Class constraints on dialogue

The starting point for this talk is the educational disadvantage socioeconomically marginalised students continue to experience at school relative to their more privileged peers (e.g., European Commission 2020; Hutchinson et al. 2020; Simon 2021). There is increasing evidence that spoken language has a significant role to play in addressing these inequalities (e.g., Oracy APPG 2021). Studies of talk-intensive (or ‘dialogic’) pedagogies have demonstrated that children who experience academically robust classroom discussion make greater progress at school than their peers who have not had this experience (Resnick, Asterhan & Clarke 2015), with the greatest benefit accruing to children on free school meals (used as a proxy measure of socioeconomic status) (Alexander 2018). Yet, dialogic teaching and learning is rarely enacted in schools serving low-income and racially minoritized populations (e.g., Applebee, Langer, Nystrand, & Gamoran 2003; Kelly 2008).

In this talk, I draw upon linguistic ethnographic data and analyses to explore the mechanisms through which some groups of children are denied access to dialogic talk at school, and thus to learning opportunities. I focus in particular on a detailed case study of one school where a ‘hidden curriculum’ (Giroux and Purpel 1983) emphasised strict control of talk, behaviour and bodies for working-class children perceived by their teachers to be immature and unruly. I argue that these perceptions are underpinned by widely shared discourses of language, class, and ability, and thus that the approach to classroom interaction evidenced at this school is representative of a more general pattern. Here, I shift the focus away from individual teachers and their interactions with students to the broader social and political context that ‘shapes the institutional listening subject positions that teachers are able to inhabit’ (Flores, Lewis & Phuong 2018: 23).