingdom, the United States, Continental Europe, and elsewhere. Despite its appeal, or perhaps because of it, the idea of dialogic teaching has been variously interpreted to the point that its significance has become unclear. The purpose of this paper is to bring conceptual clarity to the construct. We outline how Robin Alexander (2004) used the term 'dialogic teaching' in his model of dialogic pedagogy, and describe other, related conceptions of dialogic pedagogy. We then describe how the term 'dialogic teaching' is used in contemporary scholarship. Finally, we address three major points of contention surrounding dialogic teaching: the issue of discourse form and function, the role of classroom culture, and whether dialogic teaching constitutes a general pedagogical approach or a specific discourse practice. Our overall intent is to examine similarities and differences among the various approaches to dialogic teaching and locate the concept within a network of related ideas on teaching and learning through, for, and as dialogue.

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What is dialogic teaching? Constructing, deconstructing, and reconstructing a pedagogy of classroom talk

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Dialogic teaching is a pedagogical approach that capitalizes on the power of talk to further students' thinking, learning, and problem solving. The construct is often invoked when describing various pedagogies of classroom talk and is the focus of much research in the United Kingdom, the United States, Continental Europe, and elsewhere.

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Is great dialogue taking place in your classroom and across your school?

It's well worth taking the time to reflect on this given the robust evidence that dialogic teaching (more broadly known as classroom talk) is key to improving formative assessment of pupils.

Research shows that there is a direct relationship between dialogic teaching and improved individual and collective academic outcomes. A report recently published by the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) shows that spending more class time on meaningful dialogue that encourages pupils to reason, discuss, speculate, argue and explain, rather than simply give the expected answers can boost primary pupils' Maths, Science and English results.

What is dialogic talk?

Dialogue means being able to articulate ideas seen from someone else's perspective; it is characterised by chains of (primarily open) questions and answers; it may be sustained over the course of a single lesson or across lessons; and it builds on the idea of 'exploratory talk', where learners construct shared knowledge and are willing to change their minds and critique their own ideas (Prof. Neil Mercer, 2000).

So you can see that dialogue is talk with a very distinct character and purpose, designed to enable people to 'interthink' (Mercer, 2000; Littleton and Mercer, 2013) and come to an understanding of one another's knowledge and perspectives. Thus, classroom dialogue might be thought of as collective, reciprocal, supportive, cumulative and purposeful.

What does healthy dialogic talk look like in the classroom?

Children share a common goal or purpose

Children allow each other to speak

Children ask questions in order to understand better

Children paraphrase or reflect back each other's words

Children are prepared to express uncertainty or tentativeness

Children try to make their own point as clearly as possible

Children explore differences of opinion

Children give arguments to support their ideas

How to recognise dialogic teaching

Dialogue is more than 'just talk'. It involves teachers and learners building on each other's ideas, posing questions and constructing interpretations together.

"...dialogic teaching is as much about the teacher as the learner, and relates to teaching across the curriculum." - Robin Alexander

A great dialogic teacher sees pupils as partners in the learning process, not just passive recipients of knowledge (Swaffield, 2011). When observing effective dialogic teaching you might expect to hear:

Questions being used that support thinking

Pupils being encouraged to elaborate or add detail

Both teachers and pupils challenging the thinking of class members

Pupils being asked to give reasons, justify what they assert and speculate

People negotiating their position and changing their mind

How to encourage dialogue as a teacher

30 years of research shows that teachers primarily use classroom talk to give information, check understanding and maintain control. All of these are vital, however the evidence indicates that teachers can often dominate classroom interaction.

Key ways you can help improve the quality of interactions with your pupils include:

The way you ask questions

How you respond to pupils

Your 'wait time' after asking a question

How you respond to an incorrect answer (you could take the question around the class to tease out understanding rather than providing a correction)

You should also think beyond the dominant purposes of providing information and checking understanding.

