Dialogic Teaching - presentation - final

Talk for teaching and learning
(adapted from Alexander, 2008)
This does not mean teacher-centredness:
• classroom interaction patterns (Initiation-ResponseEvaluation) dominated by teacher
Focus of presentation
Defining dialogic teaching: Dialogic teaching harnesses the power of talk to engage (students), stimulate and extend their thinking, and advance their learning and understanding. (Alexander 2008, p. 185)
The course
• MEd course: Issues in Education and Leadership • University: A large, Australian university
• Semester: 13 weeks
• Class: 10 international students; 11 domestic • Course design:
Data: Interviews, classroom videos, observations, teaching evaluations. Aim: What makes for highly effective teaching with L2 students?
The participants
Dialogue (t-class/group/individual; st-sts; st-st): “achieving common understanding through structured and cumulative questioning and discussion which guide and prompt … and expedite ‘handover’ of concepts and principles (p. 186).
- three-hour weekly sessions of seminar-style classes; - two pieces of written assessment:
- an extended literature review (40%) - a critical discussion (60%)
• Classroom talk for teaching and learning
• Talk in the EL classroom • Language in the classroom: functions
• A classroom case study
• Implications for the Chinese EFL classroom • Pedagogic models: Content-focused, languagefocused • Summary: Teaching, classroom talk and cooperative learning.
1. Two sets of questions:
i. Lower-order questions – factual - recall, comprehension, application
ii. Higher-order questions – thought-provoking
- analysis, synthesis, evaluation
analyse and solve problems specuue, reason, justify negotiate
Talk in the EL classroom: Questioning
(adapted from Murray & Christison, 2011)
How do we teach so our students can accomplish these functions when they are using English as a Foreign Language?
A classroom case study
Study: Investigating teaching in a Master of Education course.
• Rather through task design and classroom organisation, these interactions can be studentstudent • Depends on aims of lesson: e.g. language (grammar, vocabulary, macroskills) presentation and mechanical practice, meaningful production, content-based.
Language in the classroom fulfils three functions
(Cazden, 2001) :
1. build content knowledge;
2. establish and maintain social relationships;
3. self-representation and identifying.
• What is talk for learning: who can undertake it and how can it be organised? • How does this link to cooperative learning?
Teaching and learning in the language classroom
2. Managing questioning and interaction:
i. feedback; ii. wait time; iii. question distribution.
Review
• What is talk for teaching: who can undertake it and how can it be organised?
• The teacher: A senior academic with a reputation for teaching excellence
• Six international students:
Anna (China), Erica (Singapore), Grace (Mozambique), Hanh (Vietnam), Javier (Argentina), Sonny (Thailand)
Dialogic teaching,cooperative learning and the EFL classroom
Dr Margaret Kettle Faculty of Education QUT Australia
Overview
• Defining dialogic teaching
2. The distinction between conversation (locally-managed) and dialogue (teacher-managed): Continuity of interaction through questions and responses leads to cumulation of knowledge and concepts.
Focus of presentation
• Acute interest in teaching in Australia and internationally • Interest is in teaching as dialogue to emphasise and foreground classroom talk • What talk promotes what learning?
Talk for teaching and learning
(adapted from Alexander, 2008)
Talk for learning: • • • narrate explain ask different questions
•
• •
receive, act and build on answers
Video Segment
• Week Two lesson: What is leadership?
1a: Assembling topics/disciplinary knowledge
TRS 1: Workplace TRS 2: Hierarchy T: But it’s very important. Good good What else? Javier (gestures to Javier) S-Javier: I like the part when he said no leader puts himself above the people and above the team, meaning that the leader is no more than the people that he or she leads. T: Do people agree with that? Julie have a comment back. (Interactive sequences forming the TRS) T: Ok, that is the significant distinction – you might be at the top but that doesn’t make you more important than everybody else. So basically he is talking about a certain set of values and assumptions. What I remember about the video is how much emphasis he was putting on morals, the common good and leading for the betterment of others. That for me was a very strong message he was putting out – that leadership is a moral act and he was also talking about vision – something greater than the individual. Now this is a very important idea that you are going to come back to and back to and back to throughout the leadership course – and that is the extent to which leadership is about vision and the extent to which it is a moral kind of action. Next week and the week after we will be revisiting this idea so hold it in your minds for then. Anything else strike you about what Mandela said about leadership?
Testing doesn’t make a student learn more; teaching does.
(Alexander, 2010)
• Linking learning to teaching: • this does not preclude cooperative learning, • this does not mean teacher-centred teaching.
Talk for teaching and learning
(adapted from Alexander, 2008)
Talk for teaching: Rote (t-class): drilling of facts, ideas and routines Recitation (t-class; t-group): accumulation of knowledge through questioning; cueing students Instruction/exposition (t-class; t-group; t-individual): imparting information, explaining, giving instructions Discussion (t-class/group/individual; st-sts; st-st): exchanging ideas to share information and solve problems
Classroom talk for teaching and learning
(adapted from Alexander, 2008)
1. Classroom talk: social and cognitive/learning purposes
Important not to prioritise one over the other; English classrooms; Emphasis on social can be cognitively undemanding if feedback not focused on learning.