Pursuing respect, relatedness and powerful learning through dialogic teaching

How does a skillful teacher create a classroom learning environment in which students make good progress in their learning but also experience respect and a sense of belonging? This question seems particularly important for students who have experienced sustained social disadvantage because of the stigma associated, for example, with living in poverty. This interim report is based on the first action research cycle of a close to practice lesson study research project by teacher researchers at the Energy Coast University Technical College in Workington, Cumbria. Working in six small curriculum subject teams the teachers used video-based lesson study to investigate current practice and future development in relation to dialogic teaching. Dialogic teaching focuses on classroom talk and develops rules for exploratory talk through collaborative problem-solving. A target student from each lesson was interviewed and shown video clips from their lesson. Students feel safe at school and are supportive of the wide range of practice used by teachers around talk in classrooms. Teachers were able to develop the characteristics of dialogic teaching even at this early stage in the project. The analysis highlights the significance of task design as well as the role and ‘voice’ of materials used in the classroom. It reveals a tension between focusing on the assessment requirements of forthcoming exams and assignments whilst setting high levels of challenge and having high expectations for all students.