What is dialogic teaching? Constructing, deconstructing, and reconstructing a pedagogy of classroom talk

Learning, Culture and Social Interaction 21 (2019) 70–86

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What is dialogic teaching? Constructing, deconstructing, and reconstructing a pedagogy of classroom talk

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Min-Young Kima, , Ian A.G. Wilkinsonb a

Literacy and Technology Department, College of Education, Grand Valley State University, Grand Rapids, MI, USA School of Curriculum and Pedagogy, Faculty of Education and Social Work, University of Auckland, Private Bag 92019, Auckland 1142, NEW ZEALAND

b

A R T IC LE I N F O

ABS TRA CT

Keywords: Dialogic teaching Classroom talk Dialogue

Dialogic teaching is a pedagogical approach that capitalizes on the power of talk to further students' thinking, learning, and problem solving. The construct is often invoked when describing various pedagogies of classroom talk and is the focus of much research in the United Kingdom, the United States, Continental Europe, and elsewhere. Despite its appeal, or perhaps because of it, the idea of dialogic teaching has been variously interpreted to the point that its significance has become unclear. The purpose of this paper is to bring conceptual clarity to the construct. We outline how Robin Alexander (2004) used the term ‘dialogic teaching’ in his model of dialogic pedagogy, and describe other, related conceptions of dialogic pedagogy. We then describe how the term ‘dialogic teaching’ is used in contemporary scholarship. Finally, we address three major points of contention surrounding dialogic teaching: the issue of discourse form and function, the role of classroom culture, and whether dialogic teaching constitutes a general pedagogical approach or a specific discourse practice. Our overall intent is to examine similarities and differences among the various approaches to dialogic teaching and locate the concept within a network of related ideas on teaching and learning through, for, and as dialogue.

“When I use a word”, Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less”. “The question is”, said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things”. “The question is”, said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master—that's all”. (Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There, 1872, p. 124) Few things are as well-established in the educational sciences as the proposition that language is the primary vehicle for learning and plays a central role in connecting teaching, learning, and cognitive development. The deliberative use of language as a tool in teaching and learning can be traced back to Socrates and Plato, although empirical research on its benefits as a pedagogical method has a more recent history. The role of talk in learning came to the fore in the summer of 1966 at an Anglo-American conference on the teaching of English, known as the Dartmouth Seminar. In a report of that meeting, Dixon (1967) forwarded a view of language as a vehicle for personal growth and development. This view gained prominence in two subsequent publications by participants in the Dartmouth Seminar, James Britton's (1969) Talking to learn and Douglas Barnes' (1976) From communication to curriculum. Since then, researchers have developed and tested a number of pedagogical approaches to classroom talk. These include ‘accountable talk’ (Michaels, O'Connor, & Resnick, 2008; Resnick, 1999), ‘dialogically organized instruction’ (Juzwik, Sherry, Caughlan, Heintz, & Borsheim-Black, 2012; Nystrand, 1997), ‘collaborative reasoning’ (Anderson, Chinn, Waggoner, & Nguyen, 1998), ⁎

Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: [email protected] (M.-Y. Kim), [email protected] (I.A.G. Wilkinson).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lcsi.2019.02.003 Received 24 July 2018; Received in revised form 17 December 2018; Accepted 12 February 2019 2210-6561/ © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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‘Thinking Together’ (Dawes, Mercer, & Wegerif, 2004), and ‘dialogic inquiry’ (Wells, 1999; Wells & Arauz, 2006), to name a few. Research on such approaches has provided mounting evidence that dialogic teaching improves performance in students' content knowledge, comprehension, and reasoning, and that the benefits maintain well beyond the time of initial engagement with the discourse (Resnick, Asterhan, & Clarke, 2015a). There are even indications that the benefits transfer from one content area to another (e.g., from math to English Language Arts, O'Connor, Michaels, & Chapin, 2015). It is now taken as a given that dialogic teaching has positive impacts on students' learning and development. The purpose of this paper is to bring conceptual clarity to the construct of dialogic teaching. Despite its appeal, or perhaps because of it, the idea of dialogic teaching has been variously interpreted. Some scholars use the term ‘dialogic teaching’ to refer to any use of talk that involves some form of discussion to further student engagement and learning (e.g., Resnick, Asterhan, Clarke, & Schantz, 2018). Some scholars use the term to refer to the use of a specific type of talk in classroom instruction (e.g., Reznitskaya et al., 2012). And some use the term to refer less to the use of talk and more to an overall orientation or stance towards knowledge and knowing (e.g., Boyd & Markarian, 2011). We argue that differences in the ways scholars have used the term ‘dialogic teaching’ have led to a lack of coherence in the field with respect to what it is, how it should be implemented, and what consequences it has for students. Although differences in usage are to be expected in an emerging area of inquiry, there comes a point at which the differences make it difficult for researcher to integrate findings across studies (e.g., how to explain the failure to find benefits of a particular instantiation of dialogic teaching). Howe and Mercer (2016) echoed this concern in a recent commentary on studies of dialogic pedagogy: … conceptual differences in this field are frequently overlain with differences in terminology. As noted earlier, even a key term like ‘dialogue’ does not have a universally agreed definition amongst classroom researchers. While on one level terminological choices are arbitrary, differences nevertheless have the potential to create confusion, and make it harder to integrate the work of different researchers (who are often seeking to address the same educational issues and solve similar problems). (p. 90) Calcagni and Lago (2018) and Alexander (2019) raised similar concerns about the diversity of perspectives on dialogic pedagogy and varied use of key terms. To provide an organizing framework for our analysis, we use Alexander's (2004/2017a) conception of dialogic teaching. His framework is perhaps the most comprehensive in its delineation of types of talk and the conditions under which talk is productive for student learning. It is also arguably the most influential in current scholarship. Alexander's (2017a) book, Towards dialogic teaching: Rethinking classroom talk, is now in its fifth edition and has sold over 20,000 copies (publisher's figure, December 2017); one of the editions (Alexander, 2006) has been cited over 2000 times (Google Scholar, February 18, 2019). His framework has been influential in shaping primary and secondary education in England (Alexander, 2010a; DfES/QCA, 2003; Higham, Brindley, & Van de Pol, 2014) and was the focus of a recent independent evaluation in a large-scale randomized control trial in that country (Alexander, 2018; Jay et al., 2017). It has also played a role in research and discussion about improving schooling in the United States (e.g., Resnick, Asterhan, & Clarke, 2015b) and Europe (e.g., Sedova, 2017; Sedova, Sedlacek, & Svaricek, 2016). The widespread appeal of Alexander's notion of dialogic teaching attests to its usefulness as a framework for comparing various pedagogical approaches to classroom talk. The structure of our paper is as follows. We begin by describing Alexander's (2004/2017a) model of dialogic teaching. We then describe other conceptions of dialogic pedagogy. Next, we describe current understandings of dialogic teaching as exemplified in contemporary scholars' use of the term. In these latter two sections, we highlight similarities and differences among the various perspectives using Alexander's model as an organizing framework to provide a basis for comparison. Our approach is itself dialogic, in the Bakhtinian sense, in that we seek to bring meaning to the term ‘dialogic teaching’ by juxtaposing alternative perspectives and allowing them to “inter-animate or inter-illuminate each other” (Wegerif, 2006, p. 146). We then address several major points of contention surrounding dialogic teaching: the issue of discourse form and function, the role of classroom culture, and the characterization of dialogic teaching as a general pedagogical framework or as a specific discourse practice. We conclude by briefly revisiting the affordances of the concept for theorizing research on classroom dialogue. 1. Alexander's model of dialogic teaching According to Alexander (2008b, 2017a), the concept of dialogic teaching grew largely out of his comparative analysis of primary education in England, France, India, Russia, and the United States (Alexander, 2001). In the fieldwork for that analysis, from 1994 through 1998, Alexander conducted interviews and observations, including video and audio recording of classroom discourse, with educators in the five educational systems to examine their teaching and learning practices and how they related to the culture, policies, and structures of the various systems. His research revealed many similarities in talk across countries but also revealed subtle differences between countries as well as between schools within countries. One of the major insights to come from this work was an understanding of the relative power of different kinds of talk for fostering students' learning—an idea fundamental to dialogic teaching. The major theoretical perspectives driving this insight were Vygotsky's (1962) and Bruner's (1983, 1987, 1996) understandings of the relationship between language and thought and Bakhtin's (1986) perspective on dialogue. From his comparative analysis, Alexander developed an appreciation of how cultural context, at all levels of an educational system, influences teachers' and students' expectations of the way talk is used in classrooms as a vehicle for teaching and learning. In some classrooms, a teacher's question might prompt only a brief response from students; in others, a question might elicit a much more elaborated response and an extended series of student-student interchanges. Drawing on this work on pedagogy in different cultures, as well as the theoretical influences of Vygotsky, Bruner, Bakhtin, and the 71

