1. Promoting productive classroom dialogue in preschool
Chiel van der Veen & Bert van Oers, VU University Amsterdam, dept. of Research & Theory in Education
Sarah Michaels, Clark University, Worcester, MA, dept. of Education

2. OUTLINE Background: productive classroom dialogue ↓
Teachers’ use of productive talk moves
Promoting children’s oral communicative competence (and more)
Method: Professional Development Program (PDP) as formative intervention
Interviews, video observations, reflection sessions, collaboration, pre- and posttests
Results (preliminary): Children’s oral communicative development; changes in teachers knowledge, beliefs, practices
Discussion 2
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3. What is productive classroom dialogue?↓
A mode of dialogue in which topics are addressed that are both culturally and personally meaningful
It’s always focused on a topic (object) that has the group’s temporary focus of attention. This topic is analyzed and further develop (topic-predicate structures) (cf. Doblaev, 1984; Vygotsky, 1987)
(3) It aims for children’s broad learning and development: academic content, reasoning, negotiating, social skills, oral ommunicative competence, etc.
(4) In contains elements of a polylogue (through information books, artifacts, others; van Oers & Dobber, 2013) 3
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4. Some example of productive talk moves
TEACHER TALK MOVES
Some example of productive talk moves ↓
Revoicing (O’Connor & Michaels, 1993; 1996)
P: “Nothing. He just touched something like a wire.”
T: “O, a wire? So you are saying, that there was electricity on that wire?”
P: “Yes.”
(2) Explaining someone else (Michaels & O’Connor, 2012)
T: “Can you explain it?”
P: “Well, that the wire is connected with a socket. And electrical power comes from the socket and if you touch it, than it causes convulsions”
(3) Metacommunication (cf. Robinson, 1983; 1986 ; Lyster, 2004)
T: “Something blue. Can you expand on that? Because I don’t understand you yet.” 4
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5. PROMOTING PRODUCTIVE CLASSROOM TALK | ISCAR PhD Day
METHODS
Participants: 2 schools, 4 experienced teachers, 92 children (41 girls; mean age=5;08, SD=.67) ↓
Professional Development Program: co-developed with teachers, theory driven, recontextualizing tools for ones own teaching context
Data: Pre-observations (video recordings), interviews (3), workshop (2), video recordings of 15 classroom conversations (over 2 cycles of 4 weeks), weekly reflection sessions, pre- and post tests of children’s oral communicative competence 5
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6. SOME PRELIMINARY RESULTS
Significant difference in children’s oral communicative competence (Wilcoxon signed-rank test: z =-6.46, p < .001; large effect size: r = .48)
Changes in teachers’ knowledge on productive talk and children’s oral communicative development
Changes in teachers’ classroom practices: decrease in teacher talk time, increase in child talk time, shift from monologic to dialogic, use of productive talk moves (increase, decrease), even some changes on school level 6
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7. PROMOTING PRODUCTIVE CLASSROOM TALK | ISCAR PhD Day
DISCUSSION
Future research: intervention study starting in October 2014 (10 schools, 22 teachers, children; quasi experimental)
Question 1: what about teachers’ agency in relation to our methodology?
Question 2: How to deal with potential conflicts of interest between researchers and practitioners?
Question 3: How can we deal with a possible decrease of newly learned skills over time? 7
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8. Thank you for your attention!
Questions, comments or more information? | 8
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