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Published in the Great Teaching Toolkit: Evidence Review, the Model for Great Teaching offers a curriculum for teachers’ professional learning. It provides a common professional language and a shared structure for enabling Great Teaching.

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A Teacher's Guide to Dialogic Pedagogy Part 1: The What and the Why

In this short series of posts, I want to explore what dialogic pedagogy is, why it might be valuable and how a classroom teacher or school might get started with it. It's written in part to help me to clarify my own thinking (or at least to keep me thinking!) during the lockdown, though I do hope others will find it interesting and useful too. Any feedback would be most welcome.

What is Dialogic Pedagogy?

Dialogic pedagogy involves teachers and students talking and thinking in a way that seeks out and values different perspectives, and uses them to develop understanding. The different perspectives in question might most commonly be those of the teacher (or the discipline) and the students, or those of different students. Such pedagogy might be characterised by the teacher encouraging / creating opportunities for talk that has the features of dialogue. It might also be characterised by a deliberate effort, on the part of both teacher and students, to get better at dialogue because they value it as a learning tool and because they see it as a 'good' in its own right.

Dialogue is a specific type of talk, distinct from others more commonly heard in classrooms. Participants in a dialogue are not trying to impose their views on others (as we often do in the course of teaching the curriculum) and are not willing to unthinkingly accept others' views (as students do for much of the time). Rather they are engaged in a collaborative endeavour to reach better understandings of ideas, and of each other. Engagement in dialogue in the classroom signals a suspension of 'putting in' in favour of shared enquiry, reflection and meaning making. Participants engage in listening, questioning, answering, explaining, exemplifying, distinguishing, connecting, applying, evaluating and so on. They become sensitive to the differences in their understandings, and use these to stimulate further talk aimed at resolving those differences or gaining an expanded awareness of the different perspectives that are held. Dialogic pedagogy is valuable in all subjects, though its form needs to be adapted to context and to different 'ways of knowing'.

There is much more to say about dialogue, and I think that teachers interested in dialogic pedagogy would find it both interesting and useful to dig a little deeper. I say a little more in the notes shared here, and I have included some useful references in the bibliography below.

Why Invest Time in Dialogic Pedagogy?

Proponents of dialogic pedagogy may well have some shared beliefs relevant to education. In his 2020 book 'A Dialogic Teaching Companion', Professor Robin Alexander suggests that these include ' stances ' on human development, classroom relationships, procedures for managing interactions, reasoning, epistemology, ethics, culture and society, and ontology. My own commitment to dialogic pedagogy is certainly informed by a conscious stance on at least some of these things, which helps me to explain why I think the practice is so valuable. Of course, I need to remain open to the idea that my stances can change as I learn more, and so can my views on dialogic pedagogy, but for now, here's how I see things:

Firstly, a view about knowledge and its acquisition. One of a teacher's roles is to pass on knowledge. This might involve making new information available to students through talk, text or experience, and supporting them to store this information in long-term memory. To a degree, this can be achieved by various forms of transmission or self-discovery. However, new information is more likely to be retained if it becomes connected to information that has already been learned; this also ensures that the new information becomes meaningful. In her recent blog Efrat Furst argues for the primacy of meaning making, and helpfully defines it as 'describing a new concept in terms of other concepts that we already understand, in a way that allows us to use it'. Students need to be engaged in an active process of meaning making if they are to retain and 'understand' what they are being taught.

To help students to make appropriate connections, teachers need an awareness of prior learning. What relevant information and concepts are students likely to have in long-term memory, and how can teaching re-activate these and connect them to the new learning? Teachers are aware of the range of experiences (texts, experiments, problems etc.) students have been exposed to and the concepts they have been helped to form in school and this will give them some control over the meaning making process. However, each student will have unique experiences from their everyday lives that will also have an influence. These are less accessible to the teacher and can confound his or her best efforts as unexpected and erroneous connections may be made, leading to alternative conceptions or 'misconceptions'. This is where the different perspectives mentioned above come from.

Let's take an example. A primary school science teacher may have done his or her best to teach children that freezing is a process that involves a substance changing from its liquid state to its solid state as it cools down. S/he may well have exemplified this by looking at water becoming ice; s/he may also have attempted to support the generalisation of the concept by looking at other liquids freezing - liquid gold becoming solid gold, for example. Some children will construct the intended understanding. Others might signal their understanding (perhaps they can recite the account of freezing given above), but their strong everyday association of freezing with 'being cold' will prevent them from accepting the solidification of gold at hundreds of degrees centigrade as an example of the phenomenon. Still others might have come to regard any example of solidification as an example of freezing, including an egg becoming solid as it is cooked or a resin setting (processes involving chemical change). There is a mismatch between the perspective of the teacher (the perspective of science) and the various perspectives of the children. By the way, this scenario arises from my discussion with three Year 5 pupils in 2019, transcribed here. Have a look - can you see the different perspectives of the students and me?

A wider range of perspectives may be formed during the interpretation of a poem, or an historical event. In these situations there may be a greater range of 'acceptable' perspectives, with no one authoritative point of view, though the teacher will wish to engage students with perspectives that have stood the test of time (the 'best that has been thought and said').

So how can we make these different perspectives visible and come to understand them and the experiences that have given rise to them? How can teachers and students come to see from the other perspective? How can they bring their perspectives into creative tension in a way that gives rise to some kind of resolution (be that the student's understanding of the teacher's view - and vice versa - or the generation of new perspectives through some kind of synthesis)? Engaging students in dialogue is one useful way of doing these things. The recognition and valuing of different perspectives is central to dialogue, as is developing the capacity to visit different perspectives, to inhabit them for a while and understand where they come from without losing sight of one's own point of view. From a position of value and understanding can come challenge; where appropriate, a dialectical process or a process of argumentation can lead towards resolution (or at least make people aware that their view is contestable).

Another 'stance' that influences my view of dialogic pedagogy is a stance on the relationship between dialogue and thinking, and on the possibility of teaching thinking. When we call somebody into dialogue, we are calling them to think (not to passively accept an authoritative voice). In this sense thinking does not just mean a rational process that goes on within the brain of the individual, but a process that goes on between people and perspectives; it is a social process - a process of thinking together (Vygotsky famously suggested that higher mental functions are learned through social interaction before becoming a feature of the internal thinking of an individual).

