Dialogic Learning: Shifting Perspectives to Learning, Instruction, and Teaching

By Jos van den Linden

Contemporary researchers have analysed dialogue primarily in terms of instruction, conversation or inquiry. There is an irreducible tension when the terms ‘dialogue’ and ‘instruction’ are brought together, because the former implies an emergent process of give-and-take, whereas the latter implies a sequence of predetermined moves. It is argued that effective teachers have learned how to perform in this contradictory space to both follow and lead, to be both responsive and directive, to require both independence and receptiveness from learners. Instructional dialogue, therefore, is an artful performance rather than a prescribed technique. Dialogues also may be structured as conversations which function to build consensus, conformity to everyday ritualistic practices, and a sense of community. The dark side of the dialogic ‘we’ and the community formed around ‘our’ and ‘us’ is the inevitable boundary that excludes ‘them’ and ‘theirs’. When dialogues are structured to build consensus and community, critical reflection on the bases of that consensus is required and vigilance to ensure that difference and diversity are not being excluded or assimilated (see Renshaw, 2002). Again it is argued that there is an irreducible tension here because understanding and appreciating diversity can be achieved only through engagement and living together in communities. Teachers who work to create such communities in their classrooms need to balance the need for common practices with the space to be different, resistant or challenging – again an artful performance that is difficult to articulate in terms of specific teaching techniques.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Springer
• Release date: Jan 12, 2006
• ISBN: 9781402019319

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Dialogic Learning Teaching and Instruction

Theoretical Roots and Analytical Frameworks

Peter D. Renshaw¹

(1)

Griffith University, Gold Coast, Australia

Peter D. Renshaw

Email: [e-mail]

Abstract

This chapter provides an analysis of the construct of ‘dialogue’ in order to frame the contributions of the various authors and research traditions represented in this volume. This volume brings together one group of researchers whose primary interest is in the ‘dialogue’ between speaking and thinking, between the social and the individual, between the public distributed performance of dialogue and the private appropriation of dialogue for individual reflection. It also brings together researchers whose primary interest is in the micro-macro interface that links specific moments of dialogue between participants to how those participants are situated and constituted by different histories and cultures. ‘Dialogue’ as a construct looks both ways—towards individual processes of thinking and reflection, as well as towards the constitution of cultural practices and communities at particular historical moments.

1. INTRODUCTION

The dialogical approach to learning and teaching has both a long history stretching back to Socrates and a contemporary relevance arising from the elaboration of socicocultural theories derived from a variety of influences in psychology, linguistics, anthropology, and education. At the intersection of psychology and linguistics, Vygotsky and Bakhtin are recognised as key influences in developing our understanding of the social foundations of learning and thinking. Specifically, they foreground the socially-situated deployment of language for the development of understanding. The chapters in this volume draw upon this tradition to explore the complex and multilayered processes of teaching and learning in different educational contexts. In particular, many authors (see Part 2 in particular) provide detailed analytical schemes to capture the distinctive linguistic features of pedagogical dialogues in virtual and face-to-face contexts. Their analyses provide evidence of the mediating role of such dialogues in the development of thinking, the formation of individual identity and the constitution of different communities of practice.

At the intersection of anthropology and education is the legacy of Freire, the Brazilian educator and social activist whose work in dialogic education inspired many teachers and researchers in the last 25 years to seek to develop more culturally relevant and reciprocal forms of education, in place of top-down and elitist models. Dialogue for Freire was not simply the description of an interactive exchange between people, but a normative definition of how human relationships should be formed — namely, on the basis of equality, respect and a commitment to the authentic interests of participants. Importantly, ‘participants’ were not theorised as universal human subjects detached in time and space, but living members of communities with histories and cultural resources that needed to be understood and respected. Various authors in this volume, particularly in Part 1, reflect a similar concern to relate specific episodes of classroom dialogue (between teachers and students, and among students themselves) to broader cultural and historical contexts. These chapters provide insight into how the incidental and everyday practices of classroom life are connected to broader cultural and historical practices.

