ABSTRACT
“Dialogic teaching” emphasises the teacher’s role in shaping classroom talk, and while the framework maps repertoires through which inclusive and rewarding talk can be advanced, it encourages actors to adapt these to circumstance, emphasising professional agency and meta-level dialogue about dialogue. This chapter considers of the dialogic pedagogy should encompass not only the post-Pittsburgh agenda–conceptual clarification, evidence of impact, strategies for professional development–but also four additional imperatives: language, voice, argument and, as a subset of the latter, truth. In Britain, exclusive and expensive private schools used to train the nation’s leaders in the art of public speaking and adversarial debate so as to send them into the world articulate, confident and ready to take control. Playing on voters’ worst instincts and deepest fears, self-styled “strong” leaders fan the flames of division and intolerance, marginalise dissenting voices, debase language and argument and treat truth with contempt.