Reflect on whether you use talk for such purposes as:

Linking present activities to past experience

Setting up future activities

Relating existing ideas to new educational frames of meaning

Modelling educated ways of using language

These might be thought of as higher order uses of talk, and the last one in particular has strong associations with the kinds of interactions that might happen during effective dialogue.

Professor Neil Mercer explains:

"We know enough [from the research] to say you should strive for a balance between authoritative presentation and genuine dialogue. And that the proportion of instructive talk and dialogue should be determined by what you want to achieve, not by your personality. A teacher may be more suited to one of those approaches, but they need both and it needs to fit the objective at that time.

There is tendency to think of oracy as speech-making or taking part in debates, but we actually mean the full range of spoken language skills, which would include working in a team, helping someone else learn something, listening sensitively to someone so you can help them, and so on. Children will differ in these skills. Some may be excellent making speeches but not skilled in a group situation - they may not listen to anyone else at all. While another student may be the opposite."

To hear more from Mercer, listen to his podcast with the TES where he talks at length about the research around teacher and student talk and about strategies that teachers need to implement in order to improve both their own spoken language skills and those of their students.

Understanding pupil oracy

Oracy means that pupils are able to break down complex tasks; create and then implement possible solutions, and then convince others of them. It allows our pupils to articulate complex ideas and gives them confidence in themselves and their abilities. It provides them with the tools they need to compete and thrive in the world. (Paul Coffey, St John Bosco Arts College)

Why is pupil oracy important?

"Erm... like... erm... yeah... erm... sort of... you know what I mean..."
How often do we hear that in our classrooms?

We hear it from pupils that are struggling with a new concept, but are unable to articulate themselves. Sometimes we hear it from pupils who may know what they are doing, but lack the communication skills to explain it.

Oracy is not just for English lessons. Good oracy is so important in all of our subjects.

Why do we need to support pupil oracy?

Voice 21 stress that children from disadvantaged backgrounds are more likely to suffer from communication difficulties, and are afforded the least opportunity to develop the confidence and abilities in speaking that will enable them to compete with their more socioeconomically advantaged peers. Studies suggest that the average student in a secondary school in a deprived area speaks (as part of the formal part of a class) only four words a lesson - the equivalent of three hours across the whole of their time in school.

" Spoken language enables us to do much more than share information - it enables us to think together. But as teachers do we always use it to the best advantage? And do we give enough attention to enabling children to use language as a tool for learning and problem-solving?" - Neil Mercer.

How you can support pupil oracy

One way is to provide students with a basic language framework or model prompts to help them better articulate their thinking when discussing things as a class or in groups.
Sentences to add on to what someone else has said:
"Building on what _____ said about _____, I think ......"

"I agree with _____ because......"
Sentences to disagree with what someone has said:
"I politely disagree with _____ because ......"

"I see why you might say _____, but I think ......"
Sentences to ask for more information:
"Can you talk more about your thinking please?"

"What made you think of that?"

Using video for oracy development

Paul Coffey from St John Bosco Arts College discusses how they've used IRIS Connect for oracy development:

As we look to develop oracy with our pupils, IRIS Connect is once again proving to be an invaluable tool.

Our school Teaching and Learning team have split into departmental groups to explore whether having increased oracy skills can help pupils to tackle complex, multi-step problems.

To start with, selected classes were recorded while they explained how they would answer a given problem and baselines were taken. Then over the course of several weeks, the classes received specific 'oracy lessons' and were encouraged to use the techniques at every possibility. The class were recorded again upon the conclusion of the trial.

The use of IRIS Connect has made it incredibly simple to track how the pupils are progressing over time. Mr Steele, one of our math teachers has used the Forms tool to great effect, enabling us to easily record when and how, pupils are using specific language. We are in the process of comparing this data with control classes, and the results are already amazing to see. Pupils who have taken part are speaking in a more structured way, with a greater confidence and understanding of the topics they have been taught.

