Dialogic learning: from lifelong learning to transformation
Lídia Puigvert and Marta Soler, University of Barcelona, Spain
Paper presented at SCUTREA, 31st Annual Conference, 3-5 July 2001, University of East London
THIS paper deals with the issue of 'popular women', that is, those women who lack a higher education degree.
For different reasons, these women have remained excluded from lifelong formal education, learning, and social participation. We aim to show how, when these women do study in their adulthood, their lives experience a radical transformation, to the extent that some of them move from not even having the most basic educational diploma in the first place to entering colleges and universities and even complete doctoral dissertations.
Dialogic orientation centres
There are women participating in adult education centres who, due to the social, political, and economic conditionings they went through, did not have the opportunity to receive basic education. Some of them did not even have the chance to attend a local school to learn to read and write. Others, though able to complete the compulsory stages of formal basic education, could not afford to move to where secondary or higher education centres were (in cities far from their hometowns or villages) and had to relinquish further formal education.
In today's information society, education becomes the key element to overcome situations of social exclusion. This is so because in this society, the ability to select and process information is the one most valued by the labour market (Castells, 1996). We can differentiate between two models of adult education centres: those that reproduce a more traditional school model (a closed one in which schools and educational centres in general are supposed to carry out a socially reproductive function), and those that are organised according to a dialogic orientation (founded on an egalitarian dialogue among all participants, rather than on the reproduction of their hierarchical position in society).
It is often thought that women lacking academic degrees cannot, because of their prior conditioning, participate in social and educational domains because they are no longer capable of acquiring the necessary skills. Our experience, though, testifies to the opposite: when people learn in a democratic environment, people develop more critical and participatory positions - that is, when they actively participate in management and organisational tasks, and when they collectively construct in class through an argument-based (rather than a power-based) egalitarian dialogue, in which mutual respect prevails, people show their capability to both learn and exchange knowledge.
Psychological and pedagogical studies have shown that every person is able to learn, regardless of age, and have provided arguments for making a well-founded case for education as a basic lifelong right (Cole and Scribner, 1982).
Dialogic learning
When we realise learning is a lifelong process, and people of all ages and backgrounds are 'in this together,' we also become aware of the need to treat different types and sources of knowledge in an egalitarian way. By grounding learning processes and environments in egalitarian foundations, we enable learners to learn from each other, that is, from those with whom they discuss course or activity contents and with whom they share their doubts and experiences.
We have already seen first-hand how the key to education is dialogic learning. And the foremost principle of dialogic learning is egalitarian dialogue (Flecha, 1997).
Egalitarian dialogue can be carried out if educators do not act on pre-conceived strategies or ideas they try to impose on participants. Participants always have to know what is going on in a classroom, why things are done in a given way, and what purpose guides an activity or an educational intervention. In addition, participants must have the option to change or discuss everything that happens at their centre.
This favours the creation of a collaborative environment that fosters more and better knowledge. Knowledge increases because this type of environment brings together the knowledge of a series of people in a group, rather than the isolated transmission of a single individual's knowledge.
At the same time, the transmitted knowledge is better, since people can collectively seek the best arguments and solutions to the problems they face.
A dialogic orientation in education entails the deepening of democratic principles and an opportunity for the participation of all people and social groups. Thus conceived, education becomes a transformational factor: it turns difficulties into possibilities by overcoming the old-fashioned dichotomy between subject and object (that is, between professor and student) through egalitarian relations among agents. In so doing, interaction through intersubjective dialogue provides the bases that allow participants to do away with exclusionary situations (Macedo, 1994).
Popular women and education
The female protagonists of the following life stories provide us with the exemplary testimony that proves the opportunity for change generated by an educational centre that follows a dialogic orientation. Such experiences make Paulo Freire's statement, 'we are not beings of adaptation, but beings of transformation' (Freire, 1997), all the more meaningful.
These women did once believe they were only good for household chores and for taking care of their families, and for jobs outside their homes directly connected to that kind of activities. Dialogic learning has changed this perception.
Juana was an adult woman with two grown-up children that did no longer need her care, and she started to think, 'when I was a child, I did not have the chance to study. Why can't I study now?'. She was encouraged by her family and, equipped with a pencil, a notebook, an eraser and a lot of fear, she went to the centre for her first day of class. She found herself warmly welcome there. This gave her the necessary strength to keep studying and, in a few years, she completed the Graduado Escolar (basic education diploma). The following year, she signed up for the World Classics Literary Circles at the adult education centre itself.
