The fundamentals of educational dialogue

A warm welcome to our course, ‘The fundamentals of educational dialogue’! This is a free course designed for teachers and teacher educators in schools and tertiary institutions globally who are interested in learning about the foundational theories behind educational dialogue.

Educational dialogue is more than just ‘classroom talk’. This introductory course is designed to develop your understandings of the kinds of dialogue that are productive for student learning and development. This course aims to:

• Introduce you to the key theorists, methodologies and debates in the field of educational dialogue across all phases of education.
• Equip you to reflect on your own thinking about dialogic pedagogy and practices in your context.
• Prepare you for further courses that support systematic reflective inquiry into your practice.

There are six weeks of modules:

• Introduction to the course - Learn more about the structure of the course and what to expect over the 6 modules
• Weekly course modules - Access the 6 weekly course modules
  • Week 1: An introduction to educational dialogue
  • Week 2: Robin Alexander - Taking a dialogic stance
  • Week 3: Neil Mercer - Interthinking through exploratory talk
  • Week 4: Sara Hennessy - Visualising classroom dialogue through dialogic moves
  • Week 5: Rupert Wegerif - Opening up a dialogic space for reflection and agency
  • Week 6: Paulo Freire and Ramón Flecha - Transformative, holistic and decolonial approaches to dialogue
• Community discussion forum - Join the discussion!
• About the course - Learn more about the course and contact the course creators

Please register for the course using this google form prior to starting any of the course materials. This registration form includes a self-audit of your practice.

To receive a Certificate of Completion, you will need to complete all 6 weeks of activities and submit a final assignment, which will be a completed reflective journal of approximately 2000 words. Details regarding this assignment are provided in Week 1.

Note that anonymous user analytics are collected and analysed for this website to better understand engagement with the site materials and pages. For further information regarding the data collection for the research study that this course is part of, please review the introduction to the course.

News and course updates!

• Give us your feedback! Please fill out the post-course survey here: https://forms.gle/RcemSXbnWE5Y42Pi8
• Course participants are encouraged to subscribe to CEDiR’s email list to be kept informed of upcoming activities and benefit from its wide international network. You can subscribe to the CEDiR newsletter at the bottom of the CEDiR webpage
• This course is Course 1 of a suite of online courses regarding educational dialogue. Course 2 is ‘Conducting a reflective inquiry’ and Course 3 is ‘Supporting your colleagues through facilitation’. Course 3 is a course for educators who are already familiar with educational dialogue and wish to take their knowledge a step further and support their colleagues in developing their dialogic approaches.
• In addition to the above courses, a fourth course is offered as an additional course for those working in Islamic settings: Course 1A: Dialogue in Islamic Classrooms: Using Halaqah to Develop Shakhsiyah.