Comparative Evaluation of Dialogic versus Monologic Pedagogy among EFL Instructors and Teacher Educators in Iran (Research Paper)

Comparative Evaluation of Dialogic versus Monologic Pedagogy among EFL Instructors and Teacher Educators in Iran 

^[1]Mojtaba Yaqubi

^[2]Naser Rashidi*

IJEAP- 1901-1337

Abstract

The present study attempted to investigate how language teacher educators evaluated two current approaches: monologic or prevalent pedagogy which is widely practiced all across the world including Iran, and dialogic pedagogy which is theoretically established by Yakubinsky, Bakhtin, and Vygotsky. The study tried to understand, whether Iranian EFL teachers and teacher educators preferred to adopt a monologic or dialogic approach and what they assumed to be the obstacles of their employment and its attributed features. To do so, through convenience and random sampling, the researcher administered a questionnaire consisting of 30 Likert-scale items among 150 EFL teachers and practitioners in order to explore whether they (tended to practice) practiced either dialogic or monologic teaching. Then, the researcher interviewed around seven percent of the interviewees, i.e.10 of them, who were EFL teacher educators in Iranian pedagogic setting. Through both quantitative analysis of the questionnaire and qualitative analysis of the interview, it was found that most EFL teachers and teacher instructors had an ultimate inclination to practice dialogic teaching, though in reality may not.  This process highlighted some interesting reflections that made it possible for the researcher to explore language teachers' and teacher educators' acquaintance, conceptualization and (re)orientation about monologism and dialogism. The analysis of the collected data indicated that what is common in Iranian EFL contexts is completely agreeable with monologic practice. Despite the fact that for more than a century, the credibility and effectiveness of monologic approach has been criticized, primarily in Russia and later all across the globe, Iranian curriculum developers, EFL teacher educators and, consequently, English teachers had not adequately been able to move along with the new engagement-oriented, autonomy-fostering, emergence-welcoming, affordance-facilitating, agency-dominated  and synergistic ecology of dialogic pedagogy.

Keywords: Dialogism, Monologism, Scaffolding, Agency, Emergence

1. Introduction

Sociocultural theory (SCT) is fundamentally a theory of learning and teaching. Unlike positivists who argue that knowledge is embodied in an objective reality that can be discovered or revealed, the SCT maintains that knowledge is both time and context dependent since it is open to myriad justifications and interpretations and is also particularly emerged through meaningful and genuine social interaction. Human practices, according to Crotty (1998), are what all knowledge and meaningful reality as such, is contingent upon. So, knowledge is constructed in and out of the interaction between human beings and their world. Accordingly, the development and transmission of knowledge takes place within an essentially social context. 

Overall, teaching approaches can be classified into monologic and dialogic. While the former believes in the mono-voicedness, particularly of teachers in instruction, as common in all traditional approaches toward teaching, the latter welcomes multi-voicedness since it strives to pay as much attention to the teacher’s talk as to the pupil’s talk. Grounded in research on the relationship between language, learning, thinking, and understanding, dialogic teaching probes the proposition that active participants are not provided with ready-made or pre-fabricated answers in an authentic and genuine communication, i.e. somehow congruent with the concept of open-ended tasks (Ellis, 2003; Yaqubi & Razmjoo, 2016; Yaqubi, 2005). However, in monologism, it is strongly believed that the ultimate voice is supposed to belong to teachers, which is solely and highly valued and followed. Consequently, monologic participants, who are not as mentally active as dialogic participants, rely on the established authority of accepted omniscient opinions for their knowledge (Alexander, 2008). Rejecting the idea of teachers as authors or transmitter of knowledge who favors explanatory practice in teaching (Rashidi & Yaqubi, 2015), dialogic pedagogy which meets the principles of exploratory teaching (Richards & Rodgers, 2014) attempts to introduce teachers as assistants to the learners' exploration of meaning, evidence, and application of reasoned argument (Jamali, 2015).

Even though several studies have been conducted in dialogic teaching practices, most of them have focused on contexts where English is the first language (Hennessy, 2006, Steadman, 2006; Alexander, 2008; Sulivan et.al, 2009). Hence, more elucidating attempts ought to be made to pinpoint, primarily, the barriers and obstacles of dialogic approach in teaching especially in EFL contexts, and secondly, some potential and practical ideas to effectively implement and practice dialogic approach in similar settings. Thus, the present study strives to answer the following questions:

Research Question One: How is dialogic pedagogy evaluated by English teachers and teacher educators?

Research Question Two: To what extent do EFL teachers and practitioners incline to employ either monologic or dialogic teaching?

