Teacher learning through dialogue with colleagues, self and students

ABSTRACT

Background

Although dialogue is often regarded as a vehicle for teacher professional development and learning, particularly in relation to verbal interactions between teachers, its uses remain limited. Deepening the understanding of dialogue in its fullest sense, and its potential applications in education, may help to unleash its power in supporting how teachers learn in various contexts.

Purpose and sources

This discussion paper aims to explore and conceptualise the complex construct of authentic dialogue for teacher professional learning. It draws on the notion of dialogue and other related concepts within the Bakhtinian tradition. For this purpose, it begins by situating this approach in the context of various views about dialogue. Forming the heart of the paper is the application of these concepts to a proposal for three channels of dialogue for teacher learning in professional contexts: dialogue with colleagues, dialogue with self, and dialogue with students.

Main argument

Diverging from the common notion of dialogue, Bakhtin’s dialogue connotes complexity, involving multiple perspectives from those present or absent from the dialogue, including super-addressees. Dialogue and related concepts in Bakhtin’s tradition can help us gain a fuller and more sophisticated understanding of how teachers learn through collaboration with different learning partners through space and time – including with self and students, in addition to colleagues. It is argued that adopting a Bakhtinian lens to dialogue can potentially engender complex but enriched teacher learning.

Conclusion

The paper offers an exploratory conceptual framework as a way of examining teacher learning through authentic dialogue. It promotes awareness of the need for researchers to sensitise themselves to the meaning of teachers’ utterances in particular contexts through time and space to better understand visible and invisible perspectives, as well as the voices influencing teachers’ words. The proposed early-stage framework has the potential to be developed and refined further through future theoretical and empirical research.

Introduction

Teacher professional learning has long been regarded as one of the keys for improving practice and, subsequently, student outcomes. A highly complex phenomenon (Timperley et al. 2007; Steeg 2011; Korthagen 2017), professional learning is social and situated in nature, requiring the active participation of teachers in the learning process (Putnam and Borko 2000). Supporting this perspective, Webster-Wright (2009) advocates the idea of teachers being ‘engaged, agentic individuals, capable of self-directed learning’ (724), as opposed to the deficit view implied by teachers needing ‘development’. Teachers can, informally and formally, learn and grow professionally in various ways, either by themselves or with others, inside and outside their workplace. Throughout their professional journeys, they typically engage in a diverse range of activities such as observing, doing, experimenting, reflecting, analysing practice, analysing transcripts of student discussions, exchanging ideas, discussing, interacting and collaborating with colleagues and researchers, and conducting action research (Davies, Kiemer, and Meissel 2017; Dudley 2013; Korthagen 2017; Saito and Khong 2017). Thus, practitioners can learn both inside and outside the classroom, during and after lessons, and with various adult partners. For example, teachers may learn through discussing and analysing practice experience with colleagues in a school-based setting (Gore and Rosser 2022).

Dialogue is often considered to be a vehicle for teacher professional learning. It can help educators comprehend the meaning and implications of challenges that they face in their everyday practices (Little 2003). When it comes to teacher dialogue, teachers’ colleagues tend to be thought of as their unquestioned partners. Dialogue with colleagues has been referred to using various terms such as professional dialogue, reflective dialogue, teacher-other dialogue, reflective conversation, learning conversation, professional conversation, inquiry conversation, teacher discussion, and professional or collegial discussion (Penlington 2008; Simoncini, Lasen, and Rocco 2014; Cochran-Smith and Lytle 1999; Feldman 1999; Warwick et al. 2016; Isai 2010; Le Cornu 2006; Gore et al. 2017).

However, there is a fundamental question about whether teacher dialogue is actually limited to interactions with colleagues: do teachers learn only from dialogue with other teachers, or do they have other counterparts? For example, whilst assuming that dialogue with colleagues is one of the main sources of professional learning for teachers, the possibility for the opportunity of intentional, or incidental, learning in dialogue with students should not be overlooked. Indeed, learners’ remarks may sometimes hint at an important issue, directly or indirectly, when teachers reflect on and analyse the meaning of those comments. Likewise, we should not discount the possibility of teachers’ dialogue with their own thoughts: in other words, an internal dialogue with the self. Thus, in addition to colleagues, students and self can be significant sources of teacher professional learning. However, we are yet to fully understand the processes involved in authentic dialogue that can enable educators to learn professionally in various settings across time and space.

