The SAGE Handbook of Learning

Professional Development in Dialogic Teaching:

Helping Teachers Promote Argument Literacy in Their
Classrooms

Contributors: Alina Reznitskaya & Ian Wilkinson

Book Title: The SAGE Handbook of Learning
Chapter Title: "Professional Development in Dialogic Teaching: Helping Teachers Promote Argument
Literacy in Their Classrooms"
Pub. Date: 2015
Access Date: April 2, 2019
Publishing Company: SAGE Publications Ltd
City: 55 City Road
Print ISBN: 9781446287569
Online ISBN: 9781473915213
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781473915213.n21
Print pages: 219-231
© 2015 SAGE Publications Ltd All Rights Reserved.
This PDF has been generated from SAGE Knowledge. Please note that the pagination of the online
version will vary from the pagination of the print book.
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Professional Development in Dialogic Teaching:

Helping Teachers Promote Argument Literacy in
Their Classrooms
Alina Reznitskaya Ian Wilkinson

INTRODUCTION
The demands placed on teachers of every grade level today far exceed instructing students in basic skills and
knowledge. From major policy documents in the US, academic publications and popular press, we read that
teachers must prepare their students to make well-reasoned judgments about complex, open-ended prob-
lems (Goodnough, 2010; Kuhn, 2010; Lipman, 2003; National Governors Association Center for Best Prac-
tices and the Council of Chief State School Officers, 2010; Partnership for 21st Century Skills, 2012; Postman,
1995). The latest Common Core State Standards Initiative in the US, for example, places heavy emphasis
on the development of students’ argumentation skills, explaining that students must learn to ‘think critically
and deeply, assess the validity of their own thinking, and anticipate counterclaims in opposition to their own
assertions’ (National Governors Association Centre for Best Practices and the Council of Chief State School
Officers, 2010: 24).

These are commendable goals, and they require new approaches to instruction. Fortunately, there is now
strong theory, as well as sufficient research, to inform us about pedagogically productive ways to support the
development of students’ argumentation (e.g. Alexander, 2006; Lipman, 2003; Reznitskaya et al., 2009; Sot-
er et al., 2008; Wegerif et al., 1999; Wells, 1999). In this chapter, we describe one approach to instruction –
dialogic teaching – that capitalizes on the power of talk to further students’ thinking, understanding and prob-
lem solving (Alexander, 2006; Burbules, 1993; Mercer and Dawes, 2008). In dialogic teaching, teachers are
aware of different patterns of classroom discourse and can strategically choose ways of organizing instruction
to meet specific pedagogical goals.

This chapter describes the use of dialogic teaching in upper-elementary language arts classrooms in the US,
with the goal of advancing teachers’ knowledge, skills, and disposition in argumentation and, ultimately, stu-
dents’ argument literacy. Following Graff (2003), we define argument literacy as the ability to comprehend and
formulate arguments through speaking, listening, reading and writing. When working on the goal of supporting
the development of argument literacy, teachers use the discussions of assigned readings to engage students
in a special kind of talk, called inquiry dialogue. During inquiry dialogue, students take part in discussions of
complex, contestable questions raised by the texts they read. They are expected to take on responsibility for
instructional functions traditionally reserved for the teacher, such as managing participation and evaluating
answers.

Following Walton (1992), we distinguish inquiry dialogue from other dialogue types, such as negotiation or
persuasion. For example, persuasion dialogue is focused on convincing someone to accept a given position,
whereas inquiry dialogue is a collaborative attempt to reach a sound conclusion (Walton and Macagno, 2007).
This difference in goals is important because it affects normative protocols (i.e. rules of what is considered
appropriate in the dialogue), the standards used to evaluate the strength of proposed arguments, and the
pedagogical approaches to teaching argumentation (Nussbaum and Ordene, 2011; Walton, 1992).

The use of inquiry dialogue requires practitioners to move away from the centuries-old role of ‘a sage on the
stage’ and become skilful facilitators of a collaborative and rigorous intellectual engagement.

