Oral interactions can take place across grades and across disciplines, making dialogic practice a universal approach to thinking and learning. In this chapter, the authors address the application of dialogic interactions within the developing strategic learners writing approach that connects thinking, listening, speaking, reading, and writing supporting learners' goal setting and writing performance across genres. The authors explain the genre-based instructional principles and pedagogical approaches on writing instruction and the use of dialogic discourse when writing to argue, to inform, and to narrate. Finally, they offer recommendations for effective dialogic interactions across disciplines.
TopIntroduction
Dialogue in ancient Greece was used to communicate and to support the discovery of truth. Socratic dialectics are an example of this form of communication that allowed a learner to uncover inconsistencies in ideas and in their own logic and be led to truth. Even though the term dialogue may be considered to mean “to talk,” it is more than just a conversation as it involves interaction among listeners who positively engage in communication and have the willingness to change their view through dialogic exchanges co-creating in this manner a new meaning. As Kent and Taylor (1998) suggested, dialogue is, “any negotiated exchange of ideas and opinions” (p. 325). Thus, dialogic exchanges include a form of negotiation of ideas and perspectives to reach a logical conclusion that may be more than the views of each party in isolation and results in new understandings. Dialogue allows many voices and perspectives to be heard and represented while allowing collaboration among participants to co-construct meaning (Vygotsky, 1978).
In classroom settings, oral, dialogic interactions can promote learners’ engagement with content, can enhance their collaboration, and can develop a classroom of engaged discourse where learning is shared and is collaborative (Cazden, 2001; Darling Hammond et al., 2020). One of the key concepts of dialogic discourse is the engagement of members in dialogue (Bakhtin, 1986). Bakhtin specified that the types of social activities most beneficial for children in their development include those focused on dialogic interaction. Bakhtin expressed the importance of learning through a shared, collaborative, and interactive experience afforded in dialogic interactions over monologic teaching where one person possesses and imparts knowledge. Such dialogic interactions can support learners’ participation and thinking, and they can impact their writing performance. Engaging in dialogic practices can support writers who have the opportunity to see the reactions of readers and have the immediate response of an audience to their written words. Such reactions and responses can enhance writers’ audience awareness.
The purpose of this chapter is to address specific dialogic interactions that are embedded in the Developing Strategic Learners K to 8 writing curriculum and their implementation within specific genre contexts (See Philippakos, 2022; Philippakos & MacArthur, 2020). The chapter will comment on the application of collaborative reasoning (see Clark et al., 2003; Kuhn et al., 2022; Reznitskaya et al., 2001) and argumentation for opinion writing (see Traga Philippakos & MacArthur, 2020) for debate (Traga Philippakos, 2022), dialogic interactions for character development and determination of personality traits while working on narrative writing (Traga Philippakos et al., 2019), and on dialogic interactions during evaluation for revision stages of procedural writing (Traga Philippakos, 2019b).
We shall first comment on dialogic discourse, the principles of dialogic interactions, and the value of collaborative learning drawing from Bakhtin’s (1986) and Vygotsky’s work (1981). Then we shall explain the instructional approaches within the Developing Strategic Learners instructional approach (see Philippakos, 2021; Philippakos & MacArthur, 2020; Philippakos et al., 2015), and how it promotes dialogic interactions and learning by gradually releasing responsibility from the teacher to the learners empowering them as they acquire knowledge.