Teacher talk that supports student thinking and talking together: Three markers of a dialogic instructional stance

Dialogic oracy practices - speaking and listening practices associated with jointly taken inquiries, and open, respectful exchanges of ideas - support deeper meaning-making and communication. Teacher talk that serves a dialogic instructional stance cultivates classroom conditions wherein such rich talk is likely to occur. A dialogic instructional stance is instantiated across classroom talk practices and across time, and characterized by dialogic purposes and value-orientations as it functions to support student thinking and talking together. In this paper I identify three partial markers of dialogic instructional stance: language of possibility signals many ways to view something while cueing for supporting evidence; response-able practices signify active listening and responding; and dialogic local space invites and values student realities in a shared space of possibilities which enables us to feel heard and be open to hearing others so there can be a deepening and widening of our understandings. I explore teacher talk in terms of these three discourse markers using data from a classroom of seven-and-eight-year-olds. I explicate a topical thread to illuminate a dialogic trajectory as I note connections and uptake, and highlight how these markers work together and overlap. I discuss affordances, constraints, and tensions, and end with implications.