1. Literature Review

2.1. Monologism and Dialogism

Bakhtin (1986) makes a distinction between monologic and dialogic discourse. Using the example of teacher-pupil discourse to depict the concept of monologic talk, he maintains that monologism hinders genuine dialogue. A monologic talk, according to Skidmore (2000) is the one which is mainly concerned with the transmission of knowledge to students and tries to remain firmly in the control of the goals of talk. As an instrumental approach to communication, monologic talk is tuned toward achieving the pre-packaged knowledge or pre-fabricated goals by the teacher. It can be considered the same as traditional IRF (Initiation/ Response/ Feedback) pattern in most classes which constitutes at least 60% of the teaching/learning process (Alexander, 2014; Lyle, 2008; Stetsenko, 2017).

To alleviate the potential problems of dialogism, Reznitskaya, (2012) proposes an observational scale, called Dialogic Inquiry Tool (DIT) hoping to offer a practical model for dialogic teaching. The model possesses the following features: 1) sharing the authority, 2) raising fundamentally open and divergent questions, 3) providing meaningful and specific feedback to foster further group inquiry which leads to negotiation and construction of new meaning, 4) encouraging students to engage in meta-level reflection that consists of self-correction, clarification, and reflection, 5) leading students to present elaborate explanations for "Why?" and "How?" questions. These questions require the learners to engage in collaborative co-construction of knowledge through listening and reacting to each other's positions and justifications for the sake of reasoning development.

Richards et al. (2010, p.169) define dialogic teaching as "teaching which centers on planned and focused conversation among teachers and addresses teaching and learning issues. During such conversations teachers examine their own beliefs and practices and engage in collaborative planning, problem-solving and decision-making."  In a more recent reformulation, dialogic teaching has been defined as an approach that capitalizes the power of talk to further students' thinking, understanding, and problem-solving (Reznitskaya & Wilkinson, 2015). Learning is called dialogic as long as it takes place via dialogue which is commonly the fruit of emerging exploratory interaction. However, dialogic learning is not a new concept. In Western tradition, it is often associated with Socratic dialogues whereas in eastern tradition with Indian tradition and Buddhism (Jamali, 2015).

         Boyd and Galda (2011) illustrate a continuum for the function of talk from reproduction to transformation. While pupils grasp new experiences and discussion emerges, they can step freely along language socialization process through which students get socialized and learn how to employ language to transform and evolve their selves. Such orientation, Wells (2006) and Alexander (2010, 2017b) argue, fosters the reciprocal development of understanding between and in individuals since the teacher is the facilitator of knowledge creation rather than the mere giver of knowledge. Alexander (2017a) maintains that dialogic teaching is not a single method of teaching. Instead, it is an approach as well as a professional outlook. It cannot be limited to speaking and listening. In other words, requiring a reorientation toward pedagogy, it is grounded in research on the relationship between language, learning, thinking and understanding and in observational evidence on what makes for effective teaching which leads to transforming the students.

2.2. Challenges and Problems of Dialogism

A couple of scholars have tried to clarify various potential barriers of dialogism. Lyle (2008a) contends that dominance of the teacher's voice, the status or power position and relationship between instructors and pupils, and teachers' lack of skill required to practice whole class dialogism are among tangible obstacles of dialogism practice. In addition, the robustness of monologism should not be overlooked, or at least, underestimated. Besides, some practitioners such as Lefstein (2006) believe in dialogism as being too much idealistic. Consequently, they would rather follow a more pragmatic approach. The introduction of a national curriculum in quite all countries obliges teachers to cover the curriculum. These content-led curricula expect instructors to consider some mandates, most of which are too strict to let the teachers practice teaching dialogically as a permanent feature of their classroom procedure.

Furthermore, too much dialogism can also cause some potential obstacles. Matusov (2007) contends that too much dialogism can lead to the creation of too many voices. Holquist (2002) maintains that natural language is only one of several ways in which dialogic relationship makes sense.  Finally, the majority of research burden focused on adopting dialogic teaching to develop oral skills conceive dialogism as an effective pedagogic tool for speaking. However, it can be clearly confessed that dialogism can be appropriately utilized for other language skill such as writing through configuring students into small peer review groups (Caughlan et al., 2013) along with providing opportunities for students to engage collaboratively with core concepts of knowledge development. As such, both language teachers and learners should be pedagogically conscious, alert, and skillful enough to accomplish those highly-valued goals in different practices along with speaking skill (Duke et al. 2012).

What Reznitskaya and Gregory (2013) argue is the proposition that teacher education program worldwide should be more welcoming to reorienting and re-conceptualizing teaching principles and should get teacher accustomed to dialogic teaching as well as assisting prospective teachers and practitioners develop their own coherent instructional frameworks integrating both theoretical and practical knowledge. Although advocated by theorists and researchers, according to Sedova et al. (2014), the main reason for the fact that dialogic teaching is a rare phenomenon worldwide is the difficulty of implementation because mostly, teachers are not capable of concretizing those abstract theoretical fundamentals underpinning dialogic teaching practices.

