Dialogue Meetings as Nonformal Adult Education in a Municipal Context

Abstract

This article discusses the prospects of fostering dialogue-competent behaviour, an important ingredient for supporting learning in discourse. The theory of transformative learning is the theoretical departure for a study of group discussions in a municipal context. A qualitative approach was used; individual interviews and field experiments with dialogue meetings were the main data collection methods. Several conditions and processes were identified as important for learning possibilities in small-group communication: participant perspectives, dialogue competence, discursive power, gender conversational styles, discourse types and prospects for learning, and perspective change. These findings have implications for individual and collective transformative learning. Single individuals could, through their own reflections in, as well as on, group conversation, experience personal transformative learning. Collective transformative learning is seen as an active and explicit transmutation that forges several different perspectives into a new alloy of knowledge. One conclusion is that with some training in dialogue competence, individuals and groups may be more likely to experience transformative learning.