The construct of ‘dialogue’, therefore, is a generative one. It brings together researchers whose primary interest is in the link between speaking and thinking, between the social and the individual, between the public distributed performance of dialogue and the private appropriation of dialogue for individual reflection. It also brings together researchers whose primary interest is in the micro-macro interface that links specific moments of dialogue between participants to how those participants are situated and constituted by different histories and cultures. ‘Dialogue’ as a construct looks both ways — towards individual processes of thinking and reflection, as well as towards the constitution of cultural practices and communities at particular historical moments.

Below, this generative aspect of dialogue is further elaborated in proposing a three-tiered analytical framework for researching dialogue. First though, the deployment of dialogue in relation to teaching and learning is reviewed by ‘looking back’ at Socrates Freire and Bakhtin, and by examining the variety of contemporary uses of dialogue to reform educational processes. Finally, the diverse two-faced nature of dialogue is described, to suggest to readers the kind of open engagement we (editors and authors) hope they will adopt in reading this volume.

2. LOOKING BACK AT DIALOGUE

2.1. Socratic Dialogue

Socrates revealed how learners could be provoked to inquire, to search for evidence and to reason for themselves, rather than rely on established authority or accepted opinions for their knowledge (Burbules, 1993). Socratic dialogue positioned the teacher as neither the author nor transmitter of knowledge, but as an assistant to the learner’s search for evidence and application of reasoned argument. The Socratic approach is often referred to as a maieutic approach to education (Halasek, 1999), and Socrates himself likened his skill as a teacher to the qualities and characteristics of a good midwife (Haroutunian-Gordon, 1989). These qualities included the knowledge and experience required to ask appropriate questions and the capacity to reveal inherent contradictions in the answers provided by conversational partners. Having inadequacies and inconsistencies revealed can be painful for learners, as indeed is childbirth, but as the metaphor implies, such discomfort needs to be balanced against the joy of insight and new understanding that dialogue enables.

In a detailed analysis of the teaching method of Socrates — as revealed in the dialogues — Haroutunian-Gordon (1989) suggested that his status as the prototype of all subsequent teachers (p.5) did not reside primarily in his method of questioning, nor his capacity to reveal inconsistencies and contradictions through interrogation of a person’s reasoning, but in his situated engagement with others in a theatre of inquiry. She writes,

We find that the questions he poses (e.g., Can virtue be taught? What is knowledge?) are the deepest issues we can conjure, and ones about which, by ourselves, we are virtually mute. We watch Socrates as he worries these matters, sometimes expressing our very thoughts and sometimes provoking them so that we discover new ideas and beliefs in ourselves. So the character of Socrates becomes our teacher, but not by telling us answers or providing us a model of teaching excellence. Rather, through his words and actions, as he engages us with him, he opens us to questions we wish to ask and guides our thinking about these issues. (emphasis added to the original)

Haroutunian-Gordon proposes in this quotation a view of dialogue as a cultural tool ‘to think with’, and the social identity of Socrates as ‘our teacher’. This quotation was actually important in helping to articulate the analytical framework described later in the chapter. The three dimensions of the framework — social process, individual reflection, and personal identity and community membership — are present in the quotation though not completely foregrounded.

2.2. Freire’s Dialogic Education

As noted above Freire (1970, 1985) used dialogue to specify educational relationships and processes that he regarded as necessary aspects of a socially just way of life. Freire’s theory was developed from his experiences as an adult educator in rural Brazil in the 1960s where the people were not only illiterate in the language of the ruling class, but also were oppressed economically and culturally. Education based on the traditional curriculum and methods employed in Brazil, Freire argued, further oppressed the local people because it inducted them into the language and knowledge of the ruling class and alienated them from their own cultural practices and traditional knowledge. His goal as an adult educator in this context was to develop a method of enabling learners to read the word (literacy) and the world (ideology) in a way that empowered them rather than oppressed them (Freire & Macedo, 1987).

