Classroom Talk, Social Disadvantage, and Educational Attainment: Raising Standards, Closing the Gap

• In Event: 53.026 - Broadening Opportunities for Classroom Learning With Dialogic Pedagogies

Abstract

This poster will present the findings of a 2-year study of a teacher professional development intervention designed to improve the quality of classroom talk as a means to increasing pupils' engagement, learning and attainment in schools serving socially deprived areas of England. By sampling schools serving the most disadvantaged areas, the study was designed to investigate whether a focused dialogic teaching intervention could change pedagogical practices and hence raise pupil attainment.

The dialogic teaching approach was grounded in evidence showing the relationship between high quality classroom talk and pupils’ engagement and learning. The programme attended to the skills of the teacher as well as to pupils’ developing oral capacities in order to achieve the quality of talk required. It emphasised dialogue through which pupils learn to reason, discuss, argue and explain as well as merely respond, in order to develop their higher order thinking as well as their articulacy.

The programme made use of a video-based training and mentoring package designed to improve the quality and power of classroom talk in accordance with the principles of dialogic teaching (AUTHOR, 2008). It included face-to-face training for teachers, ongoing in-school monitoring and support, and a pack containing study and reference materials and a development and mentoring manual. Schools were also given all necessary equipment for video and audio recording, which was an essential part of the video-stimulated recall and mentoring process, and supply cover was provided for when participating teachers were away from their classrooms.

In 2014/15 a pilot in 10 schools in Barking and Dagenham, London, some of which had participated in an earlier pilot of the Dialogic Teaching approach (AUTHOR, 2005), was used to refine the programme design. During the second year of the study (i.e. 2015/16) an impact and process evaluation using a randomised controlled trial (RCT) was conducted in 76 schools in Birmingham, Bradford and Leeds with no prior involvement in dialogic teaching. Eligible schools had to have at least two Year 5 classes (i.e. 9-10 year olds), and a high proportion of children on free school meals (over 20%). The trial employed a 3-level (pupils within classes within schools) clustered RCT design. Randomisation was at school level, with half of the schools forming the intervention group and half of the schools forming a control group.

The Year 5 teachers and a mentor from each of the 38 intervention schools were trained in the dialogic teaching approaches and additional training was provided for the mentors in how to support their Year 5 colleagues through 11 dialogic teaching review cycles. Following approximately one year of the intervention, Year 5 pupils (aged 9-10) from the experimental and control schools were tested using standardised literacy, numeracy and science measures for UK populations.

Our poster will present findings from the process and impact evaluation, focusing on how the dialogic teaching intervention impacted on classroom processes and children’s learning in literacy, numeracy and science over the course of the 2015/16 academic year.

Authors

• Jan Hardman, University of York

• Frank Hardman, University of York