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Bakhtin's theory of dialogue: A construct for pedagogy, methodology and analysis

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Abstract

This article describes the application of Bakhtin's (1981, 1986a,b) theorisation of language as dialogue to the study of young students' struggle with discourses of ethnicity within the context of a Studies of Asia curriculum project (Hamston 2003). Bakhtin's rich conceptualisation of the productive and ethical nature of dialogue has operated at all levels in this study as a theoretical, pedagogical, methodological and analytic research construct.

It is hoped that the description of the research provided here contributes to the field of discourse-based research in several key ways. First and foremost, the model of dialogic pedagogy central to the research was informed by Bakhtin's (1981, 1986a,b) belief in the moral responsibility of language and thus resonated with the need in complex and changing global and local conditions for education as ‘good work’ (Carlson 1997a,b, 2002, Gardner et al. 1999, Luke & Carpenter 2003, Willinsky, 1998). As researcher/teacher in this study, I situated at the centre of the research the kinds of questions that relate to what Weis and Fine (2003) define as issues of power, privilege, standpoint, knowledge and difference. Secondly, the dialogic nature of the data collected over time allowed for a nuanced and complex portrait of the key research participants' ‘ideological becoming’ (Bakhtin 1981) and brought to the fore the different social ‘voices’ that they chose to speak through. Finally, the location of discourses in the students' spoken and embodied language through a fine-grained linguistic analysis resonated with Bakhtin's (1986a) call for a profound understanding of language.

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  1. University of Melbourne, Australia

    Julie Hamston

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Hamston, J. Bakhtin's theory of dialogue: A construct for pedagogy, methodology and analysis. Aust. Educ. Res. 33, 55–74 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03246281

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