Dialogic Pedagogy

Cuenca, A. (2011). Democratic means for democratic ends: The possibilities of Bakhtin’s dialogic pedagogy for social studies. The Social Studies , 102, 42–48.

Summary:

Cuenca asserts that social studies teachers are acting as “teacher pretenders” when claiming to teach, but not accepting responsibility for lessons and student learning. “Basing pedagogy on finalized and predetermined standards detached from the lived experience of the classroom allows teacher-pretenders to proceed without obligation, without answerability to the students before them” (p. 44). He connects Bakhtin’s ideas about student voice to a dialogic pedagogy in the social studies classroom, encouraging teachers to move beyond the teacher centric classroom and to recognize the “nonneutrality of language” (p. 46).

Key quotes: “Commenting on the negative effects of textbooks in his classroom, Bakhtin observed that his students feared “any original expression, any turn of phrase that does not resemble the clichés in their books” (2004, 25)”(p. 44).

“As Joseph Williams (2005) suggests, perhaps one of the most important lessons to gain from Bakhtin’s writings as a teacher is that even at the risk of our own security, we have a duty to our students to cultivate creative and critical thought” (p. 45)

“…Bakhtin recognizes what Bob Fecho and Stergios Botzakis (2007,551) term as the nonneutrality of language, the idea that words “come with baggage, have histories, shift connotations, and take political stances whether willed or not” (p. 46).

“According to Bakhtin (1986), the very essence of speech as a semiotic activity is multivoiced, filled with underlying principles, with unique points of view and forms of conceptualizing the world, characterized by various meanings and values. Therefore, language is by its very nature heteroglot, representing at any given moment “the co-existence of socio-ideological contradictions between the present and the past, between differing epochs of the past, between different socio-ideological groups in the present, between tendencies schools, circles, and so forth, all given a bodily form” (1986, 291). Therefore, because of the “ideological saturation” (Bakhtin 1981, 293) found in language, neutrality is an untenable position in classrooms (Matusov 2009)” (p. 46)

“Through the use of a dialogic pedagogy, Bakhtin (2004, 23) sees “an overall improvement in the students’ style, which became more vivid, more concrete, and emotional, and most important, began to reveal the personality of the writers, so that their own living individual intonation could be heard” (p. 47).

Questions/Thoughts:

How has the recent increase in teacher accountability, which is heavily connected to student scores on state assessments, impacted the use of dialogic pedagogy? Based on my observations, I might conclude that there is not time for dialogue because teachers have to cover what’s tested. I wonder if it is more about coverage of the curriculum that depth in understanding.

I wonder about creativity and critical thought. The Common Core State Standards encourage critical thinking, but are we really encouraging better test taking and compliance?

This connects closely with my research interest on the use of language in classrooms with struggling readers.

Are the classrooms teacher centered, with few student voices heard or is there room for a dialogic pedagogy?

Are students allowed to question the “authority” of the teacher or textbooks, or to struggle with ideas and concepts?