2.3. Challenges and Problems of Monologism

Like dialogism, monologism encounters both theoretical and practical obstacles. Caughlan et.al (2013) maintain that monologism not only is welcomed by those teachers who cannot stand divergent students voice, but also fosters close-ended and non-authentic questions and interferes higher-level thinking. Such modes of teaching encourage either teachers to talk or students to merely listen and respond shortly to short-answer questions.

According to Callander (2013), monologic talk is superficial and infertile to cause true understanding and is merely controlled by the teacher. Rather, dialogism is a quite collective process through which tasks are addressed and scaffolded collaboratively. Furthermore, monologic talk is stifling to dialogue and interactions due to the fact that it does not welcome multi-voicedness (Lyle, 2008) and is consequently insufficient since it is supposed to involve one person talking, who is most of the time, the teacher during the class and teaching time. In contrast, students are able to slightly take part in monologic participation which is only informative and presentational, not contributive and truly interactive (Skidmore and Murakami 2016). Despite the problems and disabilities of monologism, it seems "necessary and fundamental for learners to construct a foundation of background knowledge" (Callander, 2013, p. 60) and is not deserved to be overlooked or banned. Instead, it should be engaged in the dialogue at a higher level. (Wegerif, 2013)    

3. Method

3.1. Participants and Sampling

To fulfil the purpose of the study i.e. EFL teachers' and practitioners' evaluation and inclination toward dialogism or monologism, 150 (97 males, 53 females) EFL instructors were selected who were either the EFL teachers or members of Teaching English Language and Literature Society of Iran (TELLSI).  Also, ten of them took part in an interview, as the second instrument. In addition, convenience and random sampling (for EFL instructors and teacher educators) were used due to the fact that availability, time, location, and accessibility were taken into account. This study was a nation-wide study since the participants who received the questionnaire and took part in the interview were either EFL instructors or EFL teacher educators, living all over Iran.  

3.2. Instrumentation

3.2.1. Questionnaire

The first instrument employed in the present investigation was a self-constructed questionnaire consisting of various principles of dialogism and monologism to determine which one, either dialogism or monologism, is more welcomed by Iranian EFL practitioners and teacher educators. The items of the questionnaire were in English since the participants had enough expertise and mastery to understand them without translating them into their mother tongue. It primarily dealt with respondents' demographic information including their age, gender, and educational degree. The second part consisted of 30 Likert-scale questions and the respondents were asked to select one of the alternatives: 1: strongly agree; 2: agree; 3: undecided; 4: disagree; and 5: strongly disagree.

The developed questionnaire was sent for review for content validity to two external academicians and EFL practitioners to ensure that the items accurately represented the attended components or principles. Then, the questionnaire was emailed to a similar population of English teachers and teacher educators, including 30 EFL instructors and the reliability and internal consistency of the instrument were confirmed by factor analysis and the calculation of the coefficient alpha for all the items. Since all items of the questionnaire indicate the optimal factor loading (higher than 0.30) and loaded highly on more than one factor, no items were deserved to be eliminated. In addition, the Cronbach-alpha coefficient was employed for the reliability of this questionnaire in the piloting and finalized phases which were 0.821 and 0.832, respectively. Likewise, for the sake of construct validity of the questionnaire, the researcher employed factor analysis to finally extract six components or factors which will be discussed later.

3.2.2. Interview

The second instrument of the present study was an interview with ten of those who were from different cities and has already taken the questionnaire. It comprised seven essay type questions in English which were the detailed, paraphrased, or reworded questions related to the research questions. Throughout the piloting procedure, two experienced English teachers were asked to take part in the interview. Thereupon, two of the questions were modified inasmuch as the two interviewees found them ambiguous and difficult to respond. To answer the seven finalized interview questions, each participant was interviewed individually, either directly or on the telephone for at least 10 minutes. The interviews were semi-structured and aimed at exploring their orientation and evaluation about dialogism and how dialogic or monologic principles of teaching or learning English would assist Iranian English learners to learn English as a foreign language.  

        The approach adopted in this study was broadly phenomenological; about the data obtained from the interviews, the researcher was interested in gathering individual retrospection or pedagogically useful experience. The interviews illustrated the ways in which respondents prioritized either dialogic or monologic approach toward teaching or learning EFL. They provided insights into users’ choices in relation to the contexts of use or personal preferences. To check out the credibility of the obtained data for the qualitative phase, member-checking and peer-debriefing were employed. For member-checking, the participants were required to review the drafts and the themes emerging from the research to evaluate and garner the feedback about the accuracy of the interpretations. Peer-debriefing involved an external check of the study by an EFL instructor who was dealing with the raw data and the researcher’s orientation and justification to review and ask questions about the investigation to certify that the study was meaningful and the interpretations from the data were plausible and accurate.  

