Session 1 Workshop 3

Margaret Turnbull has almost 40 years working in EAL/D in NSW is currently a doctoral student at the University of Wollongong. For the majority of her career, she has worked in NSW education system. As an EAL/D leader in NSW, she developed EAL/D policy, teacher professional learning in EAL/D pedagogy and assessment practices and initiated EAL/D research. More recently she has worked as a language and literacy advisor to the Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA) advising on the Australian English Curriculum, the National Literacy Learning Progressions and the EAL/D Teacher resource.

Margret has always been passionate about the role of talk in learning for EAL/D students and hence dialogic pedagogy is the focus on my research. She is keen to share her understandings and practical strategies with participants at the conference. 

Prioritising purposeful talk for explicit teaching

In the current education context, much emphasis is being placed on explicit teaching. The Australian Government’s Strong Beginnings: Report of the Teacher Education Expert Panel (2023) recommended explicit teaching as core content in all Initial Teacher Education programs. Policy documents conceive explicit teaching as ‘designed-in’ strategies but overlook the aspect of ‘interactional scaffolding’ described by Hammond and Gibbons (2005) as critical to learning. 

This workshop builds on our existing wealth of knowledge in EAL/D research about the role of talk in learning and language development.  Extracts of classroom interactions are examined to identify features of teacher talk that scaffold language learning and apprentice students into disciplinary ways of reading and writing. Participants engage with a range of strategies for developing talk that builds bridges between every day and academic language. A framework is introduced that can be used to differentiate lessons to ensure talk is aligned with language and learning goals. This workshop puts talk front and center in the teaching learning cycle.

Workshop participants will:

• have an overview of current research into dialogic pedagogy
• identify features of teacher talk that scaffold learning and engagement
• identify strategies for planning for scaffolding talk in the classroom
• use a framework for evaluating oracy in the classroom