An investigation into postgraduate trainee teachers' beliefs about the role of dialogue in teaching and learning: fostering 'reflection and reciprocity' through modelling.

The rationale for this research is a belief, based on observation of teaching practice, and learning behaviour in sessions, that primary postgraduate student teachers may tend to position themselves as receptors and transmitters of knowledge, rather than active users, and promoters, of dialogue for cognition. A year-long action research project was undertaken with a group of self-selecting students drawn from a larger purposive sample, to determine if they were able to articulate the way in which they could alter their practice by actively promoting dialogue. To this end, the Learning to Learn (Claxton, 2006; Campaign for Learning, 2003) strategies of ‘reflection’ and ‘reciprocity’ were explicitly modelled in taught English sessions at university. The study suggests that, although the taught English course did encourage students to use practical strategies for promoting dialogue, for most, the realities of the school climate were paramount. Generally students’ belief sets remained largely unaltered, despite an espoused wish to ‘improve’ their practice. It seems clear that to address this, the university must take more seriously its role as the dialogic space