This act of thinking is essential for making meaning and retaining knowledge - in a well-known aphorism, the cognitive psychologist Daniel Willingham tells us that 'memory is the residue of thought'. Good thinking together is dependent on a sound grasp of relevant prior knowledge, and perhaps on an understanding of the styles of reasoning that have developed within the relevant disciplines (science, maths, history etc.). It is also enhanced by the more general dispositions learned in dialogues, such as curiosity, an openness to other perspectives and a willingness to change one's own perspective. The disposition and ability to seek to understand and inhabit another perspective and to hold it in a creative tension with one's own perspective is essential, and is something that can be learned through the regular practice of dialogue. The relationship between knowledge, dialogue and thinking is a synergistic one.

And relationships, of course, are critical in dialogue. Professor Rupert Wegerif (2018) argues that relationship is a precursor to thinking together. The ability to be drawn into dialogue with the other is contingent on seeing and valuing the other as a potential source of meaning and understanding; not just as a source of information, but as a source of difference in relation to which one's own perspective can grow. In this sense, an orientation of openness to and interest in other people and other ideas is fundamental, and so, therefore, is the environment of the classroom and the relationships between students and teachers.

Wegerif also argues that education itself can be seen as a drawing into dialogue. This doesn't just mean the spatially and temporally bound dialogues of the classroom, but the ongoing dialogues of the disciplines and of humanity as a whole. The knowledge taught in schools is the best answers we currently have to the best questions that have been asked so far; it is not fixed and final but ever-changing. Our job as educators is to bring our students up to speed with the dialogue so far, and to help them, all of them, to come to value their own voice so that they can take it forward into the future. Sympathy with this dialogic view of education as a whole seems to me to demand sympathy with dialogic pedagogy.

I would argue that dialogic pedagogy is fundamentally democratic, not just in the way it values everybody's voice, but in the way it prepares them to participate in public discourse and deliberation. Hopefully a grounding in dialogue will give students a thirst for truth (or the best version of it they can attain), an openness to the 'unforced force of the better argument', and some protection from indoctrination, ideology and fake news.

One final stance I would like to share at this point is an ethical one. I am fond of a quoting Dmitri Nikulin who suggested that dialogue might be 'the therapy against the misrecognition of one human by another'. In teaching students to engage in dialogue, we are giving them something still more valuable than an academic education: we are giving them the abilities and dispositions they need to be interested in, to value and to come to understand (if not to agree with) their fellow human beings, which might represent a source of the care and kindness that our world so badly needs.

Evidence of Impact

The Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) has carried out research on the impact of both Robin Alexander's Dialogic Teaching and Philosophy for Children (P4C - a specific example of dialogic pedagogy that I will return to in a later post).

In Alexander's case a relatively short but intensive intervention led to a conclusion that, 'This trial found consistent, positive effects in English, science and maths for all children in Year 5, equivalent to about 2 months additional progress.' You can access the research here.

This is consistent with the findings of the P4C study, which concluded that, 'Year 4 and 5 pupils doing Philosophy for Children made about two months' additional progress in Key Stage 2 maths and reading compared with other pupils.' You can access the research .

A team from the University of Cambridge led by Professor Christine Howe, Dr Sarah Hennessy and Professor Neil Mercer has published results of a project looking into the impact of dialogic interaction on attainment, concluding that children improved significantly more in maths and English when a teachers encouraged pupils to participate in dialogue, to elaborate on their thoughts / ideas and to question each other's ideas. You can access this research .

Summary

So in summary dialogic pedagogy is useful because it helps students to gain meaningful knowledge, to think well and to participate in a deliberative democracy in which all perspectives are valued and understood. It has the power to make the world a better place. So as an interested teacher, where can you start? The next post will offer some suggestions focusing on developing an awareness of the different types of teacher talk we use and the purposes for which we use them.

Bibliography
For a deeper exploration of the nature of dialogue in relation to education try:
Phillipson, N. and Wegerif, R. 2017, Dialogic Education: Mastering core concepts through thinink together, Routledge, Abingdon

Wegerif, R. 2013, Dialogic: Education for the Internet Age, Routledge, Abingdon
See also:
Alexander, R. 2020, A Dialogic Teaching Companion, Routledge, Abingdon

Mercer, M. and Littleton, K. 2013, Interthinking: Putting Talk to Work, Routledge, Abingdon

Wegerif, R. 2018, A Dialogic Theory of Teaching Thinking in Kerslake, L. and Wegerif, R. Theory of Teaching Thinking, Routledge, Abingdon
Moving away from the context of education, try:
Sleap, F. and Sener, O. 2013, Dialogue Theories, The Dialogue Society, London

Isaacs, I. 1999, Dialogue and the Art of Thinking Together, Doubleday, New York

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A Teacher's Guide to Dialogic Pedagogy Part 1: The What and the Why - 21st Century Learners

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A Teacher's Guide to Dialogic Pedagogy Part 1: The What and the Why In this short series of posts, I want to explore what dialogic pedagogy is, why it might be valuable and how a classroom teacher or school might get started with it.

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EEF Supporting Independence Through Questioning 

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EEF Supporting Independence Through Questioning 

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Some approaches to dialogic education, 'Thinking Together' for example, are all about teaching Exploratory Talk. The idea of Exploratory Talk was introduced by Douglas Barnes in the 1970s but the version behind Thinking Together was developed mostly by Neil Mercer as part of a triad of 'types of talk': Exploratory Talk, Disputational Talk and Cummulative Talk (Mercer, 1995). But what exactly is a 'type of talk'?

The following characterisation of the three types and variations on this can be found in several books, articles and web-sites:

Disputational Talk, which is characterized by disagreement and individualized decision making. There are few attempts to pool resources, to offer constructive criticism or make suggestions. Disputational talk also has some characteristic discourse features - short exchanges consisting of assertions and challenges or counter assertions

Cumulative Talk, in which speakers build positively but uncritically on what the others have said. Partners use talk to construct 'common knowledge' by accumulation. Cumulative discourse is characterized by repetitions, confirmations and elaborations.

Exploratory Talk, in which partners engage critically but constructively with each other's ideas. Statements and suggestions are offered for joint consideration. These may be challenged and counter-challenged, but challenges are justified and alternative hypotheses are offered. Partners all actively participate, and opinions are sought and considered before decisions are jointly made. Compared with the other two types, in Exploratory Talk knowledge is made more publicly accountable and reasoning is more visible in the talk. (Mercer and Wegerif 2004 p72)

Types of talk are perhaps a way of seeing more than they are a coding scheme.
We do not measure the curvature of the smile of a child and then check this against the expression in their eyes in order to work out that they are happy, we experience their happiness directly.

