10 June 2025

What if the secret to better learning isn’t just reading and writing, but talking?   In this episode, recorded live from the 2025 Literacy Summit, join Dr Yael Leibovitch from the University of Queensland Critical Thinking Project and Professor Ian Wilkinson from the Ohio State University as they discuss how dialogic teaching can spark critical thinking, boost engagement, and help students feel more connected to their learning.

Show Notes

Ian Wilkinson - Quality talk about text to support critical and creative thinking

Yael Leibovitch - A dialogic approach to writing pedagogy

Transcript

Dale Atkinson: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to Teach, a podcast about teaching and learning in South Australia. My name is Dale Atkinson from South Australia's Department for Education and today we are at the 2025 Literacy Summit, and I'm joined by Dr. Yael Leibovitch who's the lecturer and director of research with the University of Queensland Critical Thinking Project and Professor Ian Wilkinson who's a professor with the Department of Teaching and Learning at the Ohio State University. Welcome to you both.

So today we're talking a little bit about the role of oracy as being integral to literacy and numeracy improvement and central to developing knowledge across the curriculum. Professor Ian, can I ask you first, what is the role of dialogic pedagogy and how does that capitalise on the power of talking to promote critical and creative thinking?

Ian Wilkinson: I think we can think of language, of talk, as the tool of tools for fostering learning, problem-solving, and understanding. And it's through talk socially that we engage with others, with other’s ideas, [00:01:00] and over time we internalise those ideas. So, I'm using Vygotsky as one way of answering your question.  So, I think this notion of using talk as a social mode of thinking, and then that there serves as a basis for internalising that way of thinking to make it our own. I think therein lies the power of talk for learning. Talk serves other functions, good functions, but as far as learning is concerned, I think that's one way of thinking about it.

The other way I like to think about it is in talking with others, I'm invoking Bakhtin who's been talked about a lot at the conference, in talking to others, I think we make meaning by juxtaposing our ideas, and it's when ideas clash, when ideas come together, something magic comes out after some time. I'm sort of doing ‘air quotes’, but in that magic that comes out of those ‘interanimations’, ‘interilluminations’, as Nystrand and Wagerith would call them, I think something magic can come out of that that goes beyond the capabilities of individual students.

Dale Atkinson: [00:02:00] So through conversations that I guess we're trying to deepen students' comprehension and reasoning. How do you create a classroom culture that supports that kind of dialogue?

Ian Wilkinson: That's a really interesting question because – let me sort of preface this – so it's culture, it's the classroom culture that makes talk function in a way we would like it to. And without that culture, you know, it doesn't matter what we say, it's not going to have any major influence. But at the same time, it's talk that fosters the culture. So, there's a reciprocity there.

But where do you begin as a teacher and try to foster that culture? And I've wondered about this a lot. I would probably take a leaf out of Philosophy for Children. And in Philosophy for Children, one of the major tenets, principles, foundations is this notion of a community of inquiry. And a community of inquiry can be talked about in many, many ways. But in establishing a community of inquiry, teachers can develop ground rules for the way they'd like talk to proceed in their classroom, [00:03:00] the way they'd like students to interact with each other, for the way they'd like students to work together.

Teachers can also move beyond those ground rules when we have a discussion, we can say what we'd like to achieve in our discussion. We can talk about ourselves as a collective. I see teachers talking about "we", "we", "we" all the time, deliberately using that language to establish community, to establish a collective identity in moving forward. And I see, you know, some certain tricks that Khasia children use, like there's a checklist where you have students fill out the checklist and look at sort of characteristics that either epitomise a community of inquiry or do not.

So, I don't have a great answer to your question, but I do know that there are certain ways we can do that, that fosters this so-called community of inquiry. And that's really what we want in creating a classroom culture that fosters learning through talk.

Dale Atkinson: And it's such a powerful thing, that issue of comprehension within the context of sort of citizenship and democratic involvement in some respects, that being able to kind of expand out in this space allows for critical thinking. [00:04:00]

Dr. Leibovitch, using classroom discussion to help students engage with writings and interesting concepts, what's the most powerful element of introducing talk to the writing process do you think?

Yael Leibovitch: I think there's a number of powerful things that talk brings to the writing process but maybe one of the more obvious ones is that for writing to be effective it needs to be understood by the reader, right?

So, there's that social component, there's that dialogic component and so by giving students the opportunity to talk about their writing to talk through their writing and engage with others they become more aware of the experience of the audience and how the reader might understand what they're trying to convey.

And as a result they can reflect on how they're communicating or what they're trying to communicate and refine it in a way that makes it easier for us to understand for the reader, and then makes it easier for the writer to accomplish what they're trying to achieve.

Dale Atkinson: Now talk to us a little bit about what it means within context with students who’re disengaged. How does it help to foster engagement in learning?

