**1. Introduction**

Interacting with people is a taken-for-granted and assumptive facet of humanity. In everyday life, communicating (and the language that shapes it) forms a fundamental and familiar

© 2016 The Author(s). Licensee InTech. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. © 2018 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

social and societal activity. As Johnston ([1], p. 9) explains, language "is not merely *representational* (though it is that), it is also *constitutive*. It actually creates realities and invites identities". Thus, for teachers in educational settings, language and its use is critical for shaping the realities and identities of the students in their classrooms. And indeed, as Johnston ([1], p. 4) suggests, quality "talk is the central tool of a teacher's trade. With it they mediate children's activity and experience, and help them make sense of learning, literacy, life and themselves". In classrooms interacting and communicating with students emerges as especially complex since the kinds of interactions that occur in classroom lessons differs from those encountered in everyday life. Classroom interactions, in the main, are not like dinner table conversations, nor are they like a chat with a group of friends, they are different simply because of the number of parties (a cohort of many students and their teacher) involved in the interactions. In schools, as well as a socialising function, the power of language encountered in day-to-day lesson activity extends to having a pedagogical function and a managerial function. Through it, a

the recitation script [5]; this typically involves a teacher **I**nitiation (generally a question) move, then student/s **R**esponse/s move, followed by a teacher **E**valuation or **F**eedback move. This exchange system is commonly referred to as the IRE/IRF [4, 6]. It has been shown to be an asymmetrical teacher-controlled interactive structure that, and as Cazden [5] identified, provides two turns for the teacher and one for one student from the cohort in every exchange sequence. Further, it has been suggested that this talk structure governing the conduct of many lessons also limits dialogic talk in lessons since students' turns are often restricted to the

Knowing Pedagogical Dialogues for Learning: Establishing a Repertoire of Classroom…

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In 2006, Nystrand ([7], p. 394) recognised that classroom interaction practices have "have remained remarkably unchanged over the last century and a half". Skidmore ([8], p. 511) even suggested it is "the groove into which classroom pedagogy so easily settles by default". Indeed, "even experienced teachers themselves have limited knowledge about this dimension of their pedagogical and curriculum work" ([4], p. 4). Yet, shifting away from the recitation script or varying teacher talk moves to become more dialogic appears to be difficult [9], or at best marginally accomplished unless deliberate moves are made by teachers to achieve more dialogic talk practices [9, 10]. Although over many decades longer term spaced teacher professional development, including action research studies conducted with teachers, have made attempts to support teachers disrupt the resistant hold of the IRE/F on their classroom

Conceivably, part of the perpetuation of the issue is that in preservice teaching courses in many institutions, learning teaching practice has had a limited explicit focus on classroom talk [15]. It is often the case that preservice teacher's (PSTs) explicit knowledge about the role of dialogue for accomplishing lessons hovers above understanding and enacting a repertoire of talk moves that 'actively' promotes student learning, participation and engagement and agency. Indeed, both a meta-awareness of dialogic approaches to teaching, and a metalanguage or a more precise technical language for talking about talk in lessons, is generally limited to cursory knowings about questioning. Developing a metalanguage about talk and interaction is necessary for PSTs to be able to speak coherently (to each other and to other education professionals) about how dialogue works as a pedagogical practice; developing a meta-awareness is an overt consciousness, knowledge and understanding of one's own dialogic practices as enacted in practices. These are considered central for practice development [15]. Arguably, this limitation has the potential to restrict student learning when PSTs begin

A focus on the talk and interaction makes visible the systematic ways in which teachers and students create their relationships and their classroom culture, the power and precision of verbal and non-verbal interaction in the production of classroom knowledge, and the ways in which what *counts* as learning is established [16]. Therefore, against this historical background of the study of classroom talk and interaction and understanding of its function as a core teaching practice, implications for PSTs are underscored. The unyielding taken-forgrantedness of classroom talk and its resistance to development and change in professional practice leaves open the question about whether an explicit focus on talk and interaction in teacher education courses is necessary if future teachers are to understand and enact a flexible repertoire of classroom talk and interaction moves. Faced with a career that inherently rests

talk and interaction practices [11, 12–14], monologic talk remains intractable.

response slot in the three-part structure [4, 5].

their teaching careers.

*[t]eacher's language can position children as competitors or collaborators, and themselves as referees, resources, or judges, or in many other arrangements. A teacher's choice of words, phases, metaphors and interaction sequences invokes and assumes these and other ways of being a self and of being together in the classroom (*[1], *p. 9)*

Classroom talk, and the dialogues that shape it, thus is a powerful and influential practice architecture for shaping teaching and learning, a critical aspect of everyday pedagogical practice. Further to this, its efficacy in lessons is a fundamental matter for understanding professional practice, the dynamism of teaching and student learning. The question is to what extent teachers have an explicit working and workable knowledge of its role and influence on student learning, participation and engagement, and the flexibility to adjust the discursive flow of lesson interaction sequences (for different pedagogical, social and managerial purposes) through strategically enacted talk moves. This chapter examines the flexible enactment of classroom talk and the pedagogical dialogues it enables and constrains as a matter of urgency for teacher knowledge professional knowledge and in particular for teacher education.
