Blurring the Boundaries: Opening and Sustaining Dialogic Spaces

• In Event: Opening and Sustaining Dialogic Space of Possibilities: Examining Talk in and Across International Classrooms

Abstract

Objectives
Dialogic pedagogy is premised on the idea that knowledge and understanding are constructed through and by talking together (Alexander, 2020; Resnick et al., 2015). To facilitate such talk, teachers are advised to ask open questions, to elicit student ideas, and to probe student reasoning. However, even when students actively participate in the discussion, offer reasons, and respond to one another’s ideas, teachers often sense that something is missing. The essence of dialogue – the meeting of minds that leads to the joint construction of new meanings and understandings – does not emerge. Though students explain and argue their perspectives, they talk past each other as each doubles down on their own position. Other students seem more focused on guessing what the teacher wants to hear than on sharing their own ideas. This paper investigates the conditions that facilitate and/or hinder the emergence of that elusive missing element, which we and other scholars characterize as dialogic space.
Perspectives
Building on philosophical traditions (Buber, 1937; Gadamer, 2004) and contemporary dialogic educational scholarship (Wegerif, 2007, 2013), we highlight three conditions for opening and sustaining dialogic space: tension between perspectives; openness to others, which is facilitated by ego suspension, authority relaxation and respect and interest in others; and acceptance of dialogue’s inherent unpredictability.
Research context, methods and data
We employ micro-ethnographic methods to explore the un/emergence of dialogic space in two primary Language Arts lessons, one in Israel and one in England. Both teachers engage their students in lively discussions that advance understanding of important concepts. Though both discussions may seem dialogic inasmuch as students share their perspectives and reasoning, meaningful dialogic space emerges only in one of the episodes.
Findings
The two case studies highlight the importance of playfulness and mutual attunement for maneuvering within dialogic space. They also point to four challenges that dialogic space poses: a tension between curricular coverage and dialogue’s unpredictability; the demands such unpredictability makes on teacher flexibility, knowledge and judgment; issues of equity in the distribution of teacher attention and student participation; and, finally, the threat of disorder and loss of control.
Significance
Dialogic space is a promising pathway for broadening participants’ perspectives, clarifying ideas, working through differences, and deepening understanding of content and one another. As such, it should be welcomed into mainstream classrooms. However, fostering such a space entails myriad of hurdles, challenges and dilemmas that are scantly acknowledged in the research literature. By choosing to bring these issues to the fore, we do not mean to put teachers off from trying to cultivate dialogic space in their classrooms. On the contrary, we hope that such identification of facilitating factors through empirical analysis, alongside acknowledgment of potential impediments, will make opening dialogic space a more approachable and less daunting prospect for teachers and their students.

Authors

• Edith Bouton, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

• Adam Lefstein, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

• Aliza Segal, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev

• Julia Snell, University of Leeds