Metafiction as a Dialogic Space: A Bakhtinian Exploration of Metafictional Children’s Novels

Posthuman Glossary

The concept and practice of dialogue has underpinned key developments in humanistic psychotherapy and counseling. However, dialogue has also been adopted by, and incorporated into, a range of educational, community and social theories and practices, and in this sense forms a valuable bridge between humanistic psychology and the wider field of sociopolitical theory and activity. This article critically reviews how the concept of dialogue has been developed and applied in four key domains, each oriented around the work of a principal theorist: psychotherapy (Martin Buber), education (Mikhail Bakhtin), community development (Paulo Freire), and social transformation (Jürgen Habermas). Drawing this analysis together, the discussion identifies three principal ways in which the term dialogue has been used: transformative, ontological, and everyday; outlines the different levels at which dialogue can take place; and identifies key questions for further exploration.

Reflective practice in teacher education often involves dialogic communication between teacher educators and teachers. This essay asks what constitutes authentic dialogic engagement in discussions between a pre-service second-language (SL) teacher and her university supervisor. Written as a self-critical reflection, the paper first describes the author’s thoughts and feelings about a post-teaching session he conducted with one of his supervisees and identifies possible disconnections existing between them. Drawing on Mikhail Bakhtin’s concept of dialogism and Hans-Georg Gadamer’s of genuine dialogue, this paper reflects on the dispositions that foster a dialogic relationship between teacher educators and pre-service and in-service teachers.

Inquiry-based curriculum is a responsive approach to education in which young children are viewed as capable protagonists of their learning. Inquiry-based curriculum has the potential to challenge the dominance of developmental psychology as the primary way of understanding young children’s learning. This approach to curriculum-making also disrupts the instrumentalist “technician” image of the early childhood educator. Practices of inquiry-based curriculum can also extend beyond the early childhood classroom as a potentially transformative teacher education tool, and as a research methodology that counters dominant deficit discourses of childhood. Inquiry-based curriculum in North American early childhood education has been greatly influenced by the Reggio Emilia approach, which is a powerful alternative to predetermined theme-based didactic curriculum. The revolutionary possibilities of inquiry-based curriculum, inspired by Reggio Emilia, are not standardized frameworks to be copied in practice; rather, they create critical entry points into contextual, creative, rigorous, meaningful, and justice-oriented curriculum. One of these entry points is the practice of pedagogical documentation, which not only makes children’s learning visible but also enables educators’ and researchers’ critical reflection. Such reflections can act to foreground the complex, political, and dialogical thinking, doing, and exchanging that happens in inquiry-based early childhood education classrooms. Reggio Emilia–inspired inquiry-based curriculum has brought attention to the important role of the arts in young children’s inquiries. Important research in this area includes work that has put new materialist perspectives to work to gain insight into new pedagogical and curricular possibilities that are made possible by attuning to children’s relations with materials, where materials are active participants in learning. While more research is needed in this area, recent research has also engaged with how attention to the arts and materials does not preclude attending to and responding to issues of race and racialization. In U.S. early learning contexts, an important area of research in inquiry-based curriculum has demonstrated that this approach, alongside a pedagogy of listening, is central to shifting deficit-based practices with historically marginalized children. This is important work as access to dynamic inquiry-based curriculum remains inaccessible to many young children of color, particularly within increasing policy pressures to prepare children for standardized testing. Finally, there is a growing body of work that is investigating possibilities for inquiry-based curriculum that is responsive to the inequitably distributed environmental precarities that young children are inheriting. This work is an important direction for research in inquiry-based curriculum as it proposes a radical shift from individualist and humanist modes of understanding childhood and childhood learning.