Yael Leibovitch: Oh, I mean, dialogue's a game changer. [00:05:00] I mean, we're all human beings. We're social. We love talking. We love thinking. Even when it's cognitively demanding, we just need to be given the opportunity to talk and think and have a space where we feel comfortable to do that and comfortable to challenge ourselves and each other.

So often when students are disengaged, it's because they can't see themselves in the curriculum or they're having a hard time following along. For example, and by, you know, foregrounding or spotlighting dialogue and creating dialogue spaces, students really feel like they belong. They're part of the learning process. Their voice matters. Their thoughts matter. They have something to contribute. So, it can be quite transformative for disengaged classrooms.

Dale Atkinson: And what are some of the practical tools and practical ways that teachers can bring in more of the dialogic tools into their lessons?

Yael Leibovitch: Well, where to begin? I think one of the things is to explicitly convey to students that they have something to offer to the classroom and to their peers and [00:06:00] to the world and to help instil that belief in students to build up that confidence. I think another practical tool is by scaffolding conversations in the classroom, so being really intentional as an educator with how you're responding to the contributions that students have made and kind of encouraging the building on of each other's comments and respectful challenge and not shutting down the conversation but inviting and opening and necessitating student contribution.

Dale Atkinson: Professor Wilkinson, how is this area evolving in terms of what we understand about the importance of dialogic activities within education? What are we learning now and where do you think this is headed for us?

Ian Wilkinson: I think there have been a couple of major developments and a new one on the horizon. As far as where we are now and where things are going, engaging students in dialogue in a way that furthers their knowledge, building, understanding and problem solving can be very difficult for teachers. It sounds easy, it's not. [00:07:00]

Having a discussion about a book is in a way that gives students agency. It's very difficult indeed as a teacher, and so professional development has been a key concern and continues to be a key concern in all parts of the world interested in this view of pedagogy. Another movement that's progressing very nicely is how do we assess, evaluate, monitor, talk that's going on in a classroom in a way that will further teachers' facilitation practices. And so there are various schemes, coding schemes, that are being developed in various parts of the world to help teachers reflect on the discourse, to help students reflect on the discourse and move things forward.

What's on the horizon? Well, it's very close to the horizon. AI is shaping this field so quickly. I mentioned having teachers reflect on their discourse, using AI and speech recognition and all the rest of it to record, annotate, code discourse is moving at such a pace, [00:08:00] much faster than I anticipated. And that's gonna be a game changer for this field, whether we like it or not.

There are some disadvantages, but that's the way the field is heading, and I can see that in so many areas. In my own work, some colleagues of mine and I have been thinking about how can we use AI to create an intelligent tutoring system so teachers can practice facilitation with avatars and do that in a way that's safe and easily accessible for teachers, but in a way that will really help them engage students in rich rigorous argumentation. So, it's changing the field dramatically at a pace that I didn't think was possible.

Dale Atkinson: Yeah, it's an incredibly rapid evolution in that space – still a little way away perhaps for professional development now for some of our educators. What should they be thinking about? What should they be engaging with now in terms of developing their own practice in this area?

Ian Wilkinson: There have been a number of instances of very effective professional development in dialogic pedagogy and a number of instances of some very ineffective attempts at dialogic pedagogy [00:09:00] and we don't yet have an understanding of what – to be blunt – what works and what doesn't work, and I think there are quite a few attempts going on to understand what might be effective and I think we're getting there and what I think we're learning is that there are certain principles of good professional development for teachers period, in terms of engaging students, teachers collectively, co-planning, co-inquiry.

But at the same time when we're talking about dialogic pedagogy there's a whole order of complexity additional to that and things like reflection on discourse, things like understanding the role of talk moves that are contingent on what students say, and co-planning, co-inquiry and reflection are all important.

Dale Atkinson: Now you've both worked across Australia and internationally as well. I want to start with you, Dr. Leibovitch. What are the practices that you've seen that have really blown you away in terms of outstanding performance and things that teachers are doing well?

Yael Leibovitch: And not to keep on coming back to the role of culture, but I think that's crucial to [00:10:00] the creation of dialogic spaces in the classroom. So, I think when teachers have the ability to make students feel like they belong, like they're a part of the learning experience and they have something to contribute, it goes a long ways to actually then having those students contribute and engage in their learning and as students become more habituated and accustomed to doing that, it has a snowball effect where they're really able to refine their understanding, improve the contributions that they're making and build their confidence in that domain.

So, I think, I mean, it's hard to pinpoint exactly what that looks like because teachers do it in different ways, but I think conveying to students that we're all part of a team, that this is a collective endeavour, that we're gonna collaboratively work our way through that. Once students believe that their teacher's on their side and they're there to support that and scaffold that, they're willing to take intellectual risks and to engage in a more rigorous way with their learning.