To invite students to articulate and explore their ideas … is to require that teachers hear those ideas,

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diagnose their virtues and weaknesses, and incorporate them into the substance of instruction …
This is a new role for teachers whose practice has been defined by traditional goals and methods,
and it comes with different and strenuous intellectual demands. (Hammer and Schifter, 2001: 442)

In fact, transitioning to this new role presents a serious challenge for new and experienced teachers (Alver-
mann and Hayes, 1989; Juzwik et al., 2012; Nguyen et al., 2007). For example, in a carefully planned study
designed to improve classroom practices, researchers worked with practitioners for the period of six months,
during which teachers took part in videotaped observations, reflection and planning conferences (Alvermann
and Hayes, 1989). Regrettably, the authors concluded that teacher participants ‘exhibited a marked stability
in their patterns of verbal exchanges’ and that the ‘attempts to modify teacher and students’ verbal exchange
patterns were largely unsuccessful’ (Alvermann and Hayes, 1989: 331). The difficulties with improving class-
room instruction are also evident from numerous studies that show typical teacher practices to be generally
unaffected by new educational goals that emphasize students’ independent and critical thinking (Alexander,
2005; Nystrand et al., 2003; Smith et al., 2004). Instead of engaging students in argumentation about com-
plex problems, teachers continue to dominate classroom discussions, avoid contestable issues, and require
students ‘to report on someone else's thinking rather than to think for themselves’ (Alexander, 2008: 93).

In this chapter, we discuss our recent efforts to address the disparity between the advocated pedagogical ap-
proaches and the reality of typical classroom practices. First, we explain key principles of dialogic teaching,
relating them to the goals of our professional development programme. Second, we discuss previous at-
tempts to change teachers’ discourse practices, situating our current project within the relevant literature on
teacher learning and reviewing work on effective practices in professional development. Third, we describe
a research programme designed to identify and evaluate instructional activities and materials that support
teachers’ knowledge and use of dialogic teaching to promote argumentation. We conclude with a description
of general principles for professional development in dialogic teaching.

DIALOGIC TEACHING
Dialogic teaching is a general approach to instruction that centres around strategic use of classroom talk to
support student learning (Alexander, 2008). It is consistent with social-constructivist theory that views lan-
guage as fundamental to thinking and learning (Mercer and Littleton, 2007; Vygotsky, 1968; Wells, 1999).
According to this theory, talk helps us to develop and organize our thoughts, to reason, to plan and to reflect
on our actions. Vygotsky (1968), who emphasized the primacy of language in thinking, wrote that ‘thought is
not merely expressed in words; it comes into existence through them’ (Vygotsky, 1968: 218).

In addition, learning is seen as a process of internalization of cultural tools, or ways of acting and thinking
(Mercer and Littleton, 2007; Vygotsky, 1968; Wells, 1999). Students need to encounter or use these tools to
develop their mental capacities. Language is the ‘tool of tools’ that not only helps us formulate our thoughts,
but also fundamentally transforms individual cognition (Cole and Wertsch, 1996). During productive class dis-
cussions, students develop their cognitive capacities, as they internalize language practices from a social,
external, plane to an individual, internal plane (Vygotsky, 1978). For instance, a student who says something
vague during a dialogue with peers will at first only recognize that vagueness when someone else in the class-
room community pushes her for clarification. Eventually, the student anticipates this reaction from her peers
and self-edits her ideas before communicating them to the group. What began as interpersonal interaction
becomes an intrapersonal cognitive habit.

Using language to interact with others also offers unique opportunities for a ‘social mode of thinking’ or ‘in-
terthinking’ (Mercer and Littleton, 2007). That is, exchanging ideas in a public forum gives students a means
for combining their intellectual resources to collectively make sense of their experiences and to solve prob-
lems. In a dialogic setting, participants will spontaneously react to each other's ideas, adding detail to given

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reasons, qualifying general statements, or finding flaws in each other's arguments (Kennedy, 2013; Lipman
et al., 1980). Thus, the multiplicity of voices in a dialogic discussion provides for a self-correcting mechanism
that helps to improve the quality of argumentation.