All this has made her life change. She no longer sees herself as an illiterate person. She has learned to listen to and respect other people's views. She now dares to speak in public. She believes life experiences constitute culture to be shared with others. She now thinks it is about time we started to realise the others do not always know everything.
She always learns from different people's contributions, whether they are made by 'intellectual' women or by women lacking formal education, provided these arguments are given and discussed in an egalitarian dialogue environment.
She thinks she needs to continue to learn if she wants to keep up with the demands of current advanced societies.
Dialogic literary circles constitute a clear example of this. World literature classics are read and commented among people coming from different backgrounds. In these circles, the view of a person with an academic degree and the view of another person without such a degree are equally considered: positions have to be justified through convincing arguments, regardless of prior personal achievements.
Juana experiences an enormous satisfaction in looking at her own achievements. She is now often times asked to give informational talks in other adult education centres and even at universities. She uses those talks to encourage participation and to explain the bases of literary circles.
Maria participates in all literary contests devoted, above all, to the issue of women and has earned different awards.
She is still in awe of the interest shown by others in what she writes. At the age of 60, she is currently completing her Graduado Escolar. As a child, she was not able to go to school.
She got married at a very young age and had five children.
She was not left any time for herself. A few years ago she started to attend a centre with a dialogic orientation. She has learned there poetic metrics, of whose existence she was entirely unaware before. This term she and other four classmates have presented a research paper on an issue in which they all were very interested: osteoporosis. At the presentation, in addition to the theoretical and scientific knowledge they had done research on, they were able to present their own personal experiences, as well.
When the participants' interests are taken into account, motivation for learning and knowledge increases. In addition, when these contributions are connected to our own life experiences, we move closer to understanding the reality of other people's lives and escape our own preconceived stereotypes.
In promoting dialogue, dialogic learning also promotes solidarity and an increase in the opportunities allowed to people in general, but, especially, to those who have found more barriers in their way. Maria is a good example of how neither gender nor age should be obstacles to active cultural participation. At least, from a dialogic learning orientation, they are not, because people participating in a project are not cultural consumers, but cultural creators, regardless of their age (a point against ageism), their gender (a point against sexism), or their formal education level.
Juana, Maria, and many other women have found in this type of basic education centres an environment in which egalitarian dialogue between educators and participants is possible, which has resulted in personal achievements that repeatedly refute basic education models based on reproduction. Dialogic environments allow them to feel secure and confident, and to generate, in turn, more dialogic dynamics in their homes and in other social contexts. Women who participate in their education and their community affairs in this way (in the organisation of cultural and training activities, in associations, and so on) transform their existence and, as a result, change the interpretation they provide to their own reality.
Conclusions
Egalitarian dialogue and transformational options are important elements in dialogic learning. This type of learning contributes to dynamics leading to the fight for equality. In some adult education centres teaching and learning followed a compensatory educational model, according to which, adult participants displayed training deficits because they had not been formally schooled in their childhood, and were supposed to be compensated for that.
In centres with a dialogic orientation, participants defy the (widespread) false belief that childhood or adolescence are the best life periods for learning. And they do so through the exchange of experiences enabled by dialogue.
All women participate together in a self-reflective process on their preconceived ideas. They all analyse concepts such as those of person, woman, and society, in order to develop, co-ordinate, and plan joint actions. In dialogic adult education centres, these 'popular women' re-enact the global meaning of their lives continuously. They create new lives with other people with whom they establish a horizontal relationship. So intense an interaction transforms their interpretations and their actions. They want to learn and to dialogue, and such a desire questions the usual barriers to communication arising in the classrooms when these are used as spaces for silence. The loneliness of the first day of class is gradually transformed into positive expectations and dreams.
The popular women that participate in dialogic adult education centres do want to change their lives and do change them. It is up to us, 'academic women,' to collaborate with popular women and continue to do research and work as we have done so far for the egalitarian liberation of all women.
References
Castells, M. (1996). The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture. Vol. I: The rise of network society. Cambridge, England: Blackwell.
Cole, M., and Scribner, S. (1982). 'Consecuencias cognitivas dela educación formal e informal. La necesidad de nuevas acomodaciones entre el aprendizaje basado en la escuela y las experiencias de aprendizaje de la vida diaria.' Infanciay aprendizaje, 17, pp. 13-18.
Flecha, R. (2000).Sharing Words. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
Freire, P. (1997). Pedagogy of the Heart. New York, NY: Continuum.
Macedo, D. (1994). Literacies of Power. What Americans Are Not Allowed to Know. Boulder, CO: Westview.