Dialogic Engagement Research Articles

Cinematic collage as an ethical response to the abject: Sang-mi Choo’s The Children Gone to Poland

ABSTRACT In The Children Gone to Poland (2018), Sang-mi Choo employs different narrative styles not to faithfully present public history on North Korean orphans who were moved to Poland during the Korean War but to rewrite different groups of subjects who underwent painful experiences during the Cold War, such as North Korean war orphans, the Polish teachers who cared for them, and a North Korean refugee who risked her life during the 1990s. To create their dialogic engagement, Choo uses her personal experience and weaves them into her cinematic narrative. Her filmic endeavour, however, is often conflicting as her audiences encounter a non-linear story world in terms of editing. In addition, she experiments with her filmmaking by having a porous nexus among images capturing disparate spaces and times. Audiences become defamiliarized from the film narrative as historical truth and are instead aware of it as a careful construction creating a dialogic space. To explicate Choo’s cinematic project, this article employs the philosophical concept of gesture elaborated by Giorgio Agamben. Choo’s construction of an unconventional film narrative is an ethical response to the miserable subjects who still have painful memories and urgently seek to be heard.

Using Social Media as a Tool for Dialogic Engagement: The Case of an NGO in South Africa

Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) increasingly use social media to build and maintain relationships with different stakeholders; however, previous research shows that NGOs face numerous challenges in the strategic use of social media for dialogic engagement to support their mission. While the use of social media by commercial brands has been researched considerably, research on the use of social media by NGOs as a tool for organisation-stakeholder dialogue in South Africa is scarce. Previous studies on social media usage by NGOs in South Africa have focused on social media adoption patterns or on the use of social media in branding but have not addressed the use of social media as a communication tool for relationship building. This study focuses on the use of social media for dialogic engagement by a non-governmental organisation in Gauteng province in South Africa. Data were collected through 10 semi- structured interviews with six full-time employees and four volunteers who work in the marketing, public relations, and fundraising departments and manage online communication for the organisation. The results of the study revealed that the NGO’s social ties and stakeholder support are of primary importance and that social media play a strategic role in ensuring fulfilment of the organisational mission and maintaining brand legitimacy.

Modeling authentic multivariate assessment in art and design teacher education curriculum

Assessment is a critical construct in programing and instruction. It is one of the means of accountability that is conceived within the broader context of authentic performance. This paper discusses assessment strategies that are being used in art and design teacher education programmes amid ongoing curricula reforms in teachers' colleges in Zimbabwe. Findings reveal that colleges are using diverse assessment strategies to index student performance. These include critique of student exhibitions, portfolio assessment, pre-issue examinations, and controlled examinations, all of which are operationalised within an internal and external moderation framework and dialogical engagement among stakeholders. The study proposes the inclusion of candidate interviews and deliberate student self-assessment as part of a comprehensive art programme to enhance the development of higher-order cognitive and metacognitive skills that are critical in enhancing aesthetic judgment and performative art.

Black Men Committed to Making Engineering More Humane: A Collaborative Autoethnography of Two Engineering Education Scholars

Despite an abundance of scholarship on Black men in engineering, including both meta-narratives of underperformance and counter-narratives of success, there is scant literature written by Black men in engineering giving insight into their own experiences. Even less scholarship exists about Black men who have earned undergraduate and graduate degrees in engineering and are now working to shift the engineering education landscape. The purpose of this paper is to critically engage the narrative surrounding broadening participation in engineering by closely examining the experiences of two Black male engineering education faculty aiming to make engineering more humane. Drawing on the two authors’ experiences in engineering education, we use methods from collaborative autoethnography and Du Bois’ notion of double consciousness to analyze our interpersonal experiences of being both Black men and engineering education researchers within engineering education's larger systems of power, oppression, and social privilege. In comparing and contrasting our narratives, we were able to generate a better understanding of our complicated commitment to engineering education. In sharing our narratives, we intend to present a dialogic engagement that offers new insights into the sociocultural context of engineering education.