Tinkering has been recognized as an informal method to engage students with STEM disciplines. It can be defined as an open-ended process of designing and constructing objects or installations, generally using both high- and low-tech tools (Bevan et al., 2015). Tinkering has been adopted not only to develop scientific knowledge but also to support thinking processes such as Critical and Creative Thinking. Indeed participants in Tinkering activities are constantly involved in the inquiry, collaborative process, during while scientific and aesthetic insights could be combined. Despite these theoretical assumptions, there is still a lack of empirical studies concerning the impact of Tinkering on the development of Creativity and Critical Thinking. The Centre for Museum Studies - University of Roma Tre has been trying to solve this gap, by investigating the impact of Tinkering activities on Critical and Creative thinking skills enhancement in museum educators and teachers involved in STEM education. The Centre for Museum Studies conducted a study with about 60 participants at Citta della Scienza - Science centre (Naples) and Palaexpo (Rome), where museum educators and STEM teachers participated in a two-day workshop on collaborative Tinkering activities. Data about Creative (Guilford et al., 1978) and Critical Thinking (Poce, 2017) were collected through a pre-post test methodology. In addition, different kinds of qualitative data were collected during the two days such as groups’ interactions, presentations, and final objects’ pictures. From preliminary results, a significant correlation was detected between Critical and Creative Thinking (r = 0,39) at the beginning of the course. Participants showed significant higher Creative Thinking level after the Tinkering Activity (sign. < 0,001). On the other hand, despite there were no statistical differences concerning Critical Thinking assessment, a slight improvement in the post-test could be quantified. In final objects and installations, it was possible to detect the process through which participants combined the scientific and the aesthetic dimension. Indeed, scientific knowledge was often explicitly interconnected to objects' historical, anthropological, and literary elements. In conclusion, Tinkering seems to have a positive impact on thinking functions because it allows combining scientific and humanistic knowledge through an open-ended creative process. Follow up research is required, where it will be necessary to expand the sample of the study and use different measures for Critical and Creative Thinking assessment.

This research project investigated manifestations of critical thinking in pupils 10 to 12 years of age during their group discussions held in the context of Philosophy for Children Adapted to Mathematics. The objective of the research project was to examine, through the pupils’ discussions, the development of dialogical critical thinking processes. The research was conducted during an entire school year. The research method was based on the Grounded Theory approach; the material used consisted of transcripts of verbal exchanges among the pupils (at the beginning, middle and end of the school year). Analysis of the transcripts revealed that: (1) critical thinking appears to the extent that a ‘dia-logue’ is established among pupils; (2) on the cognitive level, dialogical critical thinking is comprised of four thinking modes: logical, creative, responsible and meta-cognitive; and (3) on the epistemological level, dialogical critical thinking is only manifested in a context where egocentricity of perspective and relativism of beliefs are transcended.

A detailed analysis of the collective monograph Bakhtin in the Fullness of Time: Bakhtinian Theory and the Process of Social Education is performed in this article, involving reflections on the place and meaning of the ideas of Mikhail Bakhtin (1895–1975) for theory and practice of Western education in the recent decades. Three major topics are covered in the book. The first one has to do with identifying the philosophical and sociocultural sources that preceded the formation of Bakhtin’s early views and largely predetermined his response to challenges of the time in his early philosophical texts and in his books about Dostoevsky and the genre of Bildungsroman. Another topic is Bakhtin’s dialogue with his contemporaries. Sometimes, this dialogue was open and active, sharply polemical, as in the situation with the latest aesthetic and literary trends of the early 1920s in Russia; at other times, however, it was “inaudible”, so researchers can only attempt to reconstruct it based on the consonance between the ideas of Bakhtin and those of Lev Vygotsky or Paulo Freire. The third topic is the transformation of Bakhtinian theory into teaching practice, whether it is about using dialogue and its potential in teaching foreign students, providing educational opportunities for the most economically vulnerable social groups in South Africa, or communicating with preschoolers in a kindergarten. The authors of the book managed to create a convincing picture of how Bakhtinian theory is becoming a key element of today’s educational research and practice. Importantly, it is not only Bakhtin’s ideas as such — the concepts of dialogue, polyphony, carnival and chronotope in the first place — that matter: there is also the unrestrained polyvocality which is indispensable for any creative practice.

