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Relating dialogue and dialectics: a philosophical perspective
Get PDFDialectics and a dialogical approach constitute two distinct theoretical frameworks with long intellectual histories. The question of relations between dialogue and dialectics provokes discussions in academic communities. The present paper highlights the need to clarify the concepts ‘dialogue’ and ‘dialectics’ and explore their origins in the history of human thought. The paper attempts to examine mutual relations between dialectics and dialogue in a historical perspective and develop a theoretical reconstruction of their philosophical underpinnings. It proposes to deal with challenges connected with the creation of spaces for sharing and mutual enrichment between dialogue and dialectics
Dialogic & Critical Pedagogies: An Interview with Ira Shor
Get PDFIn 2016, the Main Editors of Dialogic Pedagogy Journal issued a call for papers and contributions to a wide range of dialogic pedagogy scholars and practitioners. One of the scholars who responded to our call is famous American educator Ira Shor, a professor at the College of Staten Island, City University of New York. Shor has been influenced by Paulo Freire with whom he published, among other books, “A Pedagogy for Liberation” (1986), the very first “talking book” Freire did with a collaborator. His work in education is about empowering and liberating practice, which is why it has become a central feature of critical pedagogy.Shor’s work has touched on themes that resonate with Dialogic Pedagogy (DP). He emphasises the importance of students becoming empowered by ensuring that their experiences are brought to bear. We were excited when Shor responded to our call for papers with an interesting proposal: an interview that could be published in DPJ, and we enthusiastically accepted his offer. The DPJ Main Editors contacted the DPJ community members and asked them to submit questions for Ira. The result is an exciting in-depth interview with him that revolved around six topics: (1) Social Justice; (2) Dialogism; (3) Democratic Higher Education; (4) Critical Literacy versus Traditional Literacy; (5) Paulo Freire and Critical Pedagogy; and (6) Language and Thought. Following the interview, we reflect on complimentary themes and tensions that emerge between Shor’s approach to critical pedagogy and DP
Between Stalin and Dionysus: Bakhtin\u27s Theory of the Carnival
Get PDFThe essay by Russian American philologist Boris Groys and nine commentaries followed by Groys’ reply to them in this special issue: “Deconstructing Bakhtin, Carnival with Evil”, present a provocative discussion about Bakhtin’s conceptual work and legacy for education and beyond. Boris Groys argued that Bakhtin embraced a dangerous play with Stalin’s totalitarianism through fusing art and life, prioritizing cosmic carnival over human rights and by being mesmerised by dionysian passions. The following nine commentaries, written by educationalists and non-educationalists, present a diverse spectrum of reactions to Groys’ criticism of Bakhtin: from passionate rejections to sympathetic acceptance seriously considering implications of Groys’ charges. The biggest implication for education is the relationship between the teacher and the student, specifically whether the teacher authors the student and the student’s education or not. The first commentary, written by Caryl Emerson provides a brilliant overview of all these diverse positions, in education and beyond. – DPJ Editors: Eugene Matusov and Ana Marjanovic-Shan
Severe limitations of the poietic individual mind
Get PDFReview of the 2011 book Thinking, fast and slow by Daniel Kahneman published by New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (ISBN: 9780374533557; 499pp.
Aesthetics and the possibility of an anti-totalitarian communism: reading Bakhtin through the lens of Groys
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Promoting students’ ownership of their own education through critical dialogue and democratic self-governance
Get PDFWe define genuine education as students’ active leisurely pursuit of critical examination of the self, life, society and the world. It is driven by the person’s interests, inquiries, needs, tensions, and puzzlements. Thus, it is based on the students’ ownership of their own education, rather than on the society’s needs and impositions on the students. Hence, genuine education cannot be forced on the students, but rather the students need to be supported and guided to find and pursue their own education as their existential need. We view genuine education as students’ authorship based on the students’ learning activism. In our opinion, the primary condition for the students’ ownership of their education is the students’ freedom to participate in making decisions about their education. In our paper, we discuss pedagogical experimentation aimed at promoting learning activism and ownership of their own education through critical dialogue and democratic self-governance.However, to our surprise, we found out that merely engaging students in decision making about their own education does not work for many students. After several years of practicing the Open Syllabus pedagogical regime in our undergraduate and graduate classes, we have experienced and abstracted two major mutually related problems: a problem of “culture” and a problem of “self-failure.” The issue of “culture” involved a tension between building a new democratic educational culture while practicing it. We also found that our undergraduate and graduate education students do not follow their own freely chosen educational commitments, and thus they feel betrayed by themselves. Analyzing students’ reflections on the self-failures, we found that they felt pressured by life and institutional survival and necessities. Because of that, they did not have the luxury of prioritizing their own educational self-commitments. In response to this and other concerns, we developed a hybrid pedagogical regime, called Opening Syllabus. We focus on tensions within this new, hybrid pedagogical regime, by analyzing students’ reflections and contributions in class