In a similar way teachers do not always need to collect and code talk 'data' in order to work out whether a group is working well or not. Tone of voice and body language is often enough. If challenges are being given without elaboration or empathy then the talk is 'Disputational Talk' and you need to intervene. If the body language and expressions show shared engagement then it is 'Exploratory Talk' and you should probably leave them be. This way of analysing talk in action in a busy classroom depends upon the teacher's ability to be a participant in the dialogues of the students, grasping what is really going on in between the children in ways that are not always immediately reflected in the words being used.
Are types of talk 'real'?
When researchers code talk they usually depend upon units that are easy to see and distinguish. Words for instance or 'turns at talk'. Are types of talk identifiable bits of reality in the same way?

In Mercer and Wegerif (1997) 'A Dialogic Framework for Researching Peer talk' we gave an example of a sudden transition in the talk of a small group of primary students. In that example a triad were working well together when one girl began to feel that the others were not respecting her views and she stopped giving reasons. The others in the group demanded that she give reasons for her disagreements. She refused and suddenly left the group. In this example the switch in the mood of the group was very obvious. Although the shift was reflected in the talk it was really about the relationship between this girl and the other two children. This is a shift in 'intersubjective orientation'.

I hope that you agree with me that this kind of shift in intersubjective orientation is something that we are all familiar with as participants in dialogue. For example I might be talking openly about my life and worries to someone then notice, from something they say, that they are judging me. I then become more defensive and cautious in what I reveal. This sort of shift is not always about the surface of the talk which might remain almost the same. It is therefore not always easy to code. Recognising this kind of transition involves an interpretation of the depth structure of the talk. This depth structure is about relationships. It is what is really going on.

'Ground rules' or social norms

The intersubjective orientation of being 'open to the other', is essential for Exploratory Talk but it is not enough on its own. Further levels of description are required.

The Thinking Together approach to teaching dialogue relies on teaching learners 'ground rules' for talk. But what exactly are these 'ground rules'? I wrote about them in another blog post http://www.rupertwegerif.name/blog/what-exactly-are-ground-rules.
One way to think about teaching ground rules for effective dialogue is as a form of culture-change. Any culture has implicit assumptions or expectations that shape explicit behaviour. These assumptions tend to be unconscious because you only become aware of them when they are challenged. If the culture of a classroom is individualistic and competitive, for example, then inviting a child to tell the class what she thinks about an issue might be interpreted either as an opportunity to perform or as an invitation to be judged and found wanting or, indeed, as both. If the culture of the classroom is 'dialogic' and collaborative then exactly the same invitation might be interpreted simply as a chance to participate in shared thinking with the goal of shared understanding in which case provisional or 'half-baked' thoughts are welcome and mistakes are understood as valuable learning opportunities.
Specifying a social kind of reason
Neil Mercer and research team defined Exploratory Talk in terms of specific ground rules

everyone in the group is encouraged to contribute

contributions are treated with respect

reasons are asked for

everyone is prepared to accept challenges

alternatives are discussed before a decision is taken

all relevant information is shared

the group seeks to reach agreement.

(From: http://thinkingtogether.educ.cam.ac.uk/resources/Ground_rules_for_Exploratory_Talk.pdf)
​
But I think that is too specific in its focus on explicit reasoning. If we go back to Douglas Barnes we can see that Exploratory Talk was set up as an opposition to 'Presentational Talk'. Barnes claimed that usually children are called upon talk in classroom to show what they know or to 'present' but that it is useful to have time to work out ideas by talking them through in an open and provisional way. The trouble is that whenever he pointed to examples of Exploratory Talk he chose examples of explicit reasoning where hypotheses were formed and tested. Mercer tends to follow suit. That is one way of thinking that is useful in some contexts but it is not the only way of thinking. Creative thinking often proceeds without evidence of explicit reasoning left behind in the transcripts.

Teachers I talked to all recognise that playful talk is very common in classrooms. Playful talk involves making verbal puns and imaginative associations with words. Playful talk works with the resonances and associations of words rather than with explicit meanings and explicit reasoning. Neil Mercer almost gives an example of this when illustrating cumulative talk (1995: p. 101). Two girls in a primary school working on creating a newspaper front page try out alternatives for their headline about how wonderful their region is. One tries 'Fantastic', the other tries 'Brilliant' but these words are obviously not quite right. Then suddenly the first girl says 'Fantabuloso' and both of them repeat it a few times excitedly. While this might not be reasoning it is co-constructive talk that solves a design problem.
​
Books on creativity are full of examples of new connections that have been made between contexts in a way that solves a problem. In my book 'Mind Expanding' I give the example of how a business technique to generate creative thinking, 'Synectics' discovered that the way that a horse's backside works, with two separate openings, was perfect for dispensing creams in a way that keeps them from going dry (Wegerif, 2010 p47-8). This might seem a long way from the playful talk of puns and rhymes and resonances in classrooms. But both kinds of talk use metaphors in a way that explicit reasoning talk does not. There is a continuum between more silly 'playful talk' and more serious 'creative talk'.

In Mexico Sylvia Rojas-Drummond led an interesting experimental study that tested the importance of explicit reasoning to the effectiveness of Exploratory Talk. Students who had been taught Exploratory Talk over three months using the Thinking Together approach were given two different kinds of test. One was a version of the kind of reasoning test that has already been widely used. The other was a more creative task in which groups of students had to collaborate together to write a short text. It was found that the students did better on the reasoning task than they had in a pre-test and this improved result was associated with more explicit reasoning. However, they also did better on the more creative task, using established ways of judging the creative quality of the writing, but that this improvement was not associated with explicit reasoning (Rojas-Drummond et al 2006).

I do not have the recordings of the talk of the groups doing the more creative task but it is possible that their lack of explicit reasoning was compensated for by more of the kind of thinking by resonance that also characterises playful talk (Wegerif, 2005).
So what are 'types of talk'?
A type of talk needs to be specified at at least three levels

A) Intersubjective orientations

Types of talk are rooted in intersubjective orientations or ways of relating to the other like being 'open' or 'closed'

If we take Exploratory Talk in the spirit of Douglas Barnes as that kind of talk in which children can work out their thinking together then we need to expand our understanding of this type of talk to include creative talk which builds understanding through resonances between ideas even if no explicit critical thinking is present.