The symbols and means of modern education — schools, classes, teachers, pupils, lessons and syllabi — are reworked in Freire’s writings (1985). Rather than a school and a classroom, there is a cultural circle based on egalitarian and inclusive relationships. The term cultural conveys the notion that education is not merely about technical knowledge, but rather is concerned with the analysis of cultural conditions and practices and their historical formation. Instead of a teacher, the circle is guided by a coordinator; instead of lectures and other forms of transmitting knowledge, there is dialogic inquiry into the conditions of life; instead of pupils who come to listen and observe, there are group participants who contribute their viewpoints; instead of syllabi determined by interest groups removed from the everyday lives of the participants, there are compacts and negotiated programs that guide the activities of the participants. Instead of the ceremonial, institutional, and pedagogical voice of the knowledgeable teacher, the coordinator speaks in the vernacular voice of other participants in the circle, conveying a complex sense of critical enthusiasm for the ideas being expressed, rather than either simple acceptance of every idea, or authoritative criticism of ideas (Freire, 1985, p.10). Thus, dialogue is used not primarily to make friends with the students but to challenge them to become critical cultural researchers and actors within their own circumstances (Freire, 1985, p.98). Programs of research by Shor (Shor & Freire, 1987), Giroux (1985) and McLaren (1986), extended Freire’s project into North America where networks of like-minded teachers developed local versions of Freire’s dialogical approach to education. They emphasised the language of possibility and the pedagogy of hope in order to inspire teachers working with poor and oppressed communities. In the tradition of Freire, dialogue provided them with a normative vision for what education should be.

2.3. Bakhtin’s Dialogism

Recent deployment of dialogue as a tool for theorising teaching and learning was sparked by Bakhtin’s writings on language (1981, 1984), and Vygotsky’s cultural theory of learning. For many learning theorists, access to Bakhtin’s theory was mediated by Wertsch’s (1991) book, Voices of the Mind. Wertsch drew on both Vygotsky and Bakhtin to elaborate the central mediating role of language in the process of learning. By reinterpreting core ideas in Vygotsky’s theory in the light of Bakhtin’s notions of voice and dialogue, Wertsch broadened the theoretical perspectives applied to learning. By carefully tracking children’s speech during classroom episodes, he showed it was possible to document the way they appropriate and use — ventriloquate — the words of the teacher, the textbook, and other students to construct their own understanding of concepts (see also Lemke, 1992).

Bakhtin’s writing on the inherent dialogicality of language and thinking, has heightened our awareness of the mediating role of speech and audience in classroom activities. Bakhtin’s view of dialogue goes beyond the observation that verbal interaction has a conversational, give-and-take, turn-taking format. Bakhtin located the core of thinking in dialogic speech occurring between oneself and another, between a speaker and a real or imagined audience without which ones utterances or thoughts could not make sense (Hicks, 2000). Even individual thought is dialogic in the sense that all thinking occurs through appropriating and using social forms of speech that are imbued with the accents, values and beliefs of previous speakers and speech communities.

Bakhtin has also enabled researchers to understand how identity is formed and transformed through the appropriation of particular language practices and genres. The kinds of speech genres and styles that children acquire at school, create new identity positions for them and change their relationships to each other and their community. To talk is not merely a technical exercise; it necessarily involves identity work that reveals and constructs who one is, and is becoming. Identity is produced in social contexts as we speak, with a personal accent, about selected topics, to a particular audience.

To combine all these aspects of language use (where, how, what and to whom) Bakhtin (1981, p.275) employed the term social languages. The concept of ‘social languages’ foregrounds the community-building function of language. Our membership of different social groups requires that we learn the particular forms of speaking that are privileged there, that is, the ways of proposing and supporting ideas; the ways to address others in the community and participate in conversation; the ways to convince others and win their allegiance; in short, the genres and speech styles that mark one as a member of the group and that sustain the group identity.

