Learning Through Discussion

Why bother with something as structured as William Fawcett Hill's Learning Through Discussion and its group process plan???

Well, for one, dialogical education, for all its value, can sometimes degenerate into mere sharing of ignorance which then becomes very frustrating for participants. LTD is structured in such a way as to pay attention to some very key components in education:

i) It is very text centered (the yellow squares). This is to say, it ensures that readers construct meaning out of what is found in the text. Readers are therefore not just interacting with themselves but with the text.

ii) It aims to find application of ideas found in the text (the green squares). a conversation of the text with other texts as well as with self (and presumably with other participants)

iii) It affirms the place of evaluation of both the author's presentation of ideas as well as the learner's understanding of ideas. (the pink bits)

My favourite books on dialogical education

Education for Judgement by David A. Garvin, Ann Sweet, C. Roland Christensen

Instructional Conversations. ERIC Digest.

Instructional Conversations. ERIC Digest.

Discussion pedagogy/dialogical education

What is dialogical education?

Smith, M. K. (2001) 'Dialogue and conversation', the encyclopaedia of informal education, www.infed.org/bibio/b-dialog.htm.