Integrating planetary citizenship as a cross-curricular theme and a whole-school approach: using a value-creating approach to learning

This article reflects on the double planetary crises of climate impacts and Covid-19 from a study of certain Indigenous perspectives. An early review of the impact of these crises suggests the importance of resilience at the national and regional level to combat these challenges. Value-creating global citizenship education is a pedagogical approach developed from a study of certain Indigenous perspectives to enhance the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, and beyond. The key focus of this approach is to build resilience and hope through engaged relationships between learners and their natural, social and educational environments. Using this approach, education for planetary citizenship is proposed as a cross-curricular theme, and a whole-school orientation for education across nation states, within formal and non-formal settings. Under this banner, the study of human relationship to Nature and its exploitation, risks such as climate change crisis, threats from global pandemics and lessons from Green Schools and Eco-Schools are suggested as focal points of study. In discussing these issues, this article enacts a dialogic engagement with multiple world views that brings into focus different ways of thinking about ourselves, society and Nature, such as reflected in the Earth Charter, which can enhance the intercultural dimension of education.

Composers’ Reflections on the Relevance of Artistic Doctoral Education in Finland

As Artistic Research (AR) is gaining momentum in academia and the movement has begun to affect the industry, in this qualitative study we ask how contemporary art music composers in Finland think of artistic doctoral education in the field of composition. Ten bigenerational composers participated in open interviews in which they were asked to reflect on AR both as a discipline and as a pathway in doctoral studies in relation to composers’ professional practice. A qualitative thematic analysis based on the “dialogic engagement practice” approach revealed certain benefits and challenges related to a) doctoral studies in AR, and b) the dynamics between composition and AR. In particular, participants noted a division between doctoral candidates enrolled in AR doctoral programs for self-focused artistic introspection (single-loop-learning) and those who connect their studies with activist and societal issues that go beyond personal inquiry (double-loop learning). Furthermore, issues of whether AR in composing could be considered research, or not, were also articulated. Based on these key aspects, the authors offer a conceptual learning triangulation between research, education, and self-development that could inform AR doctoral education curricula.

Radical dialogue and slow pedagogy in early childhood art education

This research aimed to examine the dialogical engagement of early childhood educators in an artmaking space. A descriptive-qualitative research model was used for this phenomenological case study. The study’s findings reveal that pedagogical listening can facilitate dialogue among educators and children. Moreover, when educators are in this dialogical and pedagogical space with children, and if they genuinely and attentively listen with all their senses to children’s words, thoughts, desires, and needs by maintaining a responsive and respectful attitude, the fluxes and movements of both children’s and educators’ thinking and learning will be generative, creative, and relational.

Engaging Paulo Freire on deliberative democracy: Dialogical pedagogy, deliberation and inclusion in a transformative higher education online education space

An effective education system is an environment where students feel cared for, included and are able to deliver critical dialogical input in their learnings on Learning Management Systems (LMS) platforms. The article aims to epitomizes quality education where skills, values and equal distribution of resources can be accessed by all. This includes effectively trained lecturers who manages diversity and teach effectively, to foster success, and to provide a safe and friendly classroom environment for students. This article comes from a larger work done on how to administer clear dialogical and caring aims (policy) in higher online education spaces where students grow holistically and critically. The paper focuses on the kind of space lecturers need to create online in-order to provide students the opportunity to be part of a caring teaching and learning process in order to form part of an active citizenry beyond their immediate context. This article employed a qualitative research methodology, where a questionnaire was used for lecturers at the Faculty of Theology and Religion at the University of the Free State. These questionnaires covered 30 lecturers who made use of the University’s LMS’ platform. The data was analyzed through the interpretivist paradigm. The finding in this article reveal that the little to no cultivation of critical pedagogical action vis-à-vis the enactment of activism and justice in and through higher education in the context of real pedagogical action in online (LMS) higher education spaces are important. The study is significant because it emphasizes a topic that are helpful in understanding how critical pedagogical action through Freire’s dialogical theory in the online (LMS) higher education platforms ought to be engaged.Contribution: The contribution in this article is an amendment to Freire’s pedagogy frame work framed with the Faculty of Theology and Religion and extending his notion of dialogical engagement to deliberative action in the online (LMS) higher education space is critical tenant for student wholistic growth.

