In language arts classrooms, dialogic teaching encourages diverse text interpretations, fostering discussions that enhance students' literacy skills like reasoning. However, adopting a dialogic stance poses challenges for both teachers and students. The study investigated the impact of a tailor‐made dialogic intervention on a Chinese rural teacher and students' stances towards texts. Chinese rural students shifted from efferent and instrumental stances to a more critical‐analytical stance, indicating a profound change in how rural students interacted with texts through exploratory talk, highlighting the potential of dialogic teaching practices to foster deep engagement with reading materials. However, after the intervention ended, the teacher reverted to a monologic approach due to limited dialogic texts and time constraints. The findings underscore the potential of dialogic teaching for engaging rural students, yet highlight the need for sustained teacher training and suitable texts. Future research should focus on cultivating and maintaining students' growth mindset effectively in rural settings.

This study investigates the impact of an on-line discussion on the nature of students’ patterns of interaction and the cognitive complexity of these discussions during asynchronous discussions (on-line) as a means of preparation for a Paideia Seminar (face-to-face discussion). The study was conducted in 12 experimental classrooms and 12 control classrooms across six schools (ages 11–13) of varying socioeconomic groups. Results show that the experimental group increased in student-to-student initiated discussions and in their complexity of discourse for both the on-line discussions and the Paideia Seminars. These gains were greater for mid/high than low socioeconomic students. This study suggests that the intervention of the on-line discussions did have a significant impact on the complexity of the discussions during a face-to-face Paideia Seminar, and thus makes this method more accessible to other teachers.