ABSTRACT

Bakhtin's dialogic principles do not provide any excuse for teachers to disassociate themselves from being heavily implicated in the learning experience of life. In dialogic pedagogy, the teacher resides in spaces within and outside of the pedagogical relationship. Dialogic pedagogy is characterised by teachers who exercise intellectual courage, honesty and restraint in pedagogical relationships that prioritise dialogue as learning. Teachers are implicated mind, body and soul. They need to maintain an evaluative eye at the same time as recognising the potential one has to speak into the life of another. For very young children dialogue is much more than words and the body plays a central role. It is in dialogue, in its broadest sense, that learning is situated because where ideas are revealed. Dialogic pedagogy takes ideology very seriously, finding ways to open up spaces for people to share and for teachers to maintain vigilance about the extent to which their practice is shaped by ideologies, their own, others.