In making this case, the paper seeks to explore the complex construct of authentic dialogue for teacher professional learning. Dialogue, in our view, is rich in under-exploited possibilities as one potential enabler of professional learning. We acknowledge that dialogue does not, of course, represent the only tool for professional learning: there are many non-dialogic forms which can contribute to teachers’ professional growth. As we explain in detail below, in developing our argument, we found it helpful to adopt an approach based on the notion of dialogue and other related concepts within the Bakhtinian tradition. This conceptualisation of dialogue draws on not only the past and present, but also on future experiences or events. As such, dialogue becomes more complex, involving multiple perspectives from those present or absent from the dialogue. Adopting a Bakhtinian lens to dialogue does not necessarily mean an easy way to examine teacher learning; nor should it be considered an easy fix. Rather, it offers a more complex and sophisticated view of learning, requiring researchers to sensitise themselves to the meaning of teachers’ utterances in a particular context through time and space, in order to understand both the visible and invisible perspectives and voices influencing teachers’ words. Dialogue, in this sense, might be regarded as having an ‘unsettling’ effect on teacher learning, as it may challenge hitherto uncontested assumptions. At the heart of our paper, we show how the application of the concepts gives rise to a proposal for three channels of dialogue for teacher learning: dialogue with colleagues, dialogue with self, and dialogue with students. To contextualise this, we begin with a conceptual discussion about various views of dialogue, followed by discussion of dialogue and related concepts within the Bakhtinian tradition. It should be noted that the intention of this background section is to provide an overview of concepts relevant to the application in this study: further in-depth theoretical discussion is beyond the scope of the current paper and may well form the basis of another study in the future.

Conceptual background

Ideas about dialogue

Dialogue is generally understood as talk involving at least two physically present partners whose purpose is to gain new understandings (Clark 2001) and an appreciation of themselves, others, and the world (Burbules 1993). It is conditioned by reciprocal understanding, responsiveness and instant feedback from dialogic partners (Harris et al. 2010). This implies that dialogue requires ‘real’ audiences in face-to-face or synchronous online environments. In asynchronous situations, such as those increasingly observed during the COVID-19 pandemic, dialogue may still take place, albeit with delayed responses. In this paper, we draw on the notion of dialogue and other related concepts proposed by Mikhail Bakhtin (1895–1975) and other Bakhtinian scholars. For Bakhtin, dialogue has an extended meaning (Renshaw 2004), not only in terms of what it entails and what conditions it requires, but also by way of whom it addresses. This has both epistemological and ontological implications in the context of teacher learning. In epistemological terms, it can expand the sources of teachers’ knowledge and require their active construction of knowledge in their learning journey. It also implies the dialogic nature of learning, requiring more than simply the act of talking. In ontological terms, it raises questions about the role and status of dialogue partners, as well as the relationships between them.

Dialogue and dialogicality

The concepts of dialogue and dialogicality have attracted the attention of various scholars who hold different perspectives on the purpose of dialogue, the status of interlocutors, and the relationship between self and other in dialogue. To help obtain a better understanding of the Bakhtinian approach to dialogue, we firstly offer a brief discussion of various other traditions of dialogue, identifying some influential schools of thought from past and modern times. One of the earliest recorded forms of dialogue dates back more than two thousand years. At that time, Socrates reportedly suggested an open-ended form of dialogue in which learners, instead of simply accepting the knowledge and ideas provided by those in authority, could be challenged to seek evidence, reason, and construct their own understanding of knowledge (Burbules 1993). Thus, in Socratic dialogue, teachers were no longer considered solely knowledge transmitters or figures of authority (Renshaw 2004). Accordingly, by asking pertinent questions and pointing out inconsistencies, teachers could assist learners to form a reasoned argument. It seems that here, the teacher-learner power relationship is positioned in a more balanced way than, for example, in traditional lecture-style settings. Nonetheless, the former is still considered as being the one having expertise, from whom the latter learns.

In the early 20th century, the concepts of dialogue and dialogicality were further expanded, albeit in an implied rather than explicitly stated manner. For instance, it is possible to identify notions of dialogue in works published in the 1930s by Lev Vygotsky, a contemporary of Bakhtin. Broadly, Vygotsky put forward a socio-cultural theory of human cognition and development, arguing that all higher mental functions such as thinking and reasoning have social origins (Vygotsky 1987). For Vygotsky, language plays a key role in this development. It can be inferred, from this perspective, that dialogue in social interactions entails verbal exchanges between interlocutors who share the cultural context. A clear example of this external conversation would be the oral exchange in the form of scaffold between a teacher and a child to help the latter reach the potential they cannot achieve alone, as posited in the Zone of Proximal Development (Vygotsky 1978). The dialogue differentiates itself from inner speech – a conversation with self. Whilst inner speech may be considered a form of monologic speech, it has its traces in social interactions and, therefore, retains the dialogicality as oral speech. Vygotsky further clarifies the purposes of the two forms of speech: for oneself and for others respectively. Inner speech serves one’s own thinking and is non-observable, whereas oral speech requires responders and can be physically observed.

In more recent times, we encounter the idea of dialogic education. According to Paulo Freire, dialogue ‘is the encounter between men [sic], mediated by the world, in order to name the world’ (Freire 1970, 75). Broadly, Freire maintains that this represents the means for oppressed people to gain their value and dignity as human beings, and only occurs under the conditions of a shared goal and equal status among those in dialogue. Further, true dialogue requires love, hope, humility, faith in human’s capacity and power to change the world, and critical thinking. Freire strongly advocates dialogic communication between the teacher and learners, proposing a pedagogy of hope and possibility in order to liberate underprivileged members of society (Freire 1970). For that purpose, dialogue needs to challenge learners to examine, critically, their own situation and take charge of their own life (Freire 1985). This type of dialogue has inspired and influenced educators and reformers, as it envisions the nature of educational provision that should be offered to learners (Renshaw 2004).

