ABSTRACT
This part introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters. The part discusses the development of a new measure of teachers’ dialogic attitudes. It illustrates how professional dialogues can be framed and designed to offer safe learning spaces in which taking risks is acceptable, thereby facilitating the exploration of gaps and challenges in their understanding and practice. The part also discusses how professional development efforts often do not specifically focus on the norms involved in classroom dialogue and argumentation. It demonstrates how research needs to attend not only to changes in material pedagogic practice as the outcome of professional learning interventions but those professional dialogues themselves. The part examines further the extent to, and ways in, which underlying norms and individual and collective assumptions relating to classroom talk and learning can be made visible, addressed and transformed in those conversations.
