Bewilderment as a Pragmatic Ingredient of Teacher-Student Dialogic Interactions

Abstract

Several studies on dialogic pedagogies have contributed to shedding light on how the traditional, authoritative Inquiry-Response-Evaluation (IRE) pattern may be transformed into more open, discursive formats through the inclusion of discursive moves, e.g. questions, that are more "authentic" than others. However, the problem of defining genuine teacher-student dialogue at a discourse sequence level remains open. In this essay, I define this type of dialogue from a cognitive perspective, as a dialogue aimed at fulfilling a sensemaking goal framed in at least three ways: as an individual constructionist, a socio-constructivist, and a socio-epistemological process. I then propose bewilderment, based on the philosophical concept of "critical aporia," as a necessary ingredient of pedagogical teacher-student interactions. These two elements, sensemaking and bewilderment, are then used together as framing indicators of three different profiles of pedagogical dialogues.