Despite the differences, it is worth noting that there are some commonalities across these seemingly disparate representations of dialogue. For one, it seems that the dialogue is directed towards a goal or shared understanding which tends to be set up by one of the interlocutors involved: the teacher, tutor, or educator. Another shared characteristic concerns the role and status of the dialogue interlocutors, as well as the relationship between them. As mentioned earlier, the relationship between a teacher and a student, or between an educator and a learner, often represents an unequal one – with the teacher having more power and higher status. Interestingly, there is also the possible presence of a third voice in addition to the first (teacher) and second (student) voice in the dialogue: in the case of Vygotsky, the third voice could be cultural norms, authority figures, state curriculum, or school policies (Cheyne and Tarulli 1999).

We now turn to Bakhtin’s notion of dialogue, which entails something more than oral communication, with a purpose other than achieving a shared understanding. Bakhtin was heavily influenced by the philosophy of dialogue held by Martin Buber, who viewed dialogue as entering in an ‘I-thou’ relationship, entailing wholehearted participation and the acknowledgement of a unique other (Friedman 2001). Being a literary theorist, Bakhtin primarily paid attention to literary texts. Examining the use of language in novels led to the idea that, as the meanings of such dialogic forms of text are engaged in continual dialogue with other writers and literary texts, their meanings are not static but, rather, keep evolving. Thus, each literary work is not only informed by previous ones but also informs future works (Bakhtin 1981). This dialogic nature does not limit itself to literary works but extends to all language use (Bakhtin 1986). Kozulin (1996) even argues that Bakhtin’s ideas can be applied to ‘human thoughts, acts, and intentions’ (149). Indeed, Bakhtin (1984) explained the notion of a dialogic novel as one in which the author can be surprised by the characters, pointing to the open-endedness of dialogue.

Further, Bakhtin’s ideas can be extended to human life itself. Dialogue, Bakhtin (1984, 293) argues, is so fundamental to human existence that:

The single adequate form for verbally expressing authentic human life is the open-ended dialogue. Life by its very nature is dialogic. To live means to participate in dialogue: to ask questions, to heed, to respond, to agree, and so forth.

Therefore, learning, one of the most fundamental activities of human living, can be regarded as rooted in participation in dialogue. This participation necessitates not only uttering words but contributing with the whole self, as one speaks, listens, and responds. Dialogue and dialogicality, in Bakhtin’s view, occur when two voices come into contact with each other. These voices must stand for different perspectives. Since each one has its own uniqueness and own view to bring to the dialogue, each can learn from and enrich the other. However, what makes Bakhtin’s approach to dialogue diverge from others referred to earlier is that it does not intend to reach a consensus. Instead, it values differences in perspectives and otherness to enrich dialogue partners. Further, Bakhtin’s dialogue requires a more equal relationship between interlocutors.

Addressee and addressivity

A dialogue requires a speaker and listener or an addresser and addressee. In other words, all utterances have a target audience to whom they are directed; speakers do not speak without keeping in mind their intended addressee. Bakhtin (1986) refers to this orientation to the other as addressivity. Differing from the general sense of listeners in face-to-face dialogue, addressees, in Bakhtin’s works, can be either physically present or absent. This becomes possible since dialogue ‘simultaneously and perpetually operates on a vertical plane, as an internal dialogue oriented within the self, and on a horizontal plane, as an external dialogue between subject and addressee’ (Krasny 2003, 29).

Within this conceptualisation, there is, therefore, a need to go beyond imagining physically present dialogue partners. As well as addressees being present or absent, they may be identified or unidentified, individuals or a collective, of lower or higher status than the speaker, and someone whom the speaker knows well, or does not know at all (Bakhtin 1986). Depending on the context in which utterances are produced, a particular addressee or a group of addressees would be revealed. According to Bakhtin (1986), the addressee is ‘an immediate participant-interlocutor in an everyday dialogue’ and may represent a person or a group, or specialists in some particular area of cultural communication.

In a dialogue, in addition to the first interlocutor (the speaker) and the second (the physical addressee), there is also an inevitable and absent ‘third’ person. Bakhtin (1986) refers to them as a ‘super-addressee’ (127): possibly a projected image of the self, supposed to be an ideal audience who can listen to, understand, and judge what one says even better than the immediate addressee (Wegerif 2011). Bakhtin (1986) characterised the third person as someone with ‘absolutely just responsive understanding’ (126) but, importantly, this does not necessarily signify the same person all the time. The existence of the ‘third’ person may lead the dialogue among those who are physically present to a deep level, where multi-perspectives can be considered.

Otherness

Another important concept related to dialogue is otherness. In line with the socio-cultural tradition, Bakhtin (1981) strongly acknowledges the social nature of verbal discourse amongst human beings. Accordingly, any utterance one makes is not purely an individual’s product: in fact, it always reflects the presence of the other with whom one has engaged with in the past. It ‘refutes, affirms, supplements, and relies on the others [utterances], presupposes them to be known, and somehow takes them into account’ (Bakhtin 1986, 91). Blackledge and Creese (2014) further add that we take action to address not only others’ words but also the political and ideological position that those words represent. That means that interlocutors need to look beyond what they hear to take into account of the partners’ stance in their utterances.