This chapter is devoted to Bakhtin’s concepts of dialogue and carnival and their use in political theory. The notion of language as developed by Bakhtin is analyzed in detail, whereby special attention is given to his idea of language as a system of utterances. These explorations serve to advance the idea of non-consensual dialogue. In this perspective, dialogue is a vehicle of reflexive understanding that is an assimilation of someone else’s ideas into one’s own conceptual system. This concept of dialogue is presented as an alternative to the Habermasian notion of dialogue and to the concept of hegemony as developed by Ernesto Lacalu and Chantal Mouffe. In the second part of the chapter, the concept of carnival is discussed. In Bakhtin, carnival is not just a particular festivity, but an existential feature of human nature which enables people to form intimate bonds outside any institutional circumstances. On this model, carnival can be treated as a liminal example of democracy insofar as democracy needs constant change and re-construction of its institutions and habits.

Critical reading involves multiple cognitive factors in the individual and is a pedagogical, psycholinguistic and sociocultural challenge that deserves attention in linguistic, pedagogical, sociocultural and psychological studies. This documentary research examines the potential of critical reading in children and adolescents in educational institutions, especially in the primary education sector in Riohacha, Colombia. It highlights the concern of the Colombian Ministry of Education to link critical reading as a fundamental axis in the teaching-learning processes. Limedis Castillo Mendoza, teacher-tutor of the Tutoring Program for Learning and Integral Formation 3.0, directs this process in the Educational Institution Centro de Integración Popular and works as an oral narrator and reading mediator through the Kamishibai technique in public schools. The methodology was based on a documentary research, analyzing studies on critical reading in elementary school students in Colombia, considering research with direct observation and surveys. The results indicate that research has focused on the analysis of critical reading in the pedagogical work of the teacher and the creation of interest in students. Critical reading fosters analysis, comprehension, argumentation and activation of the students' cognitive apparatus, strengthening their autonomy and capacity to evaluate social and cultural actions. An improvement was found in the children's ability to discover the main idea and general sense of the text, although they face obstacles such as unknown words and unexplained data. The need for teachers to facilitate discussion and reflection on texts to encourage critical thinking and active participation of students is highlighted. Critical reading enriches students' competence, allowing them to develop autonomous and libertarian thinking, crucial for students to free themselves from imitation and repetition of content, and move towards critical and autonomous thinking.

Various approaches and methods are used in philosophical counselling. Two main trends can be observed: the first is the use of contemplative methods and the second constitutes approaches based on dialogical critical thinking. The author defends the idea that developing philosophical counselling on the basis of critical thinking presupposes that it is possible for counsellor and client to hold a philosophical dialogue where the relationship is one of expert/lay person. J. Šulavík has described this relationship in greater detail. In the Socratic model, the philosopher and the lay person hold a dialogue whereby they ascertain opinions via inductive comparison and by defining things, creating a shared concept. While the Platonic and Enlightenment models were grounded in the authority of the expert philosopher, in the Socratic and postmodern models, the expert philosopher loses the power to manipulate those who know “less”. Lay people are not passive consumers of a particular “optimal” philosophy but through their own “philosophising” create philosophy and tailor it for themselves. While philosophising, therefore, the philosopher does not take on the role of “producer” of philosophy but of “adviser” (consultant). It is therefore supposed that people have a general need for philosophy and that ultimately they should create and reflect upon their own philosophy.

This study aims to develop the e-book Basic Physics Fluid Series design assisted by virtual laboratory Tracker Video Analysis (TVA) that effectively improves students' critical thinking skills. The method used in this study is Research and Development. The graphic design developed, including illustrations and visual elements, was identified as necessary for improving critical thinking skills. At the same time, practice questions with varying difficulty levels allowed students to apply knowledge. The validation process, including the Content Validity Ratio (CVR) test, underlined high agreement and validity, with suggestions for improvement, including contextual design, material optimization, interactive elements, accessibility considerations, student feedback collection, and curriculum alignment. The test results showed that learning with this e-book effectively improved students' critical thinking skills. The results obtained in the indicator provided a simple explanation, concluding that it shows a high N-gain value. In contrast, several other indicators show moderate values. This e-book design can be a role model for developing similar media, especially related efforts to improve students' Critical Thinking Skills (CTS).

