A dialogic and democratic journey throughout editing a (very) special journal issue

This introductory article to the special issue “Dialogic pedagogy and democratic education” aims to reflect upon the process of putting this special issue together and to pinpoint some of the most relevant aspects of the articles collected within the issue. Therefore, reverberating one of the editors’ perspectives, not only is this paper meant to introduce the DPJ readers to the texts compiled in the volume, as well as it is dedicated to giving you, dear reader, a glimpse of the journey taken by the editors and authors. It also tries and situates the issue in its social and historic chronotope to justify the ever-so-present appeal to reinforce, advocate and share theoretical discussions as well as practical accounts which focus on dialogic and democratic educational efforts – both distant and more recent events – that took place in different contexts, and different parts in the world. It\u27s claimed that the several accounts and discussions highlighted in the papers in this special issue provide DPJ readers with both hints and strong, factual proposals which might foster new ideas and further actions by those who want to consider dialogic/democratic education either as an end or/and as an act of/for social transformation

Introduction to the Special Issue “Boundaries between dialogic pedagogy and argumentation theory”

Dialogue and argumentation are two processes that complement and mutually influence each other. However, this essential relationship is not sufficiently acknowledged by current educational research. This neglected relation is also mirrored by the lack of sufficient dialogue between two fields that are defined by the dialogical approach to education and argumentation, namely dialogic pedagogy and educational argumentation. In this Special Issue, we argue that dialogue pedagogies and argumentation theory and practice should communicate more, bridging their somehow different perspectives for the common goal of engaging learners in productive and constructive discussions

The educational regime of the Bakhtinian dialogue

Many dialogue-oriented educationalists are attracted to the Bakhtinian notion of dialogue. In this theoretical essay, I have abstracted five major features of the Bakhtinian dialogue and considered what kind of educational regime emerges from these features. In conclusion, I problematize the notion of Bakhtinian dialogue and its regime for education. The paper was presented and discussed at the 17th Bakhtinian conference in Saransk, Russia, in 2021

Four person-ideas in a soul-searching internally persuasive discourse

The monologues presented in this article represent a particular Bakhtinian analysis of a transcript of a passionate, dramatic, and conflictual General Assembly meeting held in the first democratic school in Norway, the Experimental Gymnasium of Oslo (EGO), only two months after the school was opened, on November 2nd, 1967. In the meeting, they confronted each other with deep disagreements in their vision of the school and ways to govern it. The Bakhtinian assumption is that a dialogic analysis of any dialogue takes entering into dialogic relationships with the original participants in the analyzed dialogue (Matusov, Marjanovic-Shane, & Gradovski, 2019; Matusov, Marjanovic-Shane, Kullenberg, & Curtis, 2019). By taking the floor in the Soul-Searching Assembly, the students confronted each other fully from the bottom of their hearts and minds. Their ideas were embodied intentions, motives, reasons, and desires – what Bakhtin called the person-ideas (Bakhtin, 1999). I constructed four person-ideas based on the transcript of the Soul-searching assembly. In that process of dialogic abstraction, I attempted to distill specific points of view without depersonalizing them into abstract ideas thorn out of the living moment of their lives. The analysis through the construction of the four person-ideas complements a vignette I wrote based on the same transcript (Marjanovic-Shane, 2023b). It is both a distinctive kind of dialogic analysis, and it also helps me prepare the data regarding the students’ ideas for a further conceptual analysis, where I explore the students\u27 ideological positions, beliefs, and worldviews. That conceptual analysis is published in a separate article of this special issue (Marjanovic-Shane, 2023a)

Bridging dialogic pedagogy and argumentation theory through critical questions

This article explores the relationship between argumentation theory and dialogic pedagogy. Arguments made in everyday discourse tend to be enthymematic, i.e., containing implicit premises. Thus, dialogue is often necessary to uncover hidden assumptions. Furthermore, evaluating logical arguments involves dialectical and dialogic processes. We articulate the role of critical questions in this process and present the Critical Questions Model of Argument Assessment (CQMAA) as a (mostly) comprehensive framework for evaluating arguments. Students can be taught to ask and discuss these critical questions. Yet to facilitate and sustain discussion of these questions, teachers need additional tools drawn from dialogic pedagogy. We draw on Robin Alexander’s conceptual framework for this purpose as well as Michaels and O’Connor’s work on Academically Productive Talk. Alexander’s framework includes six pedagogical principles and eight repertoires of talk. We focus specifically on teacher and student talk moves and propose that critical questions should be considered an important subset of productive talk moves that can bring rigor and purpose to classroom argumentation. Other talk moves are also needed to help students construct arguments, listen and engage with one another, and help sustain discussion of the critical questions. The CQMAA provides both a theoretical and practical link between (1) logical analysis and critique and (2) dialogic teaching