It is important to note that, despite its name, dialogic teaching does not imply exclusive use of a dialogue
in a classroom. Instead, it entails having a broad pedagogical repertoire of language patterns (Alexander,
2008; O'Connor and Michaels, 2007). Depending on specific instructional goals, teachers should be able to
flexibly use different kinds of talk including recitation, exposition or discussion. At the same time, theory and
research suggest that dialogic inquiry into complex questions is a type of classroom interaction that is well
suited to support the development of higher-order thinking skills, such as argument literacy (Nystrand et al.,
2003; Reznitskaya et al., 2009; Soter et al., 2008; Wegerif et al., 1999; Wells, 1999). Furthermore, it is now
well-documented that discussions about contestable questions rarely happen in today's classrooms across
school subjects, age levels, and national borders (Alexander, 2008; Applebee et al., 2003; Nystrand et al.,
2003; Smith et al., 2004). Thus, while recognizing the importance of flexible language use in a classroom, our
professional development programme largely focuses on helping teachers learn how to make their interac-
tions with students more dialogic.

The use of inquiry dialogue requires teachers, and eventually their students, to develop views of knowledge
and knowing that are congruent with this type of classroom practice (Kuhn and Udell, 2003; Windschitl, 2002).
Specifically, participation in inquiry dialogue relies on an underlying commitment to rational thinking as a
mechanism for formulating better judgments. Models of epistemological development suggest that people
progress from a simple view of knowledge as static and known by authorities to a more nuanced understand-
ing of knowledge as socially constructed through the use of reasoning (for review, see Hofer, 2001). Kuhn
(1991) offers a useful classification of individual theories of knowledge, proposing three stages of develop-
ment: absolutist, multiplist and evaluatist. Absolutists view knowledge as fixed, certain and existing indepen-
dently of human cognition. Multiplists see knowledge as entirely subjective, denying the role of reason and
expertise and considering all opinions to be equally valid. At the most advanced stage, evaluatists accept the
subjective nature of knowledge, while also recognizing that we can engage in a rational evaluation of different
viewpoints and, as a result, consider some judgments to be more reasonable than others.

Teachers who subscribe to an evaluatist epistemology are more likely to successfully use inquiry dialogue be-
cause they view knowledge as ‘the product of a continuing process of examination, comparison, evaluation,
and judgment of different, sometimes competing, explanations and perspectives’ (Kuhn, 1991: 202). Support-
ing the important role of epistemology in teaching, research has shown that teachers’ epistemological be-
liefs are typically aligned with their instruction, influencing power relations and interactional patterns between
teachers and students (e.g. Johnston et al., 2001; Richardson et al., 1991; Sinatra and Kardash, 2004; Stipek
et al., 2001). Notably, the relationship between beliefs and practices is not simple, as subscribing to more so-
phisticated ideas about knowledge and knowing may not always translate into effective use of dialogue-based
practices during instruction (Alvermann et al., 1990; Schraw and Olafson, 2002). This is why we designed our
professional development programme to help practitioners integrate theoretical, epistemological and practical
understandings.

To illustrate the use of inquiry dialogue and review its key features, let us consider a short excerpt from a
discussion in a fifth-grade classroom. The teacher in this excerpt participated in our professional develop-
ment programme in dialogic teaching for a period of seven months. The students had read an article entitled
‘Deadly Hits’ about a boy named Zack, who was paralysed after getting a concussion during a football game.
Students are discussing a question, ‘Who is responsible for Zack's injury?'

Teacher: So who would like to start us off this morning? Okay, Jerry.

Jerry: Well, I think the one responsible for Zack's injury would be the coach, because he was the one who let
Zack play when he shouldn't, because he knew that he already had an injury.

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Andrew: I disagree with Jerry because it actually said in the passage that Zack thought that his team needed
help, so he decided to go in, 'cause the coach wasn't trained to find a concussion. So, he decided to go in on
his own, without the coach telling him to. 'Cause the coach wasn't trained to see a concussion.

