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27 May 2025

How does talk shape learning? In this episode, recorded live from the 2025 Literacy Summit, Dr Debra Myhill and Dr Rupert Wegerif dive into why oracy, the ability to speak and listen effectively, is at the heart of literacy. They explore how teachers can create rich classroom discussions that build confidence, critical thinking, and inclusion. Join us as we discuss how dialogue can be both a means and an end in education, fostering deeper learning and a more thoughtful, engaged society.

Show Notes

Transcript

Dale Atkinson: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to Teach a podcast about teaching and learning in º£½ÇÖ±²¥ Australia. My name is Dale Atkinson from º£½ÇÖ±²¥ Australia's Department for Education, and today we are at the 2025 Literacy Summit and we're with Professor Rupert Wegerif and Professor Debra Myhill. Welcome to you both.

Rupert Wegerif: Welcome.

Debra Myhill: Welcome. Yeah. Thank you.

Dale Atkinson: Now Debra, we've just brought you off the stage for the closing address, uh, where you were talking about a presentation. I'm gonna give the title here a ‘Sea of Talk, why Oracy Matters in Literacy Learning. Why does oracy matter?

Debra Myhill: Well, because it's foundational to all learning. It's no accident that we learn to talk before we learn to read and write, uh, and when we are learning to talk as young children, we're making sense, not just of language, but of ourselves and our world, and then everything that follows reading and writing is linked to that notion of making sense of ourselves and our world.

Dale Atkinson: And what's the role of the teacher in this?

Debra Myhill: Fundamental, I mean the, the, you can learn through talk in all sorts of different settings, informal settings, [00:01:00] family settings.

So it's not that the only place that you learn through talk is schools or educational settings, but the role of the teacher is, important because there are goals in mind. I suppose what's different about education is that you are there for a purpose. And so the teacher is needed to lead that talk, to facilitate the talk, but also I think to teach children about how to do that kind of talk.

It may not be a natural way of talking, and that they have to learn how to do that, how to manage disagreement, how to manage uncertainty, how to recognise that actually the teacher isn't after a right answer. But Rupert could say a lot more about that than,

Rupert Wegerif: Oh, no, no, that's excellent times. Yes.

Dale Atkinson: Now, in terms of the teacher, not like searching for the right answers as it were.

Um, what does the classroom practice look like from an educator in this when they're trying to activate the oracy in this space?

Rupert Wegerif: Well the teacher could be a model. It's in a way, as [00:02:00] Debra was saying earlier, it's about the dialogic stance, so you can see that very clearly, just how you respond to a question.

Some teachers feel very uncomfortable when they don't know the answer and they're trying to give the authoritative answer. But other teachers who genuine thinkers themselves, it is something you can't just imitate. You actually have to, unfortunately, I think you have to think, and when someone asks you a question, you can say, well, I don't know.

What do other people think? How would we find out any ideas? You know, and you can model that process of shared inquiry, which ultimately I think is something we want to induct them into. It's more scientific than a sort of idea that you have this authoritative knowledge you're transmitting.

Dale Atkinson: So what's being activated socially and mentally for the kids when you're approaching it in this kind of dialogic way.

Rupert Wegerif: You know, you're transferring authority, you're encouraging them to think, well, yes, actually I am the agent of my own thinking. I can think things [00:03:00] through. And at the end of the educational process, you want, uh, kids, children, students who are able to think for themselves and have their own motivations and projects, and it's kind of important in this day and age that we instill that confidence in them. I think it was Debra who told me that, uh, it's a bit of a slightly different issue, but the main difference between, I worked with Debra for many years in Exeter and she taught me everything I know, head of the faculty, uh, she was pointing out that what you're getting with private education and the independent schools in England are, are very influential.

It isn't a different kind of knowledge, it's a different kind of confidence. It's the sense that you can do it and that you have a right to think for yourself. And we should give that to all children. And that's what dialogic education does. Takes them seriously, listens to them.

Dale Atkinson: Interesting point there around building confidence within the learners. Within the º£½ÇÖ±²¥ Australian public schools, there's obviously an incredibly [00:04:00] diverse student body. Lots of different language backgrounds, lots of different cultures, and those with varying degrees of speech and language difficulties. Is this still applicable? To all, or is this just going to work within spaces where they already have that confidence?

