Theory and Research on Teaching as Dialogue

Abstract

A special challenge for this chapter, therefore, is to carve out a useful terrain between two unproductive extremes. One is to consider any verbal interaction between teacher and student, or among students, a "dialogue," which would simply equate dialogue with communication. Building on Dewey???s (1916, p. 5) famous formulation that "Not only is social life identical with communication, but all communication (and hence all genuine social life) is educative," it would elide any distinctions among dialogue, pedagogy, and communication. The other unproductive extreme is to narrow prescriptively the multiple forms of dialogue to a single form as "true" dialogue, which neglects its historical genealogy (but is, even more important, pedagogically counterproductive). One of our central claims will be that there are forms of dialogue, and that their usefulness in educational settings will depend on the relation between forms of communicative interaction and (1) the contexts of such interaction, (2) other activities and relations among participants, (3) the subject matter under discussion, and (4) the varied differences among those participants themselves. Conceptions of dialogue need to be rethought within the changing institutional and demographic circumstances of teaching and learning, and within the changing educational needs and aims of society.