What happens when we talk science?

While interacting with science as a discipline, my role and connection with the subject changed over the years – from being a school student to studying at university, from being a secondary school science teacher to a university science teacher educator, from being a research scholar in the area of science education to a curriculum developer – but some questions continued to prey on my mind. I wondered what kind of pedagogical approaches are conducive to effective teaching-learning of science in classrooms? What spaces are afforded to classroom talk in the science teaching-learning environment? What roles and purposes are served by classroom talk in science classrooms? And is the learning any different in classrooms that have different patterns of classroom talk?