Dialogue in the Israeli Classroom: Types of Teacher–Student Talk

Abstract

This paper is part of an ongoing study of discursive behaviour both at home and at school. The overall goal of the analysis presented was to explore the level of dialogicity (Linell, 1998) manifest in Israeli classrooms. This quest was motivated by a sociocultural inclination towards learning, which places instructive dialogue at the core of successful teaching and learning. The question this article addresses is, what are the different types of teacher–student interaction prevailing in the classroom, and how do they affect ways of making meaning? Three main genres of classroom discourse were identified, differing in the degree of their dialogicity: Socratic dialogue – a topical discussion where the final text is created by students and teacher in concert, pseudodialogue – in which the students are made to believe they are engaged in a topical discussion while being assessed on grounds of interpersonal relationships and mode, and monologue in the guise of a dialogue – in which the teacher asks topical questions while seeking the reproduction of her own text. The two latter ones were found to be dominant in the classes we observed.