Memorials, landscape and white masculinity: dialogic interventions in South African art

The memorialisation of place and representation of land and landscape is topical in many societies that are dealing with the aftermath of political trauma, such as Post-Colonial or Post-Soviet countries. In such contexts, artists engage with land and notions of place through processes of memorialisation and landscape representation, or very often, the undoing of these traditions as they were entrenched by regimes that are now redundant. In this article we investigate two different artistic agendas that engage with such sites in South Africa, in the work of Paul Emmanuel, and the collective Avant Car Guard. Though separated by a decade, the artworks discussed here share a dialogic engagement with existing memorial sites, or indeed, traditions that memorialise settler belonging, such as the landscape painting tradition or military equestrian monuments. While Emmanuel's work may be understood to employ a dialogic, anti-monumental strategy in response to the statue of Louis Botha at the Union buildings in Tshwane in South Africa, Avant Car Guard insert themselves in spaces where they engage parodically with memorial sites and the tradition of landscape representation. In both cases, white masculinity is called into question through self-representation, engaging with notions of Afrikaner hegemony and white anxiety.

Museums and communicating climate change-related issues on Facebook platforms

PurposeThis research examines the ways in which museums have utilised their Facebook platforms to communicate about climate and environmental-related challenges. The aim is to offer a snapshot of the phenomenon of museums as contributors to communicating climate-related topics and climate change education.Design/methodology/approachA content analysis of a purposeful sample of 10 museums’ Facebook postings was conducted. The study examines the themes and topics concerning climate issues that museums have posted and communicated about, the nature of the communication and an examination of responses from the audience.FindingsThis research reveals that not all museums in the study sample have communicated the different research-informed causes or contributors to climate challenges confronting societies today. There is also very little evidence of dialogic engagement with audience and the public-at-large. Most communication is still one-way focussing on the relaying of information.Originality/valueThis research highlights the roles of cultural heritage institutions such as museums in communicating climate change-related topics and the need to move towards a more dialogic mode of engagement with their audience. Museums have a role in serving as a trusted and inspirational space for public debates and community empowerment for dealing with climate challenges.

“It allowed us to let our pain out”: perspectives from voice-hearers and their voices on the ‘talking with voices’ approach

ABSTRACT Background The “Talking with Voices” (TwV) approach is a novel, formulation-driven approach to helping people who hear distressing voices. It is based on an understanding of voice-hearing as a relational phenomenon, often linked to trauma. Therapy involves facilitation of dialogical engagement between hearers and their voices. There are as yet few empirical studies of the approach. Method The current study explored experiences of the TwV approach from the perspectives of voice-hearers and also of their voices. Ten qualitative interviews were subjected to Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis. Results Both hearers and their voices felt that the TwV approach can be a powerful enabler of positive change, and that it provides a valuable means of working through past trauma. Establishing a safe base – with time to build trust in the process – was considered key, as were the personal qualities of the facilitator, including openness, courage and a non-judgemental approach. Participants also saw flexibility as important, including the ability to try things out within the work. It was also important that the ideas behind the approach made sense to the participant. Perceived barriers included the medicalised nature of current services and the lack of availability of the TwV approach. Conclusion The findings provide support for the acceptability and value of dialogical approaches to helping people who hear voices. In particular, they suggest that participating in TwV can help people develop an understanding of, and a more peaceful relationship with, their voices. The study is novel in eliciting perspectives from the voices themselves, and this yielded valuable insights.

Exploring Criticality in Chinese Philosophy: Refuting Generalisations and Supporting Critical Thinking

Much of the literature exploring Chinese international student engagement with critical thinking in Western universities draws on reductive essentialisations of ‘Confucianism’ in efforts to explain cross-cultural differences. In this paper I review literature problematising these tendencies. I then shift focus from inferences about how philosophy shapes culture and individual students, toward drawing on philosophy as a ‘living’ resource for understanding and shaping the ideal of critical thinking. A cross disciplinary approach employs historical overview and philosophical interpretation within and beyond the Confucian tradition to exemplify three types of criticality common in Chinese philosophy. These are criticality within tradition, criticality of tradition, and critical integration of traditions. The result is a refutation of claims or inferences (intentional or implicit) that Chinese philosophy is not conducive to criticality. While this paper focuses on types of criticality, it also reveals a common method of criticality within Chinese philosophy, in the form of ‘creation through transmission’. This resonates with recent research calling for less confrontational and more dialogical engagement with critical processes. However, I also draw attention to examples of confrontational argumentation within Chinese philosophy, which may provide valuable resources for educators and students. Finally, I conclude careful and explicit consideration is needed regarding the types of criticality sought within Western universities to prevent educators and students from ‘speaking past’ one and other instead of ‘speaking with’ one and other in critical dialogue.

