The Development of Dialogic Teaching of Reading in a Multilingual Setting

• In Event: Supporting Excellence and Equity and Literacy Education

Abstract

This study explores one teacher’s development of her dialogic teaching of reading comprehension. Drawing on Alexander’s (2017) five principles of dialogic teaching, the study employs sociocultural discourse analysis to examine how the teacher developed text-based discussions over a unit of instruction in one ninth-grade English language arts classes for emergent bilinguals. Findings show that initially, teacher-driven discourse scaffolded student conceptual understanding of text. Over the unit, teacher questions and scaffolding moves decreased while student questions and bilingual usage increased. Two of five principles of dialogic teaching remained elusive, but the teacher’s developing dialogic reading instruction suggested the importance of implementing a range of teaching repertoires and students’ language repertoires for increased engagement and comprehension.

Author

• Catherine Michener, Rowan University