Bakhtinian Dialogic and Vygotskian Dialectic: Compatabilities and contradictions in the classroom?

Abstract

This article explores two central notions of ‘dialectics’ and ‘dialogics’ based on the work of Vygotsky (drawing on philosophers such as Hegel, Spinoza, Engels and Marx) and Bakhtin (drawing on members of the Bakhtin Circle and writers such as Dostoevsky and Rabelais) respectively, as well their varying interanimations within Stalin-Marxist Russian societyIt is proposed that these two positions are incommensurably located alongside one another in contemporary education. I argue that Bakhtin offers diametrically oppositional educational provocations to those of Vygotsky.The implications of these interpretations will be explored with consideration of their underlying philosophical incompatibilities and contradictions, as well as the opportunities such a consideration pose for educational practice today.     

Was This Guild Made for You and Me?: A Dialogue

Abstract

This is a co-written narrative essay about our lives as religious educators in white-dominant spaces of education and educational structures. This co-narrative expression embodies for us the different ways that People of Color and Women of Color have to function as part of the guild and as part of honoring our vocational commitments to anti-colonialism and anti-racism.     

Excellence and choice: Friends or foes?

This paper explores the contrasts dividing the excellence and choice movements to date. The orientations of both are examined, along with key features and impacts of each. Particular attention is given the predicament and the challenge of at risk youngsters. Yet there are developments suggesting a growing mutuality between the two movements. The elaboration of a conception of Excellence that makes educational sense reveals the centrality of motivation to educational accomplishment. This in turn exposes the choice principle as an important aid to the pursuit of excellence.     

Professionalism and coordination: allies or enemies?

Professionalism arose concurrently with coordination policies among service providers and between parents and service providers in deaf education practices. The author examines the effects of professionalism on coordination among service providers from different disciplines (deaf education, speech-language pathology, elementary education, secondary education, audiology, otolaryngology, and pediatrics), as well as coordination between parents and these service providers in multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, and transdisciplinary teams in the light of her own experience as a teacher of children who are deaf and hard of hearing in Cyprus. The author concludes that professionalism and coordination can coexist, and that the key issue in this relationship is the personal attitudes of those involved.     

Schools and Moral Education: Conformism or Autonomy?

In pluralistic Western societies, schools have a specific task in moral education. This task is to be understood neither as the transmission of specific values, nor as the development of moral reasoning skills or universal values, but as teaching pupils to handle plurality in an autonomous way. The concept of autonomy is interpreted from a Vygotskian and Deweyan position, where learning in school means learning to participate in cultural activities in a reflective and critical way. Participation has both intellectual and moral aspects, and thus moral education can never be separated from cognitive education.     

Boffin and geek identities: abject or privileged?

High achievement, and in particular, the role of the academically diligent and successful ‘boffin’ or ‘geek’, are notably under-researched areas in the sociology of education. Issues around gender and other aspects of identity in relation to such pupils are particularly under-researched. In this Viewpoint article we draw on evidence from our recent research projects including young people interpolated to, or identifying with, the subject position of ‘boffin/geek’ and media representations of such positions. We debate some tensions between our work, drawing out shared findings. The article considers issues around capital, experience, and the extent of exclusion/inclusion for boffins/geeks, discussing to what extent such young people can be considered marginalised and abjected or agentic and privileged. We argue that structural factors such as gender, social class, ‘race’, age, and institutional location impact on these constructions and outcomes.     

Is Freire Incoherent? Reconciling Directiveness and Dialogue in Freirean Pedagogy

While some of Paulo Freire's readers understand his pedagogy as a rejection of any and all directive teaching methods, there are many scholars who do recognise Freire's emphasis on teacher directiveness in its appropriate form. In light of this tension between directiveness and dialogue, it seems that students of Freire must inevitably come to a crossroads: is Freire's pedagogy directive or is it not? However, even this question does not get at the more critical dilemma: if Freire's pedagogy is directive, is such directiveness incompatible with Freire's overwhelming emphasis on egalitarian dialogue? This paper establishes three readings of the issue of directiveness in Freire and ultimately provides an exegetical defence of what is termed the compatibilist reading—that directive teaching, properly construed, is compatible with dialogic teaching in Freirean pedagogy. The question this paper seeks to answer is how Freire can have it both ways. In sum, Freire undeniably supports teacher directiveness and philosophically justifies directiveness as compatible with problem‐posing education through his concepts of virtue education, utopia and criticality.     

Informal Mentors and Education: Complementary or Compensatory Resources?

