4.1. Learners’ perception of the values of dialogical teaching and learning

Principles

Symmetric knowledge advancement Recognize different expertise among students; having them take turns to lead and contribute will eventually benefit everyone. Help students to identify different expertise and strengths among them and encourage them to take turn to help one another. Increase students’ awareness that we benefit and learn in the process of teaching others. Teach the students about collaborative strategies.

Develop knowledge-building capacity

Pervasive knowledge building Develop knowledge-building practice as a habit of mind to be applied across various learning contexts and subjects, not just an ad hoc application.

Democratizing knowledge All students have the rights to contribute in knowledge building, not just the privileged.

Examples of Initial Approaches to Guide the Students

Use knowledge-building approach consistently, regularly and frequently throughout the course.

Emphasise that every student has the rights (and responsibility) to participate and contribute. Set class rules about respecting every participant. Provide opportunities (online and face-to-face) for students who are less confident to contribute in class.

Collective cognitive responsibility Develop in students the attitude that everyone has the responsibility in advancing the collective knowledge to the benefit of the community.

Epistemic agency Help students develop the ownership of learning and autonomy in doing knowledge building. Allocate some points for positive group behaviours. Provide opportunities for students to create something as a whole group or class (e.g., group portfolio and group taking turns to lead discussion).

Let the students know that their ideas matter; find opportunities to highlight good ideas contributed by the students. Provide opportunities to show autonomy in their learning. Encourage students to show autonomy by sharing relevant resources or initiating new inquiry.

As with the previous Chapter, this chapter uses the research questions to structure the presentation of the findings. The first section, ‘Learners’ perception of the values of dialogical teaching and learning’ is followed by, ‘Moving from didactic to dialogical approaches’. In this section we explore the challenges students experienced as they grappled with different responsibilities for their learning. ‘Learners’ awareness of their own inquiry processes’ follows and the final section, ‘Knowledge coconstruction’ is followed by the conclusion which touches on the implications for teaching and learning.

4.1. Learners’ perception of the values of dialogical teaching and learning

… as compared to the more… traditional way, because you’re hearing one voice, but now you’re actually hearing a lot more voice(s)… you can hear different voices and where they are coming from. You may not always agree, or perhaps sometimes we may not even understand,

but you at least should be aware…You hear more… things, rather than just from single point of view… Yes, sometimes, when particular group actually tried to start out the discussion, on affordances, they could actually branch out onto certain concepts on affordances, or give certain examples to integrate the concept, the principles of affordances, and these are things that I would not think of. (Dylan)

This quote from student Dylan illustrates the manifestation of core values of dialogic teaching and learning in this course. Nolan shared the same sentiment that this mode of instruction “draws the discussions from the students…even the quietest student would have a say… ” Dialogical teaching, “a pedagogical approach that involves students in the collaborative construction of meaning and is characterized by shared control over the key aspects of classroom discourse” (Rezintskaya & Gregory, 2013, p. 114), underpins the design of this course. There were strategies that aimed at having learners’ voices and shared control of the classroom discourse. For example, groups were asked to take turn to facilitate online discussion and to bring the discussion to face-to-face class meetings. The knowledge building principles (Scardamalia & Bereiter, 2015) were used to design the dialogic approach to learning for this course.

Critically, it is not just the opportunities to hear more voices, but the affordances to bring multiple perspectives to the topics being discussed. This experience of awareness of diverse perspectives is important in this class, because diversity of ideas “gives you an opportunity to explore those avenues, because you, maybe you didn’t even think along those lines” (Sandra), and this exposure to different ideas give rise to “cognitive dissonance,” prompting one to engage in “critical thinking” as compared to a monologic approach dominated by the educator’s delivery of content (Diane). John opined, “it's more than just about downloading of the content knowledge, it’s a lot more about how you can piece other people's perspectives and then contextualize it with your own.” Urijah felt that sometimes after reading a paper individually several times, one can still “miss out certain things,” but enlightenment could sometimes be attained from peer’s explanations or interpretations.

