This paper presents an examination of ways middle leader’s dialogicality and interaction practices create communicative openings for professional practice development among teachers across school and tertiary contexts. The paper addresses issues concerning how middle leaders support the design and implementation of professional learning that is worthwhile and responsive to the needs and circumstances of site-based development. It pays attention to the ways in which apposite communication approaches to practice development are derived from what we describe as dialogic principles for teacher learning that can be employed to guide the discourses and discursivity that enable development and change (Grootenboer et al., 2020; Edwards-Groves et al., 2023). It addresses the multidimensionality of relational trust as critical in creating democratic communicative spaces for professional dialogue, learning and practice development (Edwards-Groves & Grootenboer, 2021). The theory of practice architectures guides the thematic analysis revealing the unique cultural-discursive, material-economic and social-political arrangements that influence the possibilities for creating open communicative spaces where teachers are supported by middle leaders to address issues of change (Grootenboer & Edwards-Groves, 2024; Kemmis et al., 2014). As a theory concerned with the site-based 'happeningness' of practices, it offers a lens to delineate the distinctive ways the dialogic practices of middle leaders create conditions that enable teachers to actively participate in their professional learning conversations. This provides opportunities for engaging deeply with the thinking of others, recognising and expanding their own and others’ insights, and by challenging the ideologies, theories and practical propositions they are encountering. Drawing on empirical cases, the paper will outline ways dialogic approaches to professional learning form a critical pivot point from which middle leading practices support teachers to successfully engage in site-based change (Rönnerman et al., 2018). An empirically-derived, theoretically informed dialogic framework useful for facilitating robust and productive collegial conversations will be introduced. As a fundamental position, dialogue is taken not to be the kind of facilitator talk that simply delivers, lectures or feeds information, but it is a planned-for approach to professional learning that deliberately opens up communicative spaces in democratic ways responsive to individual circumstances and needs, thus maximising teacher engagement in individual and collective learning experiences. Specifically, the presentation demonstrates the value of a dialogic approach to designing and negotiating site-based professional learning, where as a premise, it is considered that it is the dialogues that take place among educators that display the critical position ‘the site’ has for facilitating practice development.

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