Cumulative talk should not be defined as any talk without explicit reasoning. Such talk can be creative. But we can preserve the term cumulative talk for that kind of closed talk which defends the image of the group. I am sure we have all been in meetings where it was clear that criticism of any kind was not welcome, we can add on to what has been said, we can agree with the others but we are not allowed to challenge. The closure of cumulative talk is based on defending an image of the group. This balances the closure of disputational talk which is all about defending the image of the individual ego.

This discussion leads us to table 1: Types of talk

​The intention of Barnes was that Exploratory Talk represented thinking talk. Thinking includes creative thinking that progresses by resonance and metaphor. I therefore think we need to expand the definition of Exploratory Talk given earlier to recognise that explicit reasoning is only present for some tasks in some contexts and that for other tasks in other contexts more creative and even playful forms of talk are also Exploratory Talk. Exploratory Talk is now understood as a way of talking together that takes shared thinking forward.

Each 'type of talk' will be characterised by a set of appropriate social norms. Whereas the fundamental division between open and closed attitudes is probably a human universal social norms vary greatly across history, culture and social context. The social norms that best support Exploratory Talk in a Mathematics classroom might not be the same as those needed in an Art class but the Exploratory orientation underlying the ground rules might be the same. The social norms we should teach for Exploratory Talk in China might not be same as those we should teach in Mexico (e.g Yang 2016). One way to approach this cultural diversity is to give children an experience of group work and then to ask them what they think the 'ground rules' should be for effective and productive dialogue.
C) Surface features
Intersubjective orientations like openness to the other are instantiated in social norms like listening with patience and respect, these norms then realise themselves in terms of interaction patterns like asking clarifying questions and giving elaborated responses and communicative actions like showing appreciation for the other. The underlying structures, in combination with a context, result in patterns of data on the surface of talk, the number of turns, the length of turns, the words used, the eyebrows raised etc.

A type of talk has all these levels, intersubjective orientation, social norms and surface features. Type of talk analysis is interesting because it is not simply empirical. It does not start with the data and work up to reconstruct meaning but it starts with the experience of teachers as participants in classroom dialogues that are always already full of meaning.

Types of talk analysis shows us that the kind of thinking that occurs in classrooms depends upon intersubjective orientations and social norms that are not always apparent to participants. How children think in classrooms is largely determined by these invisible rules. In Disputational Talk, for example, speakers find themselves narrowly defined in opposition to others and only think defensively to justify themselves. In Exploratory Talk speakers may forget themselves at times and flow into participating in a kind of 'thinking in general' that is not my thinking or your thinking but just good thinking.

Barnes, D. (1976). From curriculum to communication. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook-Heinemann.

Carter, R. (2015). Language and creativity: The art of common talk. Routledge.

Dawes, L., Mercer, N., & Wegerif, R. (2004). Thinking together: A programme of activities for developing speaking, listening and thinking skills for children aged 8-11. Birmingham: Imaginative Minds.

Dunbar, K. (1997). How scientists think: On-line creativity and conceptual change in science. Creative thought: An investigation of conceptual structures and processes, 4.

Mercer, N. (1995). The guided construction of knowledge: Talk amongst teachers and learners. Multilingual matters.

Mercer, N. and Wegerif, R (2004) Is 'exploratory talk' productive talk? In Daniels, H., & Edwards, A. (Eds.). (2004). The RoutledgeFalmer Reader in psychology of education. London. RoutledgeFalmer. pp67-86

Rojas-Drummond, S., Mazón, N., Fernández, M., & Wegerif, R. (2006). Explicit reasoning, creativity and co-construction in primary school children's collaborative activities. Thinking Skills and Creativity, 1(2), 84-94.

Wegerif, R. (2005). Reason and creativity in classroom dialogues. Language and Education, 19(3), 223-237.

Wegerif, R. (2010). Mind Expanding: Teaching For Thinking And Creativity In Primary Education: Teaching for Thinking and Creativity in Primary Education. McGraw-Hill Education (UK).

Wegerif, R., & Mercer, N. (1997). A dialogical framework for researching peer talk. Language and Education Library, 12, 49-64.

Yang, Y. (2016). Lessons learnt from contextualising a UK teaching thinking program in a conventional Chinese classroom. Thinking Skills and Creativity, 19, 198-209

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Some approaches to dialogic education, 'Thinking Together' for example, are all about teaching Exploratory Talk. The idea of Exploratory Talk was introduced by Douglas Barnes in the 1970s but the version behind Thinking Together was developed mostly by Neil Mercer as part of a triad of 'types of talk': Exploratory Talk, Disputational Talk and Cummulative Talk (Mercer, 1995).

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Dialogic Teaching

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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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Vygotsky Learning From A More Knowledgeable Other (MKO)

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Vygotsky Learning From A More Knowledgeable Other (MKO)

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Vygotsky's Theory of Sociocultural Cognitive Development

Lev Vygotsky (1896-1934) was a Russian psychologist and teacher who developed a theory about how our social interactions influence our cognitive development. This is known as Lev Vygotsky's Sociocultural Theory of Cognitive Development.

Vygotsky developed his theories around the same time as Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget was developing theories about cognitive development, but they differ on almost every point. Some of Vygotsky's work is still being translated from Russian.

What is Vygotsky's Theory?

Vygotsky's social development theory asserts that a child's cognitive development and learning ability can be guided and mediated by their social interactions. His theory (also called Vygotsky's Sociocultural theory) states that learning is a crucially social process as opposed to an independent journey of discovery. He expands on this by stating that a child's learning benefitted greatly from being guided by a more knowledgeable member of the community - such as a parent or teacher.

Vygotsky's sociocultural theory also suggested that children internalise and learn from the beliefs and attitudes that they witness around them. He believed that culture played an important role in shaping cognitive development and therefore that this development varied across cultures. Vygotsky also stressed the importance of language as the root of all learning.

Vygotsky's Concept of More Knowledgable Other (MKO)

Vygotsky's theory places importance on guiding children's learning through their interaction with a more knowledgeable other (MKO). The more knowledgeable other could be anyone with a greater understanding of the task or concept that the child is trying to complete or learn. Most often, this would be a parent, caregiver or teacher, but it could also be a peer or mentor.

