Reconceptualising first year professional experience : Enacting a repertoire of learning focused talk for efficacy in teaching practice

This chapter builds upon a substantial body of literature focused on the taken-for-grantedness of classroom interaction for enacting academically productive talk in lessons; but extends this focus into pre-service teacher education. It is argued that to know about the role of classroom talk in learning is simply not enough; what is required is an explicit practical focus on learning to listen, observe and interact with students in classrooms and be mentored in the process. Therefore, it will be proposed that developing a repertoire of learning focused, flexible and academically enriching interaction practices requires overt designed-in opportunities for pre-service teachers to both learn about and to practise. To do this, the chapter draws on a 3-year empirical study conducted at a regional Australian university that investigated how learning to interact in contextually relevant sites is critical for bridging and extending the theory-practice nexus. A key finding was that by having pre-service teachers, in their first year professional experience placements, focus critically on listening to and interacting with students within the inter-subjective spaces of classrooms, there was a distinctive shift in how they perceived what teaching entails. Furthermore, results reveal how practising enacting particular talk moves produces the kinds of substantive learning conversations required to achieve the outcomes of the curriculum at the same time create a more dialogic and participatory classroom culture.