What learners expressed about their learning experience are in alignment with the knowledge building principles (Scardamalia & Bereiter, 2015) of idea-centric knowledge building. In knowledge building, the ideas that learners really care about are captured as epistemic or knowledge artefacts in a forum, a shared space that has an "out in the world" (Popper's World 3) existence (Scardamalia, Bereiter, & Lamon, 1994) so others can build on these ideas. When done well, learners are willing to share their perspective, leading to a natural collection of diverse ideas. These ideas become important resources for building better ideas when learners are able to integrate different ideas, with the ultimate goal of attaining higher level of explaining the topic being discussed, such as higher level of coherence, stronger backing with evidence, or using theory or principles.

Beyond the cognitive benefit of creating better ideas to represent deeper level of understanding of a topic, the experience of having multiple voices and perspectives are beneficial to the learners in other ways. Some learners (Dylan, Quentin) reflected that they are more engaged in the learning process. Dylan explained the reason for higher engagement:

Compared to traditional teaching where, normally, you just listen … the traditional teaching is also pretty well-supported with lecture notes and slides, so sometimes you get momentarily switched off, you know you can still fall back to the slides and try to catch what has been taught… But I think for the dialogic teaching, you are more engaged, more involved, because it is dialogic, as the name suggest. I think this is one of the key differences that… one of the key difference that I felt.

To Dylan, the “traditional” mode of instruction where notes and presentation materials are regarded as the reference materials that learners could fall back on, even if the attention was drifting in class.

The higher level of engagement could also be due to the self-motivation developed in their learning journey.

Because mainly a lot is student-driven... we only go to Dr Tan’s class once a week, after that, a lot of it the rest of the 7 days we need to do our own research, our own discussion with our group members. So a lot of it is self-motivation, self-driven (Kathy)

Quentin elaborated what it meant to be self-directed and to some extent, personalised learning:

I guess this approach makes a little bit more personal for me because you can therefore own the learning process to some extent. ‘Cause things are not bounded, therefore have the ability to also I guess suggest and also propose certain topics. And therefore as a group you can therefore also move how fast you want to pursue something, how deep you want to pursue something.

This self-directed learning was also promoted through the self-directed assessment, as shared by Kathy:

We get to check our own progress. Because in knowledge forum there’s a function whereby we can assess and check ourselves, our own progress. Can also see… the various classmates who logged in, the exact timing. We can even see our own lecturers when he logged in, when or whether or not he read our posts and so on. So a lot of it is self-driven, selfassessment. Yeah so maybe what surprised me was the ability to assess and check myself. And also check fellow classmates whether they are doing the work.

Diane reflected that learning in such an environment, the accountability lied in the students’ hands because they have to assume “shared responsibility” and learners know that they are “accountable to the other members in the community.” Developing collective cognitive responsibility was one of the principles of knowledge building, and it seems to be have been developed among some learners. Diane recalled:

I think, as a… this is my first experience with CSCL, right, and… knowledge forum… initially, I think there were some struggles in not knowing the… you know the whole, the whole knowledge sharing is going to lead to... But I think at the end of the course, there was a chance to do the reflection, yah, I find out that there was a… more, yah, the accountability on the learners’ side as well as the empowerment to go and… yah, I feel what you want to achieve is basically in the, in the learners’ hands.

Nolan opined that shared responsibility is critical, just like in the workplace, “you need to speak up if things are not right, or things should be in a certain direction.”

In terms of the perception about the new online learning space, Diane reflected that learning through computer-supported collaborative platform such as Knowledge Forum was a novel experience “community building knowledge together on knowledge forum… definitely very different from what I had previously envisioned what collaborative teams, you know, how teams would work in a collaborative environment.” Sandra and Urijah both felt that they benefited from the sharing in the online forum as the content of peer’s notes helped them to clarify some concepts and gain deeper understanding.

Kathy also liked the analytics related to the forum that affords self-assessment:

Because in knowledge forum there’s a function whereby we can assess and check ourselves, our own progress. Can also see who are the rest, the various classmates… who logged in,