Dialogic Education and Technology

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Rupert Wegerif University of Exeter
Teaching thinking as opening, widening and
deepening dialogic space How P4C works
Dialogic Education and Technology expanding the
space of learning
Dir. Research, Graduate School of Education

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My history Vygotskian theory

• 'all that is internal in the higher mental
  functions was at one time external' (Vygotsky,
  1991, p36).
• Words and forms of social interaction are
  internalised or appropriated as cognitive tools
• Thinking is a way of using words embedded in a
  social practice
• It follows that learning to reason is essentially
  induction into a social practice involving the
  internalisation of language as a tool for
  thinking
• (See Wegerif, Mercer and Dawes, 1999, From
  Social Interaction to Individual Reasoning)

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Ground Rules for Exploratory Talk

• Each group member should be actively encouraged
  to contribute to the discussion
• Everyone should listen to others attentively
• All relevant information is shared openly
• Each suggestion should be carefully considered
• Group members are asked to provide reasons for
  ideas and opinions
• Constructive challenges to ideas are accepted and
  a response is expected
• Alternatives are discussed before a decision is
  taken
• The group works together with the purpose of
  reaching agreement
• The group, not the individual, takes
  responsibility for decisions made, for success
  achieved or for problems that may occur

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Talk and reasoning

• Several studies of teaching Exploratory Talk in
  the UK and also in Mexico - working with Prof
  Silvia Rojas Drummond of UNAM - have found
  various correlations
• Increased use of explicit reasoning terms around
  reasoning tests
• Improved group solving of reasoning test problems
• Statistically significant gains in individual
  reasoning test scores

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BUT

• The beauty of the experimental design was that
  it enabled not only quantitative correlations but
  also qualitative analysis of the talk of children
  solving reasoning tests.
• So how did they do it? We argued that they did
  it by using language as a tool for thinking but
  in the end I found this unconvincing
• The tools worked by creating a dialogic space in
  which new perspectives emerged uncaused

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Change around B12
Pre
Post
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B12 from Raven's SPM non-verbal reasoning test
Group 1 before the Thinking Together
lessons Trisha Square and diamond, it's
2 George No it's not Trisha It is 2 George
No it's not Trisha It is George No it's
not
Group 1 after the Thinking Together
lessons Trisha That has got to be a diamond, a
square with a diamond with a circle in that one,
number 6, do you agree? George No, what do you
mean? Trisha OK no it's got to be square
Later ... George I don't understand this at
all Trisha Because look on that they've taken
the circle out yes? So on that you are going to
take the circle out because they have taken the
circle out of that one George On this they have
taken the circle out and on this they have taken
the diamond out and on this they have put them
both in, so it should be a blank square because
look it goes circle square
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To re-iterate

• When researching groups of children solving
  reasoning test problems together it was found
  that the key to success was the children learning
  to listen and to change their minds. This
  suggests a movement into dialogue towards
  identification with the space of dialogue or
  dialogue as an end in itself.

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Negative Capability

• I had not a dispute but a disquisition, with
  Dilke on various subjects several things
  dove-tailed in my mind, and at once it struck me
  what quality went to form a Man of Achievement,
  especially in Literature, and which Shakespeare
  possessed so enormously - I mean Negative
  Capability, that is, when a man is capable of
  being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts,
  without any irritable reaching after fact and
  reason

(Sunday 21 Dec. 1817 Hampstead.)
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P4C paradigm shifts

• Helen You can just start staring at things and
  make it into your picture.
• Helen It can be about 20 things in one place.
• Teacher   That you can just look at and stare?
• Helen Yeh there are also lines on the curtains
  they could turn into loads of green leaves.
• EmmaYeh or bamboo stalks.
• Teacher   So you can stare at something and get
  a different picture?
• EmmaYeh you could change it into a leopard or
  something.
• Alex  Yeh you could turn that the radiator
  into a big bone or something.
• EmmaI was in my room the other day and I closed
  my eyes nearly shut and my rocking horse I
  thought it was this kind of a pot - a shaking
  pot.
• ...
• Teacher What do you think - Alex?
• Alex Well one time I invented my own country
  which I called Alexland cos I became my bedroom a
  whole country and I pretend all my toys are
  alive.
• Teacher So you created a world .
• Alex  Yes.
• Teacher   Now is that a real world?
• Alex  Well sometimes I feel like its really real
  but then when I've found something like a
  catalogue, which I pretend you couldnt get
  catalogues and stuff like that, then the world
  just disappears.
• Teacher   So it disappears when you look at
  something else.
• Alex  Yeh when I look at something - when I go
  downstairs it just disappears, because my
  bedroom's the best place - because my toys are up
  there.

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Identity (or AA A? B)
(OTHER) (B)
(SELF) (A)
OTHER
But what is the unthought in this picture?
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Constitutive difference
Meaning starts with the act of drawing a boundary
-differentiating Figure from Ground (a relation
2 perspectives)
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Abgrund or space of possibility
The precondition of meaning a projected
infinite potential for meaning. Mallarme the
pregant white page
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Dialogic ontology
(OTHER) (B)
(SELF) (A)
OTHER
X
Je suis un autre (Rimbaud)
(A ? A A All )
Identity as always open and overflowing towards
the other Chiasmic
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Two metaphors of space
For Aristotle everything has one proper place a
thing cannot be in two places and and two things
can not occupy one place. Ergo AA A ? B.

