In Denmark, we have a long tradition of dialogue and orality in schools. It is an indispensable principle, rooted in the schools' purpose clauses, that students can have a voice in the classroom and exchange understandings and opinions with both their classmates and the school's adults.
Internationally, there have been significant advances in both research and development of dialogic teaching and orality. There is growing consensus that an increased focus on dialogic teaching and orality can enhance students' thinking and learning processes, build sustainable communication forms and relationships, and prepare students for life in a democratic society in the 21st century. Thus, investigative dialogue forms and creative, reflective oral forms need to be part of the regular practice and daily life in schools.
Despite this, much teaching still appears to be dominated by traditional monologic and teacher-dominated instruction, based on the understanding that knowledge and learning are transmitted one-way from teacher to student. The focus area DiaMu aims to investigate and contribute to new practice-oriented knowledge about how dialogic teaching is understood and practiced in primary schools. Knowing that dialogic pedagogy supports students' learning processes and their shared responsibility for the collective practices that come with being together, how can we incorporate more dialogic practice into our education sector? One way to achieve this is by examining the practices in teacher education.
Dialogic teaching and orality are umbrella terms for many facets of using spoken language in teaching and do not solely concern the oral aspect. For example, dialogic teaching can include written activities and collaborative processes of various kinds, both digitally and through physical interaction, collaborative game activities, or design and dialogues about or through specific materials, etc.
We are focused on:
- Understandings and forms of dialogic teaching
The understanding of the term dialogic is crucial for how we characterize dialogic teaching and the purposes of a given dialogic sequence. Dialogic teaching can be understood in many ways. Therefore, it is not possible to definitively determine what dialogic teaching is, so how can we assess whether teaching is dialogic or not? We aim to illuminate the spectrum of understandings and approaches to dialogic teaching, examine their strengths, weaknesses, and applications, and thereby clarify the qualities and criteria for dialogic teaching from different theoretical perspectives.
- Orality and subject didactics
We examine how oral practice unfolds and investigate orality in schools both generally, within subjects, and across subjects. Oral forms in organizing teaching include, for example, qualifying students' oral presentations through clear qualification of response forms and dialogue around a subject presentation. We are also interested in clarifying and developing clear concepts of what an oral exam is. What criteria underlie subject language, and what are teachers' and students' perceptions of what it means to speak a subject, and how does subject language differ from everyday language? Testing and developing both forms of spoken language is important for awareness of pathways to one's own education and professionalism.
Another aspect of orality is the entire creative aspect when developing together and interactively inspiring each other, creating and producing together, and perhaps even achieving a shared flow through negotiation and innovative processes. This interaction often takes place orally, perhaps online, but more often orally than in writing, because the exchange may require a certain pace. How can the organization of oral investigations create space and motivate creativity in the daily life of the school?
- Dialogic perspectives on guidance, evaluation, feedback, and assessment of orality
In recent years, there has been a strong focus on viewing guidance, evaluation, and feedback from dialogic perspectives that emphasize formative and learning-promoting dimensions moving forward. Additionally, the assessment of orality is complex because spoken language exists in time and space and quickly disappears. Criteria are developed for how students are assessed orally and dialogically, but these can be vague, unclear implicit criteria and implicit cultures that set the framework for what is expected. How do we remember what someone said, for example, in a presentation, a conversation, an exam situation, and how can we retain it and be clear in guidance, feedback, and response?
- Classroom conversations and group and peer conversations
Allowing students to engage in conversations with each other in the classroom, smaller groups, or pairs is common practice in most classrooms. Research in Denmark and internationally over many years shows that investigative dialogues, where students drive the processes for questions and answers they find important through their own interests in relation to material, are motivating and strengthen and sustain learning and the desire to seek further. At the same time, their investigations must always be supported depending on how independently they work and the nature of the investigations. Therefore, teachers need to vary conversation forms to a high degree. However, it is quite demanding for teachers to learn to ask different types of questions than in the teacher-led form and to support student investigations without the teacher always having the answer. We aim to test and expand dialogic practice forms in the education sector through collaborations in DiaMu, focusing on, with, and about school and teacher education broadly.
- Pedagogical approaches to dialogic teaching
Over the years, many different approaches have been launched to contribute to the development of quality in dialogues in teaching. These approaches offer guidance on how to practice dialogic teaching, but they do so with different emphasis on various dimensions. The common denominator for them is the intention to mobilize the power of speech to stimulate students' thinking and sharpen their understanding. One of the approaches most prominent in Denmark, and which we are focused on developing and investigating, is Philosophy in Schools. This approach is a method aimed at creating investigative communities in schools. But how are such dialogues practiced, and what significance do they have for students' opportunities to learn, participate, and be formed?
- Listening
The receptive side of orality is listening. Listening is functionally what students do most in terms of the so-called cultural competencies in a school day: speaking, listening, reading, writing, and creating. However, students' listening is the aspect we know the least about in a school context. In DiaMu, we are interested in illuminating what it means to listen and how students can develop different listening maneuvers when participating in various forms of teaching. How do we listen empathetically and gain knowledge about each other, how do we listen academically when gathering knowledge, and how can one listen in group work to both gather and participate productively?
Teachers' listening is also a research focus and is significant in the practice of dialogic investigative forms. In classroom conversations, for example, it requires variation in listening and attention from the teacher to both clearly maintain the topic of the conversations and simultaneously allow students to investigate with the help of each other. Some researchers call this strong process management but weak content management.