Troubles with dialogic teaching

Learning, Culture and Social Interaction xxx (2014) xxx–xxx

LCSI-00078; No of Pages 12

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Learning, Culture and Social Interaction

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Troubles with dialogic teaching

Klara Sedova ⁎, Zuzana Salamounova, Roman SvaricekDepartment of Educational Sciences, Masaryk University, Czech Republic

a r t i c l e i n f o

⁎ Corresponding author.E-mail addresses: [email protected] (K. Sedov

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.lcsi.2014.04.0012210-6561/© 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Please cite this article as: Sedova, K., et al.,dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.lcsi.2014.04.001

a b s t r a c t

Article history:Received 14 August 2013Received in revised form 3 April 2014Accepted 10 April 2014Available online xxxx

This paper examines dialogic teaching in Czech lower secondary schools and shows how Czechteachers use forms of dialogic teaching in their practice. We understand dialogic teaching as amethod that harnesses communication and students’ work with language to promote theiractivity, deepen their thinking and enrich their understanding (Alexander, 2006). Yet, althoughCzech teachers praise the benefits of dialogic teaching, they are not capable of fully implementingits forms in their teaching. This paper identifies the basic deficits that accompany attempts atdialogic teaching. These are insufficient emphasis on rational argumentation and semantic noise.The paper concludes by suggesting that it is necessary to further develop the concept of dialogicteaching so that it can be incorporated into everyday teaching.

© 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords:Dialogic teachingDiscussionDialogueArgumentationSemantic noise

1. Introduction

Classroom discourse has become one of the key topics of educational science. Many authors have a long-term research interestin forms of talk in the classroom and their educational functions (Alexander, 2001, 2006; Cazden, 1988; Gutierrez, 1994;Gutierrez et al., 1999; Hall, 1998; Lemke, 1988; Littleton & Howe, 2010; Mehan, 1979, 1984; Mercer, 1995, 2000; Mercer & Howe,2012; Mercer & Sams, 2006; Mesa & Chang, 2010; Nystrand, Gamoran, Kachur, & Prendergast, 1997, Nystrand, Wu, Gamoran,Zeiser, & Long, 2001; Pappas & Varelas, 2006; Poole, 1990; Scott, 2008; Sharpe, 2008; Sinclair & Coulthard, 1975; Wells, 1993,1999, 2009). Such an interest can be divided into two types. The first type focuses on the intense development of theoreticalconcepts that enable to identify and evaluate the educational potential of distinct communicational processes. The second relatesto empirical researches which observe the nature of these processes in the real environment of the classroom.

This paper analyses data gathered at Czech lower secondary schools through the perspective of dialogic teaching. It shows thatalthough Czech teachers do use some of the dialogical forms, these are accompanied with troubles. We propose that the troublesthat appear in the collected data can be thought of as typical in the Czech environment. Hence, the aim of this paper is to explainhow they come into being and provide a theoretical explanation for our findings.

2. The theory of dialogic teaching

This paper uses theoretical concepts that come from sociocultural theory, which is represented by Vygotsky (1978) and Bruner(1978). Vygotsky claimed that each psychological function appears twice in the development of a child. Its first appearance takesplace on the social level (i.e. in the interaction of the child and other people) while the second takes place on the individual level(on the level of internalised psychological processes). Vygotsky believed that there is a strong connection between thinking andspeaking and that whatever a child is capable of saying is later internalised and becomes a part of its thinking. Vygotsky (1978)

a), [email protected] (Z. Salamounova), [email protected] (R. Svaricek).

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established the term the zone of proximal development which describes the difference between what a child can do without thehelp of a teacher and with what a child can do with the help of a teacher. In this scheme, good teaching is believed to be slightlyahead of what a child can do at a given moment. Hence, teachers and students communicate about matters that are slightly out ofthe reach of students and the guidance they receive is believed to be internalised by the students. In sum, what comes fromoutside (be it a competent teacher, a parent or a gifted peer) becomes absorbed into the cognitive structure of a child’s mind.

Vygotsky’s emphasis on verbal interaction between a less competent child and a more competent adult was further developedby Bruner into the metaphor of education as scaffolding (Bruner, 1978).The scaffolding metaphor implies a short-term helpprovided by a teacher to a student with the aim of acquiring a particular skill or a type of knowledge. It is understood thatacquisition of the desired goal would not be possible without the teacher’s support (Hammond, 2001; Sharpe, 2008;Wells, 1999).Once a child starts working on a task, the competent adult intervenes so as to inhibit the child’s freedom at doing the task whichresults in the child’s greater concentration on the desired goal. An additional benefit of scaffolding is the decrease of students’failure rate (Mercer, 2000).

The scaffoldingmetaphor is well-suited for classroom application. Since speech is a key source of a child’s cognitive development,the dialogue between a teacher and a child is understood as a possible scaffolding. Education is then perceived as a dialogical processwhich both teachers and students enrich by addingmeanings,which they then reflect and process. This, however, does notmean thatall communication is dialogical. Nystrand et al. (1997) states that teaching cannot automatically be considered dialogic just becausecommunication exchanges are present. For, according to Bakhtin (1981) real dialogisation contains a change of various mentalperspectives. This means that each participant brings to communication something unique and original. The consequent mixing ofvarious elements creates a dialogue. Further, the so called dialogic space opens when different perspectives and opinions arecompared together. The opening of dialogic space is essential for the development of thinking, creativity and the ability to learnbecause it enables a child to better understand a problem. Hence, dialogue can be understood as a desirable form of communication.

Scott, Ametller, Mortimer, and Emberton (2010, see also Scott, 2008) differentiate between a dialogue and interactivity. Ifclassroom communication takes the form of dialogue between a teacher and a student then it is interactive. This is not the case ofthe teacher’s un-interrupted monologue. Hence, it follows that communication is dialogic only in those cases when it is open tostudents’ ideas. However, if the teacher steers the dialogue to a previously defined end point – which the students cannotinfluence or enrich the process with their thoughts − the situation is understood to be the very opposite of dialogisation.