Dialogic pedagogy in democratically run schools: Introduction

The introduction to this special issue has the particular purpose of presenting the philosophical and educational approach of democratic schooling and its practices to readers interested and knowledgeable in Dialogic Pedagogy but without enough information about Democratic education. Namely, many scholars of dialogic pedagogy are not very familiar with democratic schooling, if at all. The term “democratic education” is polysemic (Matusov, 2023), and many educationalists use it to refer to civic education in conventional schools. However, in this special issue, we explore the relationships between dialogic pedagogy and democratically run schools. In the article, I describe democratic education and its current spread and scarcity worldwide. Next, I examine the meaning and the uses of Dialogue in conventional and progressive education. Finally, I introduce the questions about the meaning and values of dialogic pedagogy in democratic education that guided us in putting together this Special Issue

Teacher as a benevolent dictator: Promoting a culture of democratic dialogic education in a conventional university

This essay provides a grounded critical discussion of why a professor might limit their undergraduate students’ sovereignty of educational decision-making to promote an opportunity for a democratic dialogic culture in the class situated in a conventional university. On the one hand, both democracy and dialogue require voluntary participation by the students in their education and dialogue and their sovereignty over collective decision-making and educational reasoning. On the other hand, this participation is based on the students’ socialization in a special culture which might often be at odds with their sovereignty. It is difficult for many students to freely choose democracy and dialogue in education when they are embedded in a conventional educational institution based on Kantian educational paternalism and foisted education. Also, the students are often culturally unfamiliar with such concepts as “democracy,” “dialogue,” and “self-education,” let alone their practical implications. To address these contradictions, I introduce the notion of the “teacher as a benevolent dictator.” I discuss, problematize, and analyze the forms of this benevolent dictatorship, its potential pitfalls, and promises

Dialogic teacher inquiry: The case of a preservice teacher learning to facilitate class discussion

Developing knowledge and practice for high-quality K-12 class discussion remains challenging, especially for new teachers juggling other classroom responsibilities. Our study reports the case of a preservice teacher learning to lead discussions while enrolled in a teacher education inquiry course, simultaneous with semester-long supervised practice teaching in a seventh-grade class (12-13-year-olds) in a high-poverty urban community. The work is guided by a complex teacher learning process for developing complex practice of facilitating discussions in culturally and linguistically diverse high school English classes. Countering popular approaches to “talk moves” as useful but often generic facilitation practices, the teacher education pedagogical innovation we describe positions teachers as knowledge-generating, agentive professionals. Our conceptual framework for teacher learning features dialogic teacher inquiry, with three domains. The first domain involves moving beyond methods texts to dialoguing analytically with and among multiple print, online, and mentor resources for supporting development of a dialogic teaching stance. The second domain intentionally guides new teachers to explore classroom data and consider students as knowledge resources in shaping instruction. The third domain sustains dialogue about discussion processes and evolving conceptions of dialogism in small groups of preservice teacher collectives, enabling sharing of inquiry data, emerging findings, and dilemmas of practice. Drawing upon a larger database, we present a case study demonstrating one preservice teacher’s inquiry work with deep analysis of student talk, detailed memoing processes featuring challenges and benefits of developing dialogic teaching practices, thoughtful criticism of long-established discussion practices, and discoveries about nuances of dialogic teaching. Our case contributes to the literature by presenting an example of dialogic pedagogy for teacher education, in service of preservice teachers learning to lead classroom discussions. Additional innovative pedagogical designs are needed to assist teachers in gaining complex knowledge and practice for teaching and promoting meaningful and learning-rich talk in K-12 classrooms

Exploring dialogical spaces of discovery

This paper revisits two teacher-education contexts which we independently researched. Both contexts invested in teacher-professional transformation, presenting unique puzzles in our respective data analyses. Bringing together Bakhtinian dialogic theory and Natural Inclusionality (Rayner, 2017), we return to these puzzles in a reflective dialogue. The paper unpacks two emergent themes. The first theme details our sense-making of the dialogic-dialectic-dialogic flow as part of professional development, and the second theme captures our deliberations about the energy-filled spaces of the in-between that form part of teacher development in our contexts. The paper discusses key insights about the nature of teacher-professional transformation and opportunities for mutual enrichment: insights that would not be available to us in our independent analyses. Given the non-conclusive nature of Bakhtinian dialogue, we offer no closure and avoid definitive conclusions that enforce or imply the assimilation and homogeneity of perspectives. Instead, we bring a polyphony of voices – our philosophies, contexts, professional orientations, and empirical puzzles – into a receptive-responsive relationship. We believe that the emerging dialogic problematisation has significant implications for teacher development as well as for ongoing theorisations of education. It responds to the pressing need to rethink the crucial relationship between educational theory and practice

Relationships between Democratic Education and Dialogic Education: Conclusion

In my conclusion, I want to return back to the issue raised by the co-editors of this special issue: what are the relationships between Democratic Education and Dialogic Education, between dialogue and democracy? For that, I consider the following three topics: 1) their polysemy, multiple meanings, of these two concepts, 2) their complementarity; and 3) their tensions and incompatibilities