Effects of dialogic education on sensemaking: Changes in teachers' narrative structure

Abstract

The research on teachers' professional development in dialogic education focuses primarily on instructional changes. This study explores the effects learning about dialogue has on teachers' sensemaking. An analytic framework for the analysis of dialogic traces in small stories has been developed and implemented on small stories that were produced naturally in a two-year teachers' professional development (TPD) dialogic education program. The corpus (n = 57) was composed by teachers participating in the TPD program. It was analyzed to identify temporal changes in their narrative structure and evaluative devices and, consequently, changes in teachers' professional vision and perception resulting from dialogic education. The results indicate structural and evaluative changes in the teachers' stories overtime. Findings also reveal growth over time in the quantity of dialogic small stories, especially in themes related to teachers' roles and perceptions of teachers’ learning. Implications for teacher education and dialogic pedagogy are discussed.