Different authors use various terms to describe teaching which uses dialogic forms. Wells (1999) and Pappas and Varelas(2006) use the term dialogic inquiry, while Skidmore (2006) prefers dialogical pedagogy and Alexander (2006) dialogic teaching.The meaning of the terms is very similar, yet this paper uses Alexander’s demarcation as it is clear and well laid out.

Dialogic teaching uses communication and students’ work with language to promote activity, deepen thinking and enrichunderstanding (Alexander, 2006). The core feature of dialogic teaching is using such a type of communication which promoteshigher cognitive functions in students. Other important features of dialogic teaching are engaged students, their autonomy andthe fact that they are allowed to influence the course of actions in the classroom, at least to a certain extent.

According to Alexander (2006) it is possible to divide all communication situations into several genres. Yet, out of these only afew meet the criteria of dialogic teaching. Alexander’s typology is as follows: (1) Instruction is a teacher’s monologue whichexplains facts that students are to learn. Instruction is directed to all the students present in the classroom; (2) Rote is mechanicalrepetition of learned information and usually all the students participate in it; (3) recitation is used by teachers to test whetherstudents have learned a particular piece of information which the teacher had taught them previously; it is based on closed-endedquestions of lower cognitive order which are aimed at individual students; (4) Discussion entails an exchange of ideas andopinions between the teacher and students; its aim is to share information and generate ideas, while the questions used are openended and students’ participation is voluntary; (5) Dialogue is used by teachers not to control learned knowledge but to acquirenew understanding; the scaffolding dialogue uses structured questions which build on each other in order to solve a problem thatis too difficult for students. Dialogic questions are either directed to individual students or the classroom as a whole.

Even though all of the listed types have their place in education, Alexander claims that discussion and the scaffolding dialoguehave the highest potential for the processes of students’ learning (Alexander, 2006; Fisher, 2009). Hence, whenever we use theterm dialogic teaching we understand it to refer to teaching based on discussion and dialogue.

3. Contemporary empirical findings

Although Alexander (2006) suggests which communication genres are useful for dialogic teaching, the genres themselvesmight not be easily identifiable in empirical reality. This motivates researchers to propose a set of indicators that should signalisethe presence of dialogic teaching. (Nystrand et al., 1997, 2001) and Applebee, Langer, Nystrand, and Gamoran (2003) use thefollowing criteria: (1) authentic questions: these are open ended questions which aim to reveal a student’s ideas and opinionsand to which there is no pre-given answer; (2) uptake describes a situation in which the speaker builds on what has been said bythe previous speaker and thus increases the coherence of the dialogue; (4) teacher’s feedback of higher order comments not onlyon the correctness or incorrectness of a student’s response but it provides a more elaborate feedback on the content of thestudent’s response; (5) open discussion describes a sequence that includes at least three participants who react to each other formore than 30 seconds1. Apart from these widely accepted indicators, researchers also suggest others, such as: open-endedness

1 This criterion is not met by a situation in which a teacher asks first one student a question and then asks a different student another question. It is vital thatstudents react to each other.

Please cite this article as: Sedova, K., et al., Troubles with dialogic teaching, Learning, Culture and Social Interaction (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.lcsi.2014.04.001



3K. Sedova et al. / Learning, Culture and Social Interaction xxx (2014) xxx–xxx

and cognitive demandingness of questions (Gayle, Preiss, & Allen, 2006), work with mistakes (Myhill & Warren, 2005),exploratory talk2 (Mercer, 1995; Mercer & Dawes, 2008), the occurrence of students’ questions (Nystrand et al., 2001), the usageof heterogloss3 as a discursive voice (Mesa & Chang, 2010) and the presence of the so-called third space4 (Gutierrez, Rymes, &Larson, 1995). Resnitskaya et al. proposes a complex set of indicators (2009). She suggests that dialogic teaching can becharacterised with the following features: (1) authority: students share responsibility for the discussion, they manage turns, askquestions, suggest topical shifts; (2) questions: the teacher asks open and cognitively challenging questions; (3) feedback: theteacher consistently works with students’ answers to inspire further exploration; (4) connecting student ideas: the teacher makesvisible the connections among student ideas; (5) explanation: students justify their opinions and support them with examples;(6) collaboration: students react to what their peers say, they engage in critical and collaborative construction of ideas.

There are research studies which describe successful realisation of dialogic teaching. Gutierrez (1994) points out the existenceof the so-called responsive-collaborative script in education of writing in sixth and seventh grade students’ writing class.Nystrand et al. (1997) also document the existence of dialogic teaching in literature classes of eight and nine graders. In his laterstudy (Nystrand, Wu, Gamoran, Zeiser, & Long, 2003), he describes such sequences as “dialogic spells” and establishes strategieswhich enable these sequences. These are asking question without predetermined answers, following up previous studentresponses in next comments and remarks, abandoning of the ordinary feedback and giving students the chance to feedback. Theyshow that dialogic teaching depends on the track of students, among other things. For there is a greater degree of dialogicteaching in classes with high-track students than in classes with low-track students. The existence of dialogic teaching has alsobeen documented by Billings and Fitzgerald (2002) who describe education in a Paideia Seminar on a high school in England.Also, Mercer and Littleton (2007) give evidence of dialogic teaching among ten and eleven year old students.5 They also stress theimportance of temporal development of lessons and dialogue and shared experience of participants for relevant research ofdialogue. They further tie dialogue and exploratory talk which enables students to express their thoughts (see Barnes, 2008, s. 5;Pierce & Gilles, 2008; or the concept of muddle talk in Roth, 2001, s. 376). Other authors also support the existence of dialogicteaching (e.g., Lefstein, Israeli, Pollak, & Bozo-Schwartz, 2013, Scott et al., 2010; Skidmore, 2001).

There is also empirical evidence which describes the effectiveness of dialogic teaching. Mason (2001) demonstrates thepositive influence of dialogic teaching which is capable of stimulating and sustaining conceptual change in a science domain.Daniel et al. (2005) proved that dialogic teaching leads to the development of students’metacognitive thinking. Resnitskaya et al.(2009) summarise findings of researches which show that dialogic teaching develops students’ argumentation skills.

