“classroom talk is not merely a conduit for the sharing of information, or a means for controlling the

exuberance of youth; it is the most important educational tool for guiding the development of
understanding and for jointly constructing knowledge.”
(Neil Mercer; Exploring Talk in Schools)

“The communication system that teacher sets up in a lesson shapes the roles that the pupils can play, and
goes some distance to determining the kinds of learning that they engage in.”
(Douglas Barnes; Exploratory Talk for Learning)

“a teacher’s attention is not given solely to the content of what is being taught; it is also necessary to
manage social relations in the classroom”
(Douglas Barnes; Exploratory Talk for Learning)

“being ‘active’ does not imply moving about the room or manipulating objects … but rather attempting to
interrelate, to reinterpret, to understand new experiences and ideas”
(Douglas Barnes; Exploratory Talk for Learning)

“each of us can only learn by making sense of what happens to us in the course of actively constructing a
world for ourselves”
(Douglas Barnes; Exploratory Talk for Learning)

“their [teachers] central task is to set up situations and challenges that will encourage their pupils to
relate new ideas and ways of thinking to existing understanding and expectations in order to modify
them.”
(Douglas Barnes; Exploratory Talk for Learning)

“Exploratory talk is hesitant and incomplete because it enables the speaker to try out ideas, to hear how
they sound, to see what others make of them, to arrange information and ideas into different patterns”
(Douglas Barnes; Exploratory Talk for Learning)

“teachers move towards presentational talk (and writing) too soon, when pupils are still at the stage of
digesting new ideas”
(Douglas Barnes; Exploratory Talk for Learning)

“Group discussion should also never be seen as a laissez-faire option. Successful group work requires
preparation, guidance and supervision, and needs to be embedded in an extended sequence of work that
includes other patterns of communication”
(Douglas Barnes; Exploratory Talk for Learning)
“If they [teachers] see their role as simply the transmission of authoritative knowledge they are less likely
to give their pupils the opportunity to explore new ideas”
(Douglas Barnes; Exploratory Talk for Learning)

“The provision of useful material for discussion – demonstrations, apparatus, maps, pictures, texts – and a
habit of inviting pupils to predict and justify their predictions will let them know that thinking aloud is
valuable”
(Douglas Barnes; Exploratory Talk for Learning)

“Her [the teacher’s] body language will say that she has all the time in the world for good thinking to
occur. Often the silence will be broken by one voice, and then others will follow. Students are not afraid
that they will be laughed at or mocked, because a strong community has been built up and continues to
be nurtured)”
(Kathryn M. Pierce and Carol Giles; From Exploratory Talk to Critical Conversations)

“When students go public with their work, they will begin to see that work from a new perspective. They
will consider what they have learned or realised through their discussions”
(Kathryn M. Pierce and Carol Giles; From Exploratory Talk to Critical Conversations)

Exploratory talk should include the following:

 Partners engage critically but constructively with each other’s ideas
 Everyone participates
 Tentative ideas are treated with respect
 Ideas offered for joint consideration may be challenged
 Challenges are justified and alternative ideas or understandings are offered
 Opinions are sought and considered before decisions are jointly made
 Knowledge is made publicly accountable (and so reasoning is visible in the talk)
(Neil Mercer and Lyn Dawes; The Value of Exploratory Talk)

“teachers are striving to extend their repertoire of teacher talk, but as yet rather less attention is being
given to the repertoire of learning talk, and the systematic building of children’s capacities to narrate,
explain, instruct, question, respond, build upon responses, analyse, speculate, explore, evaluate, discuss,
argue, reason, justify and negotiate”
(Robin Alexander; Culture, Dialogue and Learning: Notes on an Emerging Pedagogy)

“To bring about lasting change a different vision of teaching is required, one that goes beyond a concern
with the use of appropriate discourse and moves to a recognition of the centrality of dialogue as a means
of developing both group and individual understanding”
(Gordon Wells and Tamara Ball; Exploratory Talk and Dialogic Inquiry)
“I know that on some occasions my own understanding has improved through having to explain
something to a friend who understand it less well and asked for help. One good test of whether of nor you
really understand something is having to explain it to someone else”
(Neil Mercer; The Guided Construction of Knowledge)

“one way that [teachers] feel that their competence is judge by senior staff, pupils, parents and the rest of
the world is: can they keep their classes quiet?”
(Neil Mercer; The Guided Construction of Knowledge)

“The fact that children were sitting together at a table did not mean that they were collaborating … we
should not presume that group-based learning is inevitably valuable – it depends on what purpose it has,
and how it is organized by the teacher”
(Neil Mercer; The Guided Construction of Knowledge)

“One factor that does seem important is whether or not the experimental conditions are such that they
children have to communicate and collaborate to solve a problem (rather than simply being allowed to do
so)”
(Neil Mercer; The Guided Construction of Knowledge)

“If we encourage and enable children to use language in certain ways – to ask certain kinds of questions,
to clearly describe events, to account for outcomes and consolidate what they have learned in words – we
are helping the understand and gain access to educated discourse”
(Neil Mercer; The Guided Construction of Knowledge)