Besides referring to the past, an utterance is also directed to future utterances: ‘In the moment of its use, at one and the same time, it responds to what precedes it and anticipates what is to come’ (Hall, Vitanova, and Marchenkova 2005, 2). For Bakhtin (1981), dialogue is a meaning-making process incorporating the past, the present, and the future. This signifies a deeper or more complex type of dialogue than the commonly held view, as it encompasses discourse through time. The presence of the other who stands from a different perspective in one’s speech creates what Bakhtin calls otherness – the condition for the richness of dialogue (Cheyne and Tarulli 1999). This is enabled by the way in which the other can substitute the information that one may not have, thereby opening up new possibilities, extending one’s horizon and making the dialogue productive. Bakhtin (1990) demonstrates this point by juxtaposing merging oneself and others, and keeping them as separate. Thus, the difference in perspective between the self and the other is a necessary condition that brings enlightenment to the self. This notion of the other also creates a dialogue gap in which meaning takes shape. Volosinov (1986), a close colleague of Bakhtin, suggests that a word does not generate meaning without context and the efforts of those engaged in dialogue: ‘In essence meaning belongs to a word in its position between speakers; that is, meaning is realised only in the process of active, responsive understanding’ (Bakhtin 1986, 102). Similarly, Bakhtin (1986) concurs that meaning exists in order to respond to a question. Meaning forms when there is more than one view at any particular time: that of the self and that of the other. Wegerif (2011) refers to these views as ‘an insider perspective and an outsider perspective’ (181). Accordingly, these perspectives cannot be merged into one, since individuals are different beings with different past experiences.

This may appear to be contradictory to the goal of reaching agreement or ‘common ground’ between communicators, which is often emphasised in communication theory. It is, in fact, an important goal to achieve in general dialogue. However, Wegerif (2011) posits that ‘it is one moment in a larger flow of meaning that is more fundamentally described as the tension between different perspectives held together in proximity around a dialogic gap’ (182). Without a gap, a dialogue would not exist, which literally signifies no meaning. Thus, the point here is not to produce an identical perspective in dialogue, for it signals the end of the flow of meaning (Bakhtin 1986). Although dialogue is intended to bring positive outcomes, it is important to note its less positive side, as this can easily be overlooked. Whilst Bakhtin’s theory of dialogue is extraordinarily sympathetic to the presence and perspective of others, valuing outsideness and difference as well as underlining the importance of an individual self, it is also known that others, our addressees, can be very difficult. As Emerson (1988) highlights, the ‘ideal otherness’ (514) really depends on the willingness of the other: dialogue, at times, does not take place voluntarily, but, rather, by coercion.

Dialogic space

When we talk about space, we often imagine physical places with boundaries, such as classrooms, schools, and playgrounds, where human activities take place. Dialogic space, however, does not refer to a static physical setting; instead, it is understood as ‘a dynamic continuous emergence of meaning’ (Wegerif 2011, 180). In other words, it provides the stimuli and conditions for interlocutors to generate meanings. As discussed previously, differences in worldviews and perspectives create a dialogic gap which, in turn, creates dialogic space. According to Wegerif (2011), we can either ‘open’, ‘widen’, ‘deepen’, or ‘close’ the space. Here, the concepts of authoritative discourse and internally persuasive discourse seem very helpful. Bakhtin (1981) differentiates between these two. Whilst authoritative discourse forces us to accept its ideas, an internally persuasive discourse seeks to persuade us from the inside. As such, whereas the former tends to close a dialogue, the latter tends to invite diverging ideas and, thus, open up dialogic space.

Dialogue and teacher learning

From a socio-cultural perspective, learning can be conceptualised as ‘the co-construction (or reconstruction) of social meaning from within the parameters of emergent, socially negotiated, and discursive activity’ (Hicks 1996, 136). This can be applied to student and teacher learning alike. Thus, practitioners learn through discourse: in other words, they intensively utilise an important cultural tool, which is language. So, by adopting Bakhtin’s notion of dialogue, not only is this critical aspect of teacher learning addressed, but teachers’ opportunities for learning can also be expanded. It can now take place at anytime, anywhere, and with anyone. This means that through dialogue with various partners during and after lessons, inside or outside of the classroom, practitioners can make sense of the happenings surrounding them. This may include student learning and challenges, what they do and the way they do it, as well as centrifugal and centripetal forces operating in various aspects of their work.

Adopting Bakhtin’s notion of dialogue can help address the demarcation between situative and cognitive views of learning. Whereas the former emphasises participation in communities (Borko 2004), the latter focuses on individual processes (Piaget 1950). As interlocutors from Bakhtin’s perspective can be either physically present and absent, teachers may learn with peers, such as in a professional learning community, or with self when alone, or even during the process of conversing with others. The presence of absent addressees and super-addressees in the dialogue can potentially engender complex but enriched teacher learning.