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like, Alexander developed the concept of ‘dialogic teaching’. Details of the idea were first laid out in a 39-page monograph (Alexander, 2004) and elaborated in subsequent editions (Alexander, 2005c, 2006, 2008c, 2017a) as well as in his other recent scholarship (Alexander, 2008a, 2008b, 2017b, 2018). He defined dialogic teaching as a general pedagogical approach that capitalizes on the power of talk to foster students' thinking, learning, and understanding. It can be summarized in terms of a set of repertoires, principles, and indicators, all of which are predicated on a set of arguments or justifications for the centrality of talk in teaching. Key to dialogic teaching is the idea of repertoire. Dialogic teaching requires teachers to have a repertoire of approaches for organizing interaction and engaging in talk, and to be able to strategically use different types of organization (e.g., whole class, teacher- or student-directed small groups, teacher- or student-directed one-to-one work) and types of talk to meet the educational goals for their students. The types of talk include both teaching talk (e.g., rote, recitation, discussion) and learning talk, the latter being discourse practices we want students to acquire (e.g., to narrate, to explain, to argue). Although teaching talk includes traditional kinds of talk, such as rote, repetition, recitation, and exposition, dialogic teaching privileges discussion and dialogue. For Alexander, discussion is a free-flowing exchange of ideas for the purpose of sharing information and problem-solving, whereas dialogue is more structured and consists of guided questioning and prompting to achieve a common understanding as well as scaffolding to foster independence (cf. Bruner, 1978, 1995). According to Alexander, discussion and dialogue “have by far the greatest cognitive potential” (Alexander, 2017a, p. 31) and are “the forms of talk which are most in line with prevailing thinking on children's learning” (Alexander, 2008a, p. 103). Discussion and dialogue afford students greater agency in the construction of their knowledge and understanding, and are more likely to advance students' thinking on a given topic or idea. Alexander (2017a) laid out five principles of dialogic teaching. Dialogic teaching is:

• collective: teachers and children address learning tasks together, whether as a group or as a class, rather than in isolation; • reciprocal: teachers and children listen to each other, share ideas and consider alternative viewpoints; • supportive: children articulate their ideas freely, without fear of embarrassment over ‘wrong’ answers; and they help each other to reach common understandings; • cumulative: teachers and children build on their own and each other's ideas and chain them into coherent lines of thinking and enquiry; • purposeful: teachers plan and facilitate dialogic teaching with particular educational goals in view. (p. 28) Alexander suggested that the first three principles establish the collaborative culture or ethos of the classroom to maximize the potential for learning talk whereas the last two address the content of the talk. He noted that the cumulative principle is probably the most challenging to implement as it requires the teacher to have a good understanding of where the talk is going at any given moment, knowledge of the desired outcome, and the ability to scaffold children's thinking towards that outcome. The influence of Bakhtin is most apparent in this principle as, according to Bakhtin (1986), the potential meaning of an utterance depends on its location within the broader chain of utterances. In addition to these repertoire and principles, Alexander (2017a) listed 61 classroom indicators that describe the context and conditions needed to support dialogic teaching and the features of talk that characterize it. Among the latter, for example, are:

• teacher questions that elicit extended, thoughtful responses; • student answers that are built upon and elicit further questions; and • teacher-student and student-student interchanges that are chained into coherent lines of inquiry. These and the other indicators were intended to help teachers operationalize the five principles of dialogic teaching. They reflect the aspects of teaching that Alexander identified as most aligned with dialogic teaching in his earlier cross-cultural study and in his work with local school authorities (Alexander, 2003, 2005a, 2005b). 2. Other conceptions of dialogic pedagogy In this section, we describe pedagogical models that offer other ways of conceptualizing the role of talk in teaching. We chose these models for three reasons: 1) the proponents theorized dialogic pedagogy independently of Alexander's work (most predate his conception), 2) their conception of dialogic pedagogy is at a similar conceptual level to Alexander's (what we regard as a general pedagogical framework rather than specific discourse practice), and 3) the models are frequently cited by contemporary scholars who conduct research on dialogic teaching, namely, those whose work we described in the next section. We discuss them in chronological order starting with the earliest. 2.1. Freire's dialogical teaching To our knowledge, Paulo Freire was the first to use the term ‘dialogic teaching’ although he also used other terms such as ‘dialogical education’, ‘dialogical teaching’, ‘dialogic pedagogy’, ‘dialogical method’, and ‘dialogic inquiry’. We use the term ‘dialogical teaching’ to frame his work as he used this label most frequently. Freire's views on dialogue were most clearly articulated in his exchanges with Ira Shor (Shor & Freire, 1987) and with Donaldo Macedo (Freire & Macedo, 1995). Dialogical teaching was at the core of Freire's liberatory pedagogy and served as a vehicle for developing critical consciousness. Freire viewed dialogue as an epistemological position or way of learning and knowing, and as a means of transforming social relations between teacher and 72

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students and of raising awareness of relations in society at large. From this epistemological position, knowledge of the object to be known is not in the possession of the teacher who transmits it to the students; instead, the object of study mediates the interactions between teacher and students as they engage in a process of mutual inquiry. Dialogical teaching allows both teacher and students to reflect on what they know and do not know and to “act critically to transform reality” (Shor & Freire, 1987, p. 13). Freire's views on dialogue were presented at a general level and he paid relatively little attention to the specifics of language in his writings. Nonetheless, there are similarities with Alexander's (2017a) conception. Characterizing dialogue as an epistemological position bears a close relationship to the principles of collective, reciprocal, and supportive. As we have noted, Alexander argued that these three principles relate to the conduct and ethos of classroom talk. The epistemic positioning is possible only when teacher and students address the task together (collective) and share their ideas with each other (reciprocal), without fear of ‘doing wrong’ (supportive). An important difference between Freire and Alexander's views of dialogic(al) teaching relates to the idea of a repertoire. Whereas Alexander appreciated the importance of using different types of talk to achieve different educational ends, Freire did not. Freire maintained that dialogical teaching required “the absence of authoritarianism” (Shor & Freire, 1987, p. 16, emphasis in original) and thus rejected the idea of lecture as a vehicle for learning as it presumed a teacher's authority over knowledge and involved the silencing of students. There is no equivalent of indicators of dialogic teaching in Freire's work. Indeed, Freire eschewed the idea of dialogue as technique. But Shor and Freire (1987) enumerated a number of “small interventions” (p. 29) to achieve the epistemological position required for dialogical teaching, and to foster joint construction of knowledge and understanding. These behaviors included: modulating one's tone of voice to conversational tones, signaling to students that their ideas are valued, listening intently to what each student says and asking other students to do the same, allowing students to elaborate on their questions, waiting to reply until other students have had a chance to reply to what the student said, and using humor. We note that it was Shor, in his exchanges with Freire, who actually enumerated these behaviors so it is not entirely clear that Freire subscribed to them. Nonetheless, these behaviors signal to students that they have an important role to play as epistemic agents in the classroom and, in this respect, are consistent with Freire's views. 2.2. Burbules' dialogical teaching It is probably no accident that Nicholas Burbules (1993) used the same term as Freire, ‘dialogical teaching’, to characterize his views on dialogue. Whereas Freire's ideas on dialogue were articulated at a general level, Burbules' treatise represents an attempt to bring more specificity to those ideas. Like Freire, Burbules eschewed a view of dialogue as mere technique or method and argued that “[d]ialogue is not something we do or use; it is a relation that we enter into—we can be caught up in it and carried away by it” (p. xii). He defined dialogue as a type of communicative relation specifically directed towards teaching and learning that had both cognitive and affective components. Participants must be cognitively interested in furthering their knowledge and understanding, but they must also share certain feelings towards each other (e.g., concern, trust, and respect) and virtues (e.g., tolerance, patience, and open-mindedness) to sustain their commitment to dialogue in the face of likely conflict and criticism; over time, the dialogical relation itself serves to involve participants and sustain their commitment. In conceptualizing dialogue, Burbules viewed the disagreements and differences between people as the key to dialogue, stating, “We need to be similar enough for communication to happen, but different enough to make it worthwhile” (p. 31). Drawing on Gadamer (1982), Huizinga (1950), and Wittgenstein (1958), Burbules argued that this view of dialogue is akin to playing a game. In dialogue, as in a game, there is to-and-fro movement that relates participants; there is tension; and there is enjoyment, spontaneity, and creativity that sustains participants in the activity and carries them towards new and sometimes unexpected outcomes. Yet, as in a game, there are general rules to be followed and moves to be used. Burbules (1993) posited three rules of the dialogue game: the rule of participation; the rule of commitment; and the rule of reciprocity. These rules encompass the ethos of dialogue and correspond in some measure to Alexander's (2017a) principles of collective, reciprocal, and supportive. We are unable to ascertain to what extent Burbules subscribed to a cumulative quality of dialogue. Nor is it clear to what extent he viewed dialogue as necessarily purposeful in terms of meeting educational goals. He rejected a strictly teleological view of dialogue yet maintained that dialogue has a “continuous and developmental” character that is “directed toward discovery and new understanding, which stands to improve the knowledge, insight, or sensitivity of its participants” (p. 8). It is probably safe to say that Burbules recognized the epistemic value of dialogue but was more open and flexible in terms of the purposes served (not just epistemic) and the trajectory followed. For Burbules, the purpose of dialogue was edification rather than truth. As for the moves of the dialogue game, Burbules proposed five types of utterances: questions, responses, building statements, redirecting statements, and regulatory statements. These moves do not constitute an exhaustive list of possible moves but are the basic links that are typically found in dialogue. Questions play a central role in Burbules' scheme as they shape the overall tone of a dialogue. They include both convergent questions that have a single answer and divergent questions that are open-ended and often more authentic; Burbules saw pedagogical value in both. Unlike Freire but like Alexander (2017a), Burbules' proposal for dialogical teaching gave considerable emphasis to the idea that a skilled teacher works with a repertoire of types of dialogue. These dialogue types or genres constitute moves and sequences of moves in the dialogue game. Burbules classified dialogue in terms of two dimensions: a convergent versus divergent view of the relationship between dialogue and knowledge, and an inclusive versus critical orientation towards others (cf. Mortimer & Scott, 2003). The convergent-divergent dimension contrasts a teleological view (seeking one right answer) with a heteroglossic view (seeking multiple 73

