Exploring the relationship between dialogic teacher talk and students’ persuasive writing

• DOI: 10.1016/j.learninstruc.2020.101388
• Publication Date: 2020-08-12T17:00:08Z
• Authors: Shireen Al-Adeimi; Catherine O'Connor
• Keywords: 4. Education; 05 social sciences; 0503 education

Abstract Studies have documented the importance of dialogic classroom discourse for supporting academic outcomes such as reading comprehension and vocabulary development. This study examines the relationship between teacher talk during whole-classroom discussions in 42 classrooms and post-discussion persuasive essays from students in grades four through seven (n = 471). Teacher talk was coded by type of question (contestable, semi-open, or quiz-like) and teachers' follow-ups (prompting, pressing for reasoning, active listening), and further categorized as indicating either high or low levels of dialogic talk. Multilevel modeling that accounts for student participation rate, discussion topic, and students' demographic information shows that high dialogic teacher talk positively predicts students’ persuasive essay scores, while low dialogic teacher talk negatively predicts their scores. The study supports existing hypotheses about the role of teacher dialogic talk in whole-class settings.