3.3. Data Collection and Data Analysis Procedures

The present research has applied a mixed method design dealing with both quantitative and qualitative research methods to provide and present more reliable and rigorous data to answer the questions of the study. The data necessary for the study were first collected through a questionnaire which was created and distributed among 150 EFL instructors and practitioners from various cities of Iran. Second, semi-structured interviews were administered during which ten participants presented their constructive and further comments on the items presented in the questionnaire, aiming at exploring answers to the first research question i.e. how do language teachers and educators evaluate dialogic approach to teaching? Finally, employing the steps/phases of grounded theory approach, i.e. open, axial, and selective coding, various themes and concepts were elicited.

Exploratory factor analysis was performed to explore the factor structure of the items which reflected a mixture of dialogic and monologic principles. The items were mainly drawn or elicited from various state-of-the-art articles and textbooks on the respective field. Accordingly, the participants, i.e., the EFL teachers and teacher educators showed their ultimate inclination and preference toward dialogism. Other participants contended that meaning should be co-constructed through the cooperation of learners and the teachers rather than solely-established by the teachers.  

Having categorized the transcribed interviews and getting acquainted with the collected data, the raw data were classified through a technical process which is called open coding through which various primary themes were elicited. The purpose was to highlight a great number of concepts and themes considering practicality and potential barriers and obstacles and predicaments of true employment of dialogism which turned later into fewer themes. Then, the researcher tried to elicit the core categories employing the axial and selective coding, based on the frequency of the main categories. Consequently, the researcher statistically investigated the major concerns of those interviewees involved in the study. Furthermore, researcher employed both inter-coding and intra-coding process (i.e., code-recode strategy). To tackle the dependability of the findings, the researcher asked two EFL teachers and experts to encode the transcription. Some of these experts were asked to do the same thing after a 10-day interval. The most agreed-upon criteria and the notions they conveyed, indicated informative or constructive propositions and ideas.

4. Results

4.1. Questionnaire-based Results

In the field of EFL, factor analysis is commonly used in developing, designing and administering a questionnaire. The objective is to assure the individual items of the questionnaire corroborate multiple manifestations of the construct. Consequently, those variables that cannot significantly correlate with the intended trait are deserved to be eliminated and excluded from further analysis. To assure the inter-correlation among the variables, one needs to obtain a correlation matrix. Correlation coefficients which are at least 0.30 can be regarded as significant and appropriate for factor analysis. So, low correlation coefficient has to be discarded.

       Focusing on the data, according to Table 1and based on the questionnaire, there were some great results, the most significant of which are statistically presented and discussed. In addition, Table 1 shows the descriptive statistics of the questionnaire’s items. According to Oxford (1990), the mean scores that fall between 1.0 and 2.4 are identified as “low” influence, 2.5 and 3.4 as “medium” influence, and 3.5 and 5.0 as “high” influence. Overall, the majority of items which dealt with dialogism seemed to be more influential and welcomed by both teachers and teacher educators. Interestingly, such items were of high prominence and significance among language teaching experts and scholars of the ELT since the items which sounded to be the key principles of dialogic approach toward teaching were shown to be of high index.

Table 1: Descriptive Statistics of the Questionnaire Items

Another potential problem is extreme multi-collinearity which means too high (i.e. over 0.80) correlation of some variables. Regarding sample size, there is no consensus. Some experts recommend to have a population of at least 300, some others believe in a smaller size i.e. around 150 participants (Pallant, 2010). As mentioned earlier, none of the items was excluded because there was a significant correlation among all the items and there was no extreme multi-collinearity. Moreover, there were 150 participants in eth present study to meet the minimum number for the population. Another index which is considered in factor analysis is Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) which should be at least 0.60 and Bartlett's test of sphericity which should be at most 0.50. As indicated in Table 2, the output for the data shows an index of 0.62 for KMO that meets the minimum required index. In addition, Bartlett's test of sphericity appeared to be significant. 

Table 2: KMO and Bartlett’s Test

Additionally, communality which refers to the percent of variance in an observed variable accounted for by the retained components or factors helps researchers to determine how much of the total variance is explained by the retained factors. If a given variable loads heavily on at least one of the retained factor, it will display large communality. The minimum required loading has to be a value of 0.30 and as Table 3 indicates, all the loaded factors were meaningful and significant. Table 3 also shows communalities before and after the extraction.