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meanings and interpretations, cf. Bakhtin, 1981) of the epistemic value of dialogue. The inclusive-critical dimension contrasts an accepting, almost relativistic view with a skeptical, more evaluative view towards the statements of others. The intersection of these two dimensions creates four types of dialogue: dialogue as conversation (inclusive-divergent), dialogue as inquiry (inclusive-convergent), dialogue as debate (critical-divergent), and dialogue as instruction (critical-convergent). Burbules acknowledged that these four types of dialogue can be used for good or ill and that the appropriateness of the dialogue depends on how well the dialogical approach fits the students, context, and subject matter at hand. He further acknowledged that, from a relational perspective, both teacher and students play a role in the choice of dialogical approach. 2.3. Nystrand's dialogically organized instruction Martin Nystrand's (1997) concept of ‘dialogically organized instruction’ might be viewed as a close relative of Alexander's (2017a) dialogic teaching. Indeed, Alexander (2008b, 2017b) acknowledged his debt to Nystrand (1997) in helping conceptualize his framework. Drawing largely on the work of Bakhtin (1981, 1986) and the notion of dialogism, Nystrand argued that the potential of language for learning depends not so much on the form of the utterance but on how language is treated within the context of instruction—that is, “how teachers organize instruction” (p. 9). Hence, he used the term ‘dialogically organized instruction’, though he also used the term ‘dialogic instruction’ as an abbreviated form. For Nystrand, the questions a teacher asks and the responses he or she gives students reflect the roles a teacher takes and the way he or she interacts with students, and these combine to create a social organization for instruction that gives meaning to students' utterances and helps shape their understanding and learning. Like Freire, Nystrand's ideas on dialogically organized instruction resonate with Alexander's principles because of the way students are positioned epistemically. Consistent with Bakhtin's social logic, the reciprocity of roles of teacher and students is at the heart of dialogically organized instruction. Dialogically organized instruction is also collective and supportive as teachers provide a “public space for student responses, accommodating and frequently intermingling teacher-student voices representing differing values, beliefs, and perspectives” (Nystrand, 1997, p. 18). We would also argue that dialogically organized instruction is cumulative as, within these spaces, teachers build on students' responses and co-construct knowledge and understanding together. For Nystrand (1997), certain aspects of discourse play a key role in shaping students understanding and learning. These are teachers' use of authentic questions, uptake, and questions that promote high-level thinking (analysis, generalization, and speculation). These questions serve an important epistemic role in classroom instruction in that they afford students more control over the flow of discourse, and more agency in the construction of knowledge and understanding than is typically found in recitation. They signal to students that their thinking is important and their ideas are taken seriously. They promote substantive engagement with the ideas being discussed and stimulate high-level thinking. Although Nystrand and Alexander's ideas share certain principles, there are two points of difference. Largely absent in Nystrand's ideas is explicit recognition of the purposeful or strategic use of different types of talk to achieve certain educational ends. For example, Nystrand viewed recitation as a monologic counterpoint to more dialogically organized discussion, and only occasionally acknowledged the pedagogical value of recitation. He argued that recitation, as typically used, created “orderly but lifeless” (Nystrand, 1997, p. 3) classrooms in which there is only one authoritarian voice. Conversely, present in Nystrand's ideas, but less apparent in Alexander's work, is acknowledgement of the role of tension and conflict within dialogue and the purpose they serve. For Nystrand, who drew on Bakhtin's perspective on dialogue, “[d]iscourse is dialogic not because the speakers take turns, but because it is continually structured by tension, even conflict, between the conversants, between self and other, as one voice “refracts” another” (Nystrand, 1997, p. 8). Nystrand argued that it is the very tension, and the heteroglossia created around and through the tension, that makes classroom discourse dialogic and fuels students' understanding and learning. 2.4. Resnick and colleague's accountable talk Accountable talk was introduced by Resnick (1999; Resnick & Hall, 1998) as a means of placing thinking at the core of the curriculum and highlighting the primacy of talk in promoting thinking. What began as a rather abstract conception was subsequently developed by Resnick and colleagues into a more concrete pedagogical approach (Michaels et al., 2008; Michaels, O'Connor, Hall, & Resnick, 2010; Resnick, Asterhan, & Clarke, 2018; Resnick, Asterhan, Clarke, & Schantz, 2018; Resnick, Michaels, & O'Connor, 2010). In this approach, talk is understood to promote learning when it is accountable to reasoning, to knowledge, and to the learning community. Accountability to reasoning is ensured when talk follows, more or less, a logical line of inquiry from premises to conclusions. Accountability to knowledge means that the reasoning needs to be based on facts, written texts, or other publicly available information. Accountability to the learning community requires that participants listen to and respect each other and build on their contributions to the discussion (Resnick et al., 2010). These three aspects of accountable talk share features with the five principles of dialogic teaching proposed by Alexander (2017a). Accountable talk classrooms require a “climate of respect, trust, and risk-taking, with challenges, criticism, or disagreements directed at ideas, not at individuals” (Michaels et al., 2010, p. 3). Moreover, students are encouraged to participate in talk together and are positioned as valid and valued contributors to learning and knowledge construction. These features resonate with the collective, supportive, and reciprocal principles. Accountable talk is also cumulative as students are asked to build on each other's thinking as well as the knowledge constructed in previous classes. However, the cumulative principle in accountable talk is perhaps more expansive in that thinking is connected within as well as between lessons (cf. Mercer & Littleton, 2007). The purposeful principle is evident in accountability to knowledge as it requires teachers to have “an end goal in mind in order to guide the discussion toward canonically correct knowledge” (Resnick, Asterhan, & Clarke, 2018, p. 26). 74