Bakhtin draws our attention to the diversity of social languages deployed in the official and unofficial scripts of the classroom. We are more aware now of how the diverse social languages that occur in the classroom, can enter into dialogical interanimation during teaching (see Ballinger, 1997). Students draw upon many different language resources to participate in classroom discourse — resources from their families, their neighbourhoods, their ethnic communities, from classroom activities, and increasingly from the popular culture of music, film and video-clips. Schooling has traditionally ignored or actively sought to silence vernacular everyday genres, so such talk has lived, as it were, underground, in the disruptive speech of students (Guiterrez Kreuter & Larson, 1995). The language of the school curriculum privileges the more formal, conventionalised, technical and specialised language of the disciplines over the vernaculars used by students in their daily interactions. The pedagogical challenge for the teacher is to bring these different social languages of the disciplines and the vernacular into dialogue so that the power inherent in the formal language of the school curriculum can be made accessible and meaningful to students. Bakhtin provides, therefore, primarily an analytical perspective on dialogue that highlights how meaning necessarily is constructed interactively through drawing upon and revoicing the languages of others.

The theory of language-use provided by Bakhtin, however, has been used also to suggest normative classroom practices. For example, Halasek (1999) developed a pedagogy of possibility that distinguished two contrasting approaches to teaching, namely, proficient pedagogies versus productive pedagogies. This contrast is similar to Freire’s distinction between pedagogy for adaptation versus pedagogy for integration. Proficiency and adaptation on the one hand entail a process of assimilation, where students’ existing cultural practices are devalued and replaced by those privileged within the institution. In contrast productivity and integration entail a more investigative and creative process that privileges abnormal and parodic discourses that play with and challenge institutional practices. Halasek (1999) writes that:

Proficiency is informed by any or all of the following orientations toward discourse, knowledge, learning, and students: an assumption of certainty; emphasis on centripetal cultural and polemic rhetorical ends; passive reception of knowledge and authoritative reception of discourse; instruction in and production of normal, preservative discourses; development of linear styles of reporting discourse; an overriding concern for convention and form. Productivity, on the other hand, is informed by an assumption of ambiguity; emphasis on centrifugal cultural and parodic rhetorical ends; active engagement of knowledge and internally persuasive reception of discourse; instruction in the production of abnormal, investigative discourses; development of ludic styles of reporting discourse; and a concern for content. Productivity is centrifugal; it works away from that original intention, struggling against boundaries and convention. (p.178)

Consistent with the epistemological stance of Bakhtin who regarded knowing as a dialogic process that necessarily draws upon existing and prior discourses to create possibilities for speaking and acting in the present, Halasek suggests that proficiency and productivity both are present in every teaching-learning moment. A pedagogy of possibility is not a question of either/or, either proficiency or productivity but rather both/and, a stance that entails a commitment to on-going engagement in dialogue and a mutual answerability.

3. CONTEMPORARY VARIETIES OF DIALOGUE

Contemporary scholars have maintained a lively interest in dialogue both as an instructional tool and as a theoretical and analytical framework for researching classroom practices. To review this literature a scheme proposed by Nicholas Burbules (1993) a decade ago has been used. He differentiated dialogue into four types, namely: dialogue as instruction; dialogue as conversation; dialogue as inquiry; and dialogue as debate. Below, the first three types of dialogue (instruction, conversation, and inquiry) are used to capture the diverse forms of classroom practices labelled as dialogic.