This theory is not limited to academic or educational learning, it can also be applied to recreational learning such as playing games or using technology. In these circumstances, a peer or older child is more likely to be the more knowledgeable other.

The MKO could also be an electronic tutor, in cases where a program is set up to guide learning using voice prompts or videos.Vygotsky's theory places importance on guiding children's learning through their interaction with a more knowledgeable other (MKO). The more knowledgeable other could be anyone with a greater understanding of the task or concept that the child is trying to complete or learn. Most often, this would be a parent, caregiver or teacher, but it could also be a peer or mentor.

Vygotsky's Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD)

The concept of the zone of proximal development, also known as the zone of potential development, is used to explain a child's potential for cognitive development and ability when they are guided through a task, rather than asked to do it in isolation.

If a child is presented with a task that is slightly above their ability level, the zone of proximal development (ZPD) refers to their ability to do it with the assistance of a more knowledgeable person. This theory explains why some skills present themselves in a more social context when the child is unable to display them by themselves.

The zone of proximal development can be described as the distance between the actual developmental level when assessed independently and the level of potential development when assessed in collaboration with peers or mentors or under the guidance of a teacher.

Zone of Proximal Development Stages

The ZPD can be broken down into three distinct stages in terms of a learner's skillset. In order to improve the ability of the learner the more knowledgeable person must understand what stage they are in.

Tasks a learner can accomplish without assistance

This refers to tasks that the learner can perform independently. If the learner has reached this stage, the teacher or mentor will need to increase the level of difficulty of the task in order to facilitate further learning.

Tasks a learner can accomplish with assistance

This is referred to as their zone of proximal development. In this stage, the learner needs the guidance of a more knowledgeable other to help them complete the task.

Tasks a learner cannot accomplish with assistance

This refers to tasks that the learner cannot do, even with the guidance of a more knowledgeable person. If the learner's ability falls within this range, the level of difficulty may need to be decreased to accommodate their skillset.

Vygotsky and Instructional Scaffolding

Instructional scaffolding is a method of guided learning that helps a student learn by pairing them with an educator. The educator should have greater experience with the task or process than the student, but they should also have an understanding of the level that the student is at and how they can address this level.

Techniques for instructional scaffolding might include using visual aids (such as diagrams), providing examples, working one-on-one with the student and providing feedback. The aim of scaffolding is to create an environment in which the student feels comfortable asking questions until they can perform the skill without any help.

The benefits of scaffolding include:

Motivating the learner by helping them through aspects of a task that they have trouble with

Minimising frustration for the learner

Providing a faster learning experience

Elementary Mental Functions

Vygotsky's child development theory refers to four 'elementary mental functions' as the innate abilities that we are born with. These are:

Attention

Sensation

Perception

Memory

These abilities are then developed into 'higher mental functions' through social interaction with our community.

Vygotsky also coined the term 'tools of intellectual adaptation', which refers to problem-solving strategies and ways of thinking that children internalise by observing and interacting with more knowledgeable members of society. Different cultures exemplify different tools of intellectual adaptation because they are affected by the beliefs and values of the individual culture.

Social Influences and Cognitive Development

Vygotsky believed that learning was an active process rather than a natural or passive one. He said that children were engaged in their own learning and discovery but that their development happened in the context of social interaction, as opposed to independently or in isolation.

Vygotsky also highlighted the importance of learning that was guided by an educator or teacher. Techniques used by the teacher to engage the child, such as performing the task themselves as an example or providing verbal instruction was referred to as cooperative or collaborative dialogue by Vygotsky theory.

The process of learning would occur when the child understood the information, absorbed it and then used it to guide their own performance.

An example of this guided learning could be if a child is given a sudoku puzzle to complete. A teacher or mentor might recommend certain strategies to the child, such as ruling out places where each number could go based on the horizontal and vertical positions of that number, or writing possible options in the corner of the box in pencil to cull the possibilities. The teacher might also encourage the child to ask questions and provide prompts when they are close to the right answer. As the child develops a higher level of competency, the teacher reduces their influence.

This technique is also very common in sport, in which a coach or more capable peer will often demonstrate the skill before asking the student to do it themselves. For example, if a soccer teacher was teaching students how to dribble a ball through a set of cones, they may perform this skill first themselves in order to set an example for the students.

Vygotsky's Theory and Language

Vygotsky viewed language as an essential tool for communication and that culture and behaviour was understood through language. Vygotsky also highlighted the critical role that language plays in cognitive development.

Vygotsky's theory says that social interactions help children develop their ability to use language. According to Vygotsky, there are three stages/forms of language in the development process:

Social speech - communication between children and others (usually from the age of 2)

Private speech - private speech that is directed to the self but has not yet been internalised (usually from the age of 3)

Silent inner speech - a child's internal monologue (usually from the age of 7)

Vygotsky and Private Speech in Young Children

Vygotsky was the first philosopher to describe the stage of private speech and explain it as the transition between initial external speech and silent inner speech. He also stated that thought and language were initially separate functions before they merge at around the age of 7. Vygotsky believed that this process of internalising speech and language was essential to cognitive development.

Vygotsky viewed private speech as a method of self-regulating behaviour. He also viewed language as a tool for accelerating understanding. For these reasons, he suggested that children who engaged in private speech regularly would be more socially competent than those who did not. Private speech could be useful in helping a child exercise their imagination, practise problem-solving skills and organise their thoughts.

Private speech was observed to appear at times when a child was having difficulty with a task and was then used to guide their thoughts and actions by first organising and regulating them.

Jean Piaget theorised that private speech diminished with age as the child became more socialised and adjusted more to external speech, which is in contrast with Vygotsky's theory that private speech disappeared as it became silent and internalised.

Application of Vygotsky's Theory in the Classroom

Vygotsky's sociocultural theory about child development says that cognitive development occurs as a result of social interactions. In this way, learning is innately collaborative. He believed social negotiation was essential for building knowledge and understanding concepts.

Vygotsky proposed that it was not possible to separate learning in the formative years from its social context. Initial learning occurred through social interaction and then the individual processed it internally.

Contemporary modes of applying this theory to the classroom mark a movement away from traditional memory-oriented models of teaching. 'Reciprocal teaching' refers to a method in which teachers and students work together to clarify and understand a concept before students are asked to repeat it or apply it in another context.

