6.5 The need for system change to support approaches such as dialogical teaching

 Encourage learners to engage in appropriate forms of inquiry (what the inquiry process involves varies from discipline to discipline and across vocations and professions);

 Value learners voice as a source of knowledge building; and

 Provide appropriate scaffolding for learners, by educators gradually handing over responsibility for learning and moving into being a provider of resources and a guide.

Curriculum designers unfamiliar with this approach may also require support and development opportunities.

6.5 The need for system change to support approaches such as dialogical teaching

Currently most systems such as performance management, recognition and reward systems, quality assurance systems, design of student evaluation, approval or accreditation of curriculum, the design of spaces, implicitly support monologic teaching approaches, with the unintended consequences of working against innovative pedagogical approaches. For example, reference group members raised issues such as the student evaluation forms restricting the trying out of different approaches due to concerns about receiving lower mean scores. This in turn impacts adjuncts in terms of the continuous flow of work and for permanent staff, impacts on their performance bonuses. Number of students in a class and also the design of spaces were also specifically mentioned.

Management in institutes for higher learning and private for profit training providers may be unaware of the impact of such policies. Governance processes are not neutral in their impact on pedagogical practices and can send powerful, intended or unintended, messages that actively support monologic pedagogies. Student evaluation forms can provide useful data to prompt both system change and / or changes in the practices of individual educators. Their design can encompass the valuing of learner engagement, authenticity, development of meta-cognition, holistic learning design and inquiry processes.

Current system approaches such as separating assessors and assessment from the educator, and curriculum design where separate individuals are given responsibility for design of separate courses in a program, entrench current practices rather than encourage innovative practices. Assessment and learning are entwined (see Bound, Chia & Karmel, 2016; Boud, 2000), as evidenced, for example, in the concept and practices of formative assessment. Separating the educator facilitating a course and the assessor who conducts assessment, privileges summative assessment and leaves little or no space for inquiry approaches. In the design of programs, allocating different educators to develop different courses within the program generally means the courses do not ‘talk’ to each other, and do not create a developmental path. Likely different pedagogical approaches will be utilised, making it difficult for learners to make sense of the program as a whole. Whereas a deliberate approach that values dialogical inquiry can gradually and intentionally build and develop learners’ capacity for selfdirected and learning to learn capabilities, necessary for dialogical inquiry processes.

The key message is for institutes of higher learning and training providers interested in moving towards dialogical teaching and learning, to take a relook at their systems. This requires hearing the voices of educators and of learners, and not being afraid to make changes.