Towards dialogic teaching: rethinking classroom talk

In this book, Professor Robin Alexander advocates the power of constructive talk as part of teaching. Dialogic teaching, he argues, harnesses the power of talk to stimulate and extend pupils’ thinking, and advances their learning and understanding. It also helps teachers to recognise pupils’ needs, frame their learning tasks, and assess their progress.

Dialogic teaching is different from the question-answer and listen-tell routines of traditional teaching. It requires interactions that encourage pupils to think, and to think in new and different ways to what they are used to; questions that invite critique rather than simple recall; and discussions that probe held assumptions, and lead to further lines of enquiry.

Key to all of this is a classroom and professional environment that encourages pupils and teachers to speak freely in order to test new ideas and challenge one another constructively.