For example, if a teacher is reading a paragraph of text on a certain topic, they will go through a process together with the students of:

Summarising

Questioning

Clarifying; and

Predicting

This collaborative process allows the students to learn the concept in a social context before internalising it to apply on their own.

Zone of Proximal Development Examples and Applications in the Classroom

Techniques such as 'scaffolding' and/or 'apprenticeship' are often used in the classroom to describe ways of teaching students according to their level of ability. In these techniques, the learning is structured by a teacher and then their role is gradually reduced over time. This allows the student to learn the topic within their zone of proximal development and then adjust to doing it by themselves or tackling something of a higher difficulty.

Vygotsky's theories also inform some contemporary ideas about collaborative learning, such as pairing students of lesser capability with more advanced peers to help them learn. Discussion groups, small group learning and collaborative exercises in schools and universities have also been incorporated in response to theories about social learning.

Understanding what tasks, processes and concepts might lie in a student's zone of proximal development is also essential. For example, if a student has just mastered their times tables, basic division might be in their ZPD, but they're probably not ready for exponents yet. The teacher might provide an example of a division problem and the method to solve it before asking the student to try it themselves. This linear structure of learning is applied in most schools and institutions.

Challenges to Application of Vygotsky's Theory in the Classroom

Although applications of the zone of proximal development can be beneficial to helping students learn in the classroom, there can be some challenges for teachers. These challenges include:

Not having enough time or resources to address the needs of each student or help them individually

The possibility of misjudging a student's ZPD and causing frustration for both the student and teacher

There might be too many students in the class, with rapidly changing ability levels, to employ this method successfully

If the lesson plan is not arranged to accommodate scaffolding beforehand, it might be difficult to be flexible enough to follow through with it

If the teacher is unaware of the student's ZPD, the techniques might not be effective

Critical Evaluation of Vygotsky's Sociocultural Theory of Cognitive Development

Some of Vygotsky's work is still being translated from Russian, so there is some speculation about whether or not his theories had further elaboration or development. It is a time-consuming process to translate it from Russian, so his theories have not suffered as much criticism yet. His theories also lack specificity so can be difficult to directly refute.

A large amount of criticism is directed towards Vygotsky's assumption that his theory of cognitive development and social interaction is culturally universal. Additionally, he provides no specific hypothesises to be tested in order to prove or disprove his theories.

Vygotsky's ideas also do not address the impact of biology or genetics on cognitive development, nor do they address a child's emotional development.

However, there is plenty of evidence to support the suggestion that collaborative learning can be more effective than isolated learning. Additionally, mentoring and teaching children by pairing them with more knowledgeable peers or more adults is also known to have positive results.

Criticisms of Vygotsky

Lack of experimental tests

Vygotsky mostly used observation methods to support his theories, which has invited criticism about the validity of his findings. He also only vaguely defined social interaction and never stated the best method for engagement.

Active participation in learning

Vygotsky's theory about active participation in learning does not account for some circumstances in which children experience slower cognitive growth. Other philosophers have suggested that genetics should be factored in and that the results of passive learning should not be negated.

Social interaction

Some psychologists and philosophers are critical of Vygotsky's determination that socialisation was key to learning language and culture. This theory does not explain why some children learn and develop slowly, despite having strong social support. The vagueness of his theories has been criticised, with some suggesting that they were underdeveloped.

Language as the foundation of learning

Vygotsky's theory that language was a crucial tool of social interaction and therefore a crucial tool for learning has also been questioned. Some activities can be taught or learned using physical actions, hands-on processes, observational techniques or more creative methods, suggesting that language is not always the foundation of learning.

The zone of proximal development

The concept of the zone of proximal development is criticised for being unspecific and is sometimes viewed as a general term that encapsulates various models of cognitive development. It is also not a foolproof theory, because it doesn't explain why some students cannot perform certain tasks, even with help.

What are the Differences Between Vygotsky's Theory and Piaget's Theory?

Jean Piaget was a Swiss psychologist who developed a theory about cognitive development around the same time as Lev Vygotsky. Piaget's theory had a large influence on the study of developmental psychology. Piaget's theories are largely both more well-known and more heavily criticised than Vygotsky's, mostly because they are better understood.

There are a number of key differences between Vygotsky's human development theories and Piaget's.

The way that culture affects cognitive development

Vygotsky placed importance on the way culture affected cognitive growth and did not refer to specific stages of cognitive development. In contrast, Piaget described universal stages of cognitive development that did not vary across cultures.

Piaget's theory declared that children would have to reach each stage before being capable of certain tasks and that each stage would have to be reached in the same order. The stages he described were as follows:

Sensorimotor Stage (0-2 years) - The infant explores their environment mostly through sensory and motor perception. They begin to develop a sense of object permanence.

Preoperational stage (2-7 years) - The child begins to use language to represent and understand the world. They begin to think about things symbolically but have not yet developed problem-solving abilities.

Concrete operational stage (7-11 years) - The child begins to develop the ability to think logically. They also develop empathy. The child begins to understand how things work and can reverse certain processes in their mind.

Formal operational stage (12 and over) - The child's thought process can move on from things to ideas. They can handle abstract ideas because their thoughts have been freed from most constraints. They can also speculate answers to hypothetical problems.

Learning as a social process

Vygotsky's theory on children's cognitive development centres around learning being an inherently social process. He places emphasis on social interaction as a defining element of learning and says it cannot be removed from its social context.

Vygotsky expands on this by highlighting the benefits of pairing a student with a more knowledgeable other for the purpose of guided learning. Vygotsky stated that a child's immediate environment would have a significant impact on their development.

However, Piaget theorises that learning is mostly an independent process in which the individual undertakes their own journey of exploration. He didn't do as much research or observation on the role that social interaction played in cognitive development.

The role of language

When it comes to the role of language in development, Vygotsky and Piaget have very different theories. Vygotsky states that thought and language both begin early on in development but that they are initially separate functions that merge when the child begins to use inner speech. This usually happens around 3 years of age. He goes on to say that the internalisation of language is a necessary step for cognitive development.

In contrast, Piaget says that thought comes first and language develops as a result of this.

Vygotsky also highlighted the significance of the stage in between external speech and inner speech - private speech. Piaget's theory did not place much importance on this stage and instead suggested that it was a sign of immaturity.