As it can be observed in Table 3, the initial assumption of Principal Component Analysis is that all variance is common. Besides, the communalities in Extraction column indicate the common variance in the data structure. Therefore, as an instance, 0.389 in the first row asserts that 38.9 % of the variance associated with the first item of the questionnaire is common. It also depicts that all the extractions are approximately high which means that the components account for a high degree of variance within the variables.  

Table 3: Communalities Extraction Method: Principal Component Analysis

Table 4 illustrates the Total Variance Explained, which demonstrates information about the initial eigenvalues, extraction, and rotation data. Eigenvalue is the sum of squared loading for a factor, introducing the amount of variance accounted for by a factor. As it can be observed in Table 4, because the minimum eigenvalue in the extraction procedure was set at 1.35, only six components were qualified to be extracted. The last row under the cumulative percentages shows 57.73, meaning that the six qualified components signified approximately 58% of the whole variance. Consequently, it is meaningful and significant to reduce the original 30 components to six and lose roughly 40% of the information.

Table 4: Total Variance Explained Extraction Method: Principal Component Analysis

The final output, illustrated in Table 5, is the Rotated component matrix which is the most significant to help the researcher discriminate the qualified components or factors. Table 5 represents what the components (i.e. factors) indicate.

Table 5: Component Matrix Extraction Method: Principal Component Analysis

As it can be elicited, component 1 encompasses items 2, 4, 6, 26, and 30. This series of items is labelled Good Questions and Reasoning. Such items state that "good questions require students to think deeply", "teachers should focus on open-ended questions to assess their students' linguistic ability" and "truth is born among people who collectively search for it. So, students should seek it collaboratively", "students should be triggered to manage turns, ask questions, react to each other’s ideas, suggest topic shifts, and propose procedural changes",  "teachers should consistently work with students' answers to inspire further exploration and should praise or question the processes of reasoning, not the conclusions".

The second component, according to Table 5, shows high correlation with items 12, 16, 19, 20, and 27. This set of items is labelled Students' Exploration and Contribution to Learning. They state that "successful teachers encourage their students so that the students can make elaborate and adequate contribution to learning, in addition to explaining their thinking to others", "effective teaching fosters the students to raise their personally-explored or collectively-collaborated definitions on terms / concepts rather than regurgitating already-defined concepts", "good questions require students to give reasons for their views, provide evidence to support their replies, give examples and counter-examples of their ideas", "students should make connections between ideas and their classmates' opinions", "students should make connections between ideas and their classmates' opinions", and " students are expected to take personal positions on the issues and support them by reasons and examples".

Accordingly, the third componentcorrelates with items 8, 10, 14, 17, and 29. This group of items called The Quality of Feedback Facilitating Interrelationship, and Collaboration assert that "talk is a genuine concern for the views of the participants to help them share and build meaning collaboratively", "teachers should provide occasional opportunities for the students to freely engage in the discussions", "teachers make visible the connections among students' ideas and prompt students to relate their ideas to what is presented by others", "teachers should expect students to speculate on alternative interpretations" and "teachers are recommended to attribute student ideas and questions to specific speakers.

The next component which covers items 7, 22, 23, 24, and 25 is labelled Teacher's Authority and Facilitation Leading to Real Talk. They articulate that "talk is an instrumental approach to communication, geared toward achieving goals already set", "teachers are recommended to attribute students' ideas and questions to specific speakers", "teachers should have exclusive control over discussions and learning processes", "teachers should control turn-taking, prescribe topic choice, and reshape discussions to align with specific fixed contents", and "students should be encouraged to share major responsibilities for the process and substance of discussion".

The fifth component encompassing items 9, 11, 13, 21, and 28 is called Response Production and its Interconnectivity, asserting that "teachers should nominate students, ask questions, initiate topic shifts, and evaluate the answers", "students do not have to explain what they think and why, their responses had better be brief and factual", "teachers should not relate each student's answers to his/ her classmates' responses", "effective teaching should focuse on transmission of knowledge", and " good teachers are recommended to use short, formulaic, or ambiguous feedbacks which do not invite students to further develop their answers".

The last component called Regurgitating and Memorizing the Facts include items 1, 3, 5, 15, and 18. They verbalize that "good questions require students to recall and provide right answers", "teachers should focus on closed-ended questions to assess their students' linguistic ability", "truth is a pre-determined concept already existing and students must try to find it", "effective teaching makes students regurgitate facts and memorize prefabricated definitions", and "teachers should expect students to recall already made interpretations". It is worth mentioning that two experts, who were educationists equipped with an elaborate mastery on the intended area, scientifically contributed to the present study to justify the construct validity of the instruments.