Syllabically matched resonance in sound and category

From a conversation-analytic perspective, this article describes how “creative” formulation of resonance is effectuated through dialogic engagement in Korean conversation. It examines various forms of word play and categorisation work accomplished from dialogically engaging a prior utterance, whose features are reproduced in the subsequent utterance, such that resonance arises in an array of “creative” co-construction of adjoined utterances (e.g. in creating playful word play, empathic uptake or a sonorous repetition indexing allusive stance and heightened affect). Syllabic matching figures saliently in this process, shaping resonant sound sequences whose patterning endows talk with “poetic” qualities, sometimes bearing on the organisation of sequence and topic. The findings indicate that the syllable-matching practice furnishes Korean speakers with the means to accomplish “doing being creative” in organising recognisable actions and an undercurrent of flow of talk, through having the dialogical potential of a prior utterance maximally tested, explored and expanded on in syllabic terms.

Language reproduction and coordinated agency through resonant play

This article examines how creativity is jointly achieved in playful Japanese conversations, focusing on dialogicality in language form, meaning and the speaker’s agency. The analysis employs “dialogic syntax” and “stancetaking” as the theoretical frameworks of dialogicality and shows that dialogic engagement in talk-in-interaction engenders resonance, creating both similarities and contrasts in parallel structure across utterances. This study points out that such differentiations come from distinctive social actors situated in the indexical field of social life. Injecting stancetaking into dialogic syntax makes it possible to explicitly address the dialogic creation of socially meaningful language reproduction in tandem with constructing the stancetaker’s agency. Moreover, dialogic syntax and stancetaking shed important light on how a playful utterance creates priming effects, prepatterning the subsequent language reproduction in resonance, and prompting stancetakers’ affect to voluntarily contribute something new, engaging with the prior utterances, which develops the play framing activity and enhances shared pleasure.

Oneness in John 17:1–26 as a paradigm for wider ecumenism and dialogue

This article re-reads John 17:1–26 with a focus on the theme of oneness within the micronarrative. A multilayered and polyvalent analysis of the text reveals that the theme of oneness holds the prayer together to suggest a new way forward for the Johannine community. The vision and the missio-praxis expressed in the prayer align the thought patterns of Jesus, the narrator, and the community of John. The interactions and the resultant wider perichōrētic relationships between Father and Jesus, Jesus and believers, Father and believers, believer(s) and believer(s), Father–Jesus–believers and Paraklētos and Father–Son–Paraklētos–believers and the World exist as a paradigm for today’s ecclesiastical bodies and theological institutions and organisations for wider ecumenism and dialogue.Contribution: This article discusses the theme of oneness in John 17:1–26 as a paradigm for wider ecumenism and dialogue. As HTS Teologiese Studies/Theological Studies emphasises biblical, ecumenical and dialogical engagements in theological discussions, this article fits well within the scope of the journal.

Selected Texan K-12 Educators' Perceptions of Youth Suicide Prevention Training.

K-12 school personnel may be frontline responders for youth contemplating suicide or other harmful behaviors. Therefore, the purpose of this preliminary study was to determine selected K-12 educators’ perceptions of youth suicide prevention (YSP) training. A longitudinal trend survey with repeated measures and proportionally stratified random samples of K-12 personnel from nine Texas independent school districts provided data. Participants’ perceived knowledge of the YSP content showed significant appreciative gains between pre- and follow-up post-tests. Likewise, their confidence levels for helping students at risk of suicide and approaching other adults to talk about students at risk of suicide rose significantly between pretests and follow-up post-tests. This preliminary study reinforces the value of training educators to acquire content knowledge and confidence boosting opportunities for engagement in difficult dialogue about suicidality. YSP training helped improve educators’ confidence to engage with others about students’ mental health concerns, calling attention to the importance of identifying early warning signs that may aid in early support and prevention of youth mental health concerns.

