What is a dialogue?
The term ‘dialogue’ does not refer to just any kind of talk between people but more specifically it refers to that kind of talk in which every answer gives rise to another question[i]. Any real dialogue is a chain of shared thinking and the term dialogue therefore, means roughly the same thing as ‘thinking together’.
Why the term ‘dialogic’?
The word dialogue normally refers to two or more people talking together. But sometimes, when you are thinking on your own, you might notice that your thinking takes the form of a dialogue with a range of different voices. In cartoons it is common to see characters who have to take a tough moral decision talking to either a little devil hovering over one shoulder or a little angel hovering over the other. There is some truth in that popular representation. Whenever we are really thinking hard about anything we do not just think like a computer would with just one logical point of view but we often find ourselves splitting into several different voices[ii]. We need the term ‘dialogic’ in order to refer to this kind of thinking that is not actually a dialogue but that shares some of the features of dialogue.
The most essential feature of dialogic thinking, whether this refers to thinking in a group or thinking alone, is being able to switch perspectives in order to see things from different points of view. To call anything ‘dialogic’ means that it cannot just be reduced to just one point of view but that it requires holding several different points of view together in tension at once.
Dialogic education as education for dialogue
To teach in a dialogic way means that at the same time as children learn conceptual knowledge they also learn how to be better at dialogue. Dialogic Education therefore means education for dialogue as well as education through dialogue. It is the kind of education that teaches by drawing children into dialogue about any given topic in such a way that children learn how to engage in dialogue about the topic at the same time as they learn the content of the topic itself.
Being better at dialogue means learning how to ask better questions, how to listen better, hearing not only the words but also the implicit meanings, how to be open to new possibilities and new perspectives while, of course, learning how to think critically about new perspectives through comparing different points of view. More than all these specific skills, it means being someone who enjoys dialogue and who is open-minded enough to try to understand new perspectives and to try to see things both in ways that others see them and in any new ways that they could possibly be seen. To be more dialogic essentially means to be more open to learning something new.
Dialogic education between transmission and construction
In order to bring out the way in which dialogic education offers a clear alternative I have to present in a clear and simple way the well known features of the two dominant theories of education found amongst teachers, parents and students of education around the world.
Education as transmission
The default theory of education in most countries and with most parents and teachers is that education is the transmission of knowledge. This is often seen as the common sense model. On this model education is seen as preserving and transmitting knowledge across generations. The discoveries and inventions of the past need to be communicated to young people so that they can join the culture. To be educated, on this model, means knowing facts and having skills, facts about history, scientific discoveries, geography, literature and so on and skills such as literacy, arithmetic, scientific experimentation and so on. Although educational theorists have often been critical of the transmissional theory of education it has recently had something of a revival amongst politicians and teachers in reaction to what are seen as the failures of 'progressive' education. The theorist most commonly associated with the movement to revive transmissional approaches is E.D.Hirsch, author of the book ‘Cultural Literacy: What every American needs to know’
Learning as the construction of meaning
Educational psychologists at least since Piaget have been influenced by constructivism, the idea that to really learn students need to construct meaning for themselves. Often Vygotskian theory is used to expand Piaget’s version of constructivism into ‘social constructivism’ or the idea that students need to construct meaning for themselves collaboratively with others. A simple but effective way of referring to the difference between constructivism and transmissionism is through the way in which the teacher’s role changes, from ‘sage on the stage’ (transmission) to ‘guide on the side’ (constructivism).
The idea is that to really understand things students need to be actively engaged in making meaning and the best way to promote this is to encourage them to learn through discovery and enquiry both alone and in groups. In constructivist classrooms teachers are often supposed to talk less and children are supposed to talk more.
Dialogic education as a third way
Elements of a transmissional theory really are common sense - of course we need to transmit civilisation across generations - but there are also some obvious problems with this approach when it is done badly. At its worst transmission means that students learn a set of facts that do not mean anything to them, remember them long enough to put them down in an exam and then forget them again. The problem with constructivist inspired education at its worst is that children learn only what they are interested in and they often do not learn very much at all because it is hard for them to discover for themselves all the knowledge that the culture has discovered and created over millennia.
Like the best aspect of transmissional education dialogic education is about helping children join cultures through learning the most valuable things that have been discovered and created so far. Inspired by Vygotsky dialogic education makes a distinction between short-term local dialogues and long-term global dialogues of culture. Mathematics, for example, is a long term dialogue. The discoveries of the Mayans thousands of years ago are part of the mathematics curriculum. But education into a long-term dialogue of culture such as Mathematics is not seen as simply transmission. The idea is to help students to join the dialogue as participants in the dialogue. If you want to join in an existing dialogue it is polite and also wise to listen before speaking too much or too boldly. It is important to learn at least something of what has been said so far before putting forward your own ideas. In dialogic education the focus is on learning the dialogue so far in a way that enables understanding and participation.
Like the common transmissional theory of education, dialogic education says that we have a responsibility to teach children about their own cultural inheritance, communicating to them all the most valuable ideas that their culture has developed in the past. But, like constructivism, it says that we need to teach in a way that enables students to participate in constructing new knowledge for the future. So we do not teach culture as a set of inert isolated facts, we teach facts as always part of ongoing dialogues. Science, for example, is not a set of facts but living dialogue. We know nothing for certain, we should teach in a way that inducts students into the reality which is an open and ongoing shared inquiry within a community.
So dialogic education advocates transmission and construction together. Transmission of culture across generations is seen as teaching ‘the dialogue so far’. Teaching in a way that promotes the students' capacity to learn for themselves and to think for themselves is seen as teaching how to engage in dialogue as shared inquiry and so how to create new knowledge together with others in the future.
[i] Bakhtin (1986). Speech genres and other late essays. Austin: University of Texas. P 168.
[ii] Fernyhough, C. (1996). The dialogic mind: a dialogic approach to the higher mental functions. New Ideas in Psychology, 14, 47–62. See also Charles Fernyhough’s 2016 book ‘The Voices Within’ published by Profile Books in the UK and Basic Books in the USA.