Dialogic Pedagogy: An Introduction

David Skidmore and Kyoko Murakami

Freire's Theory of Dialogic Pedagogy

Credit for initiating the theory of dialogic pedagogy belongs to Paulo Freire. His perspective is outlined in his seminal work, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Freire, 1993 [1970]), and further developed in other books such as Pedagogy for Liberation, jointly authored with Ira Shor (Freire & Shor, 1987). In most of the rest of this book, we draw more directly on dialogism, a theory of language associated with the Bakhtin Circle (Brandist, 2002), than on Freire's work. However, it is appropriate to acknowledge at the outset that without Freire there would be no theory of dialogic pedagogy, and his thinking has been enormously influential on the tradition of critical pedagogy that has emerged out of his pioneering work. We do not, therefore, see the perspective developed in this book as counterposed to Freire's vision, but as complementary to it. We have drawn on different theoretical sources to undertake a dialectical development of a view of pedagogy which has its origins in Freire's work. The understanding of language as socio-verbal interaction which derives from Bakhtinian dialogism enables us to pay close attention to patterns of teacher–student communication in naturalistic classroom conditions, to scrutinise them in fine detail and to illustrate alternative modes of interaction to the dominant form of teacher-led recitation. It would be wrong to suggest that Freire ignored this level of analysis in his own work, and indeed he has many suggestions to make which translate quite directly into possibilities to be explored in the concrete practice of teaching. However, later research has investigated classroom discourse empirically and revealed an in-depth picture of typical modes of interaction in this context and ways in which this can be challenged, in a manner which was implicit but sometimes left underdeveloped in Freire's more theoretical work. We begin, though, with a brief overview of some of the main aspects of Freire's pedagogic theory, so that readers who are not already familiar with it will be able to trace the connections between his work on dialogic pedagogy and our own position.

Freire's work developed in the context of adult literacy education in Brazil at a time when there was a high rate of illiteracy among the adult population. He was forced to leave the country following a military coup in 1964, and continued to develop his pedagogic theory during a long period of exile, first in Chile and later in the United States. In Pedagogy of the Oppressed, he drew a distinction between the 'banking concept of education' and 'problem-posing education', which has much in common with the outlook on teaching and learning which we discuss in the rest of this book. In the banking concept of education, according to Freire, 'knowledge is a gift bestowed by those who consider themselves knowledgeable upon those whom they consider to know nothing' (Freire, 1993 [1970]: 53). In problem-posing education, by contrast, the teacher enters into dialogue with her/his students, acknowledging them as fellow beings capable of consciousness and intentionality, and treats them as co-investigators into the nature of reality. Freire's description is worth quoting at length (Freire, 1993 [1970]: 64–65):

Banking education ... attempts, by mythicizing reality, to conceal certain facts which explain the way human beings exist in the world; problem-posing education sets itself the task of demythologizing. Banking education resists dialogue; problem-posing education regards dialogue as indispensable to the act of cognition which unveils reality. Banking education treats students as objects of assistance; problem-posing education makes them critical thinkers. Banking education inhibits creativity and domesticates (although it cannot completely destroy) the intentionality of consciousness by isolating consciousness from the world, thereby denying people their ontological and historical vocation of becoming more fully human. Problem-posing education bases itself on creativity and stimulates true reflection and action upon reality, thereby responding to the vocation of persons as beings who are authentic only when engaged in enquiry and creative transformation. ... Problem-posing education affirms men and women as beings in the process of becoming – as unfinished, uncompleted beings in and with a likewise unfinished reality.

In fact, for Freire, in dialogic pedagogy, the strict opposition between teacher and students is transcended, so that it becomes more appropriate to speak of the 'teacher-student' thinking with 'students-teachers' (Freire, 1993 [1970]: 61).

Freire develops the theory of dialogic pedagogy further in A Pedagogy for Liberation (Freire & Shor, 1987). Here he offers the following definition of dialogue:

Dialogue is a moment where humans meet to reflect on their reality as they make and remake it. ... Dialogue seals the relationship between the cognitive subjects, those who know, and who try to know. ... Dialogue is the sealing together of the teacher and the students in the joint act of knowing and re-knowing the object of study. (Freire & Shor, 1987: 98–100)

In the discussion with Shor presented in this book, Freire stresses that it is a mistake to think of dialogic pedagogy as a mere technique, a teaching method that can be mechanically transposed to any setting. Rather, it should be seen as an epistemological position, founded on an understanding of knowing as a social activity, albeit one that has an individual dimension; at the same time, it is a political practice, since it embodies a challenge to traditional forms of teacher–student relations, in which the teacher is the one who 'knows' and transfers this knowledge into students' minds by telling them what s/he knows. For Freire, this kind of teacherly authority socialises students into passivity, whereas dialogic...