Keynote speakers
Sara Hennessy
University of Cambridge
Dialogic pedagogy, mutual learning through reflective inquiry in research-practice partnerships, and technology applications
Research has long demonstrated the value of educational dialogue, argumentation and reasoning but practice evolves slowly. This talk begins with three “roots”: dialogic theory, contemporary professional learning models, and research on technology mediation of dialogic teaching and learning. These foundations support movement away from traditional pedagogies, but success depends on understanding and mobilising pathways for transforming research knowledge into practical tools usable across diverse educational contexts. Proposed mechanisms include inquiry-based, practitioner-led professional learning deliberately avoiding rigid fidelity, instead emphasising teacher agency and responsiveness to local needs. Systematic observation and professional dialogue enable both researchers and practitioners to scrutinise educational practice and dialogic concepts themselves, fostering mutual learning that extends beyond local research partnerships.
How can we spread and scale this approach and the collaborative learning, and is its applicability bounded? This talk draws on a decade of design-based research (DBR), iteratively developing a comprehensive professional learning toolkit that mobilises scholarly knowledge and teachers’ practical theory around dialogic teaching. T-SEDA (Toolkit for Systematic Educational Dialogue Analysis, v.9) is organically developed with practitioners to empower pedagogical change through reflective inquiry. Released into the wild through open licensing, its “wings” have carried the dialogic concepts, practices, inquiry model and analysis tools into uncharted contexts for further grassroots adaptation, including translation into 11 languages. The DBR approach enriches the knowledge base by incorporating practitioners’ own outputs and feedback into toolkit iterations. The most recent cycle is Camtree (Cambridge Teacher Research Exchange), supporting and publishing practitioners’ inquiries. International, informal research partnerships comprise small teams collaboratively designing and trialling interactive, multimedia courses on technology-mediated dialogue, preschool-level dialogue, and vocational contexts. Technology tools play multiple roles in this work, from mediating multimodal dialogue, to creating and disseminating multimedia examples from practice. The talk concludes that locally led, systematic inquiry underpinned by flexible, research-informed resources can effectively promote, sustain, and scale dialogic innovation. The mutual learning of researchers and practitioners may continue in ever-new directions, including their AI-supported analysis of dialogic interaction.
About Sara Hennessy
Sara Hennessy is a Professor of Educational Dialogue and Pedagogical Inquiry in the Faculty of Education at the University of Cambridge, UK. She is co-founder and convenor of the interdisciplinary Cambridge Educational Dialogue Research (CEDiR) group (http://bit.ly/cedirgroup). Sara’s research interests centre around dialogue, teachers’ professional learning and educational technology use. Her team has developed pioneering research tools for analysing dialogue that is productive for learning, including for technology-mediated dialogue. She co-led a large-scale project exploring the relationship between dialogic teaching in schools and student outcomes (http://tinyurl.com/ESRCdialogue). Sara is currently Deputy CEO of Camtree, the Cambridge Teacher Research Exchange, at Hughes Hall. She also co-leads a large research programme in Tanzania for the EdTech Hub – examining the scaling of the government’s national teacher professional development reform, including equity issues around teacher access. Outputs of her work include multimedia professional learning resources and the co-authored book, ‘Research methods for educational dialogue’ (2020).
Gaowei Chen
University of Hong Kong
Enhancing Classroom Dialogue: From Video-Based Teacher Reflection to AI-Powered Classroom Feedback
This talk examines how classroom dialogue can be enriched through both established and emerging strategies. It begins with proven teacher professional development approaches implemented outside the classroom, grounded in empirical research on teacher learning. Through video recordings, visual learning analytics, and AI-assisted automated coding, teachers engage in reflection that transforms abstract discourse dynamics into clear, actionable evidence. These tools foster deep self-reflection and collaborative discussions among teachers, strengthening dialogic pedagogy.
Building on this foundation of retrospective analysis, the talk moves to the conceptual frontier of live dialogic orchestration during teaching. Advances in AI open the possibility of a “co-pilot” that supports teachers within the lesson itself. Drawing on emerging conceptual work, the presentation considers how AI might offer timely, in-lesson support, such as flagging premature consensus or suggesting pauses to sustain productive classroom dialogue.
In sum, this talk offers a multidimensional perspective on advancing dialogic teaching. By combining video-based reflection with real-time AI support, it broadens the pathways for empowering teachers and reimagining classroom interaction.
About Gaowei Chen
Gaowei Chen is Tin Ka Ping Foundation Outstanding Young Professor and Head of the Academic Unit of Mathematics, Science, and Technology in the Faculty of Education at the University of Hong Kong.
His research investigates dialogic teaching, teacher professional development, learning sciences, and the integration of artificial intelligence in education. Through systematic empirical studies, his work examines how productive talk shapes classroom interactions and student learning.
To assist teachers in mastering dialogic pedagogy, his research group has developed and evaluated AI-powered discourse analytics tools, including the Classroom Discourse Analyzer and the v2elearn platform. By transforming classroom videos into visual learning analytics, these tools translate dialogic dynamics into visible, actionable evidence. Supported by competitive research funding, his evidence-based professional development models have been widely utilized by educators to reflect on and refine their instructional practices.
Currently, his work focuses on leveraging data-driven feedback to empower teachers in orchestrating high-quality classroom dialogue in the AI era.