Lily: I agree with Andrew because … you wouldn't let … If you know we got hurt and we insisted to go back
into something like that, you would at least make sure that we're okay. And I think Zack's coach probably did
that … I think Zack's coach probably made sure that he was okay, so it's not all of his fault. He as an adult
should say ‘No, maybe you could go back in next time'. But it's not only his fault.

Teacher: So wait, how is that agreeing with Andrew? 'Cause Andrew says it's not the coach's fault, but you're
…

Lily: Yeah, I don't think it's the coach's fault either.

Teacher: But you said, ‘As an adult he should know'. I'm just … I want you to just clarify.

Lily: Well okay, I agree with Andrew, like everything that he said, but it's not complete … Okay, I just agree
with Andrew, like what he said. … The coach didn't say ‘Zack, get back in here'. Zack wanted to and he went
in on his own.

Kate: I disagree with Jerry. I don't find that it's the coach's fault because in the paragraph it says they, the
coaches weren't trained at that time to know what brain concussion looks like. 'Cause brain concussions are
invisible injuries, it says it in this story, so, I don't find that it's the coach's fault and …

Jerry: But Zack was hurt …

Kate: Yeah, but he said he was all right, so how is the coach supposed to know?

Teacher: OK, so let's let him respond to that. They challenged you, right? So now let's let Jerry respond …
We had a few challenges, so let's let Jerry maybe respond to that challenge, and maybe, I don't know …

Jerry: But if you see someone fall down very hard on their head and come back to the bench, saying that
they're alright, the coach should know that they've been in an injury, and the coach should not let them play.

The discussion is centred on an open-ended, contestable question that does not have a single right answer.
During the discussion, the teacher largely releases control over the flow of discourse to the students. We see
students asking questions, self-nominating, and evaluating each other's answers. There are exchanges with
consecutive student turns without teacher interruption. As students discuss their positions on the question of
who is responsible for the injury, they provide elaborated explanations of reasoning behind their views and
refer to story information for evidence. The teacher does not dominate the discussion, speaking less than
the students. Her deliberately chosen questions serve to advance the inquiry further, as she asks students
to clarify how their ideas connect with those of other group members (‘So, wait, how is that agreeing with
Andrew?') and encourages the discussion of an opposing perspective (‘They challenged you, right? So now
let's let Jerry respond').

The excerpt above demonstrates the demands placed on teachers and students in a more dialogic classroom.
During inquiry dialogue, students need to work on two major goals: (1) to collaborate with each other, and (2)
to engage in rigorous argumentation. When students are not achieving these goals independently, the role of
the teacher is to intervene, to model and support good reasoning. Teacher contributions during the discussion
change from telling students what to think to helping them improve their thinking. In other words, teachers
need to be ‘procedurally strong, but substantively self-effacing’ (Splitter and Sharp, 1996: 306). Instead of
feeding students the right answers, they model and support effective use of talk to help students to co-reason
together.
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The focus on procedural teacher intervention used to improve student reasoning implies that practitioners
need to understand the processes and criteria of quality argumentation (Hammer and Schifter, 2001; Splitter
and Sharp, 1996). Moreover, teachers need to apply this understanding, reacting to student arguments as
they are being developed – in real time – during the discussion. This is a challenging task that requires a
sharp focus on discussion content, as well as the ability to track and analyse it:

It takes a thoughtful teacher to set up the environment, to identify, model and coach, not just its rea-
soning moves, but its group rules and practices, to help it stay on-track and focused, and to work to
provide just enough structure – not more and not less – for its own inherent structure to emerge …
The teacher must learn – through paying careful and thorough attention to what children are saying
– to recognize [the] reasoning moves in everyday language, and to feed that recognition back to her
students. (Kennedy, 2013: 4)

To conclude, dialogic teaching requires that practitioners develop knowledge and skills that differ significantly
from those that prevail in more traditional classrooms. First, teacher pedagogical and epistemic views need
to be consistent with socio-constructivist theories and evaluatist perspectives that underlie dialogue-intensive
practices (Windschitl, 2002). Second, teachers have to develop an awareness of different kinds of talk and
use language flexibly and strategically in relation to given pedagogical goals. Third, for the purpose of promot-
ing students’ argument literacy through inquiry dialogue, teachers need to: (1) understand the processes and
criteria of quality argumentation; (2) be able to recognize strengths and weakness in student reasoning; and
(3) have a repertoire of moves to model and support good reasoning. These are ambitious goals that entail a
serious transformation in beliefs and practices of many practitioners (Alexander, 2008; Nystrand et al., 2003;
Windschitl, 2002). In the next section, we review previous research on teacher education and professional
development and identify features that potentially support teachers’ use of dialogue-intensive pedagogies.