Bakhtin’s dialogue-related notions have been drawn on in studies about children learning through talk. For example, authoritative voice and internally persuasive voice are discussed as part of the theoretical roots of dialogic teaching (Sedova, Sedlacek, and Svaricek 2016). The notion of absent addressees in the forms of indefinite others, or super-addressees, is utilised in the analysis of children learning to think (Wegerif 2011). Although there may be differences in some aspects of teacher learning and children learning, the social nature of learning can be similar in both cases. That is, both try to construct, or reconstruct, social meanings from discourse-based activities (Hicks 1996). Thus, Bakhtin’s dialogue can be employed to explore teacher learning.

Three channels of dialogue for teacher learning

In their daily work, teachers spend most of their time interacting with their students, while interactions with colleagues take place to a lesser degree. As above, participation in dialogues constitutes human life (Bakhtin 1984), and the teachers’ lives are also based on dialogues with various others, inclusive of absent addressees (Wegerif 2011). Here, we enter into the proposition at the heart of this paper by setting out three channels of dialogue for teacher learning: (i) dialogue with colleagues; (ii) dialogue with self; and (iii) dialogue with students. Although colleagues and students, who represent the first and third channel of dialogue, are both physically present in dialogue, each audience deserves a separate category. First, each group represents important dialogue partners whom teachers can draw on for their professional growth in very different ways. Second, such categorisation, particularly through the second channel of dialogue – the self – will enable us to better understand how teachers learn both during and after practice, both inside and outside the classroom. It is important to recognise that these channels are mental constructs: they represent not all partners but, rather, what are suggested to be the crucial learning partners for teachers. It is possible that, in a given situation, teachers may engage with more than one channel.

While the three channels of dialogue suggest the settings for teacher learning in professional contexts, it is acknowledged that the learning can take place on other occasions as well. It is noted that teachers may participate in dialogue with different texts and/or expert sources for their professional growth. However, in this paper, our exclusive focus is on teachers’ dialogue with each of the three learning partners specified above. These human partners represent key resources, often accessible in school settings where teachers spend the majority of their time during their professional lives. As such, teachers can be in dialogue with these partners on a daily basis, forming part of their ongoing, school-based professional learning.

Learning through dialogue with colleagues

Throughout their careers, teachers are continually involved in learning by upgrading their knowledge and skills, and improving their practices. This learning journey is not necessarily a lonely one: practitioners can usually participate in a range of activities with other teachers from the same department, the same school, or a neighbouring school. Indeed, a body of literature on professional development points to the collaborative nature of teacher learning (Goldsmith, Doerr, and Lewis 2014; Grosemans et al. 2015). Often, teachers learn with and from each other through verbal exchanges and interactions, either in informal and unstructured events or institutionally planned sessions. As mentioned earlier, these verbal interactions between teachers have been investigated using a range of terms, such as professional dialogue (Simoncini, Lasen, and Rocco 2014), reflective dialogue (Harford, MacRuairc, and McCartan 2010; Dogan, Yurtseven, and Tatık 2018; Isai 2010), teacher-other dialogue (Penlington 2008), reflective conversation (Danielson 2009), dialogic reflection (Rashid 2018), learning conversation (Le Cornu 2006), oral inquiry (Cochran-Smith and Lytle 1999), teacher discussion (Warwick et al. 2016), and professional discussion (Williams 2003). Through processes such as reflective conversation, and in keeping with Bakhtin’s (1981) socio-cultural tradition, when teachers sustain verbal discourse, they engage in processes of sociality amongst human beings. When a teacher openly reflects via conversation with other teachers or engages in collaborative reflection (Postholm 2018), the presence of the ‘other’ is assured, and subsequent utterances are not simply the product of the individual, but are, instead, reflective of these others.

Nsibande (2007) defines professional dialogue as ‘a discussion between peers that allows the other to explicitly articulate, appreciate and extend their understanding of practice’ (4). Dialogue with colleagues can be based on a jointly observed lesson, as in the case of post-lesson reflection; however, it may, too, cover other aspects of teachers’ work, such as student assessment scores. This peer-to-peer exchange enables ‘the learning of new knowledge, questions and practices and, at the same time, the unlearning of some long-held and often difficult to uproot ideas, beliefs, and practices’ (Cochran-Smith 2003, 9). As such, it supports the professional growth of teachers (Corrigan and Loughran 2008; Bendtsen, Forsman, and Björklund 2022).

Teacher-other dialogue can promote teacher change by enabling practitioners to recognise the underpinning reasoning behind their thoughts and develop their own practical reasoning. One such mechanism to help teachers learn in this way constitutes the processes of excavation and evaluation in teacher-other dialogue (Penlington 2006): through excavation, teachers can explore the underlying reasons behind their practice, while through evaluation, they may evaluate their practical reasoning – ‘a process of contemplation through which people make decisions about action’ (Penlington 2008, 1306) against professional standards or ideals.

Further, via lesson study, teacher discussions before and after lessons can assist teachers to develop practical knowledge through the utilisation of imagination, tacit knowledge, and evidence of what and how students learn (Dudley 2013). Video-based reflection sessions, which focus on students as the target of discussion, can enable teachers to become ‘critically conscious of how children have or have not learnt in the class or from the lesson’ (Saito and Khong 2017, 839). This is a process of objectification; ‘a social process of progressively becoming critically aware of encoded forms of thinking and doing in the course of which consciousness is formed and transformed’ (Radford 2013, 27–28).

