A learning dialogue is inspired and honors three principles expressed in the following three quotes:
• “Learning is acquired by experiences in the environment.”(Maria Montessori)
• “Reflection is the critical thinking by means which people discover each other to be ‘in a situation.” (Paulo Freire)
• “If you don’t dispute it you don’t learn it.” (Jane Vella)
Whether is a simple dialogue with a learning partner, a group dialogue among team members or a learning dialogue with the entire class failure is always an option when you try dialogue for adult learning. However when my dialogue have failed – meaning lack of participation, engagement, educational value or lack of interest – I have observed that a few conditions for dialogue were consistently not met. What are those three necessary but hardly sufficient conditions?
The silence of the trainer.
The condition for dialogue to flourish in the class is rather simple for the trainer: he/she needs to be silent more or as Stephen Brookfield and Stephen Preskill wrote: “…curbing the compulsion to say all they would like to say in the interests of promoting engagement and participation.” (Discussion as a Way of Teaching, 1999) Our idea is that people learn best when they talk about what they are learning. I am advocating giving time for people to talk about the content and giving them time to extract their own personal meaning about it. Now a teacher’s knowledge shared in the class is valuable, but far more powerful is a trainer promoting students learning actively by helping them find their own voices. I do not know a better way to do this than to let trainees talk: whether in a conversation, a debate or a question panel, a real-world problem open as a questions to the trainees will make personal meaning of what is to be learned. This is far more effective than the most inspired of the lecturer.
A safe learning environment.
No Learning dialogue is possible if the learning environment has not been clearly identified as safe. Dialogue has started already in the setting of the right class atmosphere. Steer away from conference rooms and use or replicate informal living room settings with natural light and round tables.
A set of clear ground rules.
Additionally to ensure a learning dialogue is properly conducted and fully participated is important to state and clarify its ground rules to improve people’s thinking together. Here are the ones I circulate:
• Shift focus from ideas, to the connection between ideas
• Shift focus from conflicting views, to how differences bring new insight to the whole
• Shift focus from the person to the idea, respect the last always be skeptical the least
Five simple ideas to help dialogue in your class.
Preface the conversation with an invitation to remember a time in their lives when they had a really good conversation. The ability to have good conversations is already owned by people, they simply need to use it in a different context. Remembering what they already know is much easier to do than learning it from scratch.
1. A talking stick. Only who holds it can speak.
2. A bell in the middle of the table. Whoever feels the speaker is off subject can ring the bell and ask a question about the connection between the subject and what was said.
3. A Study group focusing only on portion of the content. The content is shared at the table, possibly written on a poster and eventually shared.
4. A stone for your thoughts. Distribute three stones at the beginning of the class. Whoever talks must relinquish one stone (very good if some people are dominating the conversation!)
