Interest in classroom-based talk and its capacity to promote cognitive development and educational attainment has gathered momentum over the last three decades as studies have emerged that have demonstrated the key role social collaboration plays in the joint construction of knowledge, understanding and learning, and how such interaction has the capacity to build the mind. While both individual and social constructivism advocate the importance of social interaction in the development of children’s reasoning and cognition, it is only in the last thirty years that research has demonstrated how children learn from interacting with others and how teachers can utilise this information to construct experiences in classrooms to ensure the benefits attributed to such experiences can be developed and maintained. Foremost among those who have provided insights into the development of

children’s talk in classroom-based settings are Adey and Shayer (1990, 1993, 1994) who conducted a series of cognitive acceleration (CA) programmes in science and mathematics in primary and secondary schools where children were confronted with cognitively challenging situations, in the context of socially mediated learning, by their teachers who guided their thinking and learning. The effects of these programmes on students’ cognitive development and academic achievements were significant when compared to same aged peers who received the regular curriculum. Furthermore, the gains recorded generalised to national public examinations up to three years after the original intervention, with gains not only in mathematics and science, the original targeted subject domains, but also in English, demonstrating clear transfer effects. The positive effects of CA programmes were attributed to three common features: First, they challenge children’s thinking; second, they emphasise that knowledge and understanding are socially constructed by collaborating

with others, building on their ideas, and cognitively reorganising and reconstructing information to co-construct new knowledge and understandings; and, finally, they encourage students to reflect on their learning and to think about the processes involved. In so doing, learning is consolidated as students learn to think metacognitively about the learning and thinking processes they employed. Others who have investigated the powerful effects of dialogic interactions on

students’ thinking and learning include Resnick (1991, 2010) and colleagues (Resnick et al., 2010) who argue that academically productive talk, which they call Accountable Talk, only emerges when students learn how to listen to others, build on their ideas, engage in providing explanations and justifications for their propositions, and are prepared to challenge what others have to say when evidence is not supported or available. The teacher’s discourse in this type of interaction often switches from providing authoritative knowledge to ensure that students acquire discipline-correct concepts to being more dialogic, where they are challenged and scaffolded to explore new ideas, ask questions, interpret findings, formulate hypotheses, and share understandings. Robin Alexander (2008a) drew parallels between his work on Dialogic Teaching

and Accountable Talk, arguing that both were discourse pedagogies that emphasised reciprocal dialogues, they occurred in a social environment that was supportive of students’ discussions, there was a clear purpose to the interaction, and the focus was to build on the ideas of others to co-construct and create new knowledge to help students learn. Mercer (1996, 2008a) and colleagues (Mercer et al., 2009; Rojas-Drummond and

Mercer, 2003) reported on a similar dialogic discourse which they called Exploratory Talk, where students were taught how to engage critically and constructively with each other’s ideas by learning to reason and justify their assertions and opinions as they collaborated. The results from a series of studies showed that not only did the use of exploratory talk enable students to become more effective in using language as a tool for reasoning and sharing knowledge, but it also led to higher levels of individual achievement and significant improvements in students’ capacities to reason and problem-solve. While it is important to know how different dialogic approaches can enhance

students’ interactions and learning and the effects they have on students’ social, emotional and cognitive development, it is also important to understand how students’ interactions promote understanding and learning during small group discussions. In a series of studies Webb (1991, 1992) and colleagues (Webb and Farivar, 1999; Webb and Mastergeorge, 2003a) found that providing elaborated help in response to requests for assistance was positively related to achievement, whereas providing minimal explanatory responses or explanations that were not requested was not. More recently, Webb (2009) has extended this research to include the teacher’s role in promoting collaborative dialogue in the classroom. The purpose of this chapter is to provide an overview of the research and theoretical

perspectives on classroom-based talk that have emerged in the last three decades

and the implications this information has for informing teaching and learning in schools. This is particularly important given the scrutiny schools receive as a consequence of global movements in educational reform which place an emphasis on developing a knowledge-based society to fuel economic competitiveness where people need to be able to work with knowledge, explore new ideas, cooperate with others, problem-solve, and have the flexibility to adapt to changing situations (Hargreaves, 2009). National economic competitiveness, Sahlberg and Oldroyd (2010) argue, is ‘linked to intellectual and creative capital and is therefore driven by knowledge, creativity and innovation’ (p. 280). Moreover, many school systems now recognise the need to focus on deeper learning, the importance of holding higher expectations for all students, and ensuring better connections between learning and assessment if they, in turn, are to produce graduates who can contribute to national sustainable economic growth and prosperity. Given that governments, internationally, are investing trillions of dollars in these

educational innovations, schools are now more accountable for the education students receive. This, in turn, has led to the introduction of educational standards, benchmarks for teaching and learning, prescribed curricula, and aligned testing and assessment with a focus on an ‘evidence-based policy agenda’ (Sahlberg, 2011, p. 176). While there is merit in many of these reforms, teachers are often reluctant to embrace new approaches to teaching such as classroom-based strategies for promoting more teacher-student and student-student interactions unless there is evidence that these pedagogies work (Gillies, 2015). These pedagogies have been referred to as ‘smarter pedagogies’ by Sahlberg and

Oldroyd (2010, p. 296) who propose that they – along with a more adequate reorganisation of schools and teaching – have the potential to bring significant improvements to knowledge, skills and competencies needed for improving economic competitiveness and ecological sustainability. Included in these ‘smarter pedagogies’ are cooperative learning, problem-based learning and creative problem-solving – all activities that involve social collaboration where students are interdependently linked to work on problem-based issues they are unable to solve alone. Problems that are complex and challenging, Murgatroyd (2010) proposes, are

‘wicked problems’ (p. 267) or problems that have no right answer as there may be multiple explanations. Solutions to wicked problems are only good or bad, as there are no right or wrong solutions, and every wicked problem is the consequence of a higher level problem. Furthermore, every wicked problem is unique and every wicked problem solver is fully accountable and responsible for their actions. In short, many wicked problems are similar to the ill-structured, complex problems that Cohen (1994) refers to, which are open and discovery-based, having no right and wrong answers, so successful completion of the task requires students to interact and exchange ideas and information if they are to come up with creative solutions. Successful completion of the task under these circumstances depends on the frequency of group members’ task-related interaction or students’ willingness to socially collaborate.