Beyond teaching practices: dialogue as a tool for conceptual change for future teachers

Advocating for dialogic teaching often faces challenges due to limited resources allocated for teacher training (Author, 2021). Developing the necessary proficiency requires substantial time and access to skilled professionals, which may not always be readily available within the educational framework. Consequently, this situation leads to two significant outcomes: the limited integration of dialogic approaches in educational settings despite evidence of their efficacy (Sedova, Salamounova & Svaricek, 2014), and the risk of trivializing or misinterpreting their underlying principles and strategies (Reznitskaya & Gregory, 2013). In addition, several studies reveal how epistemic cognition, defined as thinking about the construction and justification of knowledge, plays an important role in the in shaping teachers' practices (Brownlee, Schraw, & Berthelsen, 2011), but the acquisition of dialogue facilitation techniques does not automatically lead to a change in epistemic cognition (Reznitskaya & Wilkinson, 2019) In response to these challenges, we developed a training and research protocol for students in the Primary Education course at the University of Milano-Bicocca. The protocol aimed to immerse future teachers in dialogic practices, allowing them to experience the transformative potential of this approach firsthand. Rather than providing a comprehensive program, the goal was to instigate conceptual change and intrinsic motivation among future teachers to fully grasp the potential of dialogic teaching and continue their training in the field. The dialogic practices tested were Socratic Challenge (Author, 2023) and Inquiry Dialogue with the use of the Argumentation Rating Tool (Reznitskaya & Wilkinson, 2021). Active participation in dialogic sessions and metacognitive reflection allowed future teachers to critically reflect on their professional identity and practices. Conceptual changes emerged regarding the potential of dialogue, highlighting the fundamental role of critical analysis and error recognition in dialogic teaching.