Adult guidance

Vygotsky highlights the importance of adults playing a role in a child's cognitive development. He emphasises this through his model of the zone of proximal development, which can be used by parents, teachers, caregivers and tutors to structure and accelerate a child's learning.

On the other hand, Piaget's theory of cognitive development highlights the role of peers in providing perspective and improving a child's social awareness and negotiation skills.

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Lev Vygotsky's Theory of Child Development - Gowrie NSW

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Vygotsky's social development theory asserts that a child's cognitive development can be guided and mediated by social interactions. Read More

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Robin Alexander

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A case study by Tristan Igglesden

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This paper outlines the initial findings of a practitioner research project into the ways in which Google Classroom can be used to support classroom dialogue. These findings are taken from the first phase of a doctoral (EdD) study at Cambridge University. The setting for this ongoing project is an independent preparatory school that is making use of the Google Classroom platform to deliver curriculum materials to students in a range of subjects, with the focus here on Year 7 lessons.

There is a growing interest in schools currently in exploring the potential for The effective use of talk for teaching and learning, involvi... dialogic teaching More to increase students' capacity for reasoning and reflection (Faculty of Education, 2018). Through lesson planning, surveys and interviews, participants in this phase of the project help to identify some of the ways in which Google Classroom can be used to open up new spaces for such dialogue.

Dialogic pedagogy

Talk is a natural tool used by teachers to encourage learning, through A method of instruction in which concepts or skills are taug... direct instruction More , questioning and broader discussion. But not all communication is dialogue. Dialogue requires all participants to be open to others in the shared exchange of ideas. Dialogic teaching takes place when classroom talk is deliberately utilised to help students to develop their higher order thinking. Dialogue implies that a horizontal (between participants) rather than vertical (from teacher to student) transmission of knowledge is the route to lasting cognitive change (Alexander, 2001). This pedagogy is built on the social constructivist idea that it is impossible to separate the social and psychological functions of dialogue. Lev Vygotsky (1978) claimed that an important way in which students learn to think individually is through learning to reason with others.

Classrooms in which dialogic activities take place tend to share features that most teachers would wish to see in their own lessons: the open exchange of ideas, collaborative inquiry, reasoning, engagement with different perspectives and mutual respect (Haneda, 2017). A recent study by the Education Endowment Foundation found that dialogic pedagogy led to an average of two additional months of progress in Year 5 English and science lessons (Jay et al., 2017). Despite increasing support for dialogic pedagogy, large-scale studies suggest that system-wide change is yet to occur (Haneda, 2017). Classroom discussion is often ring-fenced, since most student contributions tend to align with those of the teacher whose comments direct the flow of enquiry. In contrast to traditional teaching, learning via an expanded dialogue can empower participants to construct new knowledge for themselves (Wegerif, 2013). Reflective dialogue is characterised by gaps between perspectives remaining open - an essential condition for productive discourse. The working definition of dialogue for this EdD project is ' a sign-based interaction that promotes intersubjectivity between participants' (after Marková and Linell, 1996).

Google Classroom

Google Classroom is a free, cloud-based learning management system (LMS) that is an integrated part of the 'G Suite for Education'. The platform aids the distribution of digital teaching materials and the coordination of collaborative projects. Since 2015, the number of users of Google Classroom has risen to 70 million (Tech Crunch, 2017). Given the global usage of this LMS, the tools are likely to soon be accessible to most teachers.

When working within the framework of the Google Classroom, it is essential that teachers identify ways to develop the skills that they most value in their students. Of particular interest are the collaborative functions of Google Classroom that can support dialogue in classrooms. These include Share and Comments functions, which allow users to collaborate in the creation of digital media. Users generate lasting digital artefacts, allowing dialogues to take place over a sustained period and at a pace controlled by the learners. In theory, the timeless, multimodal and visible nature of these artefacts should highlight the differences in perspectives between students and thus sustain reflective dialogue between them (Mercer et al., 2017).

Methods

In keeping with other design-based research (DBR) (Brown, 1992), this ongoing project aims to improve educational practices through three cycles of design, implementation, analysis and revision (Cobb et al., 2003). Furthermore, it features collaboration between the researcher and fellow teachers, enabling the alignment of theory and practice (Major et al., 2015). This article outlines the methods and findings of the first phase of the project.

Methods for the first phase of the project included a teacher questionnaire devised to better understand the prevailing beliefs about classroom technology (adapted from Haßler et al., 2016). This survey consisted of Likert scale questions, although teachers were given the opportunity to expand on their answers. Two teachers who agreed on the importance of promoting dialogue between students, and who both use Google Classroom, were then invited to become co-researchers. The two co-researchers and I completed three joint planning exercises in order to devise dialogic interventions, which were trialled with mixed-ability Year 7 students using the Google Classroom platform. Participants were observed delivering two lessons each, one as they would have typically planned it, and another augmented version based on the discussions of our planning meetings. Following each lesson, semi-structured interviews were conducted with small focus groups of students. Qualitative analysis of the audio-visual and interview transcripts then took place to identify emerging themes from the data (Bryman, 2008).

Findings

All teachers at the school agreed that promoting dialogue between students is important, and that educational technology improves the quality of both teaching and learning. Sixty-eight per cent have used features of the LMS for real-time collaboration in their lessons, although this use is occasional for most. Indeed, many of the features of Google Classroom that could be used to promote dialogue are not utilised by the majority of staff. There is a willingness to adopt new practices, but a sense that finding the time to develop these is limited.

The students surveyed appreciate the collaborative activities and feel comfortable carrying them out, recognising that other students 'might have other ideas', and that 'it helps you to discover a lot more on the topic from each other'. That said, the students recognise that not all talk is productive and that teachers should retain some measure of control over the direction of discussion: '... often these conversations go off on a tangent like when we should be talking about poetry, but half the class is discussing how Arsenal did at the weekend'.

Google Classroom is highly valued by the students in aiding the organisation and submission of their work. 'In Google Classroom it's very easy to put all of your work together and there's no way it can get lost.' The questionnaire also revealed unexpected modes of student use. For instance, 24 per cent of teachers never expect students to use online videos to better understand a topic and yet 86 per cent of the Year 7 students do so.

