DPU

Aarhus Universitets segl

PhD Project

A Culture of Dialogue


Fostering dialogic literacy through educational design

This PhD project concerns why and how to enable dialogue in the context of education. More specifically focus is on the dialogue that takes place in one class at a Danish technical upper secondary school (Danish: Teknisk gymnasium, htx).

The objective of the project is to better understand and foster dialogic literacy (henceforth DL) as a key competence for learning, knowledge building and constructive participation in a democratic society.

Research questions

The research questions are simply stated:

  • Why dialogue?
  • How dialogue?

These can be further elaborated into more specific and operational research questions:

  1. How do we understand the underlying processes that enable participation, and identify those processes that act as obstacles to participation in dialogue?
  2. How does dialogue emerge/appear in the classroom? How is it developed and sustained?
  3. Which dispositions, skills, knowledge and competences constitute DL?
  4. What are required for participating in classroom dialogue and public discourse?

Preliminary findings and dissemination

  • Have explored the concept and framework of Hybrid Education as a context for value and vision driven pattern design in education (e.g. Köppe, et al., forthcoming). The hope is that these designs may enable experimentation and change at the level of practice guided by common values and visions. 
  • The uncovered values from a pattern mining session are put into relation with an enhanced concept of citizenship that includes becoming, belonging and the capabilities to do so (Pedersen, Nørgaard, Köppe, 2018).
  • Exploration of the concept of DL in relation to different contexts such as deliberative discourse, collaborative rationality, and Moral Foundation Theory to identify obstacles and possibilities for dialogue (Caviglia et al. 2017). 
  • Identifying a new role model for the humanities which incorporate both DL and collaborative rationality and presents practices that may function as exemplars for this new role model (Pedersen & Caviglia, forthcoming). 
  • Further contexts that foster and even presuppose DL are presented in Pedersen, Caviglia, Gislev, Larsen, forthcoming. 
  • The epistemological and ontological expansion of real and possible relations in the field of educational research is discussed. A dialogic pedagogy of creating spaces for dialogue is proposed to encompass these expansions in educational practice and educational theory (Pedersen, submitted).

Methods

Observation, participant observation, auto-ethnography, design based research, pattern design. Inspired by pragmatist, constructivist theories in regards to learning. Guided by educational design thinking in practical application. 

References

  • (Publications as part of the PhD)

  • Caviglia, F., Dalsgaard, C., Delfino, M. & Pedersen, A. Y. (2017). Dialogic Literacy: contexts, competences and dispositions. L1-Educational Studies in Language and Literature, 17, p. 1–38. https://doi.org/10.17239/L1ESLL-2017.17.01.05
  • Caviglia, F. & Pedersen, A. Y. (submitted) Data literacy som en sammensat kompetence [Data
    literacy as a compound competence]. Læring og Medier
  • Köppe, C., Nørgård, R. T., & Pedersen, A. Y. (forthcoming). Towards a Pattern Language for Hybrid Education. Proceedings of the VikingPLoP’17 conference. Grube, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany.
  • Pedersen, A. Y., Nørgaard, R. T., & Köppe, C. (2018). Patterns of Inclusion: Fostering Digital
    Citizenship through Hybrid Education. Educational Technology & Society, 21(1), 225–236.
  • Pedersen, A. Y., & Caviglia, F. (forthcoming) Researcher or Fellow Citizen? Looking for a Role Model in the Humanities. Proceedings of The International Conference of the Learning Sciences. 
  • Pedersen, A. Y., Caviglia, F., Gislev, T. & Larsen, A. H. (submitted) Hybrid protopublic spaces for collaborative inquiry. In Littlejohn, A., Jaldemark, J., & Vrieling-Teunter, E. (eds). Networked Professional Learning. Springer
  • Pedersen, A. Y. (submitted) The expanding ecology of relations in education. EARLI–SIG17&SIG 25.