Yet, even though empirical studies record successful realisation of dialogic teaching, as well as its positive effect on students’learning, empirical research shows that dialogic teaching rarely takes place in teaching practice (Alexander, 2001; Billings &Fitzgerald, 2002, p. 912; Burns & Myhil, 2004; Gutierrez, 1994; Kumpulainen & Lipponen, 2010; Nystrand et al., 1997; Parker &Hurry, 2007). It is therefore possible for teachers to enter into dialogue with students under normal classroom conditions. Yet,this is not the prevailing norm and is difficult for teachers to sustain. Hence, dialogic teaching is documented by research studiesand can be realised in the classroom. Instead, communication in ordinary classes differs only infrequently from the ritualised IRFscript (Sinclair & Coulthard, 1975). Hence, dialogic teaching includes a teacher’s initiation, a student’s response and the teacher’sfeedback. The teacher’s initiation comprises of many questions which are usually closed-ended and of lower-cognitive order.Students’ responses are short and in most cases only repeat previously learned information. The teacher’s feedback is very briefand comments solely on whether a student’s response was correct or incorrect. It bears no other significant evaluative message.6

It appears that scarce presence of dialogic teaching in classroom is not caused by teachers’ disapproval of its principles. Themore probable reason seems to be that teachers are not capable of implementing them fully and effectively. Billings and Fitzgerald(2002) provide an example via their observation of an experienced teacher who was trained on the Paidea seminar. They notethat even though the teacher adopted some principles of dialogic teaching, her monologue tookmuch of the classroom time at theexpense of students’ participation. The result was therefore a combination of dialogic teaching and the traditional teacher frontedapproach. Lefstein (2008) conducted a study of ordinary British teachers which aimed to describe how they incorporate reforms(English National Literacy Strategy) that stress some elements of dialogic teaching, such as asking of open ended questions, intotheir everyday teaching. Lefstein’s research shows that the reform influenced the teachers in relation to the curriculum and lessonplanning; yet, their interaction with students remained unchanged. Lefstein claims that the micro-level of interactions is beyondthe conscious control of most teachers and it is run by their established routine. His study showed that the observed teachersinitiated a discussion with an open ended question, which was suggested in the materials related to the reform, but they tendedto narrow it down and manoeuvre students to the “correct” answer.

These examples of “teachers in transition” (see Billings & Fitzgerald, 2002) signalise that there is a gap between the theory andthe practice, as for example Mercer and Howe note (2012, p. 17). Mercer and Howe state that academic concepts have only littleimpact on pedagogical practice. Yet, they think that the situation could be changed by implementing the following steps: (1) by

2 In exploratory talk “partners engage critically but constructively with each other’s ideas (…) Statements and suggestions are offered to join consideration.”(Mercer, 1995, p. 104).

3 “Heterogloss seeks to engage the audience using a variety of linguistic resources, to open up or close down options for dialog.” (Mesa & Chang, 2010, p. 84).4 Third space is defined as a space where two scripts intersect, creating the potential for authentic interaction to occur.‘ (Gutierrez et al., 1995, p. 445).5 Mercer adds IRF does not have to be perceived as wholly negative and can be used in a productive way. To this end it is necessary to establish the function and

content of a communication sequence. It is hence not advisable only to assess the number or questions or its form or else simplification can follow (Mercer, 1996;Mercer & Littleton, 2007).

6 We realise that the IRF script is not an inappropriate structure as it is used in many important classroom functions. Hence, its evaluation needs to alwaysdepend on the aims which it pursues.





emphasising dialogic topics in teacher’s initial training and professional development; (2) by familiarising teachers with specificstrategies and approaches of dialogic forms of talk in their classrooms; (3) by making students realise the value of talk forlearning. Although these suggestions are valuable, aforementioned studies show that ordinary teachers find it difficult toincorporate dialogic teaching even if they are taught its innovative principles and even if they agree that they are beneficial.Hence, it is therefore important to ask which parts of everyday teaching practice are so incompatible with dialogic teaching thatdespite many attempts the nature of communication between teachers and students tends to remain unchanged.

These reasons lead us to believe that apart from researching teachers experts, who have fully adopted the principles of dialogicteaching, it is necessary to study the teaching practice of regular teachers. It is equally necessary to observe which principles ofdialogic teaching are difficult for them to adopt and why. Such an analysis can help to answer the question of why the presence ofdialogic teaching is scarcely observed in the classrooms.

4. Methodology

The aim of this paper is to identify the typical problems that Czech teachers have while attempting to incorporate forms ofdialogic teaching. The data with which we work in this paper were gathered during the realisation of the project entitled“Communication in the Classroom,” which was undertaken at the Department of Educational Sciences at the Faculty of Arts ofMasaryk University in Brno.

Four lower secondary schools (ISCED 2A) participated on this research study.7 Hereafter these schools are called Red, Blue,Green and Yellow. All four schools are situated in the Southern-Moravian region, which is one out of fourteen administrative unitsof the Czech Republic, that is located in the south-western part of Moravia. This region is further divided into seven counties.During this research study we cooperated with schools out of three counties. Two of the schools were in Brno which is the capitolof the region and the second largest city in the Czech Republic.

Brno can be characterised by below-average unemployment and high concentration of universities, colleges and lowersecondary schools. Students usually visit that lower secondary school in the vicinity of which they live. Parents can decide toenroll their children in a different school, yet this is not a common practice.

The Red school is an urban public school located in a part of the city inhabited by upper-middle class citizens. The Red school isvery popular among the parents in this part of the city, which allows the school to choose its future students. Not many studentsleave the primary school for high school; hence, the school retains many of its students even in its lower secondary school. TheRed school is also popular among Brno teachers who in general would like to teach there.

The Blue school is an urban public school situated in housing projects. The Blue school was built to cover the needs of theworking class whose members inhabited the locality in the past.

The school is one of the only two schools in the locality which students can enroll in. The majority of students however onlyfinishes the primary school and leave for further located yet better quality schools in the city. Consequently, the secondary schooloften consists of only one class with all the remaining students.

The Green school is located in county Vyškov in the city of the same name. Vyškov can be characterised by less than averageunemployment and inhabitants across all classes, many of whom commute for work to Brno. There is a high number of schools inVyškov. The Green school is a common public urban school visited by middle-class students. Apart from many primary andsecondary schools, there is also one high school in Vyškov. This makes it possible for students to leave the primary school after itscompletion and finish the studies at the high school. However, the capacity of the high school is small, hence the arrangement ofclasses does not change much over their transition from primary to secondary schools.

