How talking with your class can liberate your teaching

This post (taken from her forthcoming book ‘Bringing Talk to Life‘ outlines how this method of teaching relies upon a teacher’s ability to listen and hear pupils’ voices in order to be able to support their use of a developing concept vocabulary. It also makes clear the shortcomings of the current dominance of ‘performance pedagogy’ with a focus on a set of competencies which encourage teachers to take a didactic approach to teaching, stunting their ability to enter into dialogue with their students. Meghan discusses how she supported colleagues in transitioning to a dialogic approach and shows how showing your humanity can help forge stronger links with pupils, parents, and the local community.

Adopting a concept-led curriculum was a major step in our school, providing students with the education we believed they needed to develop independent thinking. Crucial to this was the choice of resources, stimuli, and activities. The focus on social class through the story of the Titanic and the opportunity to consider the racism in society which led to the murder of Stephen Lawrence enabled the students to begin to evaluate how and why society is the way it is. The chance to curate their own museum in the school building and consider what makes a community, using the Cardboard Cathedral in Christchurch as a starting point, helped grow their independence, sense of self-worth, and pride in what they were able to achieve both individually and cooperatively. But it would not have been possible without other changes too, such as the different approaches to classroom organisation and assessment. But above all, using a question-raising approach required a considerable shift in teacher mindset which did not happen overnight. Teachers had to learn to be more open to children and allow them to use exploratory talk. They needed to learn to listen to students’ thinking aloud in order to develop the use of conceptual language. We worked on this as a school by adopting a dialogic approach to teaching using ‘Philosophy for Children’ (P4C). In this chapter I discuss how this came about with reflections on my own journey and the role I played in supporting teachers who were only used to a didactic approach to teaching.

2008

Imagine an A-Level English literature class, a group of around 20, studying poetry. In particular, Wilfred Owen’s ‘Dulce et Decorum Est.’ This class is a core memory for me. I remember enjoying the sound of the poetry and knowing it was about the First World War which, as I was a passionate history student, was one subject area I was fascinated by.

But I struggled to understand the words within the poem. I did not know what they meant. My teacher asked us what Owen conveyed through his poetry, and because I was displaying an obviously puzzled look on my face, he may have deduced that I was unsure of the word ‘conveyed.’ Knowing me as a student, he anticipated that I would quickly follow up that puzzled look with a ‘Sir what does conveyed mean?’ Fortunately for me, talk is my strength; my inquisitive nature often leads me to ask questions. But perhaps even more significantly, this teacher provided a space where I knew it was safe to talk and to raise questions without fear of judgement. He both provided me with the word and with the space to talk together to make meaning from the poetry. It was a stepping stone to me being able to articulate my ideas using the power of words.

This class is just one example of when I was given the power of words. ‘Convey’ is now one of those words which makes me smile when I use it because I feel empowered – it feels like a tool I can reach for to articulate myself in this complex world. I am not ashamed to say I lacked vocabulary. Many young people do. For me, it has always been a struggle. To listen to lecturers or just people talking in general, there would be so many words I did not understand. When they say knowledge is power, I believe there are words that provide that power, and without them, you are at a disadvantage.

This is what gave me the drive to become an educator, to enable that agency that I was afforded by the teachers who gave me the words. But when I trained to be a teacher, I found that the route to enabling children to develop their own ability to conjure with the power of words was not a simple step.

Teaching beyond the standards

Becoming a teacher nowadays means meeting a set of standards. In England, these are the Teachers’ Standards which in one form or other have been in place for twenty years. The Standards claim to ‘set a clear baseline of expectations for the professional practice and conduct of teachers and define the minimum level of practice expected of teachers in England’ (DfE, 2011). They are broken down into two parts: part one covers ‘Teaching’ in eight core Standards, and part two covers ‘Personal and Professional Development.’ The eight core Standards must be sufficiently met before qualifying as a teacher:

1. Set high expectations which inspire, motivate and challenge pupils
2. Promote good progress and outcomes by pupils
3. Demonstrate good subject and curriculum knowledge
4. Plan and teach well-structured lessons
5. Adapt teaching to respond to the strengths and needs of all pupils
6. Make accurate and productive use of assessment
7. Manage behaviour effectively to ensure a good and safe learning environment
8. Fulfil wider professional responsibilities DfE (2011)

