A participatory dialogue model was used to engage a Scottish community in identifying expressed and unmet needs for children's services. The move toward a partnership model needs to be made gradually so that participatory ownership and empowerment can develop. (SK)

The fifth graders interpretations of one piece of Latino/a realistic fictions in a mid-western school, specifically around the theme of Mexican Americans living on the U.S/Mexico border is looked at. A demonstration is given on how drama-in-education strategies serve as a powerful set of tools to facilitate complex dialogues and interpretation of…

In the wake of new educational initiatives for professional development, interest in how, when, and what teachers learn is growing. Traditionally, most research into teacher learning has been located in pre-service and in-service interventions and in studies of classroom practice. Few studies investigate how teachers learn in informal settings,…

This article is a follow up to an earlier publication that developed the rationale for using conversation as a metaphor to teach research writing. We presented this proposed teaching approach at several conferences, including WILU in May 2005 at Guelph, Canada. The discussions with participants in these presentations validated the tenets of the…

Each semester, Julia G. Brooks writes "silence=agreement" on the board during a discussion of socialization in her Introductory Sociology classes, and invites students to discuss their initial responses to this statement. Inevitably, there are students who agree with the statement outright, claiming "If people have something to say…

Bakhtin's language theories give educators a view into how people develop and communicate with language through dialogue. These conceptions can be applied to teaching in a variety of positive ways. The authors explore how teaching based on Bakhtinian concepts might function in the classroom, paying particular attention to the concepts of dialogue,…

The Vygotskian concept of the zone of proximal development has been interpreted in such a way as to provide theoretical support for particular, Government-sponsored, models of both pedagogy and literacy. This article proposes a radically different interpretation of the ZPD, informed by Bakhtinian understandings of heteroglossia. This alternative…

In his influential book "Dialogues with Children" (1984), Gareth Matthews presents strong evidence that children as young as six can and should engage in philosophical discourse. His findings form the basis of this article, a theoretical and practical guide for parents and teachers seeking respectful and creative ways to encourage…

Successful community-university partnerships are usually attributed, at least in part, to clear communication processes. This chapter reflects on language and context as elements in developing a strong partnership process.

Based on a course that inquired into the similarities and differences between the discourse forms of argument and dialogue, this paper explores theoretical issues related to these communicative forms. The purpose of the team-taught course was for students to explore the possibility of non-polarizing public discourse. The first two sections of the…

The purpose of this paper is to propose the construct of "countersociopathy" and specific activities consumers can undertake in a variety of sales conditions and situations. These activities are not only designed to passively neutralize the telemarketer's or salesperson's aggressiveness, but can lead to the salesperson wanting to quickly…

The study examined the behaviors of educable mentally handicapped (EMH) children in repairing their utterances when their listener requests clarification. Subjects were 10 EMH children, aged 11-13, with mental-aged matched controls. Repair behaviors were elicited using a picture description and matching game with a barrier between the subject and…

The dual conception of literacy as functional knowledge and communication skills has provided the parameters of the debate on computer literacy, which has focussed on what type of knowledge is necessary, and what level, if any, of programming should be taught. These arguments and definitions, however, reflect a particular view of epistemology,…

A set of instructional materials in German contains six units, each consisting of a dialog (of approximately four pages) between a man and his cleaning lady; a vocabulary list, in English, corresponding to the underlined words in the dialog; content questions and answers, in German; and composition and conversation questions, in German. The unit…

Douglas Ehninger and Wayne Brockriede have both proposed the possibility of "arguers-as-lovers." To get a better idea of how this "lover" stance might actually look, an examination of two individuals engaged in arguing would be useful. The written correspondence between two young scholars, Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy (a Christian)…