The concept of dialogue provides the possibility of engagement with other discourses. First-level dialogue provides the opportunity for issues within the text surrounding the characters themselves to be considered. Second-level dialogue provides a possibility for examination of the impact of the text on the hearing-reader, especially where this involves 'word-with-a-sideward-glance' or 'word-with-a-loophole'. There is also the possibility of third-level dialogue - inter-textually and co-textually - which will take into account chronotopic elements and the Markan genre-memory. Dialogue is considered at all three levels: between interindividual characters, in terms of heteroglossia within the text, and among various speech genres and their secondary derivatives that are formative for the Markan 'genre memory'. Mikhail Bakhtin's 'middle period' certainly focuses on carnival - especially in Rabelais and his world - in ways which appear anarchic, but his later writings tend to promote a more 'responsible carnival'.Keywords: carnival; chronotopic elements; dialogue; genre memory; Markan genre; Mikhail Bakhtin

This article adopts a Bakhtinian understanding of dialogue to explore the affordances of virtual book clubs, and how they can foster dialogues and encourage dialogic thinking in students. Drawing on a qualitative case study of 11-year-old students participating in an online book club, we explore how digital book clubs open dialogic spaces for students to build on discussions of texts. Readers learn to read beyond the text by becoming more aware of the text and other readers, and also learn collaboratively by building on each other’s responses and being exposed to different perspectives and ideas. We demonstrate how online spaces such as virtual book clubs can enhance students’ reading engagement and open dialogic spaces for the different exchanges they have with others. Implications for using online book clubs for offering students opportunities to read and think critical and collaborative learning are discussed.

Background Through experience and research, the Uganda government perceived the HIV/AIDS pandemic as a multi-dimensional problem and practically demonstrated that multi-sectoral and multidisciplinary interventions are the best approaches to address this. This calls for collaborative efforts among all stakeholders with respect to their mandates, areas of comparative advantage and expertise. In this study, we explored the role of ‘spaces for community dialogues’ among adults and children in the collective identification, sharing and mitigation of HIV/AIDS concerns in Uganda. Methods This was an ethnographic study conducted between 2009 and 2015 in two purposively selected districts most hit by HIV/AIDS. We employed multiple data collection methods, including participant observation, in-depth interviews, focus group discussions, participatory rural appraisal and key informant interviews. Ethics clearance was obtained from Makerere University, College of Humanities and Social Sciences, and from the two social support agencies. Data were synthesised and analysed using thematic analysis. Results Findings show that bazaars, mother or father talks, testing sites and regular spaces, banana beer parties, village meetings, school settings, and community events provided safe environments for interaction about HIV/AIDS concerns among children and adults. Children expressed their views through visual techniques with the support of adults. The use of catalysts facilitated effective interactions by harmonizing experiences of those directly impacted by HIV/AIDS and those providing the needed helping skills. Conclusion Dialogue is an act of creations that cannot be consumed by participants. Spaces for dialogue are real sites that societies use in their daily interactions. Children are active participants in the struggle to mitigate the adverse effects of HIV/AIDS. Despite differences in ways of sharing messages, spaces in a community settings were deemed appropriate for dialogue on HIV/AIDS issues.

Introduction: Critical thinking is rational and sound thinking that involves investigation and review of opinions followed by actions and decision-making based on reasons with accurate and rational results. In our modern, complex world, we encounter multiple changes and competition in society, especially when it comes to using the latest technology; society must progress in this trend. Medical science is not exempt in this regard, considering that critical thinking is necessary in fulfilling its goals. This research aims to investigate the physicians’ critical thinking and patient satisfaction level in the Tabriz Sina Treatment and Educational Center.Methods: This study is both descriptive and analytical, and the statistical population involves all physicians and the patients of the Tabriz Sina Treatment and Educational Center in 2013. About 30 physicians and 170 patients were selected randomly, and data were collected using the Watson and Glaser critical thinking questionnaire, as well as the Mogimi and Ramazan patient satisfaction questionnaire. The data were then analyzed by Pearson correlation and regression analysis. Results: The results showed that there was a significant and positive relationship between critical thinking and patient satisfaction in all dimensions except identification. Changes in critical thinking dimensions also changed patient satisfaction. The regression test showed that the critical thinking independent variable effect on the dependent variable was 0.558, which indicated a relatively strong correlation between these variables.Conclusion: Although the critical thinking of the physicians and medical staff is important in patient satisfaction, there is no progress towards these goals in the health system. Healthcare authorities should try to empower critical thinking in order to achieve organizational goals.