The Teachers’ Standards encourage the promotion of a top-down approach. There are a number of Standards, for example, that indicate that the authoritative voice is the teacher’s, and therefore they maintain the overall agency within the classroom. For example, one of the subheadings within Standard 4, ‘impart knowledge and develop understanding through effective use of lesson time,’ references the traditional delivery model of pedagogy in which a teacher will transmit knowledge to students – commonly known as didacticism. The Standards operate as competencies, detailing what teachers need to do, but with little guidance on pedagogy or how to go about it. Just as the vocabulary of efficiency and effectiveness obscures a proper consideration of what education is actually about, the Teachers’ Standards focus on acquiring a set of skills, knowledge, and competencies which limits a full consideration of what teaching is about. Telling teachers what they need to do is not the same as developing their understanding of how they need to be. What does a teacher need to be like? What qualities do they need to develop? What steps do they need to take to go about this?

The didactic approach to teaching, thus encouraged by the Teachers’ Standards and reinforced by a behavioural objectives approach to curriculum, is essentially teacher centred. A common interpretation of ‘Effective use of lesson time’ in fact limits student participation. The expected short, factual answers students respond with inhibit their intellectual activity. This approach is historically what many of us have experienced, what many students still experience, and what many student teachers continue to adopt today, largely because that is how they were taught when they were at school and that is how they were taught to teach at college. This is what has led many to call it a ‘traditional’ pedagogy (e.g., Cazden, 2001). Two statements within Standard 7 compound the top-down approach to teaching: ‘manage classes effectively, using approaches which are appropriate to pupils’ needs in order to involve and motivate them’ and ‘maintain good relationships with pupils, exercise appropriate authority, and act decisively when necessary’ (DfE, 2011). The words in italics have become literal indicators that the teacher is in charge, and the students will be told when their involvement is required, the student perceived as ‘object’ and not ‘subject’ of their education. A learning environment cannot foster purposeful talk if the teacher delivers the knowledge and the only exchanges are Initiation, Response, and Feedback (Sinclair and Coulthard, 1975). In these circumstances, students will not become critically engaged; they will not see the value of interaction.

Becoming the teacher I am today

Taking the PGCE route following a History BA meant a year’s university course. Most of this time was spent on placement in two different schools. Here, I had the opportunity to hone my practice. Early on as a student teacher, you get to grips with the importance of the ‘core’ subjects: understanding the National Curriculum requirements, gaining the subject knowledge, and observing what a good lesson is meant to look like. You are also always aware of the need to provide evidence towards meeting the Teachers’ Standards. I had two great mentors who commanded the room; they were respected by the students and were motivating. I was able to replicate their approach to practice and performed well against the Teachers’ Standards, thereby meeting the requirements for qualified teacher status. But it was all done at such a pace that there was little time to think. During the year, you are not afforded the luxury of reflection to the point where you can recognise that your learning is focussed on performance. The requirement to show progress against the Teachers’ Standards and fulfil the delivery model of pedagogy did not provide space for thinking about what meaningful exchanges within the learning environment might look like. Experiences on placement are high pressure and time poor as you try to get to grips with the overwhelming knowledge and skills required to teach, as well as learning how to manage a room full of 30 or more students. This situation has not changed and is now even more focussed on student teachers ‘performing’ to meet a set of competencies at the expense of using their time to develop an understanding of teaching as a moral enterprise. The ITT Core Content Framework (DfE, 2019), essentially a curriculum for teacher training soon to be superseded by another document, the Initial Teacher Training and Early Career Framework (DfE, 2024), both designed to supplement the Teachers’ Standards, are didactic in approach. They have not been developed by professionals from across the sector but are imposed by the government. As long as the teacher education sector remains highly regulated and assessed based on conforming to Ofsted, the cycle will continue.

It was not until my first year as a newly qualified teacher that I began to understand the significance of exchanges within the learning environment, both amongst students and between teacher and student(s). The Teachers’ Standards had been all about me performing and fulfilling competencies, which meant I entered my classroom with only one method of teaching. How was I to know any different? But when I encountered P4C, I realised there was another way. My perspective shifted, and I began my journey afresh, this time with a growing understanding of how much rested on the nature of classroom relationships.

