159 research outputs found
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The dialogic nature of regulation in collaborative digital argumentative writing practices
Full text linkThis article discusses the dialogic nature of regulating perspectives on a controversial topic during students’ argumentative writing in remote teaching. The emerging collaborative writing processes mediated by digital technology are importantly changed as responses to physical distancing in education, as demanded by the measures of biosecurity established by the national government to prevent the transmission of COVID-19. Our analysis is framed in a sociocultural perspective, which contributes to our understanding of the concepts related to dialogism, regulation, positionings on a topic, collaborative writing, and digital technology as a tool for dialogic interaction. Our qualitative, idiographic study analyzes the argumentative utterances produced by a dyad of students enrolled in a Textual Production course at a Colombian public university who write a critical commentary over four (4) weeks using Google Docs application. The findings indicate that the participants discuss and negotiate decisions in the group writing situation and that during this dialogic interaction, the ideas are influenced by the thoughts of the other. When they communicate with each other, their discourses regulate their positionings on the social situation that is the subject of the dialogue. It is also possible to identify both the possibilities of the pedagogical mode and its potential limitations for dialogic interaction, which synchronously and asynchronously facilitate or restrict the performance of the joint writing activity. It can be concluded that within the framework of remote teaching, digital technology has become a flexible mode of pedagogical practice that supports dialogic interaction, enables regulation among peers for discussion, negotiation, and positioning on a topic, and facilitates the construction of collective knowledge that emerges in argumentative collaborative writing
Dialogic authorial academic language learning: An alternative to genre pedagogy
Full text linkThis paper reenvisions academic language learning in the university from a dialogic authorial perspective inspired by the work of Bakhtin. I argue that language pedagogues have misappropriated the radical alternative Bakhtin poses for language learning in his critique of genre through adopting a Vygotskyian internalization approach to discourse and a post-structuralist interpretation of Bakhtinian dialogic discourse as intertextuality. I explore how genre pedagogy has adopted these misunderstandings of Bakhtin to prioritize students’ and scholars’ socialization within pre-existing, commonly accepted, shared, authoritative patterns of discourse. I claim that genre pedagogy tends to legitimize the practice of university writing curricula to postpone students’ engagement in meaning making, focusing on training over education. I explore the consequence of this prioritization on socialization and training in form for suppressing students’ dialogic addressivity to and problematization of the ideas of others, which is an essential for meaningful academic discourse. By contrast, a dialogic authorial approach to language learning prioritizes education through students’ and scholars’ ontological engagement in posing problems and authoring meaning in communion with others. The expectation is for language forms to become a necessary byproduct of the production of utterances that are meaningful to oneself and responsive to others. When focused on meaning, academic language forms become invisible except when there are challenges with intelligibility or modality. I argue for a radical rethinking of university language learning curricula in terms of a focus on voice and the “stylistics” of form to serve meaning making
Dialogical interactions mediated by technology in mathematics education
Full text linkThis paper discusses the results of a research[1] that integrates Digital Interactive Storytelling (DIST), competence-oriented mathematical activities, and argumentation called DIST-M. The general aim is to support a reflective knowledge of mathematical concepts by implementing a digital educational device based on collaborative and dialogical activities proposed by researchers. Within a dialogical dimension of interactions (Bakhtin, 1981), argumentative practice is considered a social activity, where the acquisition and elaboration of new knowledge take place within a social space with multiple interlocutors in a dynamic process. The participants are engaged in constructing and negotiating mathematical meanings within a specific context. This dialogical approach to argumentation tends to create an authentic argumentative culture that is a system of implicit and explicit rules where the exchanges and interactions among participants require a joint elaboration of new meanings, within a given mathematical context, through a dialogical exchange. Learning and development result from a dialogical negotiation process during which new knowledge is developed and those already possessed are re-organized and systematized (Bakhtin, 1981; Vygotskij, 1978). In the current pandemic circumstances, technologies are the main tools to uphold the educational processes. Despite the fact that the DIST-M was implemented and tested before the Covid-19 era, its epistemic bases of dialogism mediated by technology could significantly keep alive the dialogic interaction in educational settings that have been heavily affected by the social distancing and promote mathematical thinking. The articles focus on the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal n. 4,” Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all.”