Another, often related way of teacher learning through dialogue with colleagues is evidence-informed collegiate dialogue within teachers’ professional learning communities or networks. For example, in Gore and Rosser’s (2022) study, teachers of different grades and subjects from the same school form a small learning community where they, in turn, observe each other’s lesson and analyse the pedagogy based on the evidence of practice, using a guided coding scale focusing on specific dimensions of professional practice. Elsewhere, in a study by Fecho et al. (2021), novice teachers from different schools openly share their work experiences, particularly in terms of the challenges encountered, by participating in oral inquiry processes which invite them to ‘take a reflective and dialogical stance on their practices’ (10). Collectively, through these processes, these early career teachers learn about each other’s contexts and share ways of overcoming limitations and constraints.

A common thread running through the various types of dialogue is that teachers can grow professionally through listening to the voices of various people, including colleagues and themselves, and articulating their thoughts, intuitions, findings, and analyses on interactions with those partners. In Bakhtin’s view, when engaging in dialogue with colleagues (such as in lesson study, for example), teachers will address an audience physically present at the time. Considering that each practitioner will naturally bring their own subjective theories to the discussion – a ‘complex web of beliefs, knowledge, attitudes, personal theories and identities’ (Penlington 2006, 12) – it may be the case that practitioners observe different classroom scenes during lesson study, or witness the same occurrence but interpret it in various ways (Saito and Khong 2017). Accordingly, diverging strategies may be proposed. This uniqueness sustains fruitful dialogue with a flow of new ideas during discussion time.

When two or more voices come into contact with each other, the interlocutors’ perspectives are widened; this, in turn, enables them to see things in a different light, thereby creating a dialogic gap between teacher colleagues. Dialogic space is then created where teachers build on other practitioners’ ideas to generate their own. In more democratic school environments, where no voice is considered more authoritative than another, teachers are able to critique peers’ ideas constructively. Thus, through dialogue with colleagues, practitioners co-construct or reconstruct the meanings of learning and teaching, and of their existence as teachers.

Although authentic dialogue between teachers is desirable to maximise learning, it is important to note that teachers may not experience it all the time. Contrived collegiality takes place where teacher collaboration and talk are centrally regulated, scheduled, and predicted (Hargreaves 1994). In such cases, teachers mandated to work, talk and discuss together do not experience the dialogic enrichment that a Bakhtinian perspective might suggest. They are likely to resort to safer activities rather than engaging in activities characteristic of collaborative cultures, such as critically reflecting on their work or challenging each other’s practices and assumptions (Hargreaves 1994).

Whilst participating in dialogue with colleagues, teachers may address third persons who are not physically present but who influence the interlocutors’ perspectives and subsequently their utterances. These super-addressees can be cultural values, societal demands, neo-liberalism, educational systems, authorities at different levels, educational research communities, school cultures, school leaders, colleagues, students, and parents. Together, they inform teachers’ past, present, and future actions. Thus, attempts to analyse teacher dialogue needs to take into account the ways in which super-addressees may play a role in conversations between practitioners, and how this might explicitly or implicitly promote or hinder teacher learning.

Learning through dialogue with self

As discussed above, learning through dialogue with colleagues can help teachers to grow professionally, thanks to the dialogic gap between them and the subsequently created dialogic space. By engaging in professional dialogue or conversation, and joint reflection upon lessons, teachers may come to recognise issues and insights that they may not have discovered alone. However, as well as learning from other teachers, practitioners can also grow by engaging in dialogue with the self. This can take place either during or after the lesson – what Schon (1983) terms ‘reflection-in-action’ (69) and ‘reflection-on-action’ (267). Given, as Kozulin (1996) argues, that Bakhtin’s ideas can be applied to ‘human thoughts, acts, and intentions’ (p. 149), processes of reflection-in-action, and reflection-on-action, in which teachers reflect upon their practices on their own, can additionally serve as opportunities to ‘dialogue’ via engaging with current/immediate past practice to inform future practice. Thus, in these two modes of reflection, teachers experience a ‘two-in-one’ thought process which enables them to stop for a moment, reconsider, judge and challenge their thinking (Arendt 1978).

In reflection-in-action, practitioners can interpret interesting or troublesome situations as well as problems encountered over the course of conducting a lesson, reflect on the implicit understandings leading to their action, take further action to address the problems and produce new knowledge or theory (Schon 1983). Reflecting Bakhtinian principles, this requires practitioners to engage constantly in dialogue with an inner self, so that decisions can be swiftly made every moment. Reflection-on-action, on the other hand, takes place after a lesson has been conducted. Practitioners can reflect on various topics directly or indirectly related to the action performed, such as the underlying knowledge or theory behind certain behaviours, how they view problems, the way they feel about a classroom situation, and, broadly, their role in the institution (Schon 1983). Writing a reflective journal is one familiar activity that a practitioner might undertake to reflect individually on practice. From a Bakhtinian perspective, this writing enables teachers to be informed by previous understandings (based upon prior experiences), and for these to be brought into dialogue with current understandings, in order to foster future understandings and work (Bakhtin 1981). Again, this dialogic nature extends to all language use (Bakhtin 1986), including ‘human thoughts, acts, and intentions’ (Kozulin 1996, 149). Nonetheless, although writing provides practitioners with precious opportunities to recall practices and sufficient time to contemplate, the act of writing a reflective journal may be time-consuming and require strong commitment, resources and support. Thus, it is often the case that teachers conduct self-reflection in a non-written form.