More pedagogically speaking and regarding the features of dialogic teaching, the majority of participants contended that dialogic questions excel monologic ones since they expect students to raise well-established reasons rather than dictating one's idea to others. In addition, most of them, along with dialogism, viewed talk as an instrumental approach for negotiation and (re)construction of meaning instead of orchestrating talk to attain any already agreed-upon or determined linguistic goals. Likewise, quite many EFL instructors and teacher educators supported the proposition that, as dialogic teachers, they should abstain eliciting sporadic and segmented answers out of their students and should avoid discouraging their students to utter merely individual perspectives. They, also, refuted the misconception that teachers are the authoritarian source of power who is capable of handling, determining, and setting everything in the class, as well as deciding for the topics participants, and the content of their talk. Finally, they viewed  not only talk as something genuine, rather than prefabricated, for which the teachers should elucidate, objectify, and concretize concepts via a collaborative atmosphere, but also learners as major, active, prominent and contributive aspect of meaning-making process.

4.2. Interview-based Results

Having categorized the transcribed interview, through open coding, quite many primary themes and categories were pinpointed. Table 6 illustrates fifteen finalized core themes emphasized and articulated by Iranian EFL teacher educators. As Table 6 demonstrates, many teachers and teacher educators maintained that dialogism paves the ways for further contribution and shouldering the responsibility for learning. They held that, although no easy to implement, dialogic approach facilitates learners' attempt to establish and construct meaning since a dialogic teacher does not assume them as passive learners. Rather, the interviewees elaborated, a dialogic teacher welcomes and values his students' constructive ideas and collaborative endeavors. Some interviewees held the assumption that a distinguishing feature of dialogism is the emergent nature of answers rather than prefabricated. So, all learners should play a role in co-constructing of meaning and proposition regarding the questions which are mentally-demanding and open-ended. Furthermore, quite all of them emphasized that students' ideas should be interrelated and interconnected to make cohesion be felt and practiced by the students instead of slicing their responses into some separate meaningless fragments. Dialogic classes, according to the interviewees, provide opportunities for all the students to have a voice and contribution to learning. Consequently, a dialogic teacher values and welcomes all students' contribution to learning and collaborative practices to further learning. Not only, the interviewees held, does dialogism meet the scaffolding requirement, but also it deals with corrective feedback of the dialogic teacher to foster and develop more courage and agency for dialogic learners to be

Likewise, they declared that although they liked and wished to raise challenging open-ended question (i.e. a distinguishing characteristic of dialogic teaching), the burden of their classes was intended to, along with monologism, deal with close-ended questions. Whereas the majority of the interviewees' ideas were dealing with questions and questioning, they also pinpointed other components of dialogism such as contribution, scaffolding, organization, discussion, talk, and feedback.

However, they believed that in most contexts and educational settings, monologism is a common trend and priority. Regarding most interactions atmospheres, according to most Iranian EFL teacher educators, there is a lack of scaffolding orientation due to prevalent monologic approach in curriculum development and syllabus design. Some interviewees maintained that the majority of ELT practitioners do not carry adequate mastery and scientific acquaintance to practice dialogic teaching. That may be why many teachers resort to monologism since they are afraid of not being able to truly implement dialogic principles. A few teacher educators held the assumption that dialogism may lead to heterogeneous and scattered voices in the class atmosphere which can be quite threatening for to the teacher's authority. Few teacher educators found true dialogism somehow difficult to adopt and employ in most Iranian pedagogic contexts to the extent that they would call dialogism a utopia or too much idealistic. They contended that dialogism' potentials have been overestimated and that it could not unlock the educational predicaments in Iran's pedagogy. Few teacher educators maintained what is highly valued in most educational setting can be referred to as teacher authority.

Table 6: The Frequency of the Categories Decoded through Interview Transcription

5. Discussion

The present research planned to explore the Iranian EFL teachers' and teacher educators' ideas and orientation about dialogism and monologism. It was mainly after the questions of the study i.e., the evaluation of dialogism by English teachers and teacher educators, and their inclination to teach either dialogically or monologically. Responding the questions of the study, the themes, and concepts out of the interview, even though the minority of English teachers and teacher educators believed that dialogism was difficult or impossible to practice, quite many of them did believe in it, viewed it enthusiastically, and strived to implement it.

