Professor Rupert Wegerif, Cambridge education scholar and dialogic-learning pioneer, discusses how teaching children to reason together reshapes classrooms and thinking. He describes the Thinking Together approach, why group work often fails and how simple dialogue ground rules help. The conversation spans classroom practice, culture as a living tradition, double dialogue with disciplines, and the implications of AI for dialogic learning.
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question_answer ANECDOTE
How a PhD in EdTech Became Dialogue Research
Rupert Wegerif joined an ed‑tech lab but was drawn to classroom dialogue after reading Derek Edwards and Neil Mercer on talk.
His PhD worked with primary pupils talking around computers and led to the Thinking Together programme evaluation using Raven matrices.
question_answer ANECDOTE
SLANT Videos Sparked Exploratory Talk Lessons
The SLANT project recorded ~50 hours of children talking around computers and revealed poor default group talk (domination, off‑task chat).
That led to developing exploratory talk teaching and the Thinking Together intervention.
insights INSIGHT
Make Education Dialogue Centred
Wegerif reframes the pedagogy debate: it's not teacher‑centred vs student‑centred but dialogue‑centred.
Knowledge is seen as a living dialogue to which learners must be inducted and participate critically.
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“It’s not about teacher-centred or student-centred. I would argue it’s dialogue-centred.”
In this episode of the Rethinking Education podcast, Dr James Mannion and The Read David Cameron explore these questions with Professor Rupert Wegerif, author of Rethinking Educational Theory: Education as Expanding Dialogue.
Rupert has spent decades researching how dialogue shapes thinking and learning. Drawing on work with Neil Mercer and the Thinking Together programme, he shows how teaching children to reason and talk together can improve thinking, deepen understanding across subjects, and even transform classroom culture.
But this conversation goes far beyond classroom strategies. Rupert argues that dialogue is not just a teaching technique – it is a fundamental way of understanding knowledge, identity, and even reality itself.
In this wide-ranging discussion we explore:
- Why teaching children how to talk together can dramatically improve learning outcomes
- The origins of the Thinking Together programme and what the research found in classrooms
- Why group work often fails – and how simple ground rules for dialogue can transform it
- The relationship between oracy, dialogue and thinking
- The idea of culture as a “living tradition” that students must learn to participate in
- How dialogue can bridge the long-running divide between traditional and progressive education
- Rupert’s concept of “double dialogue” – learning through conversation with both peers and disciplinary traditions
- Why education should be dialogue-centred, rather than teacher-centred or student-centred
- The deeper philosophical idea that knowledge and meaning emerge through dialogic space
- What generative AI means for education – and why dialogic thinking may matter more than ever
Along the way, the conversation ranges from classroom practice to philosophy, drawing on thinkers such as Vygotsky, Bakhtin, Paulo Freire, Michael Oakeshott and Merleau-Ponty.
The result is a fascinating exploration of education as something far richer than the transmission of information – a process of entering, expanding and contributing to the ongoing dialogue of human culture.
About Rupert Wegerif
Professor Rupert Wegerif is Professor of Education at the University of Cambridge. His work focuses on dialogic education, thinking and learning, and the role of dialogue in human development. He has worked extensively with Neil Mercer and others on the Thinking Together programme, exploring how structured dialogue can improve reasoning, understanding and collaboration in classrooms.
Links
Rupert’s Substack - https://rupertwegerif.substack.com
Rupert’s website - https://www.rupertwegerif.com
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