For example, if the issues of discussion are always prescribed by the educators, the problems may not be seen as authentic to the learners. Similarly, if the lessons always conclude with the educators having the final say on the issues discussed, learners often just wait for the final verdict instead of putting forth their ideas, contributing to a negative sense of learner agency. As discussed in Chapter 3, if the educator is the one who answers student questions, this can effectively silence the contributions of learners. Whereas throwing questions back to the group to consider demands their attention and contributions. The educator’s beliefs about learning are critical to the success of using a dialogical approach. An acquisition (Sfard, 1998) model of learning where learners ‘acquire’ knowledge as a product, from the educator, positioning the educator as the source of knowledge, the authoritative voice will not enable the use of dialogic teaching. The dialogical teaching process implicitly understands learning as an iterative social process, involving access to multiple perspectives, and resources and empowering learners as authoritative voices. Perhaps the biggest concern for educators is the issue of power and the shift in roles of educator and students required, as discussed in Chapters 2 and 3. As educators, we can learn to become comfortable as one contributing voice, with a shift in power relations, sharing power with our learners. However, as we are ultimately responsible for the final assessment decisions, dialogical teaching requires a significant, though not equalising of power relations between educator and students. Hong and Scardamalia (2014) have advised to use principle-based design for knowledge building lessons. What this means is for the educators to guide learners following the principles of knowledge building (see Table 4.1), rather than following prescribed procedures for instructions. This requires constant assessment of learners’ behaviours and their progress of inquiry, making decisions about how to steer them towards the productive path. Metaphorically, it is like a skilful driver who constantly judges the road and traffic conditions, gets information update from GPS, and decides which routes to take from Point A to Point B, rather than taking a predetermined route regardless of the situational conditions. One approach an educator can take is, for each principle, develop a suite of instructional tactics that work under different situations. For example, using different strategies to elicit authentic problems from the learners (e.g., getting students to talk about their experience, using a video clip that depicts a situation in classroom, sharing an article that presents a controversy). Over time, the educator can build up a repertoire of strategies that he/she can flexibly use. Alternatively, the course can be designed around learners’ individual workplace problems as was the case in the WPL and Performance course.
Figure 5.2: Concept map of the dialogic teaching and learning model
75
