Abstract:
There is an urgent need to provide more effective approaches to teaching and learning for Pasifika learners in English medium contexts that are deliberate and enable active and culturally sustained engagement. A dialogic approach to teaching might add to those practices that are effective.
Dialogic approaches to pedagogy entail change components specific to both teachers and learners. They draw on communicative, social, and cultural foundations. Long-standing research in New Zealand (Chu et al., 2013; Coxon et al., 2002) identifies numerous factors at both micro (e.g. classroom) and macro (e.g. policy) levels that can impact positively and negatively on Pasifika student’s learning and achievement but there is little research about dialogic pedagogy specifically for our growing Pasifika student population.
It is argued that dialogic approaches provide opportunities for students to engage with learning; build on and sustain individual and collective identities; and advance their thinking and understanding in ways that support enhanced achievement. Understanding what the discourse patterns in classrooms look like is therefore significant. This study provides an in-depth analysis of the interactive experiences of six teachers ranging from New Entrant to Year 8 in 2 Auckland primary schools following dialogic approaches to literacy instruction being adopted for Pasifika students.
Shifting practice toward dialogic pedagogy has been found to be particularly challenging (Alexander, 2006; Cazden, 2001; Mercer, 2003). Several factors provide constraints and enablers for the pedagogical practice. This study proposes that classroom discussion in literacy, combined with a pedagogic approach to lesson design that is dialogic, can provide improved learning conditions. However, this shift requires a level of reconciliation between the nature of dialogic pedagogy and a Pasifika worldview. Identifying the place and value of dialogue for Pasifika students and where and how this is situated in the formal school space by all the participants is the focus of the study.
Talanoa (Vaioleti, 2006, 2016) has been used to conceptualise the design of an analytic framework used primarily to code discourse features between teachers and their Pasifika leaners. Talanoa is an Oceanic principle that is generally defined as talk, both formal and informal. Core values of respect and reciprocity underpin Talanoa. A phased approach over one school year was used to amplify then refine teaching practices and culminated in a directory of effective dialogic instruction using a design-based research approach. A focus on
valuing Pasifika students’ understanding of their own and their teachers’ discourse practices as a point of reference improved patterns of talk across all six classrooms involved, with greater frequency of higher order talk, and lower rates of teacher ‘over-talk’.
The findings have important implications for how research for and with Pasifika is conducted in future. It has demonstrated the value of student contributions to solve localised issues, elevated teachers as researchers and woven the cultural underpinning of Talanoa into a classroom discourse framing that can better support a sustained move towards more dialogic pedagogy.