This 'Education and Professional Development' article aims to encourage those in teaching laboratories to consider how to incorporate dialogue into laboratory teaching. Within the context of the importance of dialogue in learning - both from a theoretical perspective as well as the literature on laboratory teaching in practice - the article sets out some practical examples about how a culture of dialogue can be embedded into laboratory teaching using two short case studies. To assist educators in thinking about dialogue in their own practice, some prompts relevant to analytical chemistry are provided in each case study. Overall the article asserts the valuable outcomes associated with ensuring the explicit role of dialogue in laboratory teaching.