3.1. Dialogue as Instruction

Dialogic instruction differs from monologic instruction — the transmission model of instruction — by foregrounding the interactive, contingent, responsive and flexible features of instructional activities. Scaffolding provides a powerful image of dialogic instruction. In a typical instance, scaffolding entails interaction between two participants who alternate in their utterances or physical actions, with one participant playing the role of guide or tutor as the other attempts to complete a challenging task. Stone’s (1998) comprehensive overview of the evolution of the scaffolding metaphor indicates that it was used by Wood initially (see Wood & Wood, 1996) to describe the various kinds of support that parents offer their children during problem-solving activities. Later it was linked to Vygotsky’s concept of the zone of proximal development (Cazden, 1988) and theoretically enriched by consideration of different kinds of scaffolds related to different sociocultural contexts (Greenfield, 1984; Paradise,1996; De Haan,1999). Effective scaffolding was related predominantly to the contingency of assistance provided by the adult, as encapsulated in the rule: ‘If the child succeeds offer less help; if s/he gets into trouble, offer more help’ (Wood & Middleton,1975). While highlighting the interactive and flexible requirements of effective scaffolding, the metaphor itself — a physical structure of support — militates against seeing the interaction as fully dialogic and cooperative. The structuring and supportive strategies of the adult remain in the foreground, while the contributing and creative contributions of the child are seen as secondary, merely features to be moulded by the adult (Elbers, 1996).

This contradiction in the metaphor of scaffolding reveals an irreducible tension in the notion of dialogic instruction — on the one hand, it is goal-directed, reproductive and typically involves asymmetrical roles. On the other hand, however, effective scaffolded learning cannot occur unless the resistant and divergent practices of the novice are incorporated, through dialogue, into the interaction. Such tension suggests that working dialogically to instruct will always remain an art, a situated engagement between people, never simply a procedural technique.

With regard to classroom instruction, scaffolding was promoted as a useful metaphor in the late 1970s by Courtney Cazden (see Stone, 1998), and then developed by various researchers including: Applebee (1983; Langer & Applebee, 1986); and Brown and Palincsar (1987; Palincsar & Brown, 1984). What these different researchers have in common is a concern to increase the students’ contribution to classroom activities and discourse, and to prescribe a form of instruction that resembles a give and take pattern of collaboration rather than a top-down one-way monologue from the teacher to the students.

Langer and Applebee (1986) identified five aspects of effective instructional scaffolding — joint ownership of the learning activity by students and teachers; appropriateness of the activity to the current knowledge and background of the students; structuring the activity so that it embodies a familiar sequence of thought and action for the students; collaborative engagement by the teacher and the students together; and an explicit effort to transfer control of the activity to the students and ensure they have internalised the assistance provided by the teacher. Brown and Palincsar’s reciprocal teaching method also embodies the key aspects of effective scaffolding identified by Langer and Applebee. Reciprocal teaching was designed to teach specific comprehension strategies within the context of collaborative activity between teachers and students. It included the gradual fading of teacher assistance to promote internalisation of the strategies by students, as well as placing students in the controlling role of tutor to ensure their sense of ownership of the cognitive strategies being taught.

The irreducible tension noted above in linking dialogue with instruction is incorporated in Goldenberg and Gallimore’s instructional conversation (1991; Goldenberg,1993). This teaching process necessarily involves a delicate balance between following the students’ ideas and lines of reasoning, and leading them towards insight and understanding of more abstract, more consistent, and more generalised forms of thinking.

3.2. Dialogue as Conversation — Consensus Building

In contrast to the goal-directed focus of instructional dialogues, dialogue as conversation, is directed at establishing mutual understanding, intersubjectivity and consensus. Questions in the dialogue serve to promote the sharing of information and experiences, and where different opinions, attitudes and tastes are revealed, conversation works as a means to re-establish harmony. Mercer (2000) would code the talk in such a conversation as predominantly cumulative rather than exploratory or disputational. With regard to forms of cooperation within groups, the interaction between participants would closely match what Smith Johnson and Johnson (1981) called concurrence seeking group processes rather than processes of debate or controversy.