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In accountable talk, the idea of a talk repertoire takes the form of ‘talk formats’. Talk formats include, but are not limited to, lecture, recitation, whole group discussion, and hybrid talk formats such as partner talk and fishbowl. Importantly, the appropriate type of talk format is chosen based on the teachers' objectives in particular learning contexts. Along with the talk formats, there are teacher ‘talk moves’. These moves support the three aspects of accountability within the various talk formats. For example, a move that is believed to support accountability to knowledge is pressing for accuracy (“Where can we find that?”). It is assumed that these moves are transferred from teacher to students so students learn to use them on their own. One difference between accountable talk and Alexander's model of dialogic teaching is that accountable talk privileges argumentation over other types of talk. In Alexander's dialogic teaching, various types of learning talk are encouraged: to narrate, explain, argue, speculate, and imagine. However, in accountable talk, almost exclusive attention is given to talk to argue. This is no doubt due to the emphasis on thinking, knowledge, and reasoning. In this sense, accountable talk promotes a more restricted view of what counts as knowledge and knowing. Alexander (2017a) noted “Perhaps Resnick draws the net a shade too tightly round those knowledge paradigms which are on the logico-scientific side of the curriculum, and takes too little account of more open and exploratory ways of enquiring and knowing” (p. 52). 2.5. Wells' dialogic inquiry Wells (1999) introduced the concept of ‘dialogic inquiry’ as an alternative to the traditional conception of teaching as knowledge transmission. In developing the idea, he drew from Vygotsky's (1987) social-constructivist view of teaching and learning and Halliday's (1993) theory of language as a social semiotic, as well as from Bakhtin's (1981, 1986) dialogism, to argue for the role of dialogue in the collaborative construction of knowledge. He also drew from Dewey (1938) in arguing for the importance of inquiry as a means of motivating dialogue. In using the term ‘inquiry’, Wells (1999) is careful to point out that inquiry is not a method of instruction but a stance towards experience and information—“a willingness to wonder, to ask questions, and to seek to understand by collaborating with others in the attempt to make answers to them” (p. 121). His notion of stance (Wells & Arauz, 2006) serves as a precursor to Boyd and Markarian's (2011, 2015) use of the term ‘dialogic stance’, and aligns with Freire's (Shor & Freire, 1987) view of dialogue as an epistemological position. At the center of dialogic inquiry and of these other perspectives on the learning potential of dialogue is an inquiry orientation towards knowledge and knowing. The principles of collective, reciprocal, and supportive are evident in the importance Wells gives to a community of inquiry in which all participants are engaged in knowledge building. Dialogic inquiry is characterized by the collaborative construction of knowledge, a reciprocity between participants, and a positive classroom climate or ethos in which students know their ideas are valued and feel comfortable expressing their ideas (Haneda & Wells, 2008, 2010). In dialogic inquiry, there is also a cumulative and purposeful quality to the discourse—what Wells refers to as ‘progressive discourse’ (borrowing the term from Bereiter, 1994)—as students build on each other's responses and seek to advance their knowledge and understanding in service of the larger goal of inquiry. However, Wells makes specific mention of a metacognitive component in dialogic inquiry (as do Mercer & Dawes, 2008 and Reznitskaya et al., 2012; see below). According to Wells (1999), what distinguishes the community of inquiry from other communities of practice is the “metaknowing through reflecting on what is being or has been constructed and on the tools and practices involved in the process” (p. 124). Although Alexander acknowledged that ‘talking about talk’ has a role in his framework (Alexander, 2008b, 2017b), meta-cognition is less prominent in his model. In place of a repertoire of types of talk, Wells refers to a toolkit of ‘discourse formats or genres’. Wells views the various discourse genres (e.g., recitation, exposition, and discussion) available for a teacher to draw from as lying on a continuum ranging from monologic to dialogic depending on the roles the teacher assigns to students and the degree of control the teacher exercises over the flow of discourse (Haneda & Wells, 2008). Like Mortimer and Scott (2003), Wells sees value in the use of different genres, as long as the genre used is fit for the purpose of the educational activity and is in service of the larger dialogic stance. Indeed, it is the overall dialogic stance that allows the teacher to move effectively between different genres as in using, for example, recitation to recap what was learned previously before students engage in collaborative discourse (Wells, 2007). Certain indicators of dialogic inquiry are apparent in Wells' work. These include open-ended questions that have multiple possible answers, teacher comments that build on students' comments, especially questions that involve uptake, and student comments that build on other's contributions. However, like Nystrand (1997), Wells is at pains to point out that the function served by certain forms of discourse depends on the purpose of the particular activity and how that activity fits into the larger educational goal (Nassaji & Wells, 2000). 2.6. Mortimer and Scott's communicative approach Mortimer and Scott (2003) developed an analytic framework to characterize discourse in science classrooms. It offers insight into what dialogic teaching might look like in a disciplinary domain in which there is an accepted body of knowledge and students need to move between their everyday views of phenomena and the authoritative (scientific) views. At the heart of the framework is the communicative approach a teacher adopts to work with students to develop their ideas. Mortimer and Scott proposed two dimensions for characterizing classroom discourse: the dialogic-authoritative dimension and the interactive-noninteractive dimension. The dialogic-authoritative dimension represents the extent to which the teacher takes into account students' ideas in the flow of talk (i.e., whose voices are heard in the classroom). Its origins can be traced to Bakhtin's (1981) notion of authoritative and internally persuasive discourse and Lotman's (1988) functional dualism of text—the idea that a text has both a univocal function of conveying the 75

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Table 1 Four classes of communicative approach. (From Scott et al., 2006.)

Dialogic Authoritative

Interactive

Non-interactive

Interactive/dialogic Interactive/authoritative

Non-interactive/dialogic Non-interactive/authoritative

intended meaning and a dialogic function of generating new meanings (i.e., as a ‘thinking device’). The interactive-noninteractive dimension represents the extent to which the students, along with the teacher, have opportunities to participate. The combination of these two dimensions generates the four classes of discourse shown in Table 1. To exemplify, the non-interactive/authoritative genre corresponds to a formal lecture; the non-interactive/dialogic genre, to a lecture presenting various points of view; the interactive/ dialogic genre, to open discussion between teacher and students; and the interactive/authoritative, to recitation. Like Wells' (1999) dialogic inquiry, Mortimer and Scott's (2003) framework is completely compatible with Alexander's (2017a) dialogic teaching. Fundamental to Mortimer and Scott's concept of communicative approach is the idea of teachers having a repertoire of talk that they strategically deploy to suit the teaching purpose. The dialogic and interactive ends of their two dimensions take up the collective and reciprocal principles. Their analyses of teaching episodes illustrate the supportive principle and the importance of having “a working atmosphere in the classroom where students are happy and confident in expressing their views and where they will listen thoughtfully to the contributions of others” (Scott, 2008, p. 34). Of course, the purposeful principle is well represented in Mortimer and Scott's framework. Scott (2008) also draws a parallel between the cumulative principle and the need for continuity in how teachers sequence different types of discursive interactions within and between lessons to revisit and expand on scientific concepts. One point of difference is the considerable attention Mortimer and Scott give to the important role of tension brought about by making shifts between communicative approaches. Mortimer and Scott see value in the use of different genres, as do Alexander (2017a) and Wells (1999). However, for Mortimer and Scott (2003), making shifts between communicative approaches is important for student learning because of the tension it brings between “developing the dialogic approach of encouraging students to make their views explicit on the one hand, and focusing more authoritatively on the accepted scientific point of view, on the other” (Scott, Mortimer, & Aguiar, 2006, p. 616). Students need to make connections between their everyday views and the scientific views for meaningful learning to occur. The issue of indicators is more complex in Mortimer and Scott's (2003) framework as the indicators depend on which quadrant is operative at a given point in time. They are clear that each quadrant is typified by certain patterns of interaction, and note that more dialogic discourse is characterized by the presence of more than one point of view and the interanimation of ideas to varying degrees. Specific features of dialogic discourse include the teacher asking genuine questions and probing students' response, and students building on each other's ideas. 2.7. Wegerif's dialogic space Wegerif's (2011, 2013) concept of ‘dialogic space’ offers another alternative perspective on the role of dialogue in education. He defined a dialogic space as a space of reflection and exploration of new possibilities that is opened up “when two or more incommensurate perspectives are held together in the creative tension of a dialogue” (Wegerif & Yang, 2011, p. 312). The phrase “dialogue across difference”, used by Wegerif, though coined by Burbules (1993, p. 29), captures the essence of dialogic space. Grounded in a Bakhtinian perspective on dialogue, Wegerif argued that dialogue involves difference or tension between perspectives and that the relation of difference is important because it gives rise to meaning and opens up a space of reflection; in the absence of tension there can be no meaning and no dialogue. Wegerif formulated the idea of dialogic space as a consequence of his earlier work with Mercer (e.g., Mercer, Wegerif, & Dawes, 1999) on teaching exploratory talk to promote students' thinking and creativity. Premised on Vygotskian and neo-Vygotskian views of language as a cultural tool, the learning potential of exploratory talk was thought to accrue from students' use of language as a tool for thinking or reasoning. However, Wegerif (2005; Wegerif & Mercer, 1997) noticed there were some groups of students that made advances in thinking and creativity that could not be accounted for solely by explicit reasoning in their talk (see Rojas-Drummond, Mazón, Fernández, & Wegerif, 2006; Yang, 2016 for studies in Mexico and China, respectively). Drawing on Habermas' (1991) writing on intersubjective orientation and Buber's (1958) ideas on the importance of the space of the ‘in-between’, he postulated that exploratory talk was important not only because it promoted explicit reasoning but also because it fostered an orientation towards others that allowed students to engage in a process of shared and critical enquiry. What is central in the idea of exploratory talk and dialogic space is that students collectively engage in critical and constructive inquiry into each other's idea with a relational orientation. This embodies the collective, reciprocal, and supportive principles. These principles are highlighted in Wegerif's (2008a) characterization of exploratory talk as depending on “the willingness of group members to change their minds, reflectively criticize ideas that they themselves had put forward and admit their lack of understanding” (p. 356). Exploratory talk is also cumulative in the way that ideas are “challenged and counter-challenged, but challenges are justified and alternative hypotheses are offered” (Mercer et al., 1999, p. 97). However, the purposeful principle is not apparent in the idea of exploratory talk and there appear to be little notion of a repertoire of talk types. 76

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We see at least two points of departure from Alexander's (2017a) idea of dialogic teaching in the notion of a dialogic space. The first, as might be expected from the origins of the idea, is that the role of particular forms of language (indicators) is not critical in Wegerif's proposal. What is important is the relationship between participants. He claims that the intersubjective orientation towards others in a dialogic space is not dependent on particular forms of language: “Language can be used to promote and maintain relationships, but ultimately relationships are not reducible to language” (Wegerif, 2008b, p. 283). The second is that, in moving from a Vygotskian and neo-Vygotskian account of the learning potential of talk to a Bakhtinian account of the meaning potential of talk, Wegerif is shifting from an epistemological to an ontological perspective on language (Wegerif, 2008a). From an epistemological perspective, language is a tool for reasoning and is a means to an end—a way of knowing. This is the perspective held by most of the scholars whose work is described in this paper; for them, the aim of dialogic teaching and its variants is to advance students' thinking, learning, and understanding through dialogue. From an ontological perspective, by contrast, language opens up relations with others that foster reflection, creativity, and discovery—it is a way of being in the world. From this perspective, dialogue is a desirable outcome of education in itself; dialogic pedagogy involves teaching for dialogue as well as through dialogue. Wegerif's notion of dialogic space is close to Burbules' notion of dialogical teaching as both emphasize the fact that dialogue is a “relation that we enter into” (Burbules, 1993, p. xiii). Wegerif (2008b) himself argued that Burbules (1993) “offers a coherent model of reason that could serve as an ideal within education” (p. 273). However, Wegerif's notion of dialogic space arguably extends Burbules' idea of dialogical teaching in that it shifts the focus almost exclusively to an ontological perspective (cf. Sidorkin's (1999) discussion of Burbules).