The Yellow school can be found in the county of Hodonín. There is a higher than average unemployment in the county andmany of its inhabitants work in agriculture or industry. The lower secondary school, which is a rural public school, is the only onein the county. Consequently, all students enroll in it and the school does not select its students. Most of them study both itsprimary and secondary stages as enrolling to a high school would equal commuting out of Hodonín. Since students of both Greenand Yellow schools have lower chances of enrolling in a prestigious high school, Green and Yellow schools divide their studentsinto classes of low-track and high-track students (Green school) or they divide individual classes into separate halves whichwhose education of Czech and Mathematics differs as these subjects are necessary for successful passing of entrance exams atfurther education institutions (Yellow school).

Four teachers from each of the schools agreed to participate in the project, all four teachers at each secondary school taughtCzech language, History or Civics. We cooperated with all the teachers of humanities subjects and the teachers thus were notpre-selected in any way. In total, we were able to observe 16 teachers who taught 16 different lessons. During the duration of theproject some of the teachers had been teaching for 3 years and some for 35 years. We observed 2 male teachers and 14 femaleteachers which is in accordance with the gender distribution of teachers of humanities subjects at Czech schools. We observed theteachers while they were teaching students of seventh and eighth grades, i.e. students between 12 and 14 years of age.

7 Lower secondary schools in the Czech Republic are part of primary schools where students undergo compulsory education, which lasts nine years. Schoolsconsist of primary and lower secondary schools. Primary school has four grades and these are attended by students between 6 and 11/12 years of age. Aftercompleting these four grades, students can either continue to study a lower secondary school or they can go to highschool, provided they pass the entranceexams. As there is a high number of high schools in the bigger cities of the Czech Republic, most gifted students often leave their schools for high schools, which ispart of the Czech educational system that is often criticised. The majority of schools are run by the state (97%) and only some of them are run by private (2%) orreligious organisations (1%).





The research was designed as field research of an ethnographic character, where the data were gathered by means of participantobservation (Spradley, 1980), video recording of classes,8 as well as in-depth interviews with teachers. We interviewed each of theteachers so as to find out their approaches to communication with students and their perceptions of students in given lessons (firstinterview, 60 minutes). We then observed their lessons and concluded the observation process with video recording of two lessons.9

We always recorded everything that took place in a lesson: the recordings start with the teacher’s arrival in the classroom and endwiththe teacher’s departure. Towards the end of the project, we interviewed the teachers (each interview was unique and reflected theteaching style of each teacher) in order to find out themost information possible on specific events whichwe observed in the teacher’slessons (second interview, 60-90 minutes).10 The gathering of data took place between September 2009 and February 2010. Thismethod of data collection allows researchers to obtain highly complex information from lessons and preserve it for further analysis.11

We precisely transcribed the recordings (32 lessons in total), and analysed them further using software ATLAS.ti for qualitativedata analysis. Our analytic method is in accordance with microethnographic discourse analysis (Bloome & Power Carter, 2013),according to which teaching and learning are seen as social linguistic processes. We aimed to describe the communicationbetween teachers and students in detail and moment-by-moment in order to identify its recurring patterns and their occurrence.The data analysed in this paper were chosen as representative model examples. The recorded communication between teachersand students shows some features of dialogic teaching, yet its parameters are either not developed fully or at all. This decision wasmotivated by our aim to find out which aspects of dialogic teaching are difficult for teachers to adopt and why.

5. Embryonic forms of dialogic teaching in the reality of the Czech classrooms

All teachers unanimously agreed that students should talk in lessons. Students’ talk with teachers is even taken as a sign of awell taught lesson with which the teachers are content. As Veronika says: “A good lesson is a lesson where students share theiropinions on any topic and say something interesting, something new which we can think about for a while.” Veronika’s idea is inaccordance with Bakhtin’s interpretation of dialogue as a space for presentation of different perspectives (Bakhtin, 1981).Students’ talk should not be limited to conveying “correct” answers to teachers’ questions. The teachers also said that studentslike communicative classes, as for example Vlasta suggests: “Well, when they start asking I feel they enjoy the lesson. For example,when they ask if we could go on an excursion and have a look at something. You know, when they care. I'm usually happy and so arethey.” The teachers suggest that such a type of educational communication is more effective than the traditional type ofmonological transmission of information. Alice further says that “They remember everything they find out by themselves. And youcan tell by their tests: they remember everything which they had deduced but not a thing that you tell them.” In sum, teachers in ourresearch believe that learning as interaction is a highly effective method of teaching.

Let's now examine to which extent is dialogic teaching present in the collected data. We focus especially on discussion anddialogue, which are the two types of dialogic teaching that Alexander considers the most beneficial for the development of students’thinking (2006). We identified a communication sequence as dialogue when at least three participants interacted to each other, theircommunication was relevant for the discussed topic and authentic questions or tasks were used in it. When a communicationsequence was marked for cognitively demanding questions, evaluation of higher order and uptake, we identified as discussion.

The application of these criteria resulted in a scarce set of communication sequences that can be considered dialogic. In thedata corpus of 32 recorded lessons, there are only five examples: two discussions and three dialogues. Yet, this does not mean thatteachers in our sample do not attempt to employ dialogic forms. There are a number of situation in which teachers try to influencestudents to participate more extensively and use cognitive operations of higher order. We take these communication sequencesto be embryonic forms of dialogic teaching. Teachers often use these while believing that they meet the criteria of dialogic

8 The teachers were repeatedly reassured that the recordings were intended for research purposes only and that they would only be passed on as transcriptionswhere the teachers’ names would be changed. We also had to guarantee that recordings would be handed over solely to them and not to anybody else (e.g. todirectors of schools).

