Teacher-led whole class discussions are essential when it comes to guiding students' construction of knowledge, and recent studies on teaching and learning emphasize the need for more studentcentered teaching methods. In previous studies, the extent to which different types of communication take place in the classroom have been extensively reported by means of lists, tables, and charts, yet these studies have not included overviews of how talk develops and progresses over time. This study addresses this aspect by presenting how different communicative approaches constitute a specific, cumulative communication structure. Within this structure, the role and temporal considerations of a dialogic approach to teaching are examined within a teaching sequence on the topic of electrical power and energy. The case data were analyzed on multiple levels. First, teaching sequences were presented graphically to provide a broader picture of the communicational orientation of the overall lesson. Second, a detailed analysis of dialogic interactions was executed to understand the quality and role of these interactions on a broader communicational level. This multilevel analysis provides insights into the different purposes and quality of dialogic implementation in terms of the cumulative and meaningful learning of science. Implications for teaching and teacher education and educational research are also discussed. # 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 50: 912-939, 2013

It is commonly believed that science teachers rely on language that allows only minor flexibility when it comes to taking into account contrasting views and pupil thoughts. Too frequently science teachers either pose questions that target predefined answers or simply lecture through lessons, a major concern from a sociocultural perspective. This study reports the experiences of science student teachers when introduced to the Communicative Approach to science education drawing on dialogic teacher-talk in addition to authoritative teacher-talk. This approach was introduced to the students in an interventional teaching program running parallel to the student teachers' field practice. The practical implications of this approach during initial teacher education are the central focus of this study. The data consisting of videos of lessons and interviews indicate that the student teacher awareness of teacher-talk and alternative communicative options did increase. Student teachers reported greater awareness of the different functions of teacher-talk as well as the challenges when trying to implement dialogic teaching.

There is an ongoing reform towards more inquiry-based teaching in school curriculum policy in South Africa. Reform towards more inquiry-based approaches is already integrated in pre-service teacher education programmes. As inquiry-based approaches have been gaining momentum worldwide, there is an increasing concern that dialogic interaction in classroom communication is being neglected. This is especially within teacher-orchestrated classroom interactions that should foster greater learner centredness and thus authentic scientific inquiry. In learner-centred teaching approaches, student contributions should be explicitly taken into account as part of classroom interactions in science. Learner-centred approaches provide the rationale for improved interaction, especially when student contributions should be considered within teacher-orchestrated communications. The aim of this study is to bring forth indicators that are connected to different forms of interactions and complement the dialogicauthoritative categorization through in-depth analysis of two lesson transcript examples. Even though over-authoritative and even transmission modes of communication seemed to prevail in South African classrooms, it is through finding building blocks for dialogicity this status can be challenged towards more learner-centred interaction. The explicitness of dialogicity and fundamentally contrasting differences between examples of dialogic and authoritative approaches are presented through the in-depth analysis of classroom interactions of two case episodes. Implications for teaching and teacher education are discussed.

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The aim of this study was to explore dialogic teaching in school classroom and teacher education contexts. Despite moves towards more socially-oriented and student-centred curricula, science classroom communication remains prevailingly authoritative and monologic. In order to address the dialogic gap existing in the field, within this study an intervention was developed and executed to increase student teachers' awareness of the dialogic aspect and its role in science classroom communication. Drawing on previous scholarly work in the field of dialogic teaching and teacher education, an interventional teaching programme focussing on teacher talk was designed covering the planning, execution, reflection and analysis of student science lessons and orchestrated by student teachers themselves. Thus, in addition to introducing the background theory of dialogic teaching, the empirical aspect was also given cogent weight. Participants of the study within the teacher education context included both science student teachers and primary school student teachers who had been introduced to dialogic teaching. The second part of the study assessed how dialogic teaching manifests in the science classroom without pre-intervention. Participants in this part of the study included volunteer science teachers and their classes.