Using dialogic teaching to promote student satisfaction and engagement in emergency remote teaching in primary school: a proof-of-concept study

ABSTRACT

Research from around the world has shown that COVID-19 emergency remote teaching in schools has generally struggled to maintain student satisfaction and engagement: students lacked social relatedness, a sense of belonging and ownership of school activities. This study examines the idea of using a dialogic teaching approach in synchronous online video-learning environments. The aim was to deliver proof of concept that dialogic tools can increase student satisfaction with emergency remote teaching. The authors designed and implemented 58 online dialogues and compared student satisfaction with this learning environment to student satisfaction with ‘normal’ emergency remote teaching and with traditional physical teaching. They found that dialogic online teaching achieved high student satisfaction that was comparable to student satisfaction with physical teaching. This result is relevant not only for emergency and regular remote teaching because online dialogue can be used to supplement asynchronous written dialogue in any remote teaching and learning environment.

KEYWORDS:

• Student satisfaction
• dialogic teaching
• learning online
• K–12 education
• student perspective

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the CoC Playful Minds.

Notes on contributors

Frederik Schou-Juul

Frederik Schou-Juul is a PhD student at the National Institute of Public Health at the University of Southern Denmark. He has a background in philosophy, and his interests revolve predominantly around public health ethics and bioethics, particularly focusing on the ethical dimensions of neurodegenerative diseases, dementia care and manipulation. In addition to his research, Frederik is also interested in the realms of philosophy with children and dialogic teaching, recognising the transformative potential of philosophical discourse for fostering critical thinking.

Søren Sindberg Jensen

Søren Sindberg Jensen is PhD and associate professor in Educational Science at The Department of Design, Media, and Educational Science at the University of Southern Denmark. His research interest is on dialogic teaching, philosophy with children and intercultural education.

Caroline Schaffalitzky de Muckadell

Caroline Schaffalitzky is PhD in philosophy and associate professor at The Department of Design, Media, and Educational Science at University of Southern Denmark where she is also head of the research and development project Philosophy in Schools. Her research interests include methodological and theoretical discussions in education, dialogic teaching, and philosophy with children. Recent publications include ‘Learning to Facilitate Dialogue: On Challenges and Teachers’ Assessments of Their Own Performance’ (Educational Studies, 2021) and ‘What Makes Authentic Questions Authentic?’ (Dialogic Pedagogy, 2022).