Towards Dialogic Teaching in Science: Challenging Classroom Realities through Teacher Education.

The aim of this study was to explore dialogic teaching in school classroom and teacher education contexts. Despite moves towards more socially-oriented and student-centred curricula, science classroom communication remains prevailingly authoritative and monologic. In order to address the dialogic gap existing in the field, within this study an intervention was developed and executed to increase student teachers' awareness of the dialogic aspect and its role in science classroom communication. Drawing on previous scholarly work in the field of dialogic teaching and teacher education, an interventional teaching programme focussing on teacher talk was designed covering the planning, execution, reflection and analysis of student science lessons and orchestrated by student teachers themselves. Thus, in addition to introducing the background theory of dialogic teaching, the empirical aspect was also given cogent weight. Participants of the study within the teacher education context included both science student teachers and primary school student teachers who had been introduced to dialogic teaching. The second part of the study assessed how dialogic teaching manifests in the science classroom without pre-intervention. Participants in this part of the study included volunteer science teachers and their classes.