Significance and Dialogue in Learning and Teaching

Abstract

In this essay Andrew Metcalfe and Ann Game argue that although the term ''dialogue'' is commonly used in educational theory, its full significance is diluted if it is seen as a matter of exchange or negotiation of prior positions and identities. As a meeting point, they argue, dialogue suspends the senses of time, space, and ontology on which identities are based. It is therefore not simply metaphorical to say that dialogue changes lives and opens minds. Using empirical material from interviews with Australian students and teachers, Metcalfe and Game draw out the relational qualities of genuine dialogue and the significance they have for how we understand everyday classroom life.

Dialogue Culture and Its Relationship with Psychological Compatibility of Students of “Learning Disabilities” Course at the College of Education, Najran University

“…It depends on opinion freedom, and self-defense right in a modernized approach (Gomaa, 2008). In addition, Game et al (2008) mention that tyranny and authoritarianism are social diseases that lead to sense of oppression, accompanied by deviant behaviors where honesty shrinks, faith retreats, courage and compassion disappear, and lying and hypocrisy dominate.…”

Who Am I Interviewing?

“…In Bohm"s phrase (1985: 179), it requires "a new kind of mind" which lets go of subject positions. People do not press out words of a dialogue from an inner realm: they find themselves in dia-logue by letting the words pass through them, words that are at once new and familiar, at once inside and outside (see Metcalfe and Game, 2008;Merleau-Ponty,1974: 19). Identification is problematic because it closes down this undefinable space of difference and relation, the space in between interviewer and interviewee, which should be the space of potential explored in any worthwhile interview.…”

“…To listen and to speak in an I-Thou relation are both active aspects and both passive aspects, and neither has temporal priority. This form of listening allows speaking as much as this form of speaking allows listening; it is a listening that speaks and a speaking that listens (see Gordon, 2011;Metcalfe and Game, 2008). …”

Education as Invitation to Speak: On the Teacher Who Does Not Speak

“…Communicative action and dialogue, in sum, function within this understanding as highly plausible strategies for explaining and resolving conflicts, for formulating opinions and for negotiating agreements. They are promoted as the most effective strategies for actualising oneself as a true individual, one committed to these very same approaches (Metcalfe and Game, ).…”

“…Accordingly, what is suggested through such programmes is that dialogical environments in schools should be designed in order to stimulate communicative and dialogical practices (Deneger, ; Metcalfe and Game, ). If people want to communicate, they must acquire the competences that constitute the capacity to participate in reflective dialogue and to make and examine validity claims by themselves: they must acquire ‘the necessary strategies and skills to help them become social critics capable of making decisions that would affect their social, political, and economic realities’ (Deneger, , p. 11).…”