The term ‘dialogic teaching’ is now in regular use but like all such terms means different things to different people. As developed by Robin Alexander since the early 2000s, dialogic teaching harnesses the power of talk to engage interest, stimulate thinking, advance understanding, expand ideas, and build and evaluate arguments, empowering students for lifelong learning and democratic engagement.
Being collaborative and supportive, it confers social and emotional benefits too. It also helps teachers: by encouraging students to share their thinking it enables teachers to diagnose needs, devise learning tasks, enhance understanding, assess progress, and guide students through the challenges they encounter.
Yet as defined by Alexander – though not by some others in the field – dialogic teaching is both talk and more than talk, for it enacts a distinctively dialogic stance on knowledge, learning, social relations and education itself.
