Quality Talk and dialogic teaching—an examination of a professional development programme on secondary teachers’ facilitation of student talk

Abstract

This study used the Quality Talk and dialogic teaching approach with a group of secondary school teachers (N = 7) to train their facilitation of dialogical discussions by small groups of students. The study used video and audio analysis to assess the teachers’ observable behaviours during these discussions, before and after professional development; for example, types of Quality Talk questions asked. The study also used face‐to‐face interviews, held before and after the professional development, to investigate the teachers’ beliefs about learning through discussion. Results show that although the number of high‐quality questions from the teachers did not increase, the quality of the questions students asked of each other did improve, and resulted in extended periods of dialogic spells. Positive developments were found for teachers’ beliefs about the use of dialogue to foster deeper thinking with their secondary school‐aged students.

Change in Classroom Dialogicity to Promote Cultural Literacy across Educational Levels

“…In our secondary education sample, slight changes happened as a result of the intervention. We did not observe the dialogic characteristics reported by MacNeilley, et al [36]:…”

“…(1) the presence of authentic questions (T4); (2) questions that refer to previous answers (T1); (3) follow-up questions in response to students' replies as feedback (T2) [35]. Along these lines, and in contrast to the results reported by Davies et al [36] regarding secondary school teachers' dialogic moves, we did not observe increases in the number of high-quality questions from teachers (T3), or in the quality of the questions asked to each other (T1), nor did we observe any significant reduction in the presence of closed questions (T5 and T6). Our results endorse the concepts of scalability (i.e., the difficulty in devoting sufficient time and effort to render PD effective) and sustainability (i.e., the lack of analysis of long-term PD effects raised by Howe and Mercer [39]).…”

“…Focussing on secondary education, classic research by MacNeilley, et al [35] identified three highly dialogic characteristics of secondary school teachers' practice: (1) authentic questions (with no predetermined answers); (2) questions that refer to previous answers; and (3) follow-up questions in response to students' replies as feedback (instead of a simple "OK") [33,36].…”

“…Studies with secondary school students have mainly focused on the changes generated by teachers' PD and have obtained diverse results. In a study in Auckland, New Zealand, on the facilitation of small-group discussions by senior secondary school teachers, Davies et al [36] observed changes after the teachers participated in a PD workshop on dialogic teaching. They found an increasing number of high-quality questions from the teachers, a significant reduction in the number of test questions, and an increase in the quality of the "questions asked to each other".…”

Analysing student talk moves in whole-class teaching

“…Despite the growing body of evidence showing that a dialogic pedagogy can improve student learning outcomes and social-emotional well-being, research into its implementation suggests teachers have found it difficult in practice and that it is rarely observed in the classroom (Davies, Kiemer & Meissel, 2017;Howe & Mercer, 2017;Wilkinson et al 2017).…”