Thanks to IRIS Connect, we have actual lesson footage of the process which we can now use to provide examples for other staff. The IRIS Connect Forms have also given us clear, measurable quantitative data, which we can use to measure against success criteria.

On top of all this, we're in the process of creating a new IRIS Connect Group to present examples of the research, our planning process, edited clips of footage, and all of the forms that were used. Having everything in one place will make it easier to share with wider staff and form a starting point for the new trials that will take place in the new academic year.

It's going to be an exciting few months!

Ready to take this to the next level?

If you enjoyed the above and are keen to further improve your dialogic skills, try recording your classroom practice on video and then watch it back for effective reflection. You may even want to share this video with a peer or mentor to gain valuable feedback.

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Dialogic teaching & classroom talk: How to improve dialogue and oracy

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What is dialogue and oracy and how can you support it effectively in the classroom? Discover practical solutions that you can use straight away.

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The Victorian Curriculum English - Speaking and Listening includes content descriptors that involve both social talk and talk to enhance learning. Talk to enhance learning, which stimulates and extends thinking and advances students' understandings requires more than just teacher talk and students responding to questions (Alexander, 2008).

Rather, talk to enhance learning requires students to participate in talk interactions whereby they and the teacher use talk to build upon their knowledge and talk becomes a tool for inquiry.

In these situations, both the talk and the learning is cumulative. Extended talk facilitates learning and involves students being given the time to explore and deepen their ideas. It involves students engaging in discussion, or explaining their thinking rather than providing one-word answers.

The development of higher order thinking skills is constructed through extended talk (Hammond and Miller, 2015). When focusing on extended talk, the teacher (or students) may press the speaker to 'go deeper'. This can be done by asking exploratory questions such as:

"Can you tell us more about that?"

"What makes you say that?"

"Would you provide an example of that?"

Other students can build on the extended response, which helps to develop knowledge and deepen reasoning (Edward-Groves, 2014).

Extended talk can be planned for during all phases of learning, for example:

At the beginning of a foundation science unit on weather and seasons, students share personal stories of seasons and find out if there is a more popular season amongst the group.

During a year 4 health and physical education unit, students critique the effectiveness of health advertisements.

At the end of a year 6 history unit, students retell an individual's story of migration and reasons for migrating to Australia.

Extended talk can lead to dialogic talk. Dialogic talk is talk that achieves common understandings through structured, cumulative questioning and discussion. It is talk which enhances learning (Alexander, 2008).

Research has demonstrated that the use of dialogue as a pedagogical tool develops reasoning, helps students to collectively and individually solve problems, and construct new ideas (Littleton and Mercer, 2013).

To encourage dialogic talk students should:

be encouraged to state the purpose of the discussion

be familiar with the negotiated 'rules for accountable talk'

ask questions

know how to paraphrase each other

be comfortable with moments of silence

be able to rephrase what is said to help others make meaning

explore differences of opinions

articulate ideas and provide arguments to support ideas

use the body language and facial expression of peers to determine if a message is understood.

References

Alexander, R. (2008). Culture, Dialogue and Learning: Notes on an Emerging Pedagogy In N. Mercer and S. Hodgkinson (Eds.), Exploring Talk in School, (pp. 91-114). London: Sage Publications.

Edward-Groves, C. (2014). Talk moves: A repertoire of practices for productive classroom dialogue. PETAA Paper 195. Marrickville. PETAA, Primary English Teachers Association Australia.

Hammond, J. and Miller, J. (2015). Classrooms of possibility: Supporting at-risk EAL students. Newtown: PETAA, Primary English Teachers Association.

Littleton, K. and Mercer, N. (2013). Interthinking: putting talk to work. Oxon: Routledge.

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The Victorian Curriculum English - Speaking and Listening includes content descriptors that involve both social talk and talk to enhance learning. Talk to enhance learning, which stimulates and extends thinking and advances students' understandings requires more than just teacher talk and students responding to questions (Alexander, 2008).