Conceptualizing Teachers' "Contingent Responsiveness" in Dialogic Teaching

• In Event: Dialogic Practices in Learning Contexts

Abstract

Research into classroom dialogue has been expanding over the past two decades. Despite the breadth of research in dialogic teaching, little is known about how teachers manage the demanding work of moment-to-moment interaction in the unpredictable flow of talk. More research is also needed to understand how teachers coordinate the idealistic visions of productive dialogue with the realities of social context. This paper highlights the importance of ‘contingent responsiveness’ in dialogic teaching – the competence to attend to multiple dimensions of the classroom and make instructional decisions on the fly. This theoretical paper attempts to conceptualize ‘contingent responsiveness’ by drawing on various streams of literature from dialogic teaching, responsive teaching, teacher noticing, and culturally responsive teaching.

Author

• Yu (Lydia) Cao, University of Cambridge