What Are We Taking for Granted? Questioning Core Assumptions of Dialogic Teaching

Classroom dialogue, where students formulate and defend their ideas, can foster critical thinking and deep understanding of disciplinary knowledge (Asterhan & Schwarz, 2016; Billings & Fitzgerald, 2002; Felton et al., 2015; Kuhn & Moore, 2015). Key features of productive dialogue include active participation, reasoning with evidence, and consideration of alternative perspectives (Bouton & Asterhan, 2023; Hennessy et al., 2016; Howe et al., 2019; Author, 2013).Yet, the mere presence of these features may not be enough to support a disciplined, intellectually rigorous activity that enables students to discriminate between better and worse ideas (c.f., Backman et al., 2023; Chinn et al., 2016). For example, McNeill et al. (2016) found that while science discussions featured reasons and evidence, participants rarely evaluated the quality of these argument elements or their relevance to supporting the main claim, a practice the authors referred to as “pseudoargumentation.”In this presentation, we question common assumptions of dialogic teaching as we introduce a novel approach to discussion, called the Socratic Challenge. The Socratic Challenge relies on teacher-led, truth-seeking dialogue to support the development of critical thinking. With its brief exchanges between the teacher and the students aimed to reveal errors in students’ reasoning, the Socratic Challenge demonstrates that student-centered pedagogy does not need to embody a relativist stance, in which students’ ideas are treated as equally valid (c.f., Windschitl,2002). Although empirical evidence on the effectiveness of the Socratic Challenge remains limited (Author, 2023), the initial findings and theoretical insights invite a re-consideration of several core assumptions of dialogic teaching.