The Role of Dialogue in Reciprocal Teaching and Naturalistic Tutoring

In an article entitled The Role of Dialogue in Providing Scaffolded Instruction , Palincsar examined the critical role dialogue plays in promoting scaffolded instruction of the reading comprehension strategies contained in reciprocal teaching. This chapter focuses on the characteristics of dialogue in reciprocal teaching. It discusses changes in reciprocal teaching strategies over time and how dialogue can facilitate change. With this groundwork having been laid the chapter explores whether the work by Graesser and his associates on dialogue in naturalistic tutoring might inform researchers and practitioners on how to improve dialogue in reciprocal teaching. Instruction occurs in social, interactive, and holistic dialogues between novice problems solvers and an expert teacher or more capable peer. The transcripts of reciprocal teaching dialogue provided earlier in this chapter illustrates how teacher-student dialogue supports scaffolded instruction and how strategy use can change with time. The transcripts from the two days of instruction also show a difference in the general progression of dialogue.