Higher education is widely regarded as a natural setting for active and critically stimulating teaching and learning, drawing on a wide range of instructional practices that support deep learning and students’ critical engagement (Hermann, 2013). In recent years, increasing attention has been paid in higher education to students’ active engagement in the teaching and learning process as one of the key prerequisites for high-quality learning and professional development. From this perspective, good teaching is understood as teaching that encourages students to actively discuss subject matter, thereby providing them with sufficient opportunities to practise sophisticated communicative skills that may become their cognitive habits (Šeďová, Šalamounová, Švaříček, et al., 2019). This emphasis is particularly significant in the context of pre-service teacher education (Simpson, 2016), where university teaching not only mediates disciplinary knowledge but also models pedagogical approaches that future teachers may later transfer into their own instructional practice.

This study focuses on how university teachers create opportunities for student participation through their interactional practices and on how students themselves actively contribute to the teaching and learning process. Teaching and learning are understood as a process of co-creation, in which knowledge, meanings, and learning opportunities are jointly constructed through dialogic interaction between teachers and students, rather than being unilaterally transmitted from expert to novice. The study is grounded in sociocultural and dialogic perspectives on learning, which conceptualize learning as a socially situated process emerging through interaction. Drawing on Nystrand’s (2001) concept of mutual reactivity, productive classroom dialogue is understood as a sequence of interconnected exchanges in which participants respond to and build upon each other’s contributions, rather than merely reproducing predetermined answers. Examining mutual reactivity in higher education classrooms is important because it illuminates micro-level interactional mechanisms that enable or constrain student engagement. By focusing on how teachers and students respond to one another in real time, research on mutual reactivity moves beyond static descriptions of participation and captures the dynamic, co-constructed nature of pedagogical communication. Understanding these interactional processes is particularly relevant in university teaching, where dialogic practices are often assumed but not systematically examined to the same extent.

The findings of this study contribute to a deeper understanding of how dialogic and responsive teaching is enacted in practice and how specific interactional strategies support students’ active involvement in learning. From a practical perspective, the findings may contribute to the professional development of university teachers by offering empirically grounded insights into communicative practices that promote student participation, support deeper learning, and model dialogic approaches that future teachers can transfer into their own pedagogical practice.

Using an ethnographic approach to explore everyday teaching practices, the research was conducted within the context of undergraduate teacher education at universities in the Czech Republic. The sample consisted of nine tutors teaching core courses to pre-service teachers. Data collection involved two methods: i. seminar lessons were video-recorded (two lessons captured for each tutor) and transcribed verbatim; and ii. semi-structured interviews were conducted with each tutor following the recorded lessons in order to reflect on the observed teaching practices. All interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed verbatim. The first stage of data analysis involved a series of quantitative analyses aimed to objectively assess students’ active participation in the classroom. Basic participation metrics were measured, specifically the number of students who spoke at least once during a given lesson. In the second step, the duration of both student and teacher utterances in each lesson was examined. The quantitative analysis aimed to provide an objective evaluation of students’ active participation in higher education classrooms, based on the premise that learning is significantly more effective when students are actively involved in the dialogic co-construction of meaning (Wells & Arauz, 2006). Empirical studies indicate that the more students talk, discuss, and engage in argumentation, the better they learn and the more motivated they are to study (Baber, 2020; Bernard et al., 2009). The next step of the analysis involved coding the conversational moves of individual participants. Transcripts of the lessons were utilized for this purpose. In coding the conversational moves, we followed the framework outlined by Hardman (2016). Each utterance was classified as either a teacher initiation (open/closed question), a student response (no response, phrase, simple sentence, elaborated response), or teacher feedback. As Aranda et al. (2018) note, teacher initiation moves enable students to enter classroom discussions, and the cognitive complexity of teachers’ questions influences the length of student responses. This suggests that the type of teacher question may affect quantity and quality of student utterances. Accordingly, we conducted a pairing of the research results, examining the relationship between teacher questions and student responses. The final phase of analysis involved qualitative analysis, aimed at exploring how students engage in classroom communication spontaneously, without teacher prompts (codes: student question, student comment, and student experience during the lesson), and how teachers respond to them. Together, these quantitative and qualitative analytical procedures provided a comprehensive account of classroom interaction and student participation in higher education teaching.

The findings demonstrate that the distribution of talk in university classrooms is uneven, with teacher talk remaining dominant. At the same time, substantial differences were observed among teachers in terms of the level of student participation, indicating that teaching practices play a decisive role in shaping interactional dynamics. Higher levels of student engagement were associated with dialogic communication approaches, whereas predominantly monologic teaching resulted in limited student participation. The analysis further showed that closed questions with low cognitive demand prevail in classroom discourse; however, these questions tend to result in limited or no student responses. In contrast, open-ended questions were more likely to prompt elaborated student contributions. Spontaneous student initiatives—such as comments, questions, and the sharing of experiences—emerged as important indicators of active participation, particularly when teachers acknowledged and integrated these contributions into the ongoing instructional discourse. These findings are consistent with previous research emphasizing dialogic teaching as a key factor in promoting student engagement. Several studies (Abdulah et al., 2012; Mundt & Hänze, 2022) recommend that university teachers actively invite student contributions, value diverse responses, and incorporate students’ ideas into classroom interaction. Integrating student contributions not only enhances students’ involvement in learning but also supports their understanding, interpretation of content, and development of critical thinking skills. Similarly, Sybing (2021) highlights dialogic opportunities in teacher–student interaction that facilitate the co-construction of knowledge, such as positioning students at the center of dialogue, validating their responses, and fostering a supportive classroom climate. Overall, the present study underscores that active student participation in higher education is largely shaped by teachers’ interactional choices and their ability to create dialogic spaces that sustain and develop student engagement.

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