"Teaching That Respects Students' Voices": Dialogic Pedagogy and Social Justice in a Content Literacy Course

• In Event: Teacher Education as a Lever for Equity and Social Justice

Abstract

While dialogic pedagogy is recognized as generative for learning, teachers vary in how much they utilize such pedagogy even after learning about it. To help teacher educators better prepare pre-service teachers, we examined how teacher candidates in a content literacy course centered on dialogic pedagogy understood the pedagogy in relation to their teaching-related social justice goals. Through analyzing surveys and interviews, we examined how candidates understood dialogic pedagogy; their teaching-related social justice goals; how important these goals were to them; and how they viewed the relationship between dialogic pedagogy and these goals. Our findings indicate that, in the eyes of pre-service teachers, dialogic pedagogy has promise, as well as perceived complexity, in enabling them to teach for social justice.

Authors

• Maren S. Aukerman, Stanford University

• Lisel Alice Murdock-Perriera, Stanford University

• Paolo Martin, Stanford University