Dialogic Pedagogy in Early Childhood Education

Dear Colleagues,

We are pleased to announce a Special Issue dedicated to the exploration of dialogic pedagogies in early childhood settings, spanning preschool through year/grade 2. While existing research has extensively investigated discursive interactions in middle and upper primary or secondary school classrooms, relatively little is known about dialogic pedagogy—teaching and learning through, for, and as dialogue—in early childhood.

This Special Issue aims to consolidate research on classroom talk, discussion, and dialogue with a specific focus on fostering young children’s collaborative learning and thinking. We invite contributions that delve into key questions surrounding this theme, including but not limited to the following:

• What pedagogies have been employed to facilitate dialogic interactions?
• How can early years teachers effectively support and nurture productive talk?
• Which classroom contexts are most conducive to productive talk?
• What challenges do early years teachers encounter in implementing dialogic pedagogy?
• What does the discourse look like?
• What outcomes have been examined?
• What is the role of dialogic pedagogies for facilitating and extending comprehension of texts, topics and tasks in early childhood classrooms?

Of particular interest are submissions that investigate the impact of dialogic pedagogy on higher-level learning outcomes, such as critical thinking, reasoning, metacognition, metatalk, metalinguistic awareness, and argumentation in young children. We welcome a variety of contributions, including empirical studies, systematic reviews (including meta-analyses), and conceptual reviews.

Prospective authors are encouraged to reach out to the guest editors before the submission deadline to assess the alignment of their work with the scope of this Special Issue. We look forward to your contributions.

Prof. Dr. Ian Wilkinson
Prof. Dr. Christine Joy Edwards-Groves
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Education Sciences is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• dialogic pedagogy
• early childhood education
• classroom talk
• early years