Despite concerns that self or individual reflection may not bring about the best solution in a given situation (Harris et al. 2010) and could have limited scope, due to time constraints (Eraut 1994), it is argued that this form of dialogue with the self remains, nonetheless, an extremely important vehicle for teacher learning and growth. When engaged in dialogue with self on these occasions, teachers address an absent self. That self can be understanding and non-judgemental but may have higher expectations compared with the reality, thereby signalling a call to practise change (Khong 2021). At other times, though, the voice of absent addressees could discourage teachers from trying out innovative practices, or create dilemmas, as they have to weigh things up between their desires and the reality, and between new ideas and possible rejection from different stakeholders. In addition, the voice of super-addressees may appear in the dialogue with self. This could be, for instance, the voice of educational authorities, professional associations and standards, or an expected key performance index.

In all, there are many ways in which establishing and maintaining a dialogue with self has the potential to contribute to teacher learning. It must be remembered that not every teacher has a chance to participate regularly in dialogue with colleagues, particularly if they work in institutions that do not value collegial learning and, thus, do not provide organisational support to facilitate it (Huguet, Farrell, and Marsh 2017). In other words, in such institutions, learning has not become a norm and a valued part of the culture. Given this situation, if practitioners are enabled to keep reflecting on their practices on a daily basis, albeit doing so entirely on their own, there is still potential for learning and change. Further, even in situations where practitioners do have abundant opportunities to talk to their colleagues, maintaining a concurrent dialogue with self can help strengthen reflective thought and support teachers to become more deliberate practitioners.

Learning through dialogue with students

Considerable research attention has been paid to the idea of teachers learning from other practitioners, and students learning from peers through discussion. There has, though, been more limited investigation of how teacher learning might evolve through the verbal interactions that practitioners have with students. This may, in some respects, reflect a traditional assumption that teacher-student learning is mono-directional. Since a practitioner’s job is to teach, the teacher, with more knowledge, experience, and expertise, undoubtedly guides the students’ learning. However, although the teacher’s role in student learning is not in doubt, the learning relationship between teachers and students is, arguably, much more complex, allowing multiple directions of learning.

Teaching signifies a learning profession (Darling-Hammond and Sykes 1999). For many practitioners, substantial and meaningful learning occurs when they start their career at a school or other educational institution. This is where theory can be demonstrated in practice and practice can validate, modify, or even challenge theory. More importantly, it can generate further personal, yet powerful theory. Thus, effective teacher learning and professional development needs to be grounded in the context of teachers’ work (Ball and Cohen 1999). Indeed, if classrooms are considered to be optimal learning sites for practitioners, then an important question surely arises regarding the way in which they learn, from whom, and which resources are used. As discussed in the previous sections of this article, teachers can learn by engaging in dialogues with colleagues, and also with the self, through individual reflection (e.g. reflective journals or reflective conversations). These dialogues can take place either during or after lessons; their quality and frequency may determine the nature of influence on teacher learning. However, teachers typically have busy schedules and are constantly handling multiple tasks and multiple professional roles. Thus, unless particular actions are taken by the institution and individual teachers to create opportunities, there is the possibility that these valuable dialogues between colleagues and with the self may not occur: at least, not on a regular basis.

Although students have been acknowledged as teachers’ learning partners (e.g. Fecho et al. (2021) and Warwick et al. (2019)), we believe that there has not yet been sufficient recognition of the considerable potential or significance of this partnership. Given that teachers spend the majority of their working hours with students, there may be many opportunities for students to take the role of teachers’ learning partners in everyday classroom practice. Verbal interactions between teacher and students in the classroom are excellent examples of ‘addressivity’ and, in particular, forms of addressivity involving participants in what might be construed as ‘lower’ (student) and ‘higher’ (teacher) status (Bakhtin 1986). In such situations, students represent important addressees who can help inform teachers’ understandings of their practice, and are very much an example of ‘an immediate participant-interlocutor in an everyday dialogue’ (Bakhtin 1986, 95). By seriously and sincerely listening to and responding to students, practitioners can learn about the challenges encountered by students and, thus, use this understanding to enhance their practice. Furthermore, they are able to learn about students’ lives, as well as discover new aspects and ideas related to the lesson topic that they would not arrive at by themselves (Khong 2021). As teachers and students have very different worldviews, knowledge, and experiences, it is likely that they will not tend to understand or interpret a concept, task, or text in the same way. This ‘otherness’ is likely to be fertile ground for the emergence of dialogic gaps and dialogic space, in which ideas – especially from students – can flow, and meanings can be generated. The differences between them, Bakhtin (1990) argues, can enrich the lives of students and teachers alike.