[1] The research is funded by the Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research under the National Project “Digital Interactive Storytelling in Mathematics: a competence-based social approach”, PRIN 2015, Prot. 20155NPRA5
Dialogue about “learning” across the Northern Norway-Russia border: An analysis of textbooks in kindergarten teacher education
Full text linkThis paper is the first in a series of three studies that explore the pedagogy used in the Norwegian and Russian early childhood settings by examining texts that are part of the syllabus in two early childhood teacher education programs that participated in our project with student international exchanges. The study explores how Mikhail Bakhtin’s notion of dialogue relates to the concept of ‘learning’ in the context of early childhood teacher educations in Northern Norway and Northern Russia. The data sources are textbooks used as syllabi for kindergarten teacher education in those countries. These national dialogues are understood as authoritative discourses on the concepts of learning to which the students in both countries have to relate. By being inspired by Bakhtin’s notion of dialogue, we consider that the ideas in textbooks areas are in a dialogic relationship as they are parts of a regulating battle between centrifugal and centripetal forces. A constructivist perspective on learning and the division of the learning process into subject, knowledge and education areas are identified as the centripetal forces in the dialogue on learning. Activities, tools, and the role of adults are identified as centrifugal forces. Based on the hypothetical premise that textbooks influence practices and that practice may unfold as textbooks describe, we have created hypothetical discussions between educators and students in these countries. The study provides better insight on the premises for the dialogue about learning across international borders which can be useful in internalization and exchange programs in kindergarten teacher educations in different countries
Relational Becoming: Considering Classroom Dialogue in Ethico-ontological Terms
Full text linkThis paper draws on Bakhtin’s ethico-ontological vision of dialogue to theorize “relational becoming” on a micro-level. To do so, it introduces three “ethical dimensions of dialogue” (responsibility, responsiveness, and capacitation) and develops the interrelated concepts of addressability and presencing as analytical lenses. Drawing on transcript data from a series of high school and college students’ discussions about controversial political issues, the analysis examines how interlocutors made themselves addressable, addressed each other, and were “presenced” in dialogue. It also discusses the ethico-ontological potential of these interactions, identifying a problematic tendency among interlocutors to not “show up” in verbal discourse in a variety of ways, including, in particular, reliance on abstractions
Adopting educational robotics and coding to open dialogic spaces in lower secondary education
Full text linkThis article explores how the adoption of educational robotics, cloud-based animation software, and simplified visual programming software can provide valuable opportunities for dialogic interaction and learning. The potentialities of this type of activity are often overlooked in dialogic investigations. Based on empirical illustration, we discuss how open-ended educational tasks involving the creation of material-digital artifacts can promote the expression of the students’ voices and the emergence of a dialogic space in which both human and non-human Others, as well as chronotropic dynamics and materiality, play a crucial role. To provide a polyphonic account of the dialogical processes detected, we analyzed excerpts from two group interviews with seven lower secondary school students (aged 11-12) and excerpts taken from meetings with their teacher. Our qualitative analysis shows that the technology-mediated activity provided valuable opportunities for opening a dialogic space in which the students could express their own voice in interaction with both human and non-human Others. The material world (including the virtual materiality of computer-generated objects) seems to play a twofold role. First, the resistance of the virtual and material objects can contribute to the opening of a dialogical space between the child and the world; second, the chronotopic relations seem to have an impact on the dialogic learning process. These are valid opportunities for educationally relevant dialogic interaction. They should be cultivated and supported to further advance the pedagogical value of educational robotics and coding
\u27Google Speak\u27: The discursive practices of search in home-education
Full text linkLearning with technology is increasingly understood to be a social process involving unique and telling discourses. An emerging research agenda has resulted, investigating the links between ‘talk’ and student technological practices but is yet to include home-education. Preliminary evidence exists of a relationship between particular types of ‘talk’ and success with particular online activities, namely online search. This may prove especially pertinent to home-educators who report that their most prolific online activities are those reliant upon search engines like Google. This paper presents select findings from a study into online search and the associated discursive practices among early primary students and their parent-educators in Australia. Data from observations, tests and interviews with five home-educating families were analysed recursively using a system guided by Fairclough’s Critical Discourse Analysis. Specifically, this paper seeks to investigate: which discursive practices are privileged in these sites during online search; the extent to which these practices contribute to relations of power and the extent to which these practices are found alongside effective online search. Findings revealed a prevalence of inequitable discursive practices, those that either inhibited the equal conversational power of speakers or which naturalised inequitable power relations more generally. These discursive practices were found alongside ineffective online searches. Notwithstanding, participants continued to speak positively about search engines and their educational power. This rhetoric-reality gap is theorized in the paper as the work of dominant ideologies surrounding technology in education. Findings can assist the growing number of home-educators and their students to use online search more effectively. Insights regarding links between discursive practice and search practice may also help ensure that discourse helps to maximise the educational benefits associated with online search
What makes authentic questions authentic?
