ABSTRACT
This chapter shows how the interaction processes involved in teaching-learning situations have been investigated. Drawing on a dialogical definition of dialogue adapted from M. M. Bakhtin, it presents a dialogical approach to teaching-learning processes and to introduce the concept of dialogical tensions. The chapter illustrates how dialogical tensions shape teaching-learning processes by presenting some results taken from a study on education for cultural diversity. Dialogic education has a long history going back to the 1970s and has different theoretical backgrounds. In Piaget’s aftermath, researchers first aimed at testing the influence of social interactions on development and learning. Because of its link with “real-world” and sensitive issues, education for cultural diversity was an appropriate teaching-learning situation in which to study dialogical tensions. The analysis of the data showed that present dialogues were filled up with distant dialogues and that the resulting dialogical tensions seemed to be an obstacle to secondarisation.
