Bringing Talk to Life: Thinking Through Dialogue in the Classroom

Do you want to encourage purposeful talk between students in your classroom, but feel you do not have the time or the permission? Do you wish you had more opportunity to listen to your students and include discussion of pressing and controversial issues in their lives and society today in your curriculum? Amidst rising recognition of how being articulate improves life chances, this book takes a look at these questions, outlining an alternative approach to curriculum and pedagogy.

Bringing Talk to Life is firmly grounded in classroom experience and research evidence, and explores how a dialogic approach to teaching can improve students’ confidence and agency and restore teachers’ professional judgement. It outlines the social and linguistic barriers some students find in accessing knowledge through the school curriculum and identifies ways that teachers can help them become more confident and articulate by modelling different behavioural norms and introducing concept vocabulary in an accessible way.

Using transcripts of classroom dialogues, teachers’ plans and examples of students’ work, chapters show by contrast that a talk-focussed, enquiry curriculum can free up teachers and pupils to explore ideas together, reigniting curiosity. Examples of this dialogic approach come from primary classrooms where Philosophy for Children (P4C) is adapted to suit a school’s aims and curriculum. In addition, there are chapters on how talk is used in further and higher education to develop students’ critical thinking skills.

Designed to stimulate thinking and debate, and restore teachers’ confidence in their own professional judgement, this book is intended for those training to be teachers. It will also be of interest for schools that are keen to learn how to include more talk in their curriculum, and experienced practitioners who feel that there is another way to plan and teach.

Paul Gurton was a primary school teacher, head teacher, and a senior lecturer in primary teacher education at the University of Wolverhampton, UK.

Meghan Tipping is an experienced primary school teacher currently working in the education and heritage sectors.