Dialogic approaches are promising vehicles for effective pedagogy, providing opportunities for students to talk about learning; build on and sustain individual and collective identities, and; advance thinking and understanding in ways that support enhanced achievement. Whilst this is an idealised view of talk in classrooms, international literature provides evidence that suggests teachers struggle to shift practice toward dialogic pedagogy. From a national perspective, a more pressing issue given the nature of this study is to reconcile international views of dialogic pedagogy with a Pacific worldview. This article reports on the process of developing an analytic framework or tool for identifying 'dialogic' practices that are informed by Pacific ways of knowing or orientations, including language practices to progress that reconciliation. The reconceptualised 'Pacific Dialogic Indicator Tool' (PDIT) will foreground culturally validated language acts based on talanoa dimensions and weave across these dimensions key dialogic principles that are research-based.