Maughn Rollins Gregory

Student Thought and Classroom Language: Examining the Mechanisms of Change in Dialogic Teaching

Dialogue, as a communication form characterized by its commitment to inclusiveness and rationality, has long been advocated by educators as a mechanism for helping students become better thinkers. Unfortunately, numerous claims about the educational potential of participating in dialogue have not resulted in substantial changes in classroom practices. Studies have consistently shown that in todays schools the dominant discourse remains largely monologic. In this article, we present a testable theory of change that suggests how sociocultural processes in a dialogic classroom influence students’ development. We identify and discuss three learning outcomes of dialogic teaching, including epistemological understanding, argument skills, and disciplinary knowledge. We then critically review empirical research related to the proposed theory, highlighting unsolved questions, inconsistencies, and directions for future studies. Finally, we focus on the implications of the proposed integrated theory and reviewed research for teachers and their language use in a classroom.

Evaluating classroom dialogue Reconciling internal and external accountability

In this article we present an instrument to be used by students and professors to evaluate classroom dialogue. We begin with an explanation of the classroom community of inquiry and why we value it as a pedagogical approach. We then describe our different reasons for evaluating classroom dialogue — including institutional, professional and pedagogical accountability — and describe the inherent conflicts among these reasons. We explain how our evaluation instrument was designed to ameliorate these conflicts. We recount a number of theoretical and practical problems we encountered in designing and implementing the instrument and explain how we attempted to overcome these problems. We conclude the article by describing the advantages and disadvantages of our instrument in light of our analysis of data gathered from its first implementation.

The Perils of Rationality: Nietzsche, Peirce and education

I begin this paper with a brief description of Nietzsche’s epistemology, according to which rational knowledge is constructed from intuitive experience, and intuition must be cultivated as a means of deconstructing archaic habits of rationality. I then show how Peirce’s epistemology compliments Nietzsche’s, because it employs semiotic theory to explain how rational thought is developed from intuition. Both philosophers present rationality as instrumental, hypothetical and fallible; and the general aim of education that follows from this pragmatic epistemology is to prepare students to participate in the creative renewal of dominant conventions of thought, feeling and action. I conclude the paper with sketches of three broad pedagogical strategies for achieving that aim.

A Response to My Respondents: Integrity and Pedagogy

I deeply appreciate these four very thoughtful responses to my essay. That the responses are as personal as they are theoretical is particularly gratifying. As a student and teacher of pragmatism, I find academic work especially meaningful when it begins with lived experience that is objectively (not merely mentally) problematic, and when it applies the kind of theory to it that is meant to be introduced back into experience, through experimental action, in order to effect some kind of amelioration. All four of the respondents demonstrated this kind of work. In reading these responses, I was struck by the importance of a distinction most of us had noted but not emphasized or developed. As teachers, we seek to construct certain kinds of educational experiences for our students. As people of sexual or gender minority or who are close to or in political solidarity with such people, we want to preserve and enhance our integrity, which includes being who we are at work. As our essays demonstrate, these two kinds of concerns are often mutually antagonistic, at times reconcilable, and sometimes mutually supportive. It behooves us, of course, to work out as many ways as possible of satisfying both kinds of concerns at once. That is, choosing ways and contexts for being out in our schools that will either contribute to our pedagogical efforts or at least not impede them. I am grateful to Arthur Lipkin for his insightful and practical suggestions about this: sharing evaluation and grading power with students, critiquing student writing in class, openly examining our biases, discussing with students their prior experiences of teacher power, and not contributing the queer-