I was first introduced to P4C in 2014, and it was a moment that changed everything for me. I walked into a classroom with 30 children sitting in a circle on the floor. The teacher read a picture book and then asked the children to share their first thoughts. They calmly offered a hand out on their lap to share a word, a phrase, or a question. I would describe those responses as simply surprising. I had never experienced students being afforded the opportunity to share insights into what they thought. To hear Year 3 children identify concepts that were present in the book opened a door into seeing what was possible through dialogue. I returned to the same class on another occasion to observe an enquiry based on a philosophical question they had chosen. The teacher skilfully facilitated the dialogue, taking an unobtrusive yet effective role, as the students engaged in the discourse – agreeing, disagreeing, reflecting, and developing their thoughts. The experience had a profound effect. What I had witnessed was a way to liberate my teaching. It was the start of a journey which led me to become the teacher I am today.

I always wanted the students I taught to feel as though they could talk in the classroom without fear of judgement, and it was important to me that my disposition reflected that. P4C offered a pedagogy that could reduce the social distance to a point where a successful learning community could be established and where students felt that they were engaged in the mutual process of learning. My character helped this. My teacher disposition can probably be described as an ‘enthusiastic storm,’ and my sense of humour and sarcasm meant I could develop unique relationships with my class which drew us closer. P4C can be delivered as discreet sessions that, at the time I became aware of it, followed a ten-step model. Within those sessions, there was a clear opportunity given to the students to develop the discourse norms of dialogue. Learning how to agree and disagree, explain their reasoning, change their mind, and reshape their thoughts empowered them. Being exposed to abstract nouns, concepts such as justice, kindness, fairness, and guilt in an accessible way, enabled them to begin the process of thinking critically. These concepts began to restructure their experience (Halliday, 1993). The students developed confidence emotionally and socially and thus could navigate this complex world we live in more readily. The way P4C allowed me to nurture classroom relationships created a climate of trust that is a prerequisite for purposeful dialogue and discussion. Students were no longer vying for attention in a bidding war to respond to a question the teacher was asking but were recognising that each of their contributions was valuable and that another student may challenge their thinking in a way that enabled them to grow. That is when I think my teaching shifted, and the dialogic stance which I had adopted in P4C permeated other lessons, too. Almost without realising it, I used this approach to teaching throughout the curriculum. It became a way of being with the class.

Becoming a dialogic teacher provided me with the skills, knowledge, and the confidence to take back control and restored my professional judgement. Through a process of learning and unlearning, I let go of the need to ‘know everything’ and I took ‘risks’ such as simply ‘letting go of the reins’ enough to offer children the space to develop confidence in their ability to talk. This confidence led to greater student agency, and with time, the classroom environment became richer. I also never restricted access to words. I do not believe that a child cannot understand certain words at certain ages. Why not let them decide? Figure 11.1 demonstrates the journey from didacticism to dialogism that I experienced with regards to the classroom learning community, communication, and relationships between myself and the students and amongst the students themselves.

Challenges: learning and unlearning

The school had started using P4C a few years before my arrival as a Newly Qualified Teacher. But it was still in the early stages of adoption. The teacher I had observed was the coordinator and a talented practitioner. When she moved on to a new school, I took on the mantle, and with characteristic enthusiasm, I persuaded the headteacher to let me train to Level 3 and embark on embedding P4C within the school using the UK P4C charity, SAPERE’s award programme ‘Going for Gold,’ as a guide. But it was certainly not just about getting an award. I knew how liberating this approach was for the students and how well it enabled the dialogic stance we wanted for our teachers. It aligned with our aims and the concept curriculum. Unknowingly, perhaps, I think that the decision to adapt our curriculum in the way we had had probably grown out of our early experiences with P4C. It made complete sense to adopt this approach. But it was a process, a journey of learning and unlearning, and there were some challenges along the way in developing staff confidence.