Few studies have examined the impact that mentoring (i.e., developing a special relationship with a non-parental adult) has on educational achievement and attainment in the general population. In addition, prior research has yet to clarify the extent to which mentoring relationships reduce inequality by enabling disadvantaged youth to compensate for a lack of social resources or promote inequality by serving as a complementary resource for advantaged youth. Results from a nationally representative sample of youth show (1) a powerful net influence of mentors on the educational success of youth and (2) how social background, parental, peer, and personal resources condition the formation and effectiveness of mentoring relationships. The findings uncover an interesting paradox-that informal mentors may simultaneously represent compensatory and complementary resources. Youth with many resources are more likely than other young people to have mentors, but those with few resources are likely to benefit more from having a mentor-particularly teacher mentors-in their lives.     

Educational inclusion and critical neuroscience: friends or foes?

Momentum is continuing to grow in the circulation of neuroscientific discourse, informing aspects of how we live but affecting too how we think about education and learning. Neurologically informed intrusions into education frequently align with psychology which has until now largely adopted a ‘medical model’, supporting policies and practices which ultimately invoke psychopathology and arguably render individual young people more vulnerable to various forms of social and educational exclusion. This paper urges caution in respect of understandings of educational neuroscience that focus on individual deficits and diagnoses. Rather it holds in mind the broader historical context for neuroscience and its implications for our understandings of what it is to be human in the twenty first century and thereafter for education and learning. Theoretical resources from critical and affective neuroscience but also critical educational psychology are brought together specifically to support the principles of inclusionist policies and practices in education.     

HPS and school science education: remediation or reconstruction?

Concern to incorporate historical and philosophical insights within school science curricula is an international phenomenon. Whatever the intrinsic merits of these insights, it is suggested that any willingness on the part of science educators to enter into a rapprochement with scholars in the history, philosophy and sociology (HPS) of science stems mainly from the perceived shortcomings of contemporary school science curricula. Some of the difficulties of incorporating HPS within school science are reviewed and it is argued that, together with broader questions about the role of science in society, historical, philosophical and sociological insights point towards a radical reappraisal of school science education. The article suggests three ways in which such education might respond to some recent work in the history, philosophy and sociology of science.     

Connectedness and Separateness: Cognitive Style or Moral Orientation?

Abstract

This paper reports a study of ‘connectedness’ vs ‘separateness’ orientation in adolescents’ reasoning on friendship, loyalty and understanding of political and social order. Conflict resolution in the connectedness orientation was found to focus on negotiation and an attempt to represent all points of view; in the separateness orientation the focus was on the advocacy of rules or codes of practice. There was a strong relationship between orientation and gender. The paper considers the implications of these findings for Gilligan's perspective of ‘two voices’, and for strategies for moral education.     

Security,Extremism and Education: Safeguarding or Surveillance?

This article analyses how education is positioned in the current concerns about security and extremism. This means firstly examining the different meanings of security (national, human and societal) and who provides security for whom. Initially, a central dilemma is acknowledged: that schooling appears to be simultaneously irrelevant to the huge global questions of security and yet central to the learning of alternative ways to conduct human relations. With regard to extremism, two aspects of importance in ideological compliance or challenge are firstly the attempted securitisation of education, and secondly the role of education in young people joining or supporting extremist movements. The UK’s ‘Prevent’ strategy is examined here. The issue of how to safeguard young people without securitising institutions suggests four key features: inclusivity, encounters with difference, networking and active citizenship. Critiquing sacred texts and the use of humour and satire also act to foster resilience. Educational approaches within transitional justice underline the importance of tackling violence in schools and promoting a human rights culture that promotes both human security and ultimately national security.     

Instructional design and project management: complementary or divergent?

This paper reports the results of a study to identify the extent to which organizations that develop educational/training products are committed to project management, as measured by their project management implementation maturity, as a methodology that is separate and distinct from the processes of instructional design. A Web survey was conducted among 103 public and private sector organizations worldwide that develop educational/training products. Results show no significant difference by project management maturity level in the roles of instructional designer and project manager, although there is some relationship between maturity level and how organizations perceive the skills/competencies of project managers versus those of instructional designers. Further, organizational decision-makers have very specific expectations about the formal education and training of educational/training product development project leaders. The findings should be of value to institutions of higher education in evaluating programs that prepare students for careers in instructional design.     

The mentoring dilemma: guidance and/or direction?

Abstract

How effective is your mentoring programme? How does the nature of a mentoring programme influence outcomes? By looking beneath the process and practice, an examination, analysis and classification of the nature of current real‐life mentoring practice is made and a template for the identification of your own project is presented.