2.8. Matusov's dialogic pedagogy Finally, in this section, we discuss Eugene Matusov's (2009) idea of ‘dialogic pedagogy’. Much of Matusov's work is contemporaneous with that of Wegerif so it is difficult to sequence them temporally. We discuss Matusov last because his work is best understood in relation to Wegerif's and others' ideas. Like Wegerif, Matusov (2009) adopts an ontological approach to dialogue, arguing that dialogue is a way of being and of relating to others in the world (see Buber, 2000; Sidorkin, 1999). This stands in contrast to what Matusov calls an ‘instrumentalist approach’ in which dialogue is viewed as a pedagogical method to enhance student learning—the approach adopted by most scholars featured in this paper. However, in comparison to Wegerif, Matusov adopts a more radical ontological perspective by claiming that all education is dialogic. Whereas for Wegerif, dialogic pedagogy is education for dialogue, for Matusov, dialogic pedagogy is education as dialogue (Matusov & Wegerif, 2014). Matusov claimed that all education is dialogic because all meaning making is dialogic. Drawing heavily on Bakhtin (1981, 1986, 1993, 1999), he maintained that meaning making is creative, novel, and unpredictable; that meaning arises out of a tension or gap in understanding between at least two consciousness; and that meaning making is mediated by questions. Nonetheless, Matusov argued that the inherent dialogicity of educational practices can be promoted or distorted depending on whether they are guided by a pro- or anti-dialogic program of instruction. For a practice to be pro-dialogic, he argued:

• The teacher is regarded as a learner, along with students; • Knowledge is regarded as unstable and in a continual state of transformation; • Teaching is guided by the teacher's and students' genuine information-seeking questions. This means that any educational practice that is directed at achieving the pre-set goals of the teacher or the curriculum is antidialogic, because “dialogue is impossible if a participant knows its endpoint in advance” (Matusov, 2009, p. 3). In terms of the principles of dialogic teaching, we note that Matusov's rejection of goal-driven education is the antithesis of the purposeful principle—the use of talk to achieve specific educational goals. But his characterization of dialogic pedagogy resonates with other principles, especially the collective, reciprocal, and supportive principles, as these are necessary for sustaining novelty and creativity as well as tensions in understanding, and for positioning teachers as learners (cf. Freire). The cumulative principle is also apparent in Matusov's conceptualization, notably when he emphasizes that dialogic pedagogy is guided by contingent and responsive questioning and answering among participants. However, Matusov appears to view being cumulative as inherent in the nature of meaning making, whereas Alexander's notion of cumulative implies that utterances are chained in a teleological way. Because Matusov (2009) emphasized the inherent dialogicity of educational practices, he does not subscribe to the idea of a repertoire of types of talk from which the teacher draws nor does he privilege some types of talk over others. He wrote: “Dialogicity is relational and never fully defined by individual moves of the teacher (or the students). A highly interactive and conversational class, a dialogic genre, might have less dialogicity than a lecture” (p. 76). According to Matusov, what defines the extent to which an educational practice is pro-dialogic is not its interactional form but the social relations among participants, the way they respond to each other, and the motivation behind the dialogue. Similarly, Matusov does not identify specific indicators of dialogic pedagogy. Nonetheless, it is evident in his work that the central unit of Matusov's pedagogical ideal is information-seeking questions posed by either teachers or students. These are similar to what Nystrand (1997) referred to as ‘authentic questions’. Matusov views genuine information-seeking questions as a primary means by which pro-dialogic pedagogy is enacted.

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3. Current use of the term ‘dialogic teaching’ In this section, we describe how the term ‘dialogic teaching’ has been used by contemporary scholars of classroom dialogue. We have chosen scholars who: 1) have substantial programs of research on classroom dialogue, and 2) routinely invoke the term ‘dialogic teaching’ in framing their research and scholarship. These criteria unfortunately led us to exclude the work of Aukerman (2007, 2012; Aukerman, Belfatti, & Santori, 2008) and Skidmore (2000, 2006; Skidmore & Murakami, 2016)—scholars who have large programs of research on classroom dialogue but who frame their work in different terms. We discuss the scholars in chronological order starting with the earliest. 3.1. Mercer Neil Mercer's use of the term ‘dialogic teaching’ is closely aligned with Alexander's conception. His extensive, seminal program of research on classroom dialogue includes work on exploratory talk (Mercer, 2000) and the ‘Thinking Together’ program (Dawes et al., 2004), a set of activities for the use of talk in collaborative group work. Mercer, Dawes, and Staarman (2009) defined dialogic teaching as “a pedagogic approach, underpinned by specific principles, [which] can be enacted through a range of possible talk strategies” (p. 354). The notion of the teacher working with a repertoire of talk types is somewhat less prominent in Mercer's discussion of dialogic teaching, but he does acknowledge the necessity of repertoire. In doing so, he often draws on Mortimer and Scott's (2003) four classes of communicative approach, emphasizing that the key to dialogic teaching lies “in the teacher's application of a varied repertoire of ways of using language as a tool for teaching and learning” (Mercer & Littleton, 2007, p. 51). Mercer and Littleton (2007) characterize dialogic teaching as that in which: 1) students are given opportunities and encouragement to question, state points of view, and comment on ideas and issues that arise in lessons; 2) the teacher engages in discussions with students which explore and support the development of their understanding of content; 3) the teacher takes students' contributions into account in developing the subject theme of the lesson and in devising activities that enable students to pursue their understanding themselves, through talk and other activity; and 4) the teacher uses talk to provide a cumulative, continuing, contextual frame to enable students' involvement with the new knowledge they are encountering. (p. 42) These features are closely aligned with four of the principles proposed by Alexander—collective, reciprocal, supportive, and cumulative. However, like Resnick and colleagues, for Mercer, the cumulative principle has perhaps a longer-term, temporal dimension. Drawing on his earlier work (Edwards & Mercer, 1987), Mercer argues that, in their communication with students, teachers need to capitalize on the ‘temporal organization’ of class talk to build on their shared experiences, within lessons as well as between lessons, to develop their knowledge and understanding over time. Moreover, as with Wells (1999), Mercer extends the concept of dialogic teaching by emphasizing the component of meta-cognition. It is axiomatic that, for dialogic teaching, teachers need to develop an awareness of talk and become skilled and strategic in using talk to achieve their educational goals. Mercer advocates that students, too, need to reflect on their talk and become aware of the power of talk for achieving their learning goals (Mercer et al., 2009; Mercer & Dawes, 2008). In other words, talk itself needs to become an object of inquiry for students. Helping students become aware of their talk and how they use talk to further their learning and thinking is an important feature of Mercer's work on exploratory talk and the ‘Thinking Together’ program. Mercer makes mention of various indicators of dialogic teaching. Mercer and Littleton (2007, p. 44), for example, characterized dialogic teaching classrooms as indicated by teachers' (1) use of ‘why’ questions; (2) use of ‘reasoning words’ (e.g., if, because, so); (3) offering reasons to back up ideas; (4) checking relevant ideas are heard; and (5) seeking agreement. 3.2. Boyd Maureen Boyd's concept of dialogic teaching is informed by Alexander's (2006, 2008c) conception as well as by Paulo Freire's beliefs about liberatory pedagogy as articulated in his interview with Ira Shor (Shor & Freire, 1987). Boyd has conducted a number of carefully contextualized micro-analyses of talk in language arts classrooms, using various forms of sociocultural discourse analysis, with a view to characterizing talk that shapes student learning. In describing dialogic teaching, Boyd (2012) noted that: Dialogic teaching requires time and thought, safe reflective space, and flexible lesson planning. It also demands teacher skill and subject knowledge (and willingness) to make decisions and revisions to find the most appropriate springboard for furthering students understanding and giving them freedom to explore. (p. 48) Her analyses of talk make evident that she subscribes to the five principles of dialogic teaching and that a key ingredient is the teacher working with a repertoire of patterns of talk. Indeed, she may be even more pluralistic than Alexander (2017a) in noting that any form of classroom talk (including that which on the surface looks like the Initiation-Response-Evaluation pattern) might be viewed as dialogic as long as it provides opportunities for extended student talk. However, for Boyd, central to the notion of dialogic teaching is the teacher's ‘dialogic stance’ (Boyd & Markarian, 2011, 2015). She defines a dialogic stance as an orientation to knowledge and knowing that values what students have to say and accords them interpretive authority in constructing knowledge and understanding (cf. Wells & Arauz, 2006). A teacher's dialogic stance is made 78

