when I look at, when I thought that I had identified a certain workplace issue, right? But when I talk to different stakeholders, actually there are more things underlying it and it’s interesting ah because then you can also look at it as it is actually related. In phases two and three, learners grapple with multiple voices, sources of authority on a topic, and interpretations as part of their process of deepening understanding of the ideas they are exposed to and in developing their own knowledge. Flora notes this process of debate and critique in her interview, with some surprise commenting that “no one has a perfect answer”. Knowledge (co) construction, dialogue, inquiry (including reflection), and authentic problems go hand in hand in developing deep understanding and in learners developing an identity as knowledge builders, as people who can theorise and analyse.
3.6. Conclusion: Relationship between learning activities, inquiry and knowledge building Making the connections between facilitation, and inquiry and knowledge co-construction, addresses our third research question on the implications of the dialogical approach for the practices of adult educators. The Chapter, ‘Rising Above’ extends this discussion. As highlighted in the sections above and in the literature review, use of dialogical inquiry processes and knowledge co-construction involves far more then including group processes that allow opportunities for learners to work together on a task. For example, learners use multiple sources of data (e.g. their own and their peer’s experiences, the data they collected, the literature they read), learners share responsibility for reaching a form of consensus, the educator kinaesthetically (e.g. requiring learners to physically place and move themselves in the quadrants of integral theory) introduced students to meta-frames of analysis, the educator consistently turned learner’s questions back to the group, she probed for deeper thinking, naming of assumptions held, and so on. Oscar, in his interview, makes this observation: That the other Master’s classes gives me a sense of more of we’re trying to clarify…. Whereas here, although there are a lot of doubts that we will want to clarify with [lecturer of WPL & Performance], but she will actually ask someone else, or the rest of the class, what do you all think. Then from there, she will try to see how we can answer that particular student’s queries. So we’re forced to you know, communicate, so everybody begins to, yeah, yeah begin to contribute. (Oscar) Oscar compares the student-educator exchange with the processes in a dialogical inquiry classroom. Throwing back student questions to the group, positions the students as sources of knowledge. It is an old technique, but it is the intent behind the technique that is different from more traditional uses. A genuine belief in the ability of students to work through the question themselves is important. It is not for example, about testing students to see if they have learnt a particular concept or way of understanding a concept. Additionally, this technique and the intent behind it created space and expectations for communication amongst the students, helping to establish shared dialogue as a norm in this learning setting. Implicit in establishing such norms is the critical element of trust. In her interview, Olivia highlighted the difference in the educator’s trust in her students. What surprises me…she trusted all…she, she [the course lecturer] trusted us a lot. Like just give us the reading, and then…because previous lecturer when they do the week 1 reading, they will test. Yeah, but she didn’t [laugh]. So I was like, eh, how come she didn’t, she trust us so much. (Olivia)
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