9 Each lesson was recorded on two video cameras. One was positioned at the front and recorded the teacher as well as all their movement in the classroom. Thesecond camera was at the back, which helped us to record students’ behaviour.10 Interview guide approach (Patton, 2002).11 However, when a researcher directly observes a class, their attention is quite selective, which is also mirrored in their fragmentary notes in their research logs.This method also has its limitations, of which two are more important than others. First, a situation in which there are other people present and who moreoverrecord the lesson is not natural. It is speculated that both the observed teachers and students change their behaviour. In order to decrease this effect, theresearchers attended the classes before the video recording took place: they sat at the back of the class and took notes. Hence, the level of acquaintance of theresearcher with the teacher and students was already high when it came to the actual video recording. This alleviated the teacher’s fears of being recorded, whichwere high at the outset of the project. At the same time, this gave us the chance to record lessons which we had previously seen without the video camera, and wedid not notice any marked differences (With the exception of choosing more fashionable clothes.). It could be said that the mere presence of an observer changesthe behaviour of those who are observed. Yet, we believe that a teacher, as well as the students, cannot significantly change their behaviour over a longer periodof time. Even though teachers are capable of behaving more kindly towards students than usual, they are not capable of changing their ways of asking questionsor of evaluating their students. By the same token, we expect that students are capable of decreasing their disruptive behaviour. However, they are not capable ofchanging the nature of spontaneously asked questions to the teacher nor the promptness of their responses to the teacher’s questions. The second limitation is thequality of the sound recording, for not all responses were clearly audible. Also, the comprehensibility of the recording was not improved by the number ofcommunicative actions taking place in the classroom at the same time. For example, a teacher’s question might be answered by two students at the same, yet theteacher subsequently pays attention only to one answer out of the two. We made an effort to write down the communicative dialogue between the teacher andstudents. We even transcribed those students’ answers which were not considered by the teacher. The transcription does not include students’ generalconversation as it was not possible to record it using the technology at our disposal. It would also have made the transcription very complicated. We take thetranscripts of video recordings as an approximate reconstruction of actions which took place in the classroom. We are aware of their shortcomings, yet we believethat video recording is the method which allows us to obtain the most complex data about the prime focus of our research.





teaching. An example of an embryonic dialogic form is a situation in which a teacher asks an open-ended question (e.g. What ismass media?) and elicit answers from students. However, the students do not react on what has been said by their peers. Further,the question is too simple and cannot cognitively stimulate the students.

It has been suggested that embryonic forms of dialogic teaching suffer from various deficits which distinguish them fromauthentic dialogic teaching. The following part of this paper is dedicated to examination of these deficits, out of which two wereidentified as typical representatives of the recorded data. These are lack of rational argumentation and semantic noise.

The following pages describe both of these deficits and explain the causes of their existence.

5.1. Lack of Rational Argumentation

Students’ high willingness to answer a teacher’s question is a typical feature of embryonic forms of dialogic teaching. If ateacher asks a question, several students raise their hands in an attempt to provide an answer. While the teacher allows individualstudents to talk, their communication is usually limited to the following pattern: a student forms their response, the teachereither repeats it or otherwise signals its acceptability and another student is allowed to talk. However, the second responsetypically does not react on the previous one. This means that such communication lacks uptake and each response returns to thestarting point of the communication sequence, which is the teacher’s question. Not only does such a communication lackcoherence, but it also does not allow the student to develop her or his answer. Consequently, the student cannot be asked tofurther elaborate or clarify the response, which leads to lack of rational argumentation in this type of dialogue.

The following extract demonstrates this feature in a literature class on mythological explanations of the creation of the world.

Extract 1Extract 1 describes a communication sequence from a lesson of the Czech language at the Red school. The lesson is taught by Johanawho had been teaching for 22 years, 2 out of which were spent with teaching in this particular class. Johana is fond of the studentswhom she describes as gifted.There are 21 students in the class, 9 of them boys. This particular lesson opens with a new thematic topic called “Where do we comefrom?” Johana informs the students that they are about to start a new topic and the students then proceed to read a biblical storyabout the creation of the world. After the students have finished reading the text aloud, Johana asks them which theory of thecreation of the world they like the most. The following communication exchange takes place 15 minutes after the start of a45 minute teaching block.

1. T: So, you are twelve or thirteen years old, you have heard a lot of different opinions, you certainly watch television andthere are various programmes on this, you read books, scientific publications, so what do YOU think of the origins of theworld? How did we end up being here? (she looks at the students) Honzo, go on, tell me.

2. S Honza: (has been leaning on his hands up to that point, once asked he changes his position and sits straight): Well, so I...3. T: Yes, what do you think?4. S Honza: I guess I prefer the scientific explanation.5. T: (observes Honza intently) The scientific explanation?6. S Honza: Yep.7. T: So you mean the so called big bang theory?8. S Honza: Well, probably.9. T: (looks at other students in the classroom) We will not go into details today, we can keep that for some science lesson,

Biology, Chemistry or Physics. (Looks back at Honza) So you prefer the scientific explanation, of course, I wouldn’t want youto think that if you prefer some other theory, for example the one described in the Bible, about which we will be talkingtoday, that anybody’s gonna be laughing at you (gestures with hands)...So just tell me what you have heard, what you think,so Honza prefers the scientific theory (observes the classroom)...

10. S Jindra: (raises his hand half way)11. T: So what about you, Jindra?12. S Jindra: It’s the scientific theory for me, too.13. T: So you mean the scientific theory, or a bit from this theory and a bit from another theory or what? (is looking at Jindra)14. S Jindra: No, the scientific one.15. T: Sure.16. S Jindra: Because had God existed, you know, ripping ribs out of people just hurts...17. T: (is laughing) OK, so that is your opinion. What about you, Katka?18. S Katka: I prefer the scientific one.19. T: Aha, the scientific one (is nodding her head). OK, well, and what about you, Jana?20. S Jana: I...21. T: (interrupts the student) So you have been thinking, but you don’t have to think, you know everything already (is standing

in front of the benches with folded arms and is looking at Jana)





22. S Jana: Well, I don’t really know...I think I don’t believe in any theory, I believe in . . . (pauses for two seconds), well, I justthink that I cannot imagine anything of that.

23. T: Huh (is nodding her head approvingly) So you have not given it much thought, you just take it for granted.

There are several interestingmoments in the extract. Teacher asks the students to tell her what they “think,” (line 1) yet she is notinterested inwhy they think so. Teacher goes on to ask asmany students as possible to tell her their opinion on thematter.Most of thestudents prefer “the scientific method” (line 4, 12, 18). However, it is possible to think that they induced this answer from the teacher’sinstruction in which she suggested that they read “scientific publications” (line 1). Her remark that students should not laugh at thosewho prefer the Biblical explanation (line 9) also posits the scientific explanation as the normal and standard explanation.