Does such dialogue serve a purpose within teaching-learning contexts? Dialogue as conversation seems particularly relevant in establishing a community of learners (Brown, 1994). A basic prerequisite of a learning community is a high level of common knowledge and consensus between members. In a recent review of research on learning communities Barab and Duffy (2000) identified three general dimensions to describe their characteristics: common cultural heritage; interdependent system; and reproductive cycle. These dimensions resonate with themes of consensus, concurrence and mutuality — features that bind members of the community together, enabling the smooth conduct of everyday activities and easy transitions between activities. As Brown Ash Rutherford Nakagawa Gordon & Campione (1993) suggest, these activities become a ritualistic aspect of the classroom, ceasing to be the object of explicit attention. Such ritualistic participant frameworks are collaborative and dialogical, which in turn produce shared systems of belief. Brown and her colleagues write,

Dialogues provide the format for novices to adopt the discourse structure, goals, values, and belief systems of scientific practice. Over time, the community of learners adopts a common voice and common knowledge base..., a shared system of meanings, beliefs and activity that is as often implicit as it is explicit. (Brown et al. 1993:194)

Through conversation in the classroom, the teacher and students are trying to create a common language and worldview, and a tacit set of ground rules that sustain smooth interaction between community members over time. Where the members of a community are in complete agreement, however, there is a reduced potential for insights that arise from different perspectives. From a higher-level learning perspective, therefore, dialogue as conversation will have some drawbacks as Mercer and his colleagues have made clear (Mercer, Wegerif & Dawes, 1999). More importantly in the context of a multicultural student population, the assumptions identified by Barab and Duffy (2000) and implemented by Brown et al (1993) suggest a movement from diversity to uniformity. Clearly, this was not the intention of researchers such as Brown and Campione, but in using the centripetal metaphor of a community to research learning processes, conformist implications are foregrounded. It can be argued, however, that coming together around agreed goals, beliefs, strategies and activities in the classroom, is a necessary condition for the recognition of difference and the exploration of diverse viewpoints. Irreducible tension seems to be relevant here again. To learn about, appreciate and value difference, one first needs to get into conversation. To provide space in the classroom for the expression of difference, it may be necessary to build a working consensus, the kind of taken-for-granted ritualistic community practices that seem opposed to diversity, but may be the grounds on which it actually grows.

3.3. Dialogue as Inquiry

Inquiry is focussed on a specific question or dilemma that requires the attention of the participants, and although none of the participants may be an expert, the process of inquiry itself guides them to a solution. Underlying the process of inquiry is the assumption that everyone in the interaction contributes their views; that views and opinions are interrogated openly by participants to clarify the basis on which they have been proposed; and that a working consensus or tentative agreement can be established between the partners as ideas are sorted and combined. Questioning in this form of dialogue is an invitation to propose ideas, explain ones reasoning, or clarify some ambiguous idea.

Dialogue as inquiry is central to Mercer’s notion of exploratory talk (2000). The ground rules for exploratory talk require that participants listen to each other, propose relevant ideas, provide reasons and justification for their ideas and that consensus is achieved by resolving differences based on evidence and reason rather than the assertion of power or external authority.

Dialogue as inquiry is also very similar to the notion of Collective Argumentation (see Brown & Renshaw, 2000) that involves individual problem solving, small group interaction, and whole group communication and reporting. Procedurally, it involves working individually to represent a problem, then in small self-selected groups, comparing and explaining ideas to each other, reaching agreement and justifying such consensus on the basis of evidence and argument within the small the group, and finally reporting the small group solutions to the whole class for broader validation. The different social contexts in the classroom provide different audiences for children’s ideas — initially, the children question and explain their ideas in a small group; at this stage the teacher may listen in and ask for clarification, or use leading questions to highlight a key aspect of the task overlooked by the students. Later, as the groups report to the whole class, all students in the class can ask questions and seek to clarify the ideas of the group. The progressive widening of the audience creates new demands on the students to be explicit and confident in their reasoning, and thereby creates a certain cognitive challenge in each session of dialogue and inquiry.

Wells (1999) also develops of theory of dialogic inquiry in which he argues that education should be conducted as a dialogue between teachers and students (see also Collins, 1987). Dialogic inquiry stands between traditional transmission teaching on the one hand and unstructured discovery learning on the other. It stands for a co-constructed view of knowledge in which more mature and less mature participants engage in semiotically mediated activity together. In the place of competitive individualism, Wells draws upon the developmental theory of Vygotsky, and the linguistics of Halliday to propose a vision of the ideal classroom as a collaborative community where participants learn from each other as they engage in dialogic inquiry.

