Dialogic Eventful Teaching Through Dialogic Conversations and Dramatic Inquiry

In preparation of the new term, and looking into the next steps for my Inquiry, I spent some time reading through a research article by Brian Edmiston, The Ohio State University and Richard Beach, University of Minnesota.  This article is looking into the research of Arthur Applebee and the future of Inquiry based education.  

This post is a collection of thoughts that I had while reading.

• Taking on board the use of Applebee's dialogic conversation is important but the author's suggest the conversations should be centred around topics that are considered immediate issues in a student's life using multiple perspectives from literary sources.
• According to Bakhtin,  “dialogic” conversations are not just interactive talk but rather meaning-making that changes how a person understands something in dialogue that is both internal and external in response to other people’s ideas. 
• Dialogic conversations should be extended to provide creative roles for the students to play (this is where the Manaiakalani Learn, Create, Share model fits!) 
• A dialogic conversation relies heavily on conflict and tension of opposing viewpoints (how can I work with year 4 students to make it a safe environment to share their own opinions and not what they believe is the 'correct' answer) There needs to be a shift in understanding (which can strengthen your original viewpoint) for is to be a true dialogic conversation.
• Students will feel that they are allowed to change their viewpoints on a topic that they otherwise believed to have closed parameters. 
• "all participants are invited to take up embodied multiple perspectives often in non-naturalistic ways (e.g. with everyone speaking as if they are the thoughts of one character) for short period of time"
• When talking students may vary between talking as themselves and speaking as one of the characters from the text
• Students and Teacher collectively dialogue as if they are all fictional characters within the event
• As conversations evolve, students are able to make the switch between fictional characters and their true self when proposing viewpoints 
• While discussion is simple verbal communication,  meaning-making is embodied, multimodal, and collaborative.
• Dialogic imagination is key to being able to have a dialogic conversation.
• All readers use dialogic imagination when they imagine and try to understand the actions and thoughts of literary characters.
• Dialogic Conversations need to exist in two ways to be successful: with the teacher/learning group, and imaginatively in fictional events
• Chronotopes- can be inferred from how each character acts, speaks, thinks, and responds across narrative events-need to alter in order to extend the understanding of a imaginative dialogue.
• students may dialogue about how characters might have felt about what they did, or did not do, and may evaluate characters’ action or inaction     

Next step: How can I involve the dialogic imagination in group sessions to deepen student understanding during our dialogic conversations?