• For Bakhtin meaning is like an electric spark
  that occurs only when two different terminals are
  hooked together (Volosinov).

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Phylogenesis of creativity

• Through studies of apes and humans Tomasello
  claims that consciousness originates in
• a species-unique motivation to share emotions,
  experience, and activities with other persons
• Which he refers to as dialogic and claims is
  more fundamental than language or tool use.
• Tomasello et al 2004

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Dialogic and learning to think

• Hobson argues that an individual sense of
  self-awareness and an ability to think creatively
  are internalized from the creative interanimation
  of perspectives that occurs in dialogues between
  Mother and child (Hobson, 1998). These dialogues,
  beginning with peek-a-boo games in the cradle,
  open up what he calls mental space, a space of
  possibilities through which things become
  thinkable for the first time.

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Subject-Tool-Object triangle
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Self-Other-Sign triangle
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Theses on mediation

• Mediation by an other (and by Otherness in
  general) is required for meaning
• We learn first and foremost by taking the
  perspective of the specific other (and through
  this the general Other)
• Relationship precedes and exceeds the use of
  tools
• Relationship is not similar to mediation by
  things because it opens up a transcendental space
  of possibilities
• The quality of the relationship is what counts in
  education more than the quality of the tools

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• Complex thinking P4C
• Caring empathy foundation
• Critical compare and evaluate difference
• Creative spontaineous emergence of new
  perspectives

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• Dialogos reason (logos) through and across
  (dia) difference.
• Development into dialogue is a kind of oxymoron
  but an illuminating one.
• It is learning as a trajectory of identity but
  also a trajectory away from identification with
  things (self, group etc) and towards
  identification with non-identity ie with the
  multiple and uncertain space of dialogue.

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The transactional It excludes assertions of
fixity and attempts to impose them. It installs
openness and flexibility in the very process of
knowing. It treats knowl- edge as itself
inquiryas a goal within inquiry, not as a
terminus outside or beyond inquiry. Dewey and
Bentley 1947, p 97
BACK TO DEWEY
CoP
Unsituated Central Processor
Cutural tools
Situated social practices
Forms of life
Activity systems
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Role of tools and technology
Not direct mediation of cognition as in the idea
of mindtools but opening, deepening, widening,
resourcing a space e.g words and ground rules to
open space of reflection, also to abstract,
consolidate and build on E.G Ong face to face
dialogue limited in space and time - writing and
social practices around reading and writing lead
to the development of an inner space of
reflection now with Blogs and Vlogs does this
inner space of possibility become a shared space?
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Teaching thinking

• Open dialogic spaces
• build agora in Athens
• prompt the kids to talk together when engaged in
  a game
• Deepen dialogic space
• give a topic more time for reflection using
  marker
• objectify dialogue as provisional artefact
• Widen dialogic space
• let women and slaves talk in the agora
• design for multiple voices
• Resource dialogic spaces
• E.g role play and staging
• E.g role play and staging
• tools as voices not voices as tools

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Illustration of how the internet might de-centre
identity in a good way
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An illustration of resourcing and staging
dialogue online using digalo as part of the
Argunaut project.
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Ethics and dialogic

• Monologic dialogic Totality infinity
• Totality thinking reduction of other to a sign
  in my system e.g the holocaust
• Infinity thinking every other as a sign of the
  Other that which transcends my ability to grasp
  and control and which calls me to infinite
  responsibility.

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Ethics and technology

• Simplifying grossly the story is
• Face-to-face dialogue gt participatory self and
  universal warfare because community has limits
• Writing/print gt internality (the author) and
  empires (the authority of laws)
• Internet gt both dialogic and at a distance,
  hence participatory self and unbounded dialogue
  in a network society no one is truly other

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Dialogic education

• Education for dialogue as well as education
  through dialogue.
• Dialogue as an end in itself is the primary
  thinking skill from which other skills follow
  such as
• creativity
• learning to learning
• listening to others
• critical reflection
• Teaching thinking is drawing students through
  relationship into dialogue across difference as
  an end in itself, opening, widening and deepening
  dialogic space.
• Technology opens new dialogic spaces and makes
  global dialogue possible it is essential for
  teaching the world to think together.

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A tale of two enlightenments

• Lyotard and Foucault say education is essential
  to the Enlightenment project bringing progress
  through knowledge and reason into every area of
  social life. Much teaching thinking continues
  this project uncritically.
• But the Enlightenment became hijacked by a
  monologic technical vision of reason with aim of
  mastery and control.
• Replacing monologic with dialogic can rebalance
  the Enlightenment project from mastery to
  empathy, from control to creativity.
• As Merleau-Ponty wrote what there is to be
  grasped is a dispossession The aim is not to
  grasp all otherness (to comprehend it) but to
  become more open to the essential otherness of
  the Other.

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Thank you for listening! www.rupertwegerif.name
r.b.wegerif_at_exeter.ac.uk