3.4. Summary

Contemporary researchers have analysed dialogue primarily in terms of instruction, conversation or inquiry. There is an irreducible tension when the terms ‘dialogue’ and ‘instruction’ are brought together, because the former implies an emergent process of give-and-take, whereas the latter implies a sequence of predetermined moves. It is argued that effective teachers have learned how to perform in this contradictory space to both follow and lead, to be both responsive and directive, to require both independence and receptiveness from learners. Instructional dialogue, therefore, is an artful performance rather than a prescribed technique.

Dialogues also may be structured as conversations which function to build consensus, conformity to everyday ritualistic practices, and a sense of community. The dark side of the dialogic ‘we’ and the community formed around ‘our’ and ‘us’ is the inevitable boundary that excludes ‘them’ and ‘theirs’. When dialogues are structured to build consensus and community, critical reflection on the bases of that consensus is required and vigilance to ensure that difference and diversity are not being excluded or assimilated (see Renshaw, 2002). Again it is argued that there is an irreducible tension here because understanding and appreciating diversity can be achieved only through engagement and living together in communities. Teachers who work to create such communities in their classrooms need to balance the need for common practices with the space to be different, resistant or challenging — again an artful performance that is difficult to articulate in terms of specific teaching techniques.

Finally dialogues may be structured in a more egalitarian way around inquiry, where participants employ speech and other semiotic tools to propose and evaluate ideas for solving problems. There is now a substantial literature on dialogic inquiry arising from the work of Wells (1999) as well related literature on exploratory talk (Mercer, 2000) and collective argumentation (Brown & Renshaw, 2000).

4. AN ANALYTICAL FRAMEWORK

Dialogue is used throughout this volume to refer to an interactive process between people, to an individual process of reflection and thought, and as an identity- and community-forming process. In this triadic framework, participation in dialogues is linked with individual activity that retains dialogic properties, and the constitution of specific identities within cultural and historical contexts. It is not intended, however, to specify a single model of dialogue. Rather, we suggest that there are many varieties of social dialogue, diverse types of appropriated internal dialogues, and many possible identities and communities constituted in dialogic activities.

4.1. The Social Plane

The complex features of the interaction occurring between people constitute the social plane. The chapters included in Part II in particular, provide well developed and sophisticated frameworks for capturing the complex and multi-layered aspects of social interaction. The authors in Part II (see Van Boxtel, Ejkens; Kaartinen & Kumpulainen; Dekker Elshout-Mohr & Wood) have devoted considerable time and energy to identifying different dimensions of social interaction that need to be analysed in order to capture the key aspects of pedagogical activities. What is particularly innovative (see Van Boxtel; Dekker Elshout-Mohr & Wood) is the openness of researchers within the dialogic tradition represented in this volume, to entertain multiple analytical schemes to describe the social plane. Such an open and playfully contested approach to analysis should be regarded by readers as an invitation to converse with the authors rather than simply accept their conclusions. Such multiplicity also highlights the dialogic assumption that closure is not desirable or in fact possible. Conclusions are only the starting point for further analysis — moments in an on-going conversation rather than the last word.

4.2. The Individual Plane

The associated internalised processes of reflection and thinking that are aroused and appropriated in the dialogue constitute the individual plane. In Part I of this volume the appropriation of different institutional practices to form self-regulating internal dialogues is critically analysed by various authors (see Bergvist & Saljo; Elbers & De Haan; Ten Dam, Volman & Wardekker). In Part II, Van Boxtel links participation in social dialogues to different cognitive learning outcomes with regard to physics concepts. The theorisation of the individual plane is certainly not uniform in the chapters included in this volume. Van Boxtel, Huguet Monteil & Dumas, and O’Donnell for example, employ terms such ‘declarative knowledge’, ‘concepts’ and ‘cognitive constructions’ to describe what learners take away with them from dialogues. Elbers & De Haan, and Ten Dam Volman & Wardekker employ terms such as cultural resources, common knowledge and community practices to describe what is learned. The former draw upon psychological terms, the latter upon terms from anthropology, but both theorisations suggest that the individual is changed by participating in dialogues and that it matters how dialogues are socially structured and performed for what the learner can take away.

