ABSTRACT
There is growing evidence that dialogic education is an effective way to teach the kind of general and transferable thinking skills and dispositions that have always been valued by the teaching thinking movement. However, dialogic theory implies an understanding of thinking, and, more specifically, of good thinking, that is distinctive. For dialogic theory, thinking is understood as an attribute of embodied dialogue. This means that thinking is not an abstract skill or set of skills separable from content knowledge and is not primarily something that is done by individuals but is in fact an effect of the ‘dialogic space’ that opens up when people or perspectives enter into dialogue. Learning to think can be understood as being drawn into dialogue and so teaching thinking is about drawing students into dialogue through invitations based upon relationships; drawing students into dialogue in classrooms through opening dialogic spaces; drawing children into the long-term dialogues of culture through teaching these in a way that focuses as much or more upon questions than upon already achieved answers; changing the culture of schools and classrooms to make them more supportive of dialogue; and, through Internet-mediated dialogue across difference, drawing students to participate in ongoing global dialogues as part of a long-term teaching thinking project to create a more intelligent planet.