Interestingly enough, the discussion does not focus on why the scientific explanations should be seen as valid. It in fact doesnot even define what the term “scientific”means. The teacher first associates the scientific explanation with “the so called big bangtheory” (line 7) and immediately enumerates subjects in which the students should acquire more information on the matter(line 9). Although the expression “the scientific explanation” figures prominently in the discussion, the teacher leaves it to be anempty phrase with an unclear meaning.

There is only one student, Jana, who distances herself from the mainstream answer and reveals her de facto agnostic position(line 22). She says that she finds none of the theories convincing enough and therefore she lacks proper clues to make a validdecision. She is however incorrectly paraphrased by the teacher who says that “you have not given it much thought, you just take itfor granted” (line 23). The usage of words in such a discussion is reminiscent of smoke screen: responses follow each other, yettheir meaning cannot be established. It is also unclear what Jana is supposed to “take for granted” (line 23).

The only attempt at argumentation in the extract is conducted by Jarda (line 16). Yet, the teacher laughs it off and does notdeal with the remark any more (line 17). There were several other spontaneous attempts at argumentation during the observedlesson. However, none of them has been noticed and made use of by the teacher.

Several indicators of dialogic teaching aremissing in the quoted extract. If we use indicators developed by Resnitskaya et al. (2009),the missing indicators are connecting ideas, explanation and collaboration.We believe that the absence of these indicators is mutuallydependent. Since the students are not encouraged to explain their responses, connection of ideas is not possible. In fact, students do notvolunteer ideas: instead they only voice their opinions. Further, the teacher’s reply (“you don’t have to think, you know everythingalready”) discourages the students from performing more demanding cognitive operations (line 21). In fact, the teacher proposes thatthe aim is to list already held opinions instead of evaluating their validity. Students’ response can therefore only be divided into groupswhich favour individual theories. The missing explanation also ensures that collaboration does not take place. Consequently, studentscannot be engaged in critical and collaborative construction of ideas which would enable them to develop their arguments.

We believe that the lack of rational argumentation (supported by the fact that the teacher does not encourage the students toexplain their ideas) is the key reason why this sequence falls short of meeting the features of dialogic teaching. This deficiencywas also noted in many of the remaining recorded episodes in our data collection.

5.2. Semantic noise

Insufficient rational argumentation described above manifests on the level of speech. However, the second deficit discussed inthis paper is more related to the level of speech perception and it concerns how individual communication participants perceivewhat has been said.

The term semantic noise refers to interference in communication which is caused by a different understanding of wordsbetween the participants (DeVito, 2001). Semantic noise usually remains “under the surface” and is undetected by both teachersand students. Semantic noise often appears in non-dialogic types of communication, such as rote or recitation (see Alexander,2006). Since students’ answers are mostly one or two words long, semantic noise remains undetected. For, even if students attacha different meaning to a word than their teacher, the brevity of their answers camouflages their different understanding.

When interaction between teacher and students reaches the stage of dialogic teaching, the semantic noise becomes morevisible and its presence causes misunderstanding in communication. The following extract from writing class shows howsemantic noise complicates understanding between students and their teacher:

Extract 2The extract describes a sequence recorded in a Czech language lesson which was observed at the Blue school in a class of eighthgraders. At the moment of recording, Jan had been teaching for five years, out of which three had been spent with teaching in thisparticular class. He had not completed his degree in Teaching of the Czech Language and hence was teaching the class as a teacherwithout a degree in teaching. Apart from teaching this subject, he also teaches some of the students in an optional subject on Drama.There are 20 students present in the classroom, 10 out of which are boys. The topic of the class is science writing. The teacher informsthe students that they are to write a short science text on the universe. They go on and brainstorm an outline of the text and thestudents proceed to write their texts. The teacher then encourages them to read their texts aloud. Only those students who volunteerto read are chosen to read. The second student reading is Matěj who starts speaking during the 28 minute out of 45.

1. S Matěj: There are eight planets in our solar system and one of the planets is Earth. There used to be nine planets, but one ofthem was dropped. Its name was Pluto. The planets spin around axis and the Sun is the heart of our solar system. Theplanets are listed as follows: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uran, Neptun.





2. T:Well, this is not that bad, but there are two descriptions that do not fit (he stands up and is moving towards the board) Thefirst one is the thing about . . .

3. S Michal: Dropping.4. T: you said that “it was dropped” (writes the clause on the board). And I also didn’t like the spinning around axis. Imagine

that you have a planet here and an axis there (draws a planet on the board and an axis located away from the planet). So youthink that the planet could spin like that? (is using his hands to gesture the movement)

5. S Matěj: No.6. T: So what about the axis?7. S Katka: ITS axis.8. T: Exactly, it spins around ITS axes, right? So it spins around its axis, it needs to be precise. Why don’t I like you saying that

“it was dropped?”9. S Michal: Cause it’s nonsense.

10. S Gábina: Because it is not scientific.11. T: It is not nonsense and I don’t mind that it is not scientific.12. S Michal: It hasn’t got the meaning it is supposed to have.13. T: I’m more interested in the formulation.14. S Filip: How could it possibly drop away?15. T: The words Matěj used are tinged. How?16. S Hanka: Emotionally.17. T: Of course! If we start saying that, well, they are subjective, aren’t they?18. S Nikola: The words do not sound right.19. T: “was dropped” suggests that the whole action is in a way, perhaps, expressive, right?20. S Petr: But “was dropped” is not suggestive. (says in a low voice)21. Tn So it is not nonsense. OK, well, will anybody else try to read it?

The second extract shows how the teacher reacts on what has been said by the student while other students are also involved.Unlike the first extract, the second one shows attempts at connecting ideas in the second extract: the participants react on whathas been said and try to provide feedback on the student’s performance. There is visible collaboration and the teacher elicitsstudents to elaborate their arguments further (“Why don’t I like you saying that ‘it was dropped?” – line 16). Yet, it cannot be saidthe participants reach mutual understanding at the end of the communication sequence. This can be inferred from Petr’s responsewhich shows that neither he nor the teacher share the same understanding (line 20). We believe that this misunderstanding iscaused by semantic noise.

