Research School Network: Dialogic Teaching Dialogic Teaching aims to improve pupil engagement and attainment by improving the quality of classroom talk

According to the Education Endowment Foundation, Dialogic Teaching aims to improve pupil engagement and attainment by improving the quality of classroom talk. Teachers are trained in strategies that enable pupils to reason, discuss, argue and explain rather than merely respond, in order to develop higher order thinking and articulacy.

The EEF suggest that the nature and quality of teaching practice in the classroom has a big impact on pupil learning. Pilots of dialogic teaching in the UK have suggested that it can change teachers’ practice, and there is other evidence that cognitively challenging classroom talk can lead to gains for pupils in across an array of subject areas.

The pilot study found consistent, positive effects, equivalent to about 2 months additional progress. The result was similar when looking only at children eligible for free school meals. This is consistent with other EEF trials focusing on cognitively challenging talk, such as Philosophy for Children, and Thinking, Doing, Talking Science. The consistent results across subjects and the lack of any subject specific content in the training suggest that the approach may improve children’s overall thinking and learning skills rather than their knowledge in a given topic.

Therefore, it is imperative that we as teachers understand how to use classroom talk to ensure we are maximining the opportunities for student progress and learning in our teaching groups. Fran Haynes offers a very useful insight into structuring ​‘classroom talk’(found here in full): 

The phrase ​‘classroom talk’ can represents chaotic lessons in which the talk is plentiful but the learning less easy to discern. Conversely, some teachers view classroom talk as the pulsing beat behind the thinking in any educational setting.
Classroom talk does come with a health warning that allowing the focus on talk can be to the detriment of learning. However, this does not mean that talk does not have a place in effective lessons. In fact, if used in a structured way, classroom talk can benefit all students.
Key questions to consider for ensuring that talk is a meaningful part of the learning in the classroom are

1. What types of talk are likely to be most beneficial for learning? This might include thinking individually about teacher talk and student talk, and then how the two work together.

2. How can we structure talk so that it supports learning rather than being a disparate activity?

3. How can we ensure that all students benefit from the talk (teacher’s or students’) used in the classroom?