CHANGING TEACHERS’ DISCOURSE PRACTICES

There have been numerous efforts to help teachers make the transition to more dialogic discourse practices
(see Murphy et al., 2011) and a few concerted attempts to systematically study the professional development
needed to support them in that process (e.g., Adler et al., 2004; Michaels et al., 2008; Saunders and Golden-
berg, 1996). The days of traditional one-shot professional development workshops have passed as it is now
well documented that they seldom produce substantial or sustained shifts in teachers’ practices (Cochran-
Smith and Lytle, 1999; Englert and Tarrant, 1995). Indeed, there is an emerging consensus that effective pro-
fessional development for teachers needs to, among other elements, be grounded in the daily lives of teach-
ers, be intensive and sustained, involve the collective participation of teachers, and provide both conceptual
and procedural knowledge about teaching and learning (Wei et al., 2009; Yoon et al., 2007). Dialogue-inten-
sive pedagogies impose an additional order of complexity on teaching and learning, and the supports needed
to help teachers make the transition to more dialogic practices are not so readily defined. In this section, we
review the little that is known about professional development in dialogic teaching and related pedagogies.

We begin with the observation that engaging teachers in reflection on their discourse practices appears to be
necessary but not sufficient for changing their practices. As noted previously, Alvermann and Hayes's (1989)
efforts to improve the discussion practices of five high school teachers proved largely unsuccessful. Despite
engaging teachers in repeated cycles of videotaped observations, reflection on the videos, and planning con-
ferences over a six-month period, teachers’ discourse practice remained essentially unchanged. In their con-
clusion, Alvermann and Hayes (1989: 333) noted that ‘merely asking teachers to reflect upon entrenched pat-
terns of classroom discussion is obviously insufficient to change those patterns'.

Subsequent professional development efforts to modify teachers’ discourse practices have combined oppor-
tunities for reflection with more deliberate forms of co-inquiry into teachers’ practices. For example, Kucan

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(2007, 2009) asked 12 teachers in a Masters-level methods course in reading comprehension to record, tran-
scribe and analyse excerpts of their own discussions and then engaged the teachers in analysis of the tran-
scripts. The categories used to code teachers’ questions and responses, in conjunction with instruction in how
to conduct discussion to foster students’ comprehension of text, provided the impetus for teachers to make
improvements, albeit modest, in their discourse practices. In a similar fashion, Juzwik and colleagues (Heintz
et al., 2010; Juzwik et al., 2012) prompted teacher candidates in a secondary English teacher preparation
course to reflect on videos of their teaching to help them engage in more dialogically organized instruction.
The videos were posted to an online social networking site to enable teacher candidates to comment on each
others’ practices and to reflect on how they might implement the feedback they received from their peers and
their instructors.

Other researchers of professional development have sought to arm teachers with a repertoire of discursive
moves to enhance their discourse practices. Beck et al. (1996) trained teachers to implement Questioning the
Author (QtA), an approach to conducting text-based discussion in social studies and language arts classes
that focuses on having students grapple with what an author is trying to say to foster a more coherent un-
derstanding of the text. In QtA, the teacher poses Queries such as ‘What is the author trying to say?', ‘What
do you think the author means by that?', or ‘How does that connect with what the author already told us?’ In
later work, McKeown and Beck (2004) developed a set of ‘Accessibles', one-page descriptions of pedagog-
ical cases to support teachers’ implementation of QtA. Similarly, Michaels and O'Connor (2015) identified a
set of talk moves to help teachers facilitate substantive and rigorous discussions (e.g. ‘Can you say more?',
‘Why do you think that?'). These talk moves are conceptualized as tools to help teachers engage students in
high-level thinking and reasoning. They provide the basis for professional development in Accountable Talk
(Michaels et al., 2002, 2008), an approach to conducting academically productive discussions in various con-
tent areas (see also, Hillen and Hughes, 2008).