When these interlocutors have dialogue with each other, Bakhtin’s notions of authoritative voice and internally persuasive voice are of key importance. In cultures where strong hierarchy exists, teachers are considered highly authoritative, and knowledge is viewed as a fixed body of facts to be mastered. Students do not dare to question or challenge their teachers in such contexts (Bjork 2005; Gutierrez 2016; Lall 2017; Maber, Oo, and Higgins 2018; Saito and Tsukui 2008; Saito and Atencio 2013): dialogic space either does not emerge, or is substantially narrowed. In contrast, in situations where teachers do not impose their knowledge on students but, rather, treat differences as serious matters for learning, opening up space for dialogue (Wegerif 2011), students are more likely to share what they think, and experience an internally persuasive voice. It happens when they co-construct knowledge together with peers and teachers, rather than simply being positioned as recipients of knowledge: in this way, students become much more active ‘addressees’. For instance, as has long been understood through assessment for learning (Wiliam 2011), teachers can benefit from having an authentic dialogue with students to explore where the students are in their learning, where they need to go next, and the best means to get there. By actively listening to students, and becoming familiar with their misconceptions and challenges, teachers can use the information to make instructional decisions to improve student learning. In such situations, students and teachers can work collaboratively to strengthen learning and teaching.

As teachers learn from students through dialogue with them, the teacher–student relationship is turned around. That is, in a dialogue, at least momentarily, the teacher ceases to be the one who solely teaches. Instead, the teacher becomes the one to be taught, and the students become the ones to teach while being taught (Cahn 1997). Accordingly, the teacher and students become jointly responsible for a process of growth of all. In this new reciprocal relationship, both parties teach each other at times and, likewise, learn from each other at other times. Thus, the roles of teacher and learner that each alternately adopts during lessons enable both to grow over time – not solely the student. It should be noted that for teacher learning to take place through dialogue with students, it requires the teacher to possess a willingness to learn from the student, and to be sensitive enough to observe, hear, and recognise differences in what students think and understand (Khong 2021). Recognising students’ voices, therefore, demands that teachers undergo a change in their professional identities, which can be a challenge.

It is important to note that, although students can be valuable partners for teacher learning, participation in professional dialogue with students differs from dialogue with self and with colleagues. In the first place, it entails an educational relationship that is not entirely reciprocal or equal, given the teachers’ and the students’ roles in the classroom. As discussed earlier, this may lead to varied perspectives between the two interlocutors in a dialogue, rendering the need for the practitioner to consider carefully the significance and meaning of the students’ talk, in terms of their professional learning. Students’ views can undoubtedly complement those of adults – for example, by pointing out what the adults, or teachers, may tend to ignore or neglect. Such views do enrich teacher learning. However, this channel of dialogue may not be available if the students do not choose to engage; according to Rajala et al. (2016), students as young as 9–10 years may resist teachers’ initiatives or requests. Even if students do accept the invitation to talk, in some cases, it may be that their utterances do not benefit teacher learning. Further, learning through dialogue with students brings with it important ethical requirements and responsibilities for teachers: for example, as the primary purpose of teacher-student dialogue must always be to benefit student learning, teachers need to make sure that this purpose is fulfilled as the first priority.

Limitations

Due to inevitable limitations of scope, this paper only investigates dialogue as an avenue for educators’ professional learning in school-like settings, with a focus on dialogue with three learning partners: colleagues, self, and students. It is acknowledged that teachers can learn and grow through other activities and practices in other professional and non-professional settings, and with partners other than colleagues, self and students. Further, the paper has adopted Bakhtin’s notion of dialogue and related concepts as a way of approaching teacher learning. As a complex concept, dialogue can, of course, be viewed in multiple ways.

Conclusions

Teacher professional learning plays a vital role in improving practice, which ultimately influences the life chances of students. This paper has offered an exploration of the complex construct of authentic dialogue for teacher professional learning. We have drawn on Bakhtin’s notion of dialogue and other related concepts, including addressee and addressivity, otherness, dialogic gap, and dialogic space. This led us to propose a conceptual framework for teacher learning through three channels of dialogue: dialogue with colleagues, dialogue with self, and dialogue with students. In doing so, it has shone a light on the potential for practitioners to dialogue with learning partners who may otherwise be overlooked, including their inner self and their students. We have argued that, in suitably conducive environments, colleagues, self and students can all contribute to teachers’ professional growth. Practitioners can gainfully learn from students in situations where teachers acknowledge students as significant dialogue partners, remain open to learning opportunities during lesson time, and recognise the differences in their ideas and those of their students. We suggest that, in future frameworks of professional learning, a more emphatic focus on dialogue with students would be helpful. The framework we propose is characterised by efforts to identify critical moments in the process of lessons in which teachers interact with students as significant ‘addressees’, in addition to engagement with self and colleagues. Such a multifaceted, student-centred approach could potentially influence and challenge teachers’ existing perspectives and values, fostering enhanced understandings, and practices. Our proposed framework is at an exploratory stage and needs to be developed and refined further through future theoretical and empirical research. Nonetheless, it provides a lens through which to investigate teacher learning via discursive activities across time and space. It is hoped that our discussion might encourage other researchers in the field to undertake their own explorations of what, and how, teachers learn as they are engaged in conversing with colleagues, self and students.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.