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evident in the way he or she organizes instruction and gives space for students to explore their ideas, and in strategic decision making about how content is to be covered (Boyd & Markarian, 2011). Borrowing from Freire's ideas on dialogical education, Boyd argues that a teacher who adopts a dialogic stance encourages students to articulate what they know, listens carefully to what they say, and uses the everyday knowledge students bring with them to school to bridge to the discourse of formal, school knowledge. Because of Boyd's emphasis on dialogic stance, specific forms of talk take a backseat in her conception of dialogic teaching. Boyd argues that the productivity of an interactional episode is indexed not by the syntactic form of the utterances but by the function that the utterances serve within the larger stream of classroom discourse. Even a closed question or a didactic statement can be viewed as dialogic if it is “in service of a dialogic teacher stance” (Boyd & Markarian, 2011, p. 518). The closest Boyd gets to indicators of dialogic teaching is teachers' contingent questioning—questions that build on previous student utterances and elicit extended episodes of student talk (cf. uptake, Collins, 1982; Nystrand, 1997)—and other markers of careful listening on the part of the teacher. 3.3. Reznitskaya Alina Reznitskaya subscribes to a narrower conception of dialogic teaching than that promulgated by Alexander (2004, 2017a). She defined dialogic teaching as “a pedagogical approach that involves students in the collaborative construction of meaning and is characterized by shared control over the key aspects of classroom discourse” (Reznitskaya & Gregory, 2013, p. 114). She effectively equates dialogic teaching with a specific type of talk called ‘inquiry dialogue,’ one of six conversational contexts of argument identified by Walton (1998). Inquiry dialogue is a type of talk where people come together to formulate collectively the most reasonable judgment about a particular proposition or contestable question. Because Reznitskaya defined dialogic teaching as a specific form of dialogue, rather than a general approach to pedagogy, she has frequently applied the term in reference to various dialogue-intensive practices such as ‘collaborative reasoning’ (Anderson et al., 1998) and ‘exploratory talk’ (Mercer et al., 1999). In our view, these pedagogies represent one element of dialogic teaching rather than the general pedagogical approach described by Alexander. Reznitskaya contrasts dialogic teaching, or inquiry dialogue, with recitation (e.g., Reznitskaya & Glina, 2013) and, influenced by the pedagogy of Philosophy for Children (Lipman, Sharp, & Oscanyan, 1980; Sprod, 1997), portrays it as reasoned discussion in whole-class settings. Thus, largely missing in Reznitskaya's conceptualization of dialogic teaching is the idea of a repertoire of approaches for organizing classroom interaction (e.g., whole class, teacher- or student-directed small groups) and engaging students in talk (e.g., exposition, dialogue) and the idea that the teacher strategically moves between these different modes of organization and talk depending on the educational goals and needs of the students. Within this conceptualization, Reznitskaya et al. (2012; Reznitskaya & Gregory, 2013) identify three characteristics of dialogic teaching: 1) shared control over the content and form of discourse among discussion participants, 2) collaborative inquiry into openended or divergent questions, and 3) meta-level reflection. These characteristics correspond in approximate measure to four of Alexander's (2017a) principles, namely, that dialogic teaching is collective, reciprocal, supportive, and cumulative. The cumulative principle is particularly evident in Reznitskaya's conceptualization. Throughout her work, she emphasizes the importance of ensuring students' responses are chained together to advance the line of inquiry. Somewhat less prominent in Reznitskaya's conceptualization (at least in her early work) is Alexander's fifth principle, that the use of dialogue should be purposeful, directed, and structured towards achieving specific pedagogical goals. As noted, Reznitskaya argues that dialogic teaching has a meta-level reflection component; teachers and students need to consistently reflect on and monitor their talk to achieve their learning objectives. As mentioned earlier, meta-level reflection is not a prominent feature of Alexander's (2004, 2017a) work, although it is strong a feature of Wells' (1999) and Mercer et al.'s (2009; Mercer & Dawes, 2008) conceptualizations. 3.4. Juzwik Juzwik, Borsheim-Black, Caughlan, and Heintz (2013) defined dialogic teaching as “instructional designs and practices that provide students with frequent and sustained opportunities to engage in learning talk” (p. 5). Their understanding of dialogic teaching owes much to Nystrand's (1997) notion of ‘dialogically organized instruction’ and, indeed, they use the terms interchangeably in their work (see especially Caughlan, Juzwik, Kelly, Fine, & Borsheim-Black, 2013; Juzwik et al., 2012). Like Nystrand, they draw heavily on Bakhtin's (1981) idea of dialogism, emphasizing that what counts in dialogic teaching is not language per se, for all language is potentially dialogic, but how language is used and how teachers organize instruction to promote talk for learning. Crucial to dialogic teaching is organizing instruction to foster interaction among a multiplicity of voices, especially student voices. Caughlan et al. (2013) wrote: “Any instructional practice (even reviews for tests) can become dialogic when multiple student voices are included in the creation of what counts as knowledge in the classroom through discourse processes that can include both conflict and agreement” (p. 217). Nonetheless, Juzwik and colleagues' use of the term ‘dialogic teaching’ is very similar to Alexander's (2017a) notion. They enumerate a repertoire of types of talk adapted for teachers in secondary English classes, both teaching talk (procedures and directions, read-aloud, lecture, recitation, deliberation, and dialogue) and learning talk (e.g., speculating, narrating, arguing). They subscribe to Alexander's five principles of dialogic teaching and describe various indicators of dialogic teaching. Chief among these, again following Nystrand (1997), are authentic questions and uptake. What distinguishes Juzwik and colleagues' understanding of dialogic teaching from Alexander (2017a) is the particular attention to the dialogic stance as a precondition for the enactment of dialogic teaching. For Juzwik et al. (2013), taking a dialogic stance 79

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involves sharing responsibility with students for the flow of discourse and valuing what students contribute by respecting and responding to what students say (the content of their talk) and how they say it. This idea resonates with Alexander's reciprocal principle and his emphasis on epistemic culture and stance in conceptualizing dialogic teaching (see Alexander, 2010a, 2015, 2017a), but we argue it has more prominence in Juzwik and colleagues' work. According to Juzwik and colleagues, a dialogic stance is necessary to build a classroom environment that supports dialogic teaching. Although they offer no citations, their idea of dialogic stance is similar in some ways to that of Boyd and Markarian (2011) and Wells (1999). Another prominent feature of Juzwik and colleagues' understanding of dialogic teaching is the use of dialogic tools, defined as “practical tools mobilized in teacher planning and practice with potential to mediate dialogically organized instruction in a given classroom situation” (Caughlan et al., 2013, p. 212). Dialogic tools include ways of organizing space (e.g., arranging chairs in a circle) and activities (e.g., debate) in the classroom, positioning students as agents (e.g., having students nominate who speaks), and preparing students to interact (e.g., establishing ground rules for discussion)— all with the goal of fostering learning talk. Dialogic tools have some parallel with the indicators Alexander (2017a) lists under the context and conditions needed to support dialogic teaching, but they play a more prominent role in Juzwik's work. For Juzwik and colleague, dialogic tools are thought to be integral to teachers' adoption of a dialogic stance. Although almost any practical tool can function as a dialogic tool, Juzwik and colleagues argue that it depends on how they are used and that some tools have more dialogic potential than others. 3.5. Lefstein In constructing his view of dialogic pedagogy, Adam Lefstein built on, but also significantly extended Alexander's (2005c, 2008b, 2008c) conception of dialogic teaching. In particular, Lefstein (2010; Lefstein & Snell, 2014) addresses the practical tensions involved in situating dialogic pedagogy in classrooms amid the constraints of conventional schooling. He examines dialogue from multiple dimensions including the interactional form, interplay of voices, development and critique of ideas, interpersonal relationships, identities, and power relations, and argues that all dimensions need to be taken into account when analyzing dialogue in the classroom. Consistent with this multidimensional view, Lefstein and Snell (2015) defined dialogic pedagogy as “learning processes in which teachers and pupils critically interrogate the topic of study, express and listen to multiple voices and points of view, and create respectful and equitable classroom relations” (para. 1). Despite this multidimensional approach, Lefstein builds directly on some of Alexander's (2005c, 2008b, 2008c) ideas, especially the importance of classroom culture in creating a dialogic pedagogy and the idea that a teacher draws from a repertoire of approaches. Lefstein and Snell (2014) define a repertoire as “the flexibility and depth that allow a teacher to call upon a wide range of possible courses of action, and to successfully implement them” (p. 8), but do not identify specific types of talk. Moreover, Lefstein is reluctant to offer his own pedagogy, preferring instead to offer a perspective that subsumes dialogic teaching. In doing so, he views Alexander's dialogic teaching as a model that is on a par with Nystrand's (1997) ‘dialogically organized instruction’, Mercer's (2000) ‘exploratory talk’, and Michaels et al.'s (2008) ‘accountable talk’. Lefstein (2010; Lefstein & Snell, 2014) is wont to cite Alexander's five principles of dialogic teaching and clearly subscribes to them. However, consistent with his multidimensional view of dialogue, he proposes two additional principles:

