ABSTRACT
Having defined terms, explored concepts, examined evidence and addressed problems and challenges, the book now turns to synthesis and practical ways forward. It sets out a much revised and greatly extended iteration of the framework for dialogic teaching on which the author has worked for over two decades. The new framework has six segments: definitions of dialogue and dialogic teaching; the educational, epistemological and pedagogical stance that informs the whole; eight key justifications for talk of the kind proposed; six broad principles to guide classroom planning and serve as criteria for assessing how far what is practised is indeed dialogic; eight pedagogical and oral repertoires through which dialogic teaching is enacted by both teachers and students; and some broad indicators to aid planning and evaluation. The repertoires are central. They are premised on understanding of the complexity of teaching, the diversity of classroom participants and circumstances, and the consequent limitations of ‘best practice’ formulae; and they foreground teacher agency, for in the end it is the teacher who much decide how to act. The repertoires encompass: interactive culture; interactive settings; the various kinds of student learning talk we should aim to foster; the forms of teaching talk through which these can be achieved; the purposes, character and structure of teacher (and student) questioning; the third turn or extending moves which take what the student answers, asks or states and builds upon it; the various purposes and moves for discussion, whether as a class or in groups, led by the teachers or by students themselves; and the criteria, practices and moves of argumentation.
