British Educational Research Journal

This study was carried out in three secondary schools of varying socioeconomic levels within the usual framework of tasks completed by students while studying towards a national assessment. The study examined the change in the nature of the interactions between students in group conversations, in the context of a film unit and a geography unit using Quality Talk. Quality Talk is an interventional approach promoting text comprehension via a critical‐reflective thinking approach. The study also sought to determine whether there was a positive intervention effect from the use of Quality Talk, on the students' ability to write from a critical analytical (CA) stance. Differences in the pre‐ and post‐treatment writing achievement of seven intervention and one comparison class were assessed. Analysis revealed a large intervention effect within the intervention classes with marked improvements in students' abilities to talk and write with a CA stance (d = 0.92). The change in behaviour for the students in the intervention classes appeared to be associated with their increased use of authentic questions, uptake questions and high‐level questions, which appeared to foster higher levels of dialogic spells, supporting the development of higher levels of CA talk and writing.