ABSTRACT
The word dialogic is a frequent presence in the current educational literature. Whereas the exact meaning of this term may not be immediately obvious, it clearly functions as a trademark of high-quality instruction. The excitement with dialogue transpires from such claims as “dialogic instruction improves intellectual development” (Koedinger & Stampfer Wiese, 2015, p. 283), “the quantity and quality of dialogue in the classroom seems key to harvesting … multiple benefits” (Topping & Trickey, 2015, p. 109) or “dialogic teaching has the power to break the cycle of low demand/low performance too often experienced by children from disadvantaged socioeconomic background” (Resnick, Asterhan, & Clarke, 2015, p. 3). Neither the fact that some of these assertions may later be deemed as “inadequately tested” (Koedinger & Stampfer Wiese, 2015, p. 283) nor a certain ambiguity of the term “dialogic pedagogy” seems to deter the advocates.
