Dialogic Pedagogy: Discourse in Contexts from Pre-school to University

Taking a dialogic approach, this edited book engages in analysis and description of dialogic discourse in a number of different educational contexts, from early childhood to tertiary, with an international team of contributors from Australia, Finland, New Zealand and the United Kingdom. The chapters focus mostly on dialogic face-to-face discourse, with some examples of online interactions, and feature insights from educational linguistics, particularly the work of Michael Halliday.

While the contributors come from a range of theoretical backgrounds, they all share an interest in language in use and engage in close analysis of transcripts of naturally-occurring interaction. Taking inspiration from Alexander and other theorists, they employ a fine-grained and analytic approach to the exploration of their data. The authors make use of the linguistic tools and models of language in society, in order to examine the turn-by-turn unfolding of the interaction. The authors relate their insights from disparate forms of linguistic analysis to elements of Alexander’s (2020) dialogic framework, situating the discourse in its contexts and discussing the pedagogical implications of the linguistic choices at play.

In presenting this work from a range of situations and perspectives, the authors strive to demonstrate how dialogic discourse plays out in educational contexts across the world. The book aims to foster further research in this direction and to inspire educators to explore dialogic discourse for themselves. It will be of interest to a wide audience, including literacy researchers, linguists, teachers and teacher educators, as well as graduate students.

Anne Thwaite is a Lecturer in Language Education in the School of Education at Edith Cowan University (ECU) in Australia. Her research applies a functional perspective to spoken discourse analysis, including classroom discourse, critical discourse analysis and casual conversation.

Alyson Simpson is a Professor in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the University of Sydney in Australia. Her research projects focus on the role of children’s literature in education, the power of dialogic learning and the formation of teacher professional identity through the lens of educational linguistics.

Pauline Jones is Associate Professor, Language in Education in the School of Education, at the University of Wollongong in Australia. Her scholarship focuses on educational linguistics/semiotics, which she applies to studies of pedagogic dialogue, advanced literacy skills and teacher development.