Whether teachers trained post-Teachers’ Standards or not was irrelevant because the delivery model of pedagogy was widely accepted. The younger cohort of teachers needed convincing that they were not going to metaphorically ‘drown’ adopting this approach. For older, long-standing members of staff, it was about convincing them that the change was worth it and that substantial support would be provided. We started with everyone being trained to Level 1 in P4C, and I provided opportunities to watch P4C in my classroom as well as for me to lead P4C and/or team-teach in other classes. This was important, as I was able to show teachers that using talk in this way was not something that only Year 6 could do. All Year groups were capable of purposeful talk. However, this did not stop the questions of doubt creeping in:

• What if I choose a bad stimulus?
• Do I stay silent and let them just talk?
• When do I intervene?
• Should I share any personal views?
• How do I know I am facilitating talk well?

This doubt was normal and welcomed. People who train to be educators do it for one core reason – to enable young people to realise their potential. I knew we could not move forward without having an open dialogue, and I addressed these questions in a variety of ways. First, I compiled a list of stimuli with potential concepts that could be explored from them and recommended these regularly to teachers. In continued professional development sessions, I facilitated P4C with teachers and teaching assistants, building confidence in their understanding and practice of facilitation. Another successful strategy of support was giving teachers 1:1 opportunities to talk through lesson plans. This helped me understand how they were feeling about particular aspects of pedagogy and helped them self-evaluate the progress of P4C in their classrooms. Within the first term of P4C practice, teachers were finding their way, and the feedback was positive. I received such comments as these: They love to discuss their own opinions, so I have incorporated more activities like this to allow this skill to develop. It has in turn developed some children’s thinking, they are now able to listen to others better and use what they hear to add to and inform their choices.

The children are good at offering everyday life examples to clarify their thoughts, and this can allow a number of children to access the discussion better as it is a peer who has offered the support.

Are you curious enough?

Although the teacher feedback was positive, they also recognised this was a journey that both they and their students were on. It was not going to be easy. A teacher trained to be didactic is bound to find the initial facilitation of talk tricky. But once children are given the opportunity to talk, what they come out with usually takes us by surprise. It is their curiosity – they can wonder and imagine – and sometimes as adults, we lose that capability.

Early-years practitioners understand the power of curiosity, and whenever you enter an early-years’ classroom, you see how the teachers encourage this so effortlessly. At my school, our early-years teachers implemented Ann Dawson’s Rainbow Talk to encourage and facilitate purposeful talk amongst the children. Rainbow Talk fans with the words ‘see’, ‘hear’, ‘touch’, ‘smell’, ‘taste’, ‘think’, and ‘feel’ written on them were used by the teachers and placed within the classroom to develop the children’s vocabulary, questioning and making sense of their world.

It is this curiosity that teachers, who were trained to be didactic, can find tricky to facilitate or encourage. As I explained in Chapter 10, it can be easy to make assumptions about a child who is creatively responding to a concept, but we do not immediately understand. The example I gave was a boy who responded to the enquiry on the concept of adversity by making a Lego aeroplane. When Freire stated, ‘through dialogue, the teacher-of-the-students and the students-of-the-teacher cease to exist and a new term emerges: teacher-student with students-teachers. The teacher is no longer merely the-one-who-teaches, but one who is himself taught in dialogue with the students’ (1970, p. 61), he was trying to get at something that is hard to describe. Perhaps that is why the language appears clumsy, although, of course, we are reading it in translation. He was describing a wonderful zone, created by dialogue, which exists between two people – in this case, the teacher and the pupil – when they are truly listening to each other. The child who explained to me the relevance of the Lego aeroplane to adversity, when I failed to see its significance, had let me into his world. But this had only occurred because of my genuine curiosity. After stopping myself short of making a negative assumption (this cannot have anything to do with adversity), I showed my curiosity and interest and that I was prepared to listen. And in genuine listening, he took me into his world, and I was ‘taught’ by him as he explained the relevance (a pilot might have to make decisions that could literally plunge the passengers into the sea if his plane were malfunctioning).

Knowing when to intervene in dialogue and when not to can be daunting. As a facilitator, you need to do more listening, asking questions at times to help clarify or draw out a student’s point. You may ask open questions to probe for deeper thought. Ultimately, if you train yourself to listen carefully for the students trying to talk in concepts, you can enable your students to use concept language. It is important not to have preconceived ideas about how you think the dialogue should go. You are providing a space for students to think, question, and make up their own minds about the world.

