Effective classroom talk in science

Talk is a teacher's prime teaching tool, but how many of us stop to plan or analyse what we say, or think about how it affects pupil learning? This research summary features a project* that examined in detail how teachers use talk to promote meaningful learning in science.  The researchers analysed the interactions between 12 teachers (six primary and six secondary) and their pupils in science lessons to find out what strategic use of talk in teaching (often called 'dialogic teaching') looked like in science. They found that science teachers needed to use different kinds of talk to enable pupils to move from their existing everyday understanding of natural phenomena towards a scientific view. These included 'dialogic' episodes when teachers probed pupils' everyday ideas and 'authoritative' episodes when the teacher introduced scientific ideas. Sometimes the talk was interactive and sometimes it was not. The skill lay in making the right choices at the right time.The researchers worked in both primary and secondary classrooms so they could compare challenges and approaches to dialogic teaching in both settings. For example, although primary school teachers sometimes worked at the limit of their subject knowledge, they were more likely than secondary science teachers to focus on dialogue. The researchers felt that this was due to the wider remit they had for pupils' learning, which included 'speaking and listening' as well as science.The analyses of classroom talk, example dialogues and suggested approaches for promoting classroom talk that are presented in this research summary will help both primary and secondary science teachers to consider how they could develop their use of talk in the classroom in ways that will promote meaningful learning.