ROBIN ALEXANDER
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Dialogos

Dialogos (Dialogos UK Ltd) provides consultancy in the areas covered by Robin Alexander’s research. To date this has included work in the UK with schools, local authorities, higher education institutions and national agencies on pedagogy, talk reform, dialogic teaching and topics ranging from the future of primary education to the methodology of classroom and comparative research. Dialogos also mediates Robin Alexander’s international consultancy assignments.

 

In addition, Dialogos publishes educational material which needs to get into the professional and public domains more speedily than is possible with mainstream publishers, and which can be revised and reprinted no less rapidly.

 

Dialogos publications started with the highly successful Towards Dialogic Teaching, which is now in its fourth edition and thirteenth printing since first appearing in 2004. To this have been added Education as Dialogue (a joint publication with Hong Kong Institute of Education, March 2006), and the professional development DVD/CD pack Talk for Learning, produced jointly by Dialogos and North Yorkshire County Council (July 2006).

 

Details of these publications appear below, together with links for ordering.

Alexander, R.J., Towards Dialogic Teaching: rethinking classroom talk, 60 pp, Dialogos. First published 2004, fourth edition March 2008. ISBN 978 - 0 - 9546943 - 6 - 4).

 

Towards Dialogic Teaching surveys research evidence on the role of talk in learning and teaching from different disciplines and countries and shows how it converges on and sustains the idea of dialogic teaching. Dialogic teaching exploits the potential of classroom talk for cognitive as well as social empowerment, but only when such talk is a good deal more rigorous and reciprocal than is traditionally the case. The booklet sets out the necessary oral and organisational repertoires for effective dialogic teaching and the principles by which it is informed, and proposes classroom indicators to guide the evaluation and development of dialogic practice. The publication, whose earlier editions are now in widespread use in schools and on teacher training courses in Britain and several other countries, is extensively referenced, but also includes a section specifically for teachers which lists suggestions for further reading and support. The fourth edition is longer than its predecessors and contains significant new material.

Order the new edition of Towards Dialogic Teaching


 

Alexander, R.J., Education as Dialogue: moral and pedagogical choices for a runaway world, 43 pp, Hong Kong Institute of Education in conjunction with Dialogos, March 2006, ISBN 0 - 9546943 - 2 - 5  (ISBN13: 978 - 0 - 9546943 - 2 - 6) 

 

Education as Dialogue takes the idea of dialogue into the domains of curriculum and educational values. Expanded from a public lecture given to an international audience in Hong Kong, the publication argues that educational reform entails a double dialogic imperative. On the one hand there are pressing questions to be addressed about the purposes and content of education in an increasingly unstable world. On the other, there is growing recognition that dialogic forms of pedagogy are potent tools for securing student engagement, learning and understanding. Squaring the circle, dialogue can empower both the lifelong learner and the future citizen, to whom the debates about education and pedagogy properly belong. The publication uses contrasting future scenarios to show that educational planners’ perspectives need to be global no less than national, and moral no less than economic. It explores the potency of dialogue in human affairs generally, and in pedagogy in particular. Finally, it considers alternative starting points and models for a dialogic curriculum. Education as Dialogue is in effect a sequel to Towards Dialogic Teaching.

Order Education as Dialogue


 

Talk for Learning: teaching and learning through dialogue (DVD/CD pack), North Yorkshire County Council in conjunction with Dialogos, July 2006, ISBN 978 - 0 - 9546943 - 4 - 0.

 

The Talk for Learning DVD features 24 teaching extracts from schools involved in the North Yorkshire Talk for Learning Project. The project, to which Robin Alexander is consultant, is applying and testing the repertoires and principles of dialogic teaching. Unlike some such material, the filmed lessons have not been staged, and - in accordance with the conditions of dialogue - the extracts are there to be studied and discussed rather than merely imitated. The sequence starts with those kinds of talk with which children and teachers are traditionally most familiar: rote, recitation and instruction/exposition. We then see dialogue emerging from paired pupil talk, group discussion (both teacher-led and independent) and whole class teaching.  The DVD has no voice-over commentary: it combines captions with minimal text, but otherwise allows the extracts to speak for themselves. However, users are not left entirely to their own devices, for the accompanying CD summarises the conditions and principles of dialogic teaching and provides a useful collection of support material: the article ‘Oracy revisited’, suggestions on how the pack can be used to support professional development, a list of further resources for teachers, and the full texts of evaluation reports from the North Yorkshire project. The CD also leads teacher users to a website link where they are invited to post their own suggestions for fellow teachers. The Talk for Learning pack is a useful companion to Towards Dialogic Teaching and Education as Dialogue.

 

To order the Talk for Learning DVD/CD pack, write to:
Laura Irwin, CAMAS, North Yorkshire County Council, County Hall, Northallerton, North Yorkshire, DL7 8AE. Tel. 01609 780780

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  Dialogos contact:  Karen Lennox (publications), Robin Alexander (consultancy)