Wider school community

One other strategy that was important in supporting teachers moving to a more dialogic approach was the way in which we engaged the wider school community. I aimed to engage parents and carers in P4C to provide opportunities to witness the capability of their children when they took part in rich dialogue and also to find ways to continue this dialogue at home. We hosted P4C days which involved choosing a stimulus the whole school could talk about, and encouraged families to come into school to respond with thoughts and questions and to talk about concepts such as difference, perception, and beauty. These were some of the concepts that arose from the picture book Square by Mac Barnett (2019). Picture books are often rich stimuli that can be used across all Year groups. Who doesn’t love a picture book? And luckily, the tide is turning on picture books being ‘too young’ for Year 6. There are many accessible, rich stories within picture books, and they usually refer to concept language. Another book we used for a P4C day was Oliver Jeffers’ Here We Are (2017). Not only did these days get everyone talking, but we talked about things that were important and that brought us closer as a community.

A parent and carer philosophy group every month or so also provided a space to understand the P4C approach and to pick up the basic skills. Another way to encourage families to engage in dialogue at home was through ‘Thinking Thursdays’ which was an enquiry question sent out on the weekly newsletter that had space for students and their families to note some thoughts into speech bubbles and bring it back into school if they wanted. I created a display in the school entrance for this and updated it weekly, valuing the responses that were sent in. A home-school P4C book also became popular, and students could request to take it home to fill in a page based on an enquiry question.

The reward

The growth of successful dialogue in our school, through the medium of P4C, enabled children to offer their own life experiences to expand on and link their thoughts to a range of stimuli. In a school with 48 languages, P4C and a dialogic approach to teaching were removing barriers to learning. Many who would not normally contribute to class discussions were doing so. And as talk became the common currency of learning, more students were willing and able to talk. P4C transformed my pedagogy and provided me with the method to fulfil my drive to enable students to experience education differently to me. With the whole school adopting the pedagogy of P4C, children were increasingly able to develop independence and realise agency. It was the perfect medium for us to realise our aims and to put the concept curriculum into action. Children were now bursting into learning and asking questions. We need to allow all children to be those children.

Instruction is part of education. However, the ideology currently is that instruction, the delivery model, is all there is. Verbal contributions are currently less valued than written contributions in education and preordained learning outcomes prevail, diminishing opportunities for creative thinking. P4C with its question-raising approach supports the liberation of teaching. It gives space to children and teachers to think together. When teachers are given the space to let go of the reins and the tools to facilitate talk in lessons, the social distance between the student and teacher is reduced. You feel ‘less like a teacher and almost, well . . . more human,’ as one teacher said to me.But it takes patience and trust. Facilitating dialogue is a journey that both teachers and students embark on together. It requires discipline and experience to develop the necessary skills for a talk-friendly classroom. And it involves taking a risk. But it is possible and the reward makes it well worth taking that risk.

References

Barnett, M. (2019) Square. London: Walker Books.
Cazden, C.B. (2001) Classroom Discourse: The Language of Teaching and Learning, 2nd edn. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Department for Education (DfE) (2011) Teachers’ Standards. Available at: https://www.gov.uk/govern-ment/publications/teachers-standards
Department for Education (DfE) (2019) Initial Teacher Training (ITT) Core Content Framework. Available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/initial-teacher-training-itt-core-content-framework
Freire, P. (1970) Pedagogy of the Oppressed. London: Continuum.
Halliday, M.A.K. (1993) Towards a language-based theory of learning. Linguistics and Education, 5,pp. 93–116.
Jeffers, O. (2017) Here We Are: Notes for Living on Planet Earth. London: Harper Collins.
Sinclair, J.M. and Coulthard, R.M. (1975) Towards an Analysis of Discourse: The English Used by Teachers and Pupils. London: Oxford University Press.

Meghan Tipping is a Freelance Consultant working across the Education and Heritage sectors. She previously worked as a primary teacher leading the development of a History curriculum and embedding a whole school approach to Philosophy for Children before becoming a Design Lead for a centralised curriculum provider. Her organisation, Rooted in Talk, offers innovative learning experiences that foster a love for dialogue and ignite a passion for self-expression and critical thinking. Meghan has published several articles on the power of dialogue in tackling sensitive subjects and in engaging young people in heritage. She is co-author of Bringing Talk to Life.

You can purchase a copy of the book here:

Bringing Talk to Life: Thinking Through Dialogue in The Classroom – 1s (routledge.com)