The Year 7 students are clear that talk is an important classroom activity and none of them consider it to be a waste of lesson time. However, the children do not consider the act of talking in the classroom to be work. 'So, in some lessons you might talk and, in some lessons, you might get on with some work.' Despite the value placed on dialogue and collaborative activities by both staff and students, there is sporadic use of the Share function of Google documents in lessons. However, teachers who have explored this feature find it to be a useful means to promote dialogue. This approach facilitates exploratory talk (Mercer and Littleton, 2007) by making ideas public and allowing participants to critically engage with one another's ideas. That said, students do harbour frustrations with this approach, because sometimes 'people put stupid stuff in the suggestions'. Etiquette is still being negotiated in this new space.

In the first planning meeting, we looked to devise an intervention that would encourage students to justify their opinions. It was suggested that by using the Share function of the LMS, children could pause and discuss video independently of the teacher, who would otherwise have done this for them on the interactive whiteboard. The lesson plan was therefore altered to include a Google Slide activity, asking students to collaboratively select and annotate screenshots in a shared document. Furthermore, the children were encouraged to add Comments to expand or challenge the ideas of others. The atmosphere during the activity was described as studious and the teacher noted that students in some of the groups were 'connecting to one another' in a way not previously seen. Whilst students were looking at their own machines, they chatted and collaborated simultaneously.

An apparent strength of the intervention was the removal of the teacher's control of the media. However, very few of the children moved on to comment or exchange in dialogue with any other group's work, and where they had done so, the comments failed to build upon one another's ideas. The children were 'wrapped up in what they were doing' and did not find time to move on. With this in mind, we decided that in the next augmented lesson we would continue to make use of the Share function of Google Slides but focus solely on encouraging dialogue between small groups of students, rather than expecting them to also engage in written dialogue with others. The number of digital devices was also reduced to one between two in order to maintain real-world talk.

Whilst using the Slides to coordinate their ideas, the students shared their thoughts more openly and the groups offered ideas that had not been anticipated by the teacher. There was a consensus among the participants that the intervention had led to more explicit reasoning and better coordination of ideas. This intervention was refined in the final planning meeting, where limitations were placed on the design of the slides, increasing the opportunities for dialogue by creating more actions that required consideration of the opinions of others. The number of digital devices was further reduced to one between three.

Implications

In many schools this technology will not be introduced to enhance teaching, but to better curate student work. Whilst cloud-based technologies such as Google Classroom have opened up the possibility of new forms of dialogue, the realisation of this is still brokered by teachers. Reflective dialogue will not be a natural consequence of having this technology to hand. Instead, the relevant features must be recognised and exploited if they are to have transformative effects. Teachers must also be mindful of the restrictions that the technology might put upon the dialogue in their lessons, such as the time taken logging on to the platform, and individual device use. In order to promote dialogue, it is beneficial to have students share their devices, and a ratio of one to three was found to be effective in this project. Therefore, schools with limited ICT resources or those with bring-your-own-device policies can still benefit from the collaborative features of the platform.

Engaging with fellow practitioners in joint planning activities proved to be an effective means of developing pedagogy in the first phase of this EdD project. For instance, by using the Share function, a teacher's tendency to direct students towards a predetermined outcome was reduced and kept the dialogue open and wide-ranging. Whilst practitioner research of this kind may limit the extent to which these findings can be applied in all settings, it did lead to the development of principles that promoted dialogue in this context. All teachers working with new technologies such as Google Classroom should be encouraged to discuss and experiment in this way in order to find practices that fit the demands of their school.

References

Alexander RJ (2001) Culture and Pedagogy: International Comparisons in Primary Education. Blackwell Publishing, Oxford, UK.

Brown AL (1992) Design experiments: Theoretical and methodological challenges in creating complex interventions in classroom settings. The Journal of the Learning Sciences 2(2): 141-178.

Bryman A (2008) Social Research Methods (3rd edition). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Cobb P, Confrey J, diSessa A et al. (2003) Design experiments in educational research. Educational Researcher 32(1): 9-13.

Faculty of Education (2018) Classroom dialogue: Does it really make a difference for student learning? Available at: https://www.educ.cam.ac.uk/research/projects/classroomdialogue/ (accessed 30 September 2018).

Haneda M (2017) Dialogic learning and teaching across diverse contexts: Promises and challenges. Language and Education 31(1): 1-5.

Haßler B, Major L, Warwick P et al. (2016) A Short Guide on the Use of Technology in Learning: Perspectives and Toolkit for Discussion. Faculty of Education: University of Cambridge.

Jay T, Taylor R, Moore N et al. (2017) Dialogic Teaching: Evaluation Report and Executive Summary. London: Education Endowment Foundation with Sheffield Hallam University.

Major L, Watson S and Kimber E (2015) Developing instructional and pedagogical design for the Cambridge Mathematics Education Project: A design-based research approach. Proceedings of British Society for Research into Learning Mathematics 35(2), pp. 43-47.

Marková I and Linell P (1996) In qualitative research, coding involves breaking down data ... More elementary contributions to dialogue: Individual acts versus dialogical interactions. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 26(4): 353-373.

Mercer N, Hennessy S and Warwick P (2017) Dialogue, thinking together and digital technology in the classroom: Some educational implications of a continuing line of inquiry. International Journal of Educational Research. Epub ahead of print 12 October 2017. DOI: 10.1016/j.ijer.2017.08.007

Mercer N and Littleton K (2007) Dialogue and the Development of Children's Thinking: A Sociocultural Approach. London: Routledge.

Tech Crunch (2017) Google says its G Suite for Education now has 70M users. Available at: https://techcrunch.com/2017/01/24/google-says-its-g-suite-for-education-now-has-70m-users/ (accessed 30 September 2018).

Vygotsky LS (1978) Mind & Society: The Development of Higher Psychological Processes. Cambridge: Harvard.

Wegerif R (2013) Dialogic: Education for the Internet Age. London: Routledge.

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This paper outlines the initial findings of a practitioner research project into the ways in which Google Classroom can be used to support classroom dialogue. These findings are taken from the first phase of a doctoral (EdD) study at Cambridge University. The setting for this ongoing project is an independent preparatory school that is making [...]

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An article by Daryn Egan-Simon

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Dr Neil Phillipson

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As an associate of / registered trainer with , and , Dr Neil Phillipson offers a portfolio of high-quality, evidence-based approaches that enhance teaching and learning through the development of classroom dialogue and metacognition. The approaches can be used individually, and combine beautifully, leading to students who think and talk in caring, collaborative, critical and creative ways in school, in their wider communities and online. Use the links below to find out more.

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