Better than Best Practice: Developing teaching and learning through dialogue

This really is the book we’ve been waiting for. Better than Best Practice is not just another evangelising text about the need to move classroom talk beyond the default of closed questioning, recall answers and minimal feedback but an offering that is richer, more subtle and much more useful. Alongside a rigorous but accessible examination of the thinking and evidence behind dialogic pedagogy the book provides videographic and transcript case material of dialogue as it happens, together with contextual information and commentaries. This makes enthralling reading - and viewing - in its own right as well as superb material for professional discussion and development. But perhaps the book’s central virtue is that it lives as well as commends the dialogic principle. For this is a book of many voices - children, teachers, authors, researchers and invited commentators; and they do not necessarily agree, which is precisely the dialogic point. So it’s impossible to evade the message that dialogue is indivisible. If it’s good for young learners then it’s essential for their teachers – and for all of us.

- Professor Robin Alexander, Professor of Education Emeritus, University of Warwick and Chairman, The Cambridge Primary Review Trust, CU Faculty of Education

Better than Best Practice offers a new way of thinking about classroom practice, professional development, and improving teaching and learning. This companion book and website together offer a selection of rich and realistic video-based case studies, context and narrative, step-by-step guidance through key issues, and commentary and debate from a range of expert contributors.　

Carefully chosen video clips from primary school literacy lessons show real teachers in a variety of often knotty situations: classroom conversations that take unexpected turns; grappling with assessment; managing disagreements, to name a few. The book explores the educational potential of classroom talk and, in particular, the promise and problems of dialogic pedagogy.　

With an emphasis on the complexity and ‘messiness’ of teaching, Better than Best Practice considers how to learn from observing and discussing practice in order to develop professional judgment. It offers practical advice on how to organise and facilitate video-based professional development in which teachers share their practice with colleagues in order to learn from one another’s challenges, problems, dilemmas and breakthroughs.　

This exciting new resource argues that critical discussions of practice, which highlight dilemmas instead of prescribing solutions, help to develop and support thoughtful, flexible, and insightful practitioners: an approach that is better than best practice.