ABSTRACT
Dialogue is one of the best vehicles for learning how to think, how to be reasonable, how to make moral decisions and how to understand another person’s point of view. It is supremely flexible, instructional, collaborative and rigorous. At its very best, dialogue is one of the best ways for children to learn good habits of thinking. Dialogue is undervalued in many schools and Early Years settings when compared with writing, reading and maths. Some of the other benefits of dialogue include the opportunity to ask appropriate questions, articulate problems and issues, imagine life’s possibilities, see where things lead, evaluate alternatives, engage with one another and think collaboratively. In the most basic sense, dialogue is the to and fro of talk between people who want to be understood. Dialogue is not the Initiate-Response-Evaluate model of questioning that is used in so many interactions between adult and child. Dialogue can give adults precious insights into the lives of their children.