Full text linkIn some approaches to dialogic pedagogy research, authentic questions have long attracted attention, since the prevalence of authentic questions has been used as an indicator of the dialogic quality of classroom activities. However, this article offers an analysis of the concept of authentic questions in the research literature and shows that this concept is less clear than is commonly assumed. For instance, descriptions and definitions offered are very heterogeneous even within particular studies, and classifications of authentic questions vary across research literature. The analysis identifies four different, implicit conceptual elements in “authentic question” — some of which cannot be reconciled. The analysis also identifies an important underlying theme, namely mutual recognition and respect, in descriptions of authentic questions. Accordingly, the article concludes with the recommendation that future research on authentic questions includes this theme explicitly in reflections on the identification of authentic questions
The University of Students: A place for joint self-education
Full text linkIn this article, we explain, explore, and problematize the formation, organization, leadership, and daily educational life of the first (to our knowledge) international democratic university of students (UniS) in the 21st century. UniS is run by the students, for the students, and with the students for their diverse purposes, desires, interests, and needs. A student is anyone who freely chooses to study something for whatever reason. Everyone can become a student at any time without any high school credits, fees, bureaucracy, tests, or any other form of human suffering. But what exactly is UniS? Why students? What if…? How can one visualize UniS, which is “so vague, so bizarre, so unnecessary to me!” What are its philosophical principles? Who are we? What does the University of Students look like? In the spirit of curiosity, wonder, leisure, fun, freedom, and love for learning, we invite the reader to attend and connect with two working edu-clubs of UniS: a movie club “Schooling Around the World and Time” and an “Educationalist Club.” In addition, we discuss some of the main issues, limitations, and challenges, including the civilization of the necessities, colonization of the human spirit by the economy, a lack of genuine leisure, and toxification of the human by foisted education. The open-ended, poetic conclusion lets the readers form their own interpretations, ideas, questions, and answers about UniS. What is the future of UniS? And only time will tell, 10, 100 years later or 100 light-years from now
Opportunities and challenges of dialogic pedagogy in art museum education
Full text linkThe aim of this interpretative, qualitative research study is to investigate affordances and constraints of dialogic pedagogy in the museums, as well as its broader contribution to society today. The background is my involvement in a Danish development project called ‘Museums and Cultural Institutions as Spaces for Citizenship,’ initiated by seven art museum educators in Copenhagen and supported by the Ministry of Culture. Denmark has a strong dialogic tradition dating back to Grundtvig’s belief in the power of ´the oral word’ to foster democratic ‘Bildung.’ Museum education, on the other hand, has a long tradition of monologic transmission. Still, a more participatory pedagogy has been gaining ground over many years.
This study is based on the observations of three-hour-long teaching sessions in seven museums and has a Bakhtinian framework. While the overall analysis builds on the whole project, two cases are discussed in more detail. The overarching research question is how central aspects of dialogic pedagogy played out in an art museum context and its opportunities and challenges. The subquestions focus on three central Bakhtinian concepts: How did the educators facilitate multivoicedness during the short museum visits? What role did difference and disagreement play? What opportunities emerged for students to develop internally persuasive discourse? I have chosen these concepts because they are central in dialogism and combined them because they are closely connected in Bakhtin’s work. The final reflections open a wider perspective of how dialogic museum education may contribute to overarching functions of education: qualification, socialization, and subjectification.
Key findings were that the museum educators’ transition from traditional to dialogic pedagogy was enhanced by their genuine interest in hearing students’ voices. They succeeded in engaging students in multivoiced dialogues but with a tendency towards harmonization rather than the exploration of diversity and difference. The practical aesthetic workshops offered unique opportunities for students to develop their internally persuasive word, i.e., by replacing authoritative interpretations of artworks with their own. Challenges experienced by the educators were, e.g., the dilemmas between preplanning and student choice and between disseminating their professional art knowledge and facilitating students’ meaning making and creativity. In contrast, students found the lack of workshop follow-up problematic.
The article provides deeper insight into museums as an alternative pedagogical arena. Museum educators and non-museum classroom teachers may find it useful for cultivating greater dialogic interactions in respective learning contexts