ABSTRACT
The conceptualization of dialogic instruction has achieved some consensus among researchers and teacher/educators, although they use different terms for it—for example, academically productive talk, Accountable Talk, dialogic teaching, dialogic inquiry, and productive classroom dialogue (Alexander, Chapter 47 in this volume; Michaels & O’Connor, 2015; Pehmer, Gröschner, & Seidel, 2015; Resnick, Michaels, & O’Connor, 2010; Wells, 1999; Wells & Ball, 2008). Researchers agree that dialogue is an important classroom tool for coordinating and encouraging student thinking, reasoning, and argumentation and that certain forms of dialogue are productive for learning (Alexander, 2017; Gillies, 2016; Hennessy, Mercer, & Warwick, 2011; Howe & Abedin, 2013; Howe & Hennessy, & Mercer this volume; Howe, Hennessy, Mercer, Vrikki, & Wheatley, 2019; Littleton & Mercer, 2013; Michaels & O’Connor, 2015; Osborne, 2010; Resnick et al., 2010; Reznitskaya & Wilkinson, Chapter 18 in this volume). One essential element of dialogic instruction is that students should be guided to verbalize, share, and co-construct knowledge about the subject matter, not only individually but also by interacting with others (Clarke, Resnick, & Rosé, 2015; Michaels, O’Connor, & Resnick, 2008). For this, teachers play an important role in facilitating the dialogic process. The effective use of classroom talk by teachers has been shown to be a key influence on student understanding and skill development (Alexander, 2017; Osborne, 2010; Resnick, Asterhan, & Clarke, 2015). Further, when students respond to each other’s ideas and elaborate on their own thinking, they have opportunities to re-examine their prior knowledge, test their mental models—whether complete or incomplete—and evaluate one another’s hypotheses, all of which contributes to learning (Gillies, 2017; Mercer, 1996; Webb et al., 2014). Such opportunities may even have a retention and transfer effect from one domain to another—for example, from mathematics and science to literacy (Adey & Shayer, 2015; Chapin, O’Connor, & Anderson, 2009; Topping & Trickey, 2007).