4.3. The Identity and Community Aspects of Dialogue

The identity-forming and community-forming features of dialogue are treated as necessarily linked features of dialogue. Through participation with others in social interaction in the classroom, students are constituted as members of different communities of practice and situated as particular identities. These features of dialogue are examined in each of the chapters included in Part I. For example, the chapters by Hirst & Renshaw, and Kapitzke & Renshaw use aspects of Bakhtin’s theory of language-use to analyse the identity positions offered to students in different classrooms. Their research is premised on the assumption that participating in classroom dialogues produces certain identities for students. Ten Dam Volman & Wardekker further amplify this premise in their analysis of how institutional practices related to gendered curricula areas, such as Information Technology and Care, actually produce social differences between students. For these authors, difference is not an a-priori category or background variable, but an emergent aspect of social interaction in the classroom. Elbers & De Haan examine identity in multi-ethnic classrooms both as a cultural category applied to students from different ethnic communities and as an emergent process of identity construction arising from different modes of collaboration. They show that the complementary student identities of ‘tutor’ or ‘tutee’ and associated inferences regarding competence or incompetence, are produced interactively and vary across settings. Berqvist & Saljo provide a historical analysis of how changing institutional practices in classrooms produces different versions of the successful student identity. The contemporary moment is one where self-regulation and the capacity to plan and self-monitor learning activities are highly regarded. This pedagogical regime produces versions of the successful student as active, reflective and resourceful rather than as observant, conformist and obedient.

4.4. Summary

This analytical framework implicates dialogue in both individual processes of internalisation and appropriation, and community-forming processes of identity formation. It provides a heuristic for researchers from different traditions to locate their particular focus on dialogue within a more encompassing field. If ones purpose is to research the interface between the social and individual planes of dialogue, then attention may be directed solely at mapping across time and contexts the individual’s internalisation or appropriation of the features of specific dialogues. By also considering how the process of individual appropriation forms an individual’s identity by creating resources for conversations with different people or affording access to members of different communities, the researcher can provide a multifaceted understanding of the consequences of specific instances of internalisation or appropriation. Likewise, if ones purpose is to analyse the role of dialogue in constituting the life of a community, ones attention might be fixed on common knowledge and shared cultural resources while the different ways that individuals have internalised or appropriated those resources might be overlooked. In addition, the analytical framework provides readers with a possible means of integrating diverse insights derived from the chapters in this volume.

5. CONCLUSION

Dialogue is two-faced — in diverse ways. In everyday parlance, dialogue denotes turn-taking interaction between face to face conversational partners. This everyday usage remains important in the context of this volume because it foregrounds the importance of responsive and flexible approaches to teaching and instruction — dialogic rather than monologic. Also, as Vygotsky and Bakhtin noted, the socially situated use of language is shaped by a pervading sense of audience, so it matters whom we ‘face’ when we talk. To communicate successfully with a conversational partner requires an active process of interpretation and contingent responding that creates an emergent horizon of co-constructed meaning. These features of active co-construction — so clearly visible in episodes of everyday conversation — have provided a vision for the reforming of pedagogical practices in more interactive and participatory ways.

Dialogue is two faced also at the analytical level. It is theorised simultaneously as the social process from which individual processes of thinking and reflection are formed, and as the social process embedded in and constitutive of broader cultural practices and communities.

Dialogue is two faced also in highlighting both normative and analytical intentions of speakers and writers. The production of this volume was motivated by both a concern to improve classroom learning by designing more collaborative and dialogic pedagogical practices, and by an analytical concern to investigate learning and instruction as inherently dialogic processes. Bergqvist and Saljo (this volume) regard dialogue as an inherent aspect of all social activities, rather than a particular kind of learning with