The first example of semantic noise is Matěj’s interaction with the other students whenMatěj suggests that Pluto dropped fromthe solar system (line 1). He imprecisely suggests that Pluto was reclassified as a dwarf planet and hence it was dropped from thelist of other planets. Yet, the other students seem to think that Matěj suggests that Pluto actually dropped out of the solar system(line 9, 14). This is why Michal says that “it is nonsense” and Filip wonders “How could it possibly be dropped?”

Yet, the teacher is not aware of this misunderstanding and the level of semantic noise increases as he attempts to lead thestudents to notice the stylistically improper phrasing. For example, Michal continues to believe that Matěj’s response describes animpossible action and is therefore incorrect. His understanding motivates him to label Matěj’ text as “nonsense.” Only Gábina’sresponse aims at the word register used and suggests that “it is not scientific” (line 10). However, the teacher does not realise themeaning of the responses and is not satisfied with any of them. First, he claims that Matěj’s suggestion is not non-sensical as hehas not yet understood the meaning which some of the students apply (line 11). Further, while responding to Gábina’s response,he suggests that a scientific text does not have to be written only in scientific word register (line 11). Yet, none of the participantscan realise that they apply different meanings as the teacher uses the same words and phrases in his feedback as the students arein their responses. In order to elicit the response he wants to hear, the teacher suggests that formulation of words is relevant inthis case (line 13). However, this attempt is not successful. The teacher therefore directly points out that Matěj’s formulation istinged (line 15). Hanka interprets the cue correctly when she says that the phrase is coloured “emotionally” (line 16). It can bepresumed that she would not have arrived to the interpretation had the teacher not provided her with the clue. It is probable thatHanka finds the correct answer because of the collocability of the word tinged.12 This does not mean that Hanka understands themeaning of the phrase which she used.

The level of semantic noise continues to rise as the teacher closes the sequence by saying that the phrase “‘was dropped’suggests that the whole action is in a way, perhaps, expressive, right?” (line 19). The teacher confirms the validity of Gábina’sresponse and uses the word “expressive” instead of “emotionally tinged.” Yet, in Czech “expressive” is a loan word and its meaning isunknown to the students. Since Petr does not know the meaning of the word, in his response he creates a verb out of the nounwhich he knows and thus he uses “suggestive” instead of “expressive.” Consequently, he thinks that Matěj’s formulation is incorrect

12 We understand the term collocability to refer to tendency of words to occur together. Such tendency is high, especially in the case of the phrase "emotionallytinged". It is therefore not surprising that students can recall the full phrase once they hear one of its parts (Makovska, 2011, p. 60–63).





from a different reason than the teacher: Petr believes that it is because of its suggestivity instead of its expressivity (line 20). Yetthe teacher pays no attention to Petr’s response and asks a different student to read on (line 21).

Although the extract meets the criteria of dialogic teaching as specified by Resnitskaya et al. (2009), learning does not takeplace as the teacher and students understand their responses differently. It is therefore not clear what the students should gainfrom the communication exchange. The teacher probably intends to warn them about inappropriate usage of emotionally tingedwords in scientific writing. As a result of the exchange, students do know that the phrase Pluto “was dropped” is not acceptable,but they do not know why. Some think from the very beginning that the text is incorrect as a planet cannot leave its system.Others have realised that the text is incorrect because of its formulation. However, the reason why the formulation is consideredincorrect remains hidden behind the word “expressive,” which is unknown to the students. The teacher’s commentaries thus donot help the students to understand why certain formulations are appropriate in science writing and when this is no longer thecase.

6. Troubles with dialogic teaching

It has been suggested that academic literature presents dialogic teaching as an effective and desirable teaching method.Although the observed teachers do not follow such sources, they have spontaneously reported their attempts to engage studentsin dialogue and discussion. Hence, these teachers find the concept of dialogic teaching appealing. Yet, the recordings show thatincorporation of dialogic teaching is difficult as discussion and dialogue appear only rarely in the recorded lessons. If they dooccur, they are accompanied by the afore-described deficits: by the lack of argumentation and semantic noise.

This raises the question of why is realisation of dialogic teaching so difficult for teachers in spite of their apparent good will todo so. Let’s now return to Alexander who summarises several key features that are vital for dialogic teaching. Alexander claimsthat dialogic teaching is: (1) collective, (2) reciprocal, (3) supportive, (4) cumulative and (5) purposeful. While we do not want toquestion that these features fittingly describe dialogic teaching, we believe that they are very difficult to achieve in the reality ofthe classroom, as the following paragraphs show.

The first feature implies that dialogic teaching should be collective and hence the whole classroom or at least some of itsgroups should participate in it. Alexander suggests that educational tasks need to address all the students (2006). However, ourdata show that this features clashes with strong heterogeneity of students at lower secondary schools, because not all studentsare interested in the subject and their aptitude differs. Such heterogeneity complicates the realisation of the collectivity criterion(Nystrand et al., 2001). Teachers find it difficult to plan scaffolding because it presupposes a more or less individual diagnosis ofacquired knowledge and skills. On one hand, teachers should give students such tasks that are within the range of their zone ofproximal development. On the other hand, this is difficult to fulfill since each student’s zone of proximal development is uniqueand hence different than the others.

Teachers who are aware of heterogeneity of their students can adopt two strategies. First, they can choose to leave outlow-track students out of the more demanding communication sequences. This is supported by the collected data which showthat only some of the most motivated and gifted students participate in dialogic sequences. Second, teachers can set theirstandards low so that each student can exceed them.While the first strategy does not meet the criterion of collectivity, the secondmakes dialogic teaching almost impossible by preferring its social functions. Collectivity could be one of the reasons whichmotivates the teacher in Extract 1 not to elicit further elaboration of responses and rational argumentation from the students. Theteacher could believe that such a task would be too difficult for the students. Further, her intention to include a high number ofstudents in communication motivates her to quickly change her communication partners. Consequently, she does not have thetime to let them elaborate their answers.

