ABSTRACT
While research highlights the benefits of dialogic teaching and learning, it has been found difficult to change classroom practice to involve more discussion of students’ ideas (Osborne, Simon, Christodoulou, Howell-Richardson, & Richardson, 2013; Ruthven et al., 2017). This section discusses this challenge. It is argued here that two new research directions are needed to address this challenge. Firstly, research needs to move from an over-emphasis on individual professionals and attend to the sociocultural and collective nature and institutional context of teachers’ work. Secondly, there has been a tendency to focus on practices and programmes of professional learning interventions (PLIs). Going forward, research needs to explain the generative mechanisms that can bring about change: we need to understand how PLIs have their effect and why they may or may not lead to professional change.