Debra Myhill: I think it's particularly important for groups who aren't part of what you might call the, the, the standard or the norm because it is a way of giving them a voice. It's a way of being more genuinely inclusive rather than expecting students simply to integrate into the normal ways of working in the classroom.

I think with um, things like children who've got English is an additional language or Indigenous languages that they've got at home. You don't want them to think they've got to leave those languages at the door when they come into school and can only talk in English and the dialogic talk, you can have dialogue.

There was one of the examples in one of the sessions I went, was in today where someone was talking about the different proverbs that occur in different languages that often [00:05:00] mean the same, have the same message, but they're expressed in different ways in different languages and children were talking about the ways different languages, express those things, and that's enabling for children who bring a different language into the classroom. So for me, part of being, making classroom and learning classrooms and learning more equitable and inclusive is recognising that there is a place for the dialogic for everybody and obviously wherever, whoever you've got as your learners.

Where you’re starting from is different. Now, obviously, if you've got a different language at home, you may not be able to think in English in the same way that you can think in your home language. And teachers can facilitate that in the classroom by, you know, having opportunities for them to think in their home language first before they say it in English.

There's all sorts of strategies that can be used to help that, but yes, it's not, dialogic talk is not only for the standard groups.

Dale Atkinson: What are the skills that we are [00:06:00] looking to develop in educators or that they should be looking to develop in themselves to activate this?

Debra Myhill: I think for me it's been critically reflective about what learning's happening in your classroom.

And for me that's partly because education, probably not so much in Australia, I don’t know, but in England has become very mandated, narrowed, scripted, and people have forgot to question. What learning's really going on here? And I think that teachers who can reflect on, well, we've done this, we've talked about that, they all gave me the right answers.

Have they really understood? One of the things about dialogic talk that I don't think any of us have talked about today is that if you do create a dialogic classroom where you are really getting children to express what they think for a teacher, you can often assess where their learning is more effectively than any other tests that you do 'cause you actually hear where they are so you can build their learning from that.

Dale Atkinson: It's interesting that you talk about the interface between the kids in that space and hearing them [00:07:00] learning and using teacher judgment technology and particularly the eyes of AI, is something that's very much in the minds of educators and how this might apply and work. What are the risks and opportunities that exist with technology in terms of activating dialogic interactions in classrooms?

Rupert Wegerif: Well, the risks that many teachers are mentioning are mainly concerned that the students aren't thinking for themselves. They're just asking their Chat GPT or or other AIs are available, uh, for the answer and just thinking, oh, that's enough. And they're putting, putting that down. And there's quite good evidence that they're learning far less from homework than they used to with this approach.

And surveys are suggesting that that fear is entirely well grounded. That there’s been surveys suggesting that as the use of AI increases, the development of critical thinking decreases so that that's, uh, a problem. But that's exactly why we need a dialogic education approach [00:08:00] 'cause what are these students doing?

They're in a system that incentivises just giving the pat answers and getting a tick, and that's their only motive. If their motive was actual curiosity and learning, then the AI is an incredible tool. So, we need to teach them how to use it as a learning assistant, how to interrogate it, ask it questions, get it to expand the range of perspectives and take their projects forward.

So I think for me it's an opportunity, but clearly many people see it as very dangerous.

Dale Atkinson: I think there's always an opportunity, but there's always a risk as well. There's a, an element of comfort, I think for parents and education systems as well, and sometimes schools around having a standard by which you can judge where a student is at in this space and ability to have a correct or incorrect answer is very useful in that space to understand exactly where these kids are at.

How do we communicate and prioritise this as an approach within the education system when sometimes there are some perverse [00:09:00] incentives to go after the score?

Debra Myhill: You change your assessment system. I mean, I think one you, you said that sense that every teacher wants to know what grade their children's at.

For me, one of the problems with systems that are heavily orientated around high stakes assessments mandated nationally is that that isn't what the teachers are doing the assessments for. They're doing it for that instrumental purpose of we've got to get those grades 'cause we'll be judged by them, if not, but nine times out of 10, the teacher knows where the child's at, so in fact, they don't need the assessments to know where the child is at. I would like to see teachers become even more proficient at assessment that doesn't require you to do a test that's got a number attached to it but is much more focused on student learning.