The second feature implies that dialogic teaching should be reciprocal. According to Alexander (2006) this means thatteachers and students listen to each other, share their thoughts and consider alternative viewpoints. We believe that the criterionof reciprocity can best be applied to feedback. This means that a dialogue is only reciprocal when its participants comment oneach other’s thought and develop them further. Yet, Alexander’s second feature can clash with the first one. Our observationshowed that whenever a teacher concentrated on a single student’s response for a longer period of time, the other studentsbecome gradually less and less interested in their communication exchange, the noise level in the classroom increased and so didoff-task activities of the students. We therefore believe that activation of all students takes place at the expense of concentrationat one student and elaboration of his or her thoughts.

If dialogic teaching is supportive then students share their ideas freely, participate in communication and are not afraid ofmaking mistakes (Alexander, 2006). The level of support is directly influenced by the relationships of teachers and their students:if teachers fear that students might misbehave, they decrease the level of their support. It is important to say that the observedteachers were supportive and students did not find it difficult to participate in classroom communication. However, this ispotentially problematic as too much support leads to over-emphasis of the social functions of dialogic teaching. In such casesdiscussion deteriorates and the value of students’ comments is not high. Further, teachers might not evaluate the value of thecomments nor their accuracy. We think that teachers behave in this way in order to be supportive, not to discourage studentswith critical commentary and generally welcome each of their comments.

Alexander claims the most challenging feature is to make dialogic teaching cumulative (2006). If communication is cumulativethen the process of acquiring new skills and knowledge continues. This process makes use of previous stages and emphasisesstraightforward and thorough examination of the content matter. Dialogue in Extract 1 cannot be considered as cumulative sincethe teacher asks individual students the same question. Albeit ideas are connected in Extract 2 (and there is collaboration





between the teacher and students) the communication does not result in accumulation of new knowledge because of semanticnoise. We think that the lack of cumulative feature is caused by insubstantial reciprocity. The teacher in Extract 1 does not givestudents enough time to elaborate their arguments. The teacher in extract 2 comments on student’s responses; however, he doesso without fully understanding them. The features of dialogic teaching are therefore not met because the principle of reciprocity isnot met either.

Alexander's last feature of dialogic teaching is that it is purposeful (2006), which means that a teacher teaches with specificeducational goals in view. The interviews with teachers show that this feature is particularly problematic in attempts atrealisation of dialogic teaching. On several occasions the teachers claimed that dialogic methods cannot be used often as theywould not manage to cover the subject matter which they are supposed to. They perceived dialogue as carefree conversationwhose aim is to make a lesson enjoyable rather than deepen the students’ understanding. We interpret this finding as overratingof the supportive feature of dialogic teaching. It was revealed that the teachers’ main aim was to make students feel comfortableso that they would participate in communication. This was motivated by their opinion that if students participate incommunication then that particular lesson is well taught.

Yet another complicating factor is the openness of the lesson plan, despite its prominent position in dialogic teaching.Students’ responses can be surprising for teachers because they were not anticipated in their pre-prepared lesson plans orbecause they require knowledge that teachers do not possess. Only teachers who are very knowledgeable in their fields (andknow how to handle spontaneous questions) can manage situations when the lesson plan is open and when students caninfluence the course of the lesson.

It can be summarised that features of dialogic teaching are interrelated. Some of them are necessary for the occurrence ofothers (e.g. reciprocity is needed for the occurrence of the cumulative feature) while others are at odds (as is the case of thesupportive feature which undermines the purposeful feature).

7. Conclusion

This paper examines how Czech teachers at lower secondary schools use forms of dialogic teaching. It has shown that Czechteachers agree with teaching as a dialogic activity, but real dialogic forms are present only scarcely in their teaching. Hence, it ismore accurate to talk about embryonic forms which do not fully meet the criteria of dialogic teaching than of dialogic teaching.The shortcomings of embryonic forms are insufficient emphasis on rational argumentation and semantic noise.

Our analysis shows that teachers find it difficult to meet the different features of dialogic teaching at the same time becausethey are interrelated and can support or contradict one another. Lefstein (2010) claims that educational literature presentsdialogic teaching as a remedy for a whole number of problems and that it should increase the quality of education and learning,cultivate students’ thinking, democratise schools and empower students. However, literature renders dialogic teaching in such anidealised way that is very difficult to realise dialogic teaching with all its attributes everyday practice. Teachers who attempt to doso are limited by the curricula of their schools and their own skills. Lefstein (2010) therefore advises to develop the concept ofsituated dialogue (in the sense of dialogue which is situated into the environment of the real classroom where teachers have toface real limits and contradictions). Lefstein believes that it is necessary to take into account the number of students in theclassroom13 and the fact the classroom dialogue is not free but limited by the curriculum. These limitations play role also in ourconclusion.

We believe that the concept of dialogic teaching is a satisfactorily developed theory, yet it is only infrequently realised ineveryday teaching at Czech schools. Other steps need to be taken in order to find out under which conditions the concept can bemore easily transferred into classrooms so that it became a part of everyday teaching. There are a number of approaches that canbe employed for this task: one of them can be a study of expert teachers who can use dialogic forms in their teaching. Yet, there isalso the approach which this paper has taken: to observe ordinary teachers, find the moments in which their attempts at dialogicteaching fail and identify the causes of their failure. It has been established that persuading teachers to use dialogic teaching is noteffective (after all, the teachers are already persuaded). Our findings summarise the situation in Czech schools and show that itmight now be effective to think how to reduce semantic noise and strengthen rational argumentation in teachers’ communicationwith students.

Even though embryonic forms are not equal with dialogic teaching, they can still perform valuable functions (e.g. make thelessonmore interesting and enjoyable for students who thus may be motivated to participate more in classroom communication).We understand embryonic forms as a stage in transition because they signal that teachers are interested in implementation ofdialogic features and that this interest is headed in the positive direction.

Acknowledgements

This article is an output of the project Teachers and students in dialogic teaching (GA13-23578S) funded by the Czech ScienceFoundation.

13 The scaffolding metaphor, which is one of the supporting pillars of the theory of dialogic teaching, was developed during observations of a mother and herchild, i.e. a one to one communication (Ninio & Bruner, 1978).





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Troubles with dialogic teaching