• critical: participants identify and investigate open questions and points of contention within the group; and • meaningful: participants relate the topic of discussion to their own horizons of meaning, and bring those horizons to bear upon one another (and the curricular content) in developing new understandings. (Lefstein, 2010, p. 177, emphasis in original)

The critical principle reflects the importance Lefstein attaches to Socratic questioning and argument in dialogue, whereas the meaningful principle reflects the epistemic affordances that dialogue offers conversants. Alexander (2010b) evidently agrees with these additional principles. Lefstein is somewhat agnostic on the issue of indicators. On the one hand, he notes that surface features such as open teacher questions, extended student responses, and the distribution of speaking turns can serve as indicators of the dialogic quality of talk. On the other hand, he argues that these features of interactional form do not always reflect well the substantive content, function, and spirit of the talk. For Lefstein, these aspects of talk are reflected in other dimensions of dialogue. 3.6. Sedova The last scholar we discuss in this section is Klara Sedova who has established a recent program of research on professional development in dialogic teaching. Sedova draws heavily upon Alexander's (2006) notion of dialogic teaching to frame her research. Following Alexander, she defined dialogic teaching as “a method that harnesses communication and students' work with language to promote their activity, deepen their thinking and enrich their understanding” (Sedova, Salamounova, & Svaricek, 2014, p. 274). Her work is strongly grounded in sociocultural theory, notably the writings of Vygotsky (1978, 1981) and Bakhtin (1981). Like Lefstein (2010; Lefstein & Snell, 2014), a theme in her work is the practical difficulties involved in implementing dialogic teaching in classrooms. While recognizing the importance of the five principles of dialogic teaching in theory, she argues that the principles may conflict with each other when teachers attempt to realize the ideas in practice (Sedova, 2017; Sedova et al., 2014). She points out, for example, that teachers' attempts to create an atmosphere where students feel free to share their ideas (supportive principle) might undermine their achievement of specific educational goals (purposeful principle). Despite Sedova's close adherence to Alexander's framework, the notion of the teacher working with a repertoire of talk does not 80

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figure prominently in her work. Throughout her studies, Sedova acknowledges Alexander's typology of five types of teaching talk and notes that discussion and dialogue have the greatest potential for student learning. Nonetheless, she essentially equates dialogic teaching with discussion and dialogue (Sedova et al., 2014). Consistent with this view, she cites various approaches to conducting classroom discussion (collaborative reasoning, Paideia seminar, Philosophy for Children) as methods of implementing dialogic teaching (Sedova, 2017). Sedova sees a role for both authoritative and dialogic discourse in teaching and learning, citing Mortimer and Scott (2003) and Nurkka, Viiri, Littleton, and Lehesvuori (2014), but does not examine the function of more authoritative types of discourse in her analyses. Discourse features thought to be indicators of dialogic teaching play an important role in Sedova's work. In large part, she draws on features identified by Nystrand et al. (Applebee, Langer, Nystrand, & Gamoran, 2003; Nystrand, 1997; Nystrand, Wu, Gamoran, Zeiser, & Long, 2003): teacher authentic questions of high cognitive demand; teacher uptake; and open discussion. However, in an effort to address concerns raised by Boyd and Markarian (2011, 2015) about the unreliability of teacher questions as a marker of dialogic teaching, she regards student talk as the “decisive parameter of classroom discourse” (Sedova et al., 2016, p. 17). Drawing on Pimentel and McNeill (2013), Sedova identifies student utterances that express reasoning (i.e., elaborated explanations) as a primary indicator of dialogic teaching. 4. Points of contention surrounding dialogic teaching In our effort to bring conceptual clarity to the construct, we now address three major points of contention surrounding dialogic teaching. We identified these three points as the main sources of tension among scholars as we surveyed how the term is used in current scholarship. We attempt to resolve these issues by situating them in relation to the other conceptions of dialogic pedagogy discussed earlier. As is evident and inevitable, these points of contention are related. 4.1. Discourse form and function One of the key issues in scholarship on dialogic teaching is whether it is marked by the specific forms of discourse. As is evident in our review, many scholars (e.g., Nystrand, 1997) hold that dialogic teaching is marked by the use of specific forms of discourse such as the teacher's use of open or authentic questions (i.e., questions for which there is no pre-specified answer), uptake, and students' use of reasoning words (e.g., if, because, so). However, other scholars (e.g., Boyd & Markarian, 2011, 2015; Nassaji & Wells, 2000; Wells, 1999; Wells & Arauz, 2006) contends that it is not the form but the function of utterances within the larger flow of discourse—the overall dialogic stance— that characterizes dialogic teaching. It was Boyd and Markarian (2011) who brought this issue of discourse form and function to prominence: Much discussion regarding effective teacher talk today suggests that the function of talk can be determined by its form (Nystrand, 2006; Soter et al., 2008). But this increasingly inflexible belief in and adherence to the privileging of one linguistic syntax over another—such as teachers employing ‘open’ questions over ‘closed’ questions—has demonized the research regarding the effectiveness of teacher talk. … It is the perceived function of the talk in a situated, social context, not its decontextualized form, that determines its effectiveness. Form follows function, not the other way around. (p. 517) The issue of form and function is not a new topic in scholarship on classroom discourse. In one of the earliest treatments of the issue, Sinclair and Coulthard (1975) were careful to note that the functions of an utterance (e.g., “directives”) were not neatly determined by the form (e.g., “imperatives”), but were influenced by the situation in which the utterance was delivered and the discourse that preceded and followed it. Wells (1993) also addressed the issue when he argued, from the perspective of activity theory, that the function of the I-R-F (initiation, response, follow-up) sequence varied according to the goal of the activity in which it is embedded and its location within the larger curriculum unit. To address the dilemma of form and function, we note that it is useful to make a distinction between syntactic form (e.g., WHquestions) and interactional form (e.g., authentic questions, uptake). Boyd and Markarian (2011) appear to problematize much scholarship on dialogic teaching by claiming that some scholars mistakenly identify interactional forms such as open questions or closed questions based on their syntactic form rather than their function. For instance, a closed question might be indicated by a syntactic unit such as “So there's an orphanage involved?” (Boyd & Markarian, 2011, p. 515). They then provide a case of dialogic teaching that is not marked by interactional/syntactic forms allegedly associated with dialogic teaching but, instead, by forms more commonly associated with monologic talk—closed questions, inauthentic questions, and didactic statements. Based on this analysis, they argue that it is the function of the discourse and the overall dialogic stance, rather than the particular form, that is important in dialogic teaching. Others have made similar arguments (e.g., Kachur & Prendergast, 1997). It is an error to assume that scholars who emphasize the importance of interactional form have ignored function entirely. Close examination of the work of Nystrand (1997; Nystrand et al., 2003), for example, reveals that, in analyzing discourse, the function served by a question within the larger flow of discourse, rather than its form, was key to their analysis. Nystrand et al. (2003) were careful to point out that their unit of analysis was the question event, a unit that included the question itself, students' responses to the question, and the teacher's or other students' follow up to the students' responses: In our studies, we code not questions per se but rather the interactions surrounding the questions. That is to say, our coding treats questions as sites of interaction … we coded participants' understandings of their interactions as manifest by their discourse moves. To judge the authenticity of a question, for example, we took cues not only from how students responded to the questions, 81