Still more ambitious attempts to change teachers’ discourse practices have incorporated reflection, co-inquiry
and discursive moves within a more expansive teacher-learning context. These efforts seem to have yield-
ed more sustained shifts in teachers’ discourse practices. Notable among these efforts are: Goldenberg and
colleagues’ professional development work with primary-grade language arts teachers to help them conduct
Instructional Conversations (Goldenberg, 1993; Goldenberg and Gallimore, 1991; Saunders and Goldenberg,
1996; Saunders et al., 1992); Adler et al.'s (2004) work with middle school teachers to foster more dialogic
discussions in their language arts classrooms; and Hennessy et al.'s (2011) work with teachers in various
grades and content areas to help them adopt a more dialogic pedagogy when using interactive whiteboards.
What distinguishes these professional development efforts from others is that they adhered to many of the
principles known to characterize effective professional development. For example, the professional develop-
ment was firmly grounded in the realities of teachers’ daily work, took place over an extended period of time
(in some cases, involving a weekly meeting over a year), and helped teachers acquire both conceptual and
procedural knowledge of the pedagogy. Another distinguishing feature was that researchers offered opportu-
nities for teachers to co-plan lessons in meetings. These lessons provided the basis for subsequent co-inquiry
and reflection through analysis of videos or transcripts. Yet another feature was that the process of co-inquiry
was itself dialogic. For example, in Goldenberg's work, weekly meetings with teachers took on many of the
qualities of Instructional Conversations; in Hennessy et al.'s work, the co-inquiry was dialogic inquiry (Wells,
1999) such that dialogue served as the central means by which teachers constructed their understanding of
the new pedagogy.

In sum, research on professional development in dialogic pedagogy is relatively inchoate. Reflection on dis-
course through analysis of video and transcripts, teacher learning through a process of co-inquiry, and a focus
on discursive moves to promote productive talk appear to be core features of most programmes. Providing
opportunities for co-planning and using dialogic pedagogy as a vehicle for achieving professional develop-
ment goals also seem to be important. These features helped to guide the design of our own professional
development programme to support teachers’ knowledge and use of dialogic teaching to promote students’
argument literacy.
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PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT IN DIALOGIC TEACHING

Overview of a Dialogic Teaching Programme

We are currently working on a three-year project to design and evaluate a comprehensive professional de-
velopment programme in dialogic teaching. The project is being conducted largely as a design study (Collins
et al., 2004), during which we work collaboratively with teachers to identify and organize instructional con-
tent and activities that support teachers’ use of dialogic teaching to promote argument literacy. Each year, we
implement a version of the programme and collect data from teachers and students to assess programme
effectiveness and inform its revisions. In other words, each year comprises a new iteration of the programme.
At the time of writing, we are nearing the conclusion of the second year of the project.

Study participants came from school districts in two states in the US, Ohio and New Jersey. In Year 1, we
worked with a total of ten Grade 5 teachers and their students (six in Ohio and four in New Jersey). In Year 2,
13 fifth-grade teachers participated at both sites (six in Ohio and seven in New Jersey). The teaching experi-
ence of participants ranged from two to 26 years.

First Year

The project in Year 1 was conducted in three stages: pre-testing, implementation of the professional devel-
opment programme, and post-testing. During the pre-testing stage (September), we videotaped two discus-
sions in each classroom to collect baseline information about typical teacher practices. We also interviewed
teachers about their background and experience, as well as assessed their epistemological beliefs using the
interview measure developed and validated by King and Kitchener (1994).