What is it they can do? What is it they can't do, and what do they need to do next would be the fundamental assessment questions, and really it should be a live activity and it should be happening all the time in your interactions with children, and that's where I think [00:10:00] the dialogic stuff is important because through those interactions, the teacher does see where children are at and misconceptions can often come out that way.

So I've got very little faith in formalised written assessments as a tool for learning. They're largely just a tool for accountability, which is a different function.

Dale Atkinson: Certainly is. In both of your travels, what are the things that you observe in a classroom environment where this is really humming, like this is going really well, the teacher's got complete mastery of the classroom using some of these techniques, what are you seeing? What should you know, leaders and educators been looking out for?

Debra Myhill: Well, I, I think I would say there, you'd see it in the relationships and interactions that occur reflect a sense that learning isn't fixed.  That knowledge isn't fixed, but it is developing and growing.

Well, you'd see it in the nature of the interactions of teachers with children [00:11:00] because you'd, you'd see that they aren't just searching for one right answer. In particular, you'd see that the teacher is capable of really listening to what children say, um, and builds on what the child says for the next question. And it doesn’t have to be a question? It could just be a prompt or a statement. It's not all about questioning. So you see people working together to learn. And one of the things I would say is it isn't necessarily easy to do that any teacher, you know, with a real classroom, with some naughty kids in the corner or whatever. The pressures to revert back to very teacher controlled, management oriented ways of learning, I think is very powerful. But if you are in a classroom like that over time, what you see is those naughty children do often change because suddenly they feel they actually have a voice, a real voice, not a fake voice. And I think that really matters.

Dale Atkinson: Seems like a lot of roads lead back to student agency in all of this [00:12:00] control and some sort of input and feeling of, uh, involvement in their own learning. It's such a powerful thing for, for a young person. Rupert your keynote presentation was titled Dialogue as an Aim of Education as well as a means of education.

What's the difference between those two things and how are they the same?

Rupert Wegerif: We have shown that through dialogic education approaches, you can achieve better results on the sort of standardised tests that Debra was just a bit uncomfortable about. So you can use it as a tool to, to achieve results. But I actually think it's important for everybody involved, parents, teachers, and students to have a vision of what education is, is for, and that vision makes a big difference so that when you are deciding as a policy maker or, or as a teacher, just when you're deciding on your activities and your response, when a child asks you your question. I think if you realise that your aim is to expand dialogue as to say, to [00:13:00] initiate thinking, to explore multiple perspectives and widening the dialogue, to deepen it, to question your assumptions and to understand that that is your goal.

Your goal isn't to get lots of right answers on a test. Your goal is to develop the sort of wise people who are able to see multiple perspectives and able to listen to alternative points of view without just rejecting them with a possibility of learning from them. And that's kind of what we're trying to do, both wise individuals, but also collectively for well, the future of the planet is actually, we should be thinking about promoting the possibility of dialogue, collaboration, and collective intelligence to solve the kind of challenges that we face. So it's important. An example. I, I'll give though. 'cause you know, I, I, I'm sorry carrying on I talk too much, but I mentioned, uh, in, in the talk, uh, the OECD. They've been promoting a human capital vision of education, which is [00:14:00] something to do with GDP and economies and so on, and they're getting a lot of kickback from people who aren't too happy at the suicide rates. And, and so they are, they're actively exploring, and already committed to a human flourishing model.

And that immediately made me realise that's why they're cutting all the arts and the theatre and they're just going for STEM and they're going for the results because of their vision of what education is. And if we just switch it from the top down to human flourishing, it would bring back the arts. Because you'd have to, for wellbeing, you have this chance through drama, through literature to understand yourself and the meaning of your own life and to, uh, work in communities so you'd have more, you know, music festival. My point is that the vision of education from the top makes a difference. And I'm proposing, I mean, I like flourishing, it's a bit vague, but I think expanding dialogue is a good one and we should go with that as well.

Dale Atkinson: I think expanding dialogue and you said earlier, developing wise people is a mission [00:15:00] statement, is a, is a fairly good summary. Dr. Wegerif, Dr. Myhill, thank you very much for your time. O

Rupert Wegerif: Oh, thank you.

Debra Myhill: Brilliant. Thank you.