Walking the Talk: moving forwards with sustained shared thinking and dialogic teaching

Abstract

Dialogic teaching has enormous potential to harness the power of talk in developing children's thinking but is sometimes challenging to enact within today's policy context. Similarly, sustained shared thinking is an established and powerful practice with children in the early years but faces pressure within today's educational climate. Though closely related, the two have been addressed largely separately until now. The authors argue for drawing dialogic teaching and sustained shared thinking together more explicitly by reviewing how they are similar yet distinctive, and by offering a continuum model for practice, throughout school, which takes a dialogic stance. They suggest that this more holistic approach may empower teachers to utilise these powerful forms of pedagogy. Establishing a continuum within which sustained shared thinking and the many pedagogies of dialogic teaching align may strengthen both perspectives in the face of outside pressures and help to clarify the position of productive dialogue throughout the curriculum.