From October through May, we implemented our professional development programme. The programme in-
cluded a variety of activities, such as study group meetings, focus group interviews and in-class coaching. All
project activities were similar at both sites, but with some variations to test the viability and effects of different
instructional approaches or sequences of approaches. During the post-testing period (May), we again inter-
viewed teachers about their epistemological beliefs. We also piloted measures designed to assess students’
argument skills when speaking, reading, and writing to be used in subsequent years to evaluate programme
effectiveness.

By the end of our first year, we had developed initial materials for the programme, such as PowerPoint
slides, instructional activities, and videos for illustrating inquiry dialogue. We also collected data from multiple
sources, including study group meetings, focus group interviews and coaching sessions. We conducted con-
tent analysis of the data to inform the revisions of the professional development programme for Year 2.

Second Year

In Year 2, the study was structured using the same three stages as in Year 1. The pre- and post-testing
stages were identical to Year 1. However, stage two – the implementation of the professional development
programme – was revised based on the data collected and analysed in Year 1. In Year 2, project activities
were similar at both sites, with variation in materials and programme delivery methods only to accommodate
specific needs of teachers at the two sites. The activities in Year 2 consisted of: (1) a two-day workshop; (2)
eight study group meetings, including three focus-group interviews; and (3) six individual coaching sessions.

The programme in Year 2 began in October, with a two-day workshop on dialogic teaching, lasting approxi-
mately 12 hours in total. There was a short, one- to two-week interval between Day 1 and Day 2. After the
first day of the workshop, we asked teachers to conduct inquiry dialogue with their students before the next
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meeting, and at least once per month through the rest of the academic year. The teachers conducted the
discussions during language arts lessons, and we videotaped their discussions.

Following the two-day workshop, we met with teachers every two weeks in November and December in
teacher study groups. Starting in January, study group meetings were conducted once per month. Study
groups lasted about two hours, totalling approximately 14 hours per year. During these study-group meetings,
participants engaged in mini-lessons, collaboratively analysed transcripts and videos of classroom discus-
sions, and took part in activities on topics related to dialogic teaching, inquiry dialogue and argumentation.
Teachers also read and discussed several short digests that we wrote on these topics.

In addition to taking part in workshops and study groups, teachers received individual coaching in how to con-
duct discussions to promote argumentation. During these sessions, teachers viewed and critiqued their own
classroom interactions with the help of an experienced discourse coach, who supported the teachers’ on-go-
ing development and reflection. They also rated the quality of their discussion using a carefully researched
observational rating scale. Another coaching activity was a demonstration of inquiry dialogue with fifth-grade
students conducted by the discourse coach in the teachers’ own classrooms. Each teacher participated in six
coaching sessions, lasting about 30–40 minutes each.

Finally, during study group meetings in November, February and May, we conducted focus-group interviews
with teacher participants. The purpose of these focus-group interviews was to identify what teachers found
valuable (or not) in learning about dialogic teaching and argumentation. All workshops, study group meetings,
focus-group interviews and coaching sessions were audio-recorded, transcribed, and analysed to inform re-
visions of the professional development programme.

Examples of Instructional Activities for Teachers

By the end of Year 2, we had identified key instructional priorities and related activities of the professional
development programme in dialogic teaching. Consistent with previous research on the classroom talk and
related professional development efforts (Alexander, 2005; Alvermann et al., 1990; Mehan, 1998; Nystrand
et al., 2003; Smith et al., 2004), our teachers needed considerable support with learning how to effectively
facilitate inquiry dialogue in their classrooms. This is why the majority of instructional time in our programme
was spent on helping teachers acquire the necessary skills and knowledge to become effective facilitators
of inquiry dialogue. When designing the programme, we chose instructional activities that were themselves
aligned with dialogic teaching and, more generally, with evaluatist epistemological perspectives and social-
constructivist theories of learning. This was done in order to help teachers experience, and eventually adopt,
classroom practices consistent with contemporary theories of knowledge construction.

An example of an instructional activity we used during our study-group meetings was debriefing. During this
activity, teachers discuss the successes and challenges they have experienced with implementing inquiry di-
alogue in their classrooms. This created opportunities for collegial support, promoted teacher engagement,
and allowed sharing of effective classroom practices among teachers. Thus, teachers were learning about
dialogic teaching ‘through social interaction around problems of practice’ (Elmore, 2002: 17), a feature of pro-
fessional development that is consistent with our approach to instruction and that supports teacher use of
new instructional methods (Elmore, 2002; Wei et al., 2009).

