Do dialogic teaching models always guarantee empowering the student’s voice in classroom dialogue?

Abstract

This paper challenges the prevailing assumption that dialogic teaching models always guarantee empowering the student’s voice. It shows that the strict adherence of classroom dialogue to the model’s protocol may inhibit the unique expression of students. In the first section, I discuss the aspect that every classroom dialogue is different from the other and, as such, cannot always be perceived as being produced solely from the parameters of dialogic teaching models. To substantiate this argument, I employ Derrida’s analysis of the example as a force that consistently exceeds the boundaries of the exemplary. The second section deals with the issue of how a classroom dialogue can effectively empower the student’s voice using a critical appropriation of the paradigmatic conditions of dialogic teaching. Drawing on Derrida’s concept of ethical responsibility as a process resulting from how we use something for a specific purpose, I point out that adoption and adaptation allow us to be more creative in our use of the protocols of dialogic teaching models for classroom dialogue. The concluding remarks again indicate the complexities of balancing pedagogical strategies between the hegemonic structuring of classroom dialogue from dialogic teaching models and the organic development of students’ voices.