Facilitating effective pedagogic design in initial teacher education through dialogic learning

Abstract

Dialogic frameworks make visible the nature of social interaction providing insights into the formation of epistemic awareness. The conscious design of classroom interaction as both pedagogic practice and pedagogic tool for knowledge co-construction remains under represented in initial teacher education programs of study. This empirical research paper focuses on the importance of improving pre-service teachers’ meta-awareness of dialogue as a tool to support effective teaching and learning by making the tacit explicit. It illustrates a synthesis of analytic approaches (Systemic Functional Linguistics and Interaction Analysis) providing insights across units of analysis spanning from individual language choices to group dynamics. We address the question: What is the potential of facilitating linguistic knowledge in initial teacher education to inform pedagogic design for dialogic learning? Findings have suggested that effective learning and teaching relies on both pre-service teachers’ sensitisation to their linguistic choices as well as their capacity to adjust planned pedagogic and dialogic strategies in the fow of teaching. Implications will be discussed from two perspectives. One relates to the design of pedagogic instruction. The other relates to the dynamic nature of teaching events and the importance of responding to ‘surprising’ knowledge as it arises unanticipated during the course of interaction between student and teacher.