The findings of the study are in line with those of previous research (Dafermos, 2018; Alexander, 2017a, & 2017b; Davies, et.al, 2017; Skidmore & Murakami, 2016; Gupta and Lee, 2015; Lefstein & Snell, 2014). In addition, the current research adds to the findings of previous research studies by demonstrating that dialogic approach needs some drastic changes in teacher education programs, material development, and in-service instruction. The reason may be attributed to the chronic effects and output of traditional approach which has been quite commonplace and acceptable standard in Iranian pedagogic setting. From one side, some EFL teachers and  teacher educators and  believe that dialogism or many-voicedness may endanger the traditional authority of the class that, according to many teachers, belongs to teachers, and causes chaos in the class atmosphere. Meanwhile, some principles of dialogic teaching such as corrective feedback, making the visible connection among students' ideas, facilitating emergence to take place, scaffolding learning and teaching, raising open-ended and in-depth questions are quite lengthy and sometimes is an over-expectation to happen. From the other side, many English teachers and teacher educators maintained that dialogic principles are vitally necessary for the modern classes to experience and practice. Quite all of them confessed that students should be encouraged to share major responsibility for the learning process, co-construct the meaning and truth, make the concepts and utterances to be gradually emerged, interrelate their ideas together, deal with open- ended questions, and make more opportunity for themselves to get engaged in and contribute to true learning. They overemphasized that teacher education programs should eradicate this misconception that dialogism is too idealistic to be completely practiced, and instead concentrate on equipping English teachers with adequate and thorough mastery and expertise to implement dialogism. They also maintained that although many EFL practitioners and teacher educators eventually prefer to employ dialogic approach in their actual teaching, they feel they are obliged to have a monologic orientation in their pedagogic endeavors and instruct their students mostly through monologism. This may be due to their hesitation and reluctance to incorporating dialogism, the expectation of language program developers to teach monologically, the avoidance to take any risk while pioneering a new paradigm, and their traditional resistance to change.    

Like many scholars and instructional experts, most language teachers and teacher educators believed the authority shift, the prevalent dominance of teachers' voice and the position and relationship between instructors and pupils are too time-consuming to be vanished or at least diminished. Four interviewees contended that since students’ autonomy can potentially endanger the teachers’ authority in the class management, they do not try to develop it at all. Also, there were some other teachers who asserted if they plan to teach dialogically, they are required to be well-equipped with high expertise and proficiency. Similar to Lyle (200a), quite all participants held the assumption that dominance of the teacher's voice is quite widespread. It seems to be not so easy to make a drastic change in teachers' approach and orientation toward pedagogy. What Matusov (2007) worries about regarding the creation of too many voices out of dialogism corresponds to some of the interviewees' conception. They maintain that letting all the students talk and comment make the management of the class difficult. Furthermore, just like Sedova et al. (2014), quite a few teachers witnessed their educational disability, lack of mastery and expertise to practice dialogic principles in their actual classroom activities. Quite surprisingly, for few teachers dialogism, would lead to chaos in the teaching/learning procedures.

        Some interviewee's contention resembles Sedova et al. (2014) due to the embryonic forms of dialogism. That is, some language teachers and teacher educators asserted that many of these early or primitive forms of teaching practice are too far to be called dialogic teaching. Not only can they function valuably,  but they also reflect that instructors are interested in sporadic, rather than continuous and planned practices of those features which are attributed to dialogic teaching which do not suffice to be called true dialogism. 

          Likewise, as pointed by both scholars such as Matusov et al. (2016), and the participants of the study, it is somehow difficult to distinguish pseudo-dialogism or so-called dialogism, which is orchestrated by the conventional standard-based agency-free banking education, from true dialogism that focuses on authorial agency and problem-posing education. Another challenging feature on which scholars such as Lefstein (2010) on one side and some participants on the other, agree is that even though most recent studies have tried to introduce and argue for dialogism as a total resolution for many instructional problems, in reality, it is not the case. Dialogism is required to be more theoretically and pedagogically well-established and –elucidated inasmuch as the current literature is so idealized that it is very difficult to thoroughly employ dialogism. Different from Alexander (2008), who nominates some certain characteristic features for dialogic teaching, one of the interviewees believe the principles of dialogism are too intricate and too interrelated to be distinguished and separately met. This is what Sedova et al.  (2007) asserts about Ukrainian teachers in secondary education. 

Many teacher educators as the interviewees tended to blame educational policy-makers, for, according to them, they do not expect or encourage the teachers to follow dialogism. Three interviewees demanded the administration of more educational supplementary activities such as workshops, seminars, and conferences to acquaint more and more teachers with exploratory teaching. Fewer number of teacher justified the problem via the shortage of educational facilities available for dialogic teaching. Another justification that two interviewees, corresponding to Dafermos (2018), made was the fact that too much employment of dialogism may lead the class to pay attention solely to language use rather than language forms and levels occasionally.

