Diversifying dialogic discourses. Introduction to a special issue International Perspectives on Dialogic Theory and Practice

The broad church of dialogic practices embraces a wide range of themes, and the ways in which dialogic practices are explored, analysed and theorised are many and diverse. During the past decade, dialogic pedagogies have enjoyed extensive attention in international educational circles and across disciplines concerned with education. Dialogic teaching has been defined in various ways, but for the purposes of this special issue, we understand "the dialogic" broadly as a set of approaches to and stances toward classroom communication in which teacher and students, through purposeful classroom talk (alongside other semiotic means), engage in an ongoing, relationally & interactionally contingent process of co-constructing feeling, value, and knowledge about curricular material (Alexander, 2008; Mercer & Littleton, 2007; Mortimer & Scott, 2003; Wegerif, 2010; Black, & Wiliam, D. 1998).