Desiring Dialogue

Journal of Curriculum Theorizing, 2009

This paper is about student participation in critical pedagogy. It is also about the anxiety that occurs in practice when the prompting of participation falls on deaf ears. It considers the way that students silence figures as a symptom in critical pedagogy, where it is taken as something that blocks learning and simultaneously a point on which on dialogue is potentiated. Drawing on Freud's concept of the uncanny and Hegel's master/slave dialectic, the discussion analyses that anxiety and suggests that beneath explicit emphasis on dialogue in critical pedagogy, there is also an implicit asymmetrical desire for recognition because the teacher relates to students' learning mediately, through their participation. I argue that student silence should not be regarded only as a problem of "non-work" to be overcome via pedagogical techniques; but rather, the anxiety it provokes offers two ways of responding.

Drawing on Martin Buber’s philosophy of dialogue, my contribution to the theorising of education evolves around the concept of calling and responding. Understanding our being in the world according to Martin Buber’s philosophy of dialogue, means understanding it as an existential dialogue, conceptualized in my thesis (see Jons 2008) as a matter of calling and responding. The conceptualization was undertaken by employing a method of philosophical construction suggested by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari (1994) aiming at reusing old concepts in new contexts, thereby affording possibilities to discover, articulate and discern phenomena of that context in new ways. The construction of the concept was based on a secularised notion of vocation and coined as a relational, ontologically normative and existentially dialogical notion, thereby intending to discover, articulate and discern pedagogical relations in a new way. My presentation is concerned with the pedagogical relation between the teacher and her student, a relation here conceptualized as a question of the teacher being addressed by and responding to the student’s undertakings, predicaments and needs. As a relational, ontologically normative and existentially dialogical construct, the conception of calling and responding suggests three demands on the teacher. The first demand is put forth as a question of the teacher paying heed to the address, in which the undertakings, predicaments and needs of her student is summoning her, a demand more precisely asking of her to talk authentically and to serve her student. The second demand is put forth as a requirement to respond in a responsible way to the callings by way of embracing a loving leadership, whilst the third demand is about the teacher in turn addressing the student and her predicaments and needs in a provocative way, daring to take risks. Elaborating the conceptualization of calling and responding as well as the notion of teacher-student-relation inside the conceptual framework of calling and responding, my paper aims at contributing to the conversation concerned with the theorising of education with a relational, ontological normative and existentially dialogical perspective on this pedagogical relation.

We all know too well the resisting student-even the bright student-who seems to have a mental block when it comes to studying Milton's prosody, or Lacan's psycholinguistic theory. It is an unfair oversimplification to label such a student "ignorant," "stupid," or "insensitive," though the obvious alternative-admit ting that we are dull, boring, or insensitive as teachers-is not very pleasant either. But as long as we accept, as given, the privileged inviolability of both the "knowledge" to be imparted (literature or literary theory) and the conventional methods of imparting it (including all of the institutional and personal appara tuses and methods by which authority is vested in and deployed by the teacher), there appears to be no other way to recognize opposition and resistance in the classroom.

2015

The scope of the article is to investigate the role of dialogue in experiences and theories of resistance in societies based on the exploitation of class and in a postcolonial model of relationships. Neo-liberal educational model presents, in its mercantile paradigm, renewed forms of repression: what we can call in Freirean terms as “culture of silence”. How can we break the “culture of silence”? How can we build a critical culture of social relationships? Worldwide social movement and academic groups are working to develop a critical/dialogic culture based on actions of resistance against neo-liberalism, creating spaces of teaching and learning not more based on competitive skills, but focused in a creative, collective and participative experience of popular education.

Educational Theory, 2008

Abstract In this essay Andrew Metcalfe and Ann Game argue that although the term “dialogue” is commonly used in educational theory, its full significance is diluted if it is seen as a matter of exchange or negotiation of prior positions and identities. As a meeting point, they argue, dialogue suspends the senses of time, space, and ontology on which identities are based. It is therefore not simply metaphorical to say that dialogue changes lives and opens minds. Using empirical material from interviews with Australian students and teachers, Metcalfe and Game draw out the relational qualities of genuine dialogue and the significance they have for how we understand everyday classroom life.

Kizel, A. (2010). Towards a New Dialogical Language in Education. In: Ilan Gur-Ze’ev (ed.), The Possibility/Impossibility of a New Critical Language in Education (pp. 409–416). Rotterdam: Sense Pub.

In searching for a new language that will rescue critical pedagogy from besiege, Ilan Gur Ze'ev wrote: "What is regrettable, however is that so much of critical pedagogy has become dogmatic, and sometimes anti-intellectual, while on the other hand losing its relevance for the people it conceived as victims to be emancipated". 1 Gur Ze'ev argued, further, that today many critical pedagogues are ready for or actually searching for a new critical language in education that will reach beyond the achievements and limitations of critical pedagogy. However, various current versions of critical pedagogy do not pursue the attempt of critical theory to propose a holistic utopia. Furthermore, the absence of love, creativity, and a human vista have led critical pedagogy into a blind alley.

2008

This article concludes that a pedagogic discourse is legitimized in school practices when power in society is actualized and exercised through the use of language as symbolic power. Under these circumstances, the classroom becomes an arena where teachers’ discourse as the regulator collides with students’ discourse as the regulated. Reflecting on the context, this article investigates a classroom where pedagogic discourse prevails and highlights that teacher’s identities and students’ identities are met and negotiated by each other through alignments and conflicts. The significance of these tensions of discourses between teachers and students is discussed.

2014

The paper aims to shed light on the possibilities of achieving deep dialogical teaching through critical friendship with students. The teaching experience described illustrates how teaching and communication through dialogue can be improved by joint efforts of teachers and students. The attempt is based on theoretical presumptions where dialogue is perceived on the basis of its form and purpose. Most of the teaching takes place through some kind of a dialogue, but the purpose of these dialogues can be quite different. So "dialogue in spirit" is what actually counts as true pedagogic dialogue. If the purpose of dialogue is only to lead us to the answer that a teacher has already had in mind, we are actually referring to a "recitation". The way of achieving better understanding between students and teachers is to develop critical friendship between them. Students significantly increase their role in reflection on the entire educational process with active participation in the action research. In doing so, the authors wanted to examine in which way students' roles in higher education might be transformed so that they become active participants, not only in the classroom activities, but in the overall reflexive process.

2022

6. Υποκειμενικός χρόνος και συνάντηση στη στιγμή: Προς μια ηθική στάση για τον διαγενεακό διάλογο, στο πλαίσιο των διαφόρων θεωριών για την παιδική ηλικία .

Policy Futures in Education, 2018

In a higher education system driven by student satisfaction, there has been a recent push towards more student-centred methods of teaching such as collaborative learning and seminar discussions despite an increase in student numbers. In contrast, some academics defend the transformative and educative possibilities of the lecture by challenging its conception as ‘banking education’, asking us to reflect on the purpose of education in a way that calls into question our assumptions about the transmission of information through lecturing. While acknowledging the place of the lecture in higher education, I want to consider whether a lecture can be critical pedagogy by interrupting previous ways of thinking and being. As the teacher lectures he/she models what it means to know, to think and to act, but is this enough to make it critical pedagogy? Looking at conceptualisations of the transformative intellectual and the relationship between curriculum and pedagogy alongside data from case s...