As far as the themes decoded out of the interview were concerned, sharing major responsibility and co-construction of meaning were considered as pivotal features of dialogism. This is an agreed-upon assumption held by all dialogic educationist in their elaboration in the field such as Dafermos (2018), Alexander (2017a & b), Matusov et al. (2016), and Skidmore and Murakami (2016). The next most agreed-upon principle of dialogic teaching is that truth is a shared concept that is to emerge from a myriad of ideas rather than a pre-fabricated conception in the head of mentor which students should strive to attain. Like Davies et al. (2017), most interviewees maintained that if high-quality questions are practiced and taught to the teachers in teacher training programs, it will certainly lead to the same approach and orientation in real classroom practices.

Furthermore, correlational analyses of the variables indicated some interesting points as well. As stated before, the items indicated different kinds of correlational relationship. As a whole, the items were a mix of both monologic and dialogic principles. As such, there was a negative correlation among the features introducing dialogism and monologism. However, there was a positive relationship between the items introducing either monologism or dialogism. Some of them were as positively and significantly correlated (such as “students' sharing responsibility, raising open-ended questions, co-constructing of the meaning), but some other principles showed a highly negative correlation (i.e. the items featuring monologism and the one belonging to dialogism).

Considering the finalized themes and codes in the interviewee, there were some considerable points which are worth discussing. For instance, many EFL teachers and teacher educators believed that the majority of Iranian contexts require them to follow monologic perspective due to conforming, expertise, and content of the textbook. Some others argued that most teachers naturally incline to teach based on traditional approaches and accordingly welcome monologism since this is the approach they are quite familiar with and trained by. Most language teachers and teacher educators, i.e., participants of the study, evaluated a dialogic approach to teaching positively; notwithstanding, they raised some challenges and potential obstacles which may impede true dialogic practices.

Along with Caughlan et.al (2013), they maintained that in most settings, they expect their students to give their teachers back what exactly others think, instead of encouraging them to express what they themselves believe. So, it is quite difficult to foster their learners' reasoning ability or their tolerance of opposite ideas (i.e. a principal feature of dialogism). The amount of student talk in the class does not seem to be adequate and needs delicate supervision and remedy. As Reznitskaya and Gregory (2013) highlight, dialogism requires and necessitates raising deepening, enlightening, and authentic questions which are posed by the students and the teachers.       

6. Conclusion

Just like many other settings, the ELT attempts in Iran have been pivoting around monologic approach. That is to say, those involved in Iranian EFL pedagogy have been pursuing a traditional or monologic approach which is far from dialogism, welcoming collaborative teaching as well as shared co-constructing of meaning and concepts among students and teachers. Textbook compilation and material preparation practices in Iran can be partially blamed; however, the majority of concern can be traced in teacher education programs. Accordingly, students are not truly valued and expected to share the considerable burden of the meaning-making process since they are not believed to have a distinguishing voice. Dialogism is an instructional attempt or opportunity for students to be heard.

Similarly, educational researchers have challenged recitation or IRF approach as the most widespread educational perspective even for conducting group discussions of assigned speaking, listening, writing, and reading. Instead of asking known, and information question and controlling the key aspect of communication which indeed impede students' engagement and learning particularly at higher level of cognitive complexity (Reznitskaya, 2012), teacher should welcome dialogism through which synergism takes place, students get enough courage to have a voice and share their utterances, comments, a perspective which helps truth to emerge.  

Nowadays, there are multiple persuasive theoretical underpinnings of dialogic teaching (Mercer & Littleton, 2007, Skidmore & Murakami, 2016), as well as empirical evidence attributing it to significant learning outcomes (Reznitskaya et al., 2009; Soter et al., 2008). Some professional standards describe prosperous teachers as being aware of how to engage students in true dialogue and to raise questions which “inspire the most thoughtful conversation and dialogue” (National Board for Professional Teacher Standards, 2002). Despite its distinguished pedagogical potentials, dialogic teaching is scarce, scattered, and too challenging to achieve in most modern schools, educational institutes, and colleges (Alexander, 2008). Because there has been or is little discussion in the sense of an open and in-depth exchange in every class, dialogism seems to be a necessity.

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Appendix 1:  A Questionnaire on Monologic or Dialogic Teaching

This questionnaire has been designed to help you realize whether you teach monologically or dialogically. Please, read the following statements and respond to them as they apply to your teaching of English. Decide whether you agree or disagree with them. Try to avoid making doubtful choice. Please answer all the questions. I highly appreciate your cooperation. 

(Gender: ..............                                                   Age: ..........                        Educational Degree: ...............)

Appendix 2: Interview Questions

1. Do you prefer to teach monologically or dialogically? How and why?

2. Do you think your students welcome monologism or dialogism?

3. What do you think about some barriers and predicaments of true dialogism?

4. How is dialogism applicable to Iranian educational context?

5. What is your evaluation of dialogic teaching?

6. Do you think dialogic pedagogy can be practiced for all language skills?

7. How is it possible to devise or develop a dialogically applicable framework for ELT?