Another effective practice that emerged in our professional development programme was co-planning. During
co-planning, teachers collaboratively constructed an entire unit around a text to be read by their students (i.e.
the ‘Deadly Hits’ article cited earlier). Teachers identified key topics or themes in the text and turned them
into contestable questions to be used during inquiry dialogue (e.g. ‘Who is responsible for Zack's injury?').

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Next, teachers participated in inquiry dialogue, led by an expert facilitator. Being participants in the inquiry
dialogue allowed teachers to explore central themes in a given student text on a deeper level, thus becoming
more prepared to discuss the same text with their students. In addition, it enabled teachers to experience the
rewards and demands of examining complex questions in a collaborative and structured environment, where
each member was accountable for helping the group to reach the most reasonable judgment. As they en-
gaged in inquiry dialogue, teachers adopted new roles and participation structures, and experimented with
new discourse practices. Teachers also observed and reflected on the facilitation of the inquiry dialogue mod-
elled by an expert.

In addition to participating in inquiry dialogue during co-planning, teachers collaboratively worked on design-
ing pre-discussion and post-discussion activities around a given text. Pre-discussion activities were used to
promote students’ cognitive and affective engagement with the text. For example, before gathering for a dis-
cussion, students took notes about their reactions using post-it notes or selectively highlighted ideas in the
text that resonated with them. On the other hand, the goal of post-discussion activities was to help students
transfer the argument skills and dispositions learned in the group to their individual efforts in speaking, hear-
ing, reading and writing arguments. For example, during a post-discussion activity students wrote a letter to a
relevant party (e.g. the protagonist in a story) explaining their group's position on the issue.

As noted earlier, although dialogic teaching is centred on inquiry dialogue, it requires that teachers flexibly
use multiple teaching strategies to help students develop and transfer their argument literacy skills. From ob-
servation and teacher feedback, we learned that engaging teachers in debriefing and co-planning was useful
for helping them to acquire procedural knowledge about dialogic teaching and to connect it to conceptual
knowledge about the role of talk in learning. Co-planning also offered teachers a shared experience that they
were able to take back to the classroom, thus grounding their learning in practice.

CONCLUSION
Informed by prior work in professional development and dialogic teaching, and our own ongoing study, we
are developing a set of design principles to guide future iterations of our programme. The emerging principles
include:

• Professional development in dialogic teaching should exemplify dialogic teaching. In particular,

teachers should have multiple opportunities to engage in and be exposed to inquiry dialogue;
• Teachers should have multiple opportunities to reflect on their discourse practices through analysis
of video and transcripts of discussions;
• Teachers’ use of discourse-moves to promote argumentation is contingent on the quality of student
arguments and should be taught in the context of an analysis of argumentation;
• Instruction should be situated in authentic activity and proceed from whole to part (e.g. co-planning
provides a context for learning about pre- and post-discussion activities and orchestrating inquiry di-
alogue; inquiry dialogue provides a context for learning about parts of an argument);
• Connections to standards and curricular content for which teachers are responsible should be readily
apparent.

As we have indicated, making the transition from teacher-dominated classroom practice to a more dialogic
pedagogy requires a substantial shift in teachers’ beliefs about knowledge construction and about the role
of talk in learning. Research on professional development in dialogic pedagogy is not well developed, and it
remains to be seen whether our current instantiation of these design principles is sufficient to support teach-
ers in making the transition to dialogic teaching to promote argument literacy. Our analyses of videotaped

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discussions at the beginning and end of each year of our study suggest that teachers made substantial im-
provements in their facilitation of inquiry dialogue and in the quality of students’ argumentation. Although our
initial results are promising, considerable research remains to be done to identify and test innovative strate-
gies to help practitioners learn about the theoretical, epistemological and procedural knowledge needed to
successfully implement dialogic teaching in classroom settings.

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