Dale Atkinson: And what's the role of internet? Well, you talk about taking into intellectual risks there. [00:11:00] Obviously, it's critical when you're in any group of people, the confidence to be able to kind of contribute is absolutely essential. How do we foster that within the classroom space for our students and learners?

Yael Leibovitch: I mean a simple example would be instead of asking students “What's the correct answer?”, you change that to “What do you think, and why do you think that?”. And what that does – it’s such a simple phrase – like that signals to students that what the teacher is interested in is their thoughts.

They're not interested in what's right or wrong. And so slowly as the thinking becomes kind of like the aim, the purpose, the focus, students become accustomed to sharing their thinking, they feel like it's safe, they feel like their thoughts are valued, and it lowers the stakes, it lowers the pressure. And so all of a sudden it becomes normal to go, "I used to think this, and now I think that. Wait, I'm not sure what I think."

And that's not actually a sign of weakness, that's a sign of intelligence, of thinking, of engagement, and it's something to be celebrated and something that becomes normalised. [00:12:00] So I think that's a really, really powerful way of fostering a space that people feel safe to take actual risks in.

Ian Wilkinson: Paulo Freire, the well-known Brazilian educator, had a move that he would routinely use when interacting with students in the classroom. And the move was very simple. So, a student might ask Freire or a teacher a question. And before answering the question, Freire would say, “Wow, that was a really nice question you asked. Before I talk to you about that, I'd love to know what others think. Let's ask Mary what she thinks. What do you think about that Mary? Would you like to talk about that?” So that move is very nice and again it gives students a sense of agency that they have something to offer and what they have to say is of value.

Yael Leibovitch: Yeah and actually I also love that move. I think that's a game changer in the classroom and like when a student asks a teacher a question instead of giving an answer you open it up for broader dialogue and it changes who kind of holds the knowledge and what they have to contribute. [00:13:00] I guess is what is exciting about dialogic teaching, but also challenging is, yes, it removes the hierarchy in the sense that we're all contributing to this dialogue.

But the teacher still has such an important role to play because they're helping to orchestrate that dialogue. They're trying to scaffold the comments that students have made. So they're still very much involved in moving that dialogue forward, but they're no longer viewed as the arbiter of knowledge. The outcome of the dialogue is a product of everyone's thinking, but the role of the teachers not to be underestimated in them, scaffolding and orchestrating that.

Ian Wilkinson: It's an incredibly different role for the teacher to be a facilitator or to be procedurally heavy but substantively light is a phrase that you'll often hear. That's really hard to do. So much harder than you might think, but so important and that's where we need to go in changing the nature of education.

Dale Atkinson: Professor Wilkinson, what do you observe when, you know, this is in practice in schools? [00:14:00] Like, if you're a teacher out the front of the classroom, what are you looking for when you can see that this thing has kind of taken hold and students are engaging in this way?

Ian Wilkinson: Going back to this notion of the community of inquiry. I'm seeing that being played out in the way students interact with each other and as children, adult conversations where they give space for others to speak, where they go into a situation with a predisposition that they may need to change their mind, that they might want to change their mind if there's an appropriate amount of evidence that warrants are doing that.

Children changing their minds on a position is a key indicator of something very powerful happening and so that's something I look for. And I also look for invitations fathers to speak. I look for drawing on evidence, be it, you know, from principles, from examples, from texts that they've read. Those are the things I look for.

Dale Atkinson: [00:15:00] There's a degree of courage and bravery I think for educators sometimes in leaning into this space where if you have a syllabus in front of you or if there's a kind of clear to find text that you get to kind of step through in a kind of progressive way with the students that can be an easier entry point for a teacher. How do you – as a leader in a school – how do you free people up to really lean into this space?

Yael Leibovitch: I mean, this sounds really basic but I think it's about having conversations around what's the purpose of education and why are we in schools and why are students in classrooms and why are teachers teaching. Because as much as there’s a syllabus and a curriculum to get there, what we're doing is we're trying to prepare students to navigate life. And the successful or exciting navigation of life involves critical thinking and collaboration and communication.

And that fundamental skillset is something that comes through our guides or is engaged with when we are creating dialogic spaces. So, while it might feel scary to, you know, not follow a strict lesson plan in terms of how we're communicating content, what we're actually doing is acknowledging the humanity of everyone that's in that classroom [00:16:00] and trying to develop young people into human beings that are complex and can navigate the complexities of our world and can be empathetic and can be respectful and collaboratively reason to come to effective decisions.

And a theme that came out today is that, you know, arguably we need this now more than ever. And so if we can just sit down and reflect and take the time to go, you know, what is the purpose of education and why are we here, I think we'll be able to find a justification for leaning into a dialogic stance to education.

Dale Atkinson: Ultimately always comes back to purpose. Professor Wilkinson, Dr. Leibovitch, thank you very much for your time.

Ian Wilkinson: Thank you.

Yael Leibovitch: Thank you.