The authors suggest that a necessary tension exists between authoritative and dialogic approaches as dialogic exchanges are followed by authoritative interventions (to develop the canonical scientific view), and the authoritative introduction of new ideas is followed by the opportunity for dialogic application and exploration of those ideas
This paper describes a methodology for the analysis of classroom talk, called socio-cultural discourse analysis, which focuses on the use of language as a social mode of thinking – a tool for teaching-and-learning, constructing knowledge, creating joint understanding and tackling problems collaboratively. Its application involves a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods and enables the study of both educational processes and learning outcomes