ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the authors draw on a dialogic perspective of learning, seeing dialogue as more than the exchange of recognisable utterances but as a ‘theoretical idea that defines the nature of many aspects of the relationality of language’. They explore how the notion of pedagogical links is articulated when interactive technologies are used to support the dialogue and the collaborative construction of knowledge in science classrooms. The authors show how their interpretative framework can be used to shed light on the ways in which new interactive technologies have helped to make the classroom walls permeable, and the role of the teacher in helping students to weave together new information and ideas into shared understandings. They argue that the technology mediation is not just convenient; it actually brings into the classroom the media that students use outside of school to access information and, hence, it becomes a realistic exercise on linking classroom constructed knowledge to out-of-the-school reasoning.