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but also how the teacher evaluated or followed up the students' responses. … In all cases, we coded not listed questions but rather the character of social interaction elicited and valorized by the questions themselves. (p. 144) Moreover, there is evidence from at least two lines of research that interactional forms frequently regarded as productive for student learning are characterized by certain syntactic forms. Samei et al. (2014, 2015) trained a machine learning classifier on a corpus of data coded for authentic questions and uptake based on Nystrand's notion of the question event, and found that certain syntactic features were highly predictive of these questions. Authentic questions, for example, were distinguished by a combination of judgmental keywords (‘think’, ‘should’, ‘find’), WH-words, and enablement keywords (‘need(ed)’, ‘helpful’, ‘in order to’). Indeed, after training, the system could predict authenticity and uptake based on the questions in isolation from context with over 60% accuracy. Similarly, Wegerif and Mercer (1997) and Wegerif, Mercer, and Dawes (1999), using a computer-based concordance analysis, identified certain key words (e.g., ‘because’, modals such as ‘would’, ‘could’, ‘should’, and ‘might’) that, when used in appropriate contexts, served as markers of exploratory talk. What we take from this is that syntactic form, interactional form, and function are related. To be sure, the mapping between form and function is neither singular nor straightforward, but neither is it arbitrary. As O'Connor and Michaels (2007) wrote, “Power, knowledge, dialogic form, and dialogic stance—are in fact often correlated, but are not inextricably linked. Does the dialogic form of this utterance mean the teacher has enacted a Dialogic stance? In most cases … it does, but this is not logically necessary” (p. 281). Burbules (1993) made a similar point when he asserted that the function of an utterance depends on the context in which it occurs but, at the same time, the talk moves can be “partly formalized” and “have a distinct character that we can usually reflect upon” (p. 95). In the final analysis, it is the function of an utterance within the larger flow of discourse that is important in dialogic teaching, but certain syntactic and interactional forms tend to be associated with certain discourse functions. No doubt, seemingly closed questions and the like can function to open dialogue and generate meaningful contributions from students, but more often than not form and function work in unison. 4.2. Role of classroom culture Another key issue in scholarship on dialogic teaching is the importance given to classroom culture. Classroom culture is more prominent in some conceptualizations of dialogic teaching than in others. Boyd and Markarian (2011, 2015), Juzwik et al. (2013), and Wells (1999; Wells & Arauz, 2006) clearly recognized the importance of classroom culture in foregrounding the role of a dialogic stance in dialogic teaching. For them, a dialogic stance is necessary to build a classroom environment that supports dialogic teaching; it provides an interpretive frame by which talk is enacted and interpreted. Alexander (2004, 2017a), Nystrand (1997), and Lefstein and Snell (2014) also recognized the importance of classroom culture. For Alexander (2017a), the role of classroom culture is embodied in the first three principles (collective, reciprocal, and supportive) related to the “conduct and ethos” (p. 49) of the classroom. For Nystrand, it is the classroom culture that ultimately determines the epistemological function of certain interactional forms. For Lefstein, students' critical and meaningful inquiry is most readily accomplished in a supportive and collaborative classroom environment, one that is jointly created by teachers and students over time. By contrast, Mercer (Mercer et al., 2009; Mercer & Littleton, 2007) and Reznitskaya (2012; Reznitskaya & Gregory, 2013) made relatively little explicit mention of classroom culture (although Reznitskaya & Gregory, 2013, mentioned the importance of having a ‘community of inquiry’). As we reviewed the work on dialogic teaching, we questioned what exactly counts as classroom culture. For some scholars (e.g., Boyd & Markarian, 2011, 2015; Juzwik et al., 2013; Nystrand, 1997; Shor & Freire, 1987; Wells, 1999, 2007), classroom culture is characterized as an epistemological stance or an orientation towards knowledge and knowing. Indeed, those scholars who invoke the construct of dialogic stance (Boyd & Markarian, 2011, 2015; Juzwik et al., 2013; Wells, 1999) tend to use it as a synonym for epistemological stance. In essence, this orientation towards knowledge and knowing sanctions giving agency and meaningful epistemic roles to students in the act of constructing knowledge and understanding. Students are afforded space for thinking, learning, and knowing; their contributions are valued and shape the flow of discourse. For others (e.g., Burbules, 1993; Lefstein & Snell, 2014; Wegerif, 2011), classroom culture can also be characterized in terms of social relations or an orientation towards others. Burbules (1993), while acknowledging the epistemological value of dialogue, foregrounded the importance of social relations in dialogic teaching, claiming that social relations and feelings are the requisites to sustaining dialogue. Lefstein and Snell's (2014) reference to teacher's and students' social positioning, emotional involvement, and identity construction in dialogue and Wegerif's (2011) idea of dialogic space also give prominence to a relational account of classroom culture. For yet others (e.g., Alexander, 2001, 2008b, 2015), classroom culture is viewed as encompassing the physical and psychological contexts and conditions necessary to maximize the potential of talk as a vehicle for teaching and learning, including but not limited to “space, pupil organization, time, curriculum, routine, rule and ritual” (Alexander, 2001, p. 325). Informed by his earlier work on pedagogy in different cultures, Alexander (2015) noted: Classroom talk is nested within, depends upon, and speaks to teachers' handling of learning task, activities, time, space, relationships, pupil groupings, planning, assessment, lesson structure, the curriculum, and the unspoken routines, rules, and rituals that bind students and teachers together in a more or less conscious endeavor (Alexander, 2001). And all are underpinned by values and assumptions about what education is for and what it means for students to know and understand. (p. 434) As such, Alexander's consideration of culture extends beyond the classroom and encompasses the social, cultural, and historical contexts surrounding the classroom. According to Alexander, this broader culture shapes the nature and the ways of classroom 82

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learning by characterizing what knowledge is, what it means to learn, and even the mindsets of teachers and students. We take an inclusive view of classroom culture. No doubt classroom culture is important in shaping the discourse environment of the classroom. And no doubt culture includes both an orientation to knowledge and knowing (epistemological stance) and an orientation to others (social relations). Presumably there is a reciprocity between the two as they mutually constitute the dialogic makeup of a classroom. We note that Burbules (1993) saw value in both orientations by virtue of his appreciation of dialogue as a communicative relation that has both cognitive and affective components. Like Burbules, we believe that dialogic teaching needs to take place within a classroom culture that has both rational and relational components. 4.3. General pedagogical approach or specific discourse practice The last issue in need of clarity is whether dialogic teaching is a general pedagogical approach or a specific discourse practice. Mercer and Dawes' (2008) exploratory talk and Resnick and colleagues' (Michaels et al., 2008; Resnick, 1999) accountable talk are often cited by scholars (e.g., Lefstein & Snell, 2014) as examples of dialogic teaching. Indeed, Alexander (2018) himself positions these practices as compatible with dialogic teaching (although, as mentioned above, he has stated that accountable talk might be too narrow a conceptualization; see Alexander, 2017a, p. 52). Moreover, as noted earlier, Reznitskaya et al. (2012) equated a specific discourse practice, inquiry dialogue, with dialogic teaching in stating, for example, “We suggest that more systematic use of inquiry dialogue in a variety of contexts may be necessary to clearly see the benefits of dialogic teaching” (p. 302). Confusion about this issue also arises in teachers' attempts to enact dialogic teaching in school contexts. Scott et al. (2006) addressed a case where teachers equated dialogic teaching with highly interactive classroom practice: Our experiences of using the communicative approach framework with teachers, in both preservice and in-service professional development contexts, is that very often they confuse dialogic teaching with interactive/authoritative approaches. Thus the teacher engages students in lots of interaction and turn taking but these are authoritative in nature as the teacher focuses attention on the scientific point of view, ignoring contributions from students which are not consistent with that view. (p. 624) Our view is that dialogic teaching is a general pedagogical approach that embodies the strategic use of different types of talk, ranging from rote repetition to discussion, to achieve certain pedagogical goals. Nonetheless, like Alexander (2017a), we believe it privileges two forms of talk, namely discussion and dialogue. Alexander's emphasis on these two types of talk may have been misinterpreted by some to mean that they are the only forms of talk that enable dialogic teaching. In our view, exclusive use of these types of talk is not dialogic teaching but the strategic use of the different types of talk in the context of a broader framework is. We regard Mortimer and Scott's (2003; Scott et al., 2006) work as exemplary of this way of thinking. They maintained that all four discourse types in their communicative approach framework—even non-interactive/authoritative forms of talk—contribute to meaning making in the classroom and to achieving the goals of dialogic teaching. 5. Conclusion Our purpose in writing this paper was to bring conceptual clarity to the widely used term ‘dialogic teaching’. Using Alexander's concept of dialogic teaching as an organizing framework, we examined similarities and differences among various conceptions of dialogic pedagogy and attempted to locate the concept of dialogic teaching within a network of related ideas on teaching and learning through, for, and as dialogue. Conceptions of dialogic pedagogy vary but share many features. Differences among them lie largely in terms of their adherence to an epistemological or ontological perspective on dialogue, the extent to which they privilege different types of talk over others, and the specificity with which they subscribe to particular interactional forms. In our efforts to bring conceptual clarity to the construct of dialogic teaching, in particular, we identified three major points of contention in how contemporary scholars use the term and sought to establish a common understanding. We hope the conceptual map we have provided offers a clearer understanding of dialogic teaching and how it relates to others' views of classroom talk. Dialogic teaching is a general pedagogical approach that capitalizes on the power of talk to further students' thinking, learning, and problem solving. Fundamental to the concept is the affordances of different kinds of talk for teaching and learning. Yet, as we hope we have made clear, it is not all about talk. Premised on the work of Alexander (2001, 2008b, 2015) as well as the work of Juzwik et al. (2013), Boyd and Markarian (2011, 2015), and Wells (1999; Wells & Arauz, 2006), we believe dialogic teaching accords considerable status to the role of culture in teaching and learning and foregrounds the close relationship between talk and culture. It is culture that gives talk the power that it has and, at the same time, it is talk that constitutes the culture. Attending to the interconnection between the two, and not only talk strategies, is necessary to explicate productive contexts for furthering students' thinking, learning, and problem solving. References Alexander, Alexander, Alexander, Alexander, Alexander, Alexander, Alexander,

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