Race-reimaged self-determination theory: Elucidating how ethnic studies promotes student identity and learning outcomes using mixed-methods

Latinx students often experience a lifetime of deficit-based pedagogy. These deficit views are perpetuated in instruction that ignores the depth of their insight and intellect, essentially pushing them out of school. In contrast to assimilationist approaches to instruction that omit and disparage minoritized students through the formal and informal curriculum, ethnic studies is a pedagogical approach centered on affirming students’ identities and nurturing critical consciousness. Recent large scale empirical analyses across various contexts demonstrate important educational benefits of ethnic studies courses for students but have not included the examination of identity, the very mechanism that underlies the theorized effectiveness of ethnic studies. By applying a race-reimaged Self-Determination Theory using a qualitative-dominant sequential explanatory mixed methods design, we elucidate the ways ethnic studies informs learning via students’ motivation and identity. Quantitative findings confirm prior research on SDT, but the qualitative findings extend a race-reimaging of SDT. Students expressed the ways rigorous courses focused on developing an understanding of systems of oppression through critical dialogic engagement with teachers and peers (and materials) can promote critical curiosity, affirm relatedness that considers race/ethnicity explicitly, as well as competence and autonomy.

Positionality in Information Studies Research of Visuality: Ethical and Epistemological Considerations

AbstractThis panel, co‐sponsored by ASIS&T SIG‐VIS (Visualization, Images, & Sound) and SIG‐DL (Digital Libraries), has two purposes. First, it briefly discusses panelists' recent research projects on visual forms of knowledge production and documentation. Their approaches involve collecting visual forms of data or studying contexts in which information practices involve visual information formats or regimes of graphical information creation. Second, this panel draws attention to the importance of dialogic engagement and acknowledgment of the role of the embodied researcher as a critical methodological agent in generating research data related to visual practices. This central role of the researcher in visual research foregrounds ethical and epistemological aspects of their positionality. In particular, panelists will discuss the ethical challenges of information studies research that involves Indigenous knowledge communities. This panel will engage the audience in a discussion on the role played by a researcher's positionality in shaping qualitative information research methodologies and will discuss how the generation of visual forms of data and the study of visual information practices pose particular challenges for information studies research.

Truth-telling about a settler-colonial legacy: decolonizing possibilities?

ABSTRACT In 2017, the Uluru Statement calling for Voice, Treaty and Truth was released by Australia’s Referendum Council. The Uluru Statement calls for a Makarrata Commission to oversee a process of ‘agreement-making’ and ‘truth-telling’. I argue that it was in the regional dialogues held by the Referendum Council prior to the release of the Uluru Statement that this demand for truth-telling was substantively articulated by dialogue participants. This article explores this grassroots invocation of truth-telling within the context of the desire for political transformation, most recently expressed in the Uluru Statement. I argue that truth-telling is conceptualized by regional dialogue participants as an opportunity for First Nations and non-Indigenous Australians to participate as equals in a process of place-based dialogic engagement about the ‘truths’ of colonial history that may or may not lead to local reconciliation. This type of ‘agonistic’ political encounter, therefore, does not assume an outcome of national or even local reconciliation. I contend that these types of encounters may have the potential to create local decolonizing spaces in which more equal terms of association are negotiated. However, they could also be appropriated to pursue ideological forms of consensus that undermine this possibility, as occurred in previous periods of Australian history.

Comics and the Body: Drawing, Reading, and Vulnerability by Eszter Szép

Reviewed by: Comics and the Body: Drawing, Reading, and Vulnerability by Eszter Szép Pamela J. Rader Eszter Szép. Comics and the Body: Drawing, Reading, and Vulnerability. Ohio State UP, 2020. 206 p. Humans dwell in bodies. How they feel about, relate to, and narrate their bodies and the bodies of the Other are not restricted to any one discipline. Drawing, like writing, is an embodied experience. Eszter Szép argues that reading comics is not just a cognitive experience, but "it is also a performance and interaction of bodies," (1) and "the line is a partner of the drawer and body" (77). However, writing, a verbal medium, happens even before the pen (pencil or laptop letters) hit the page; I compose while I walk which creates a state of mind. Barry, one of the writer-drawers studied here, teaches her students to think of "drawing as a way of thinking" (63). Grounding her monograph in an impressive swath of theory and comics scholarship, Szép summarizes the array of sources that inform the study in the introduction and reiterates those sources frequently throughout the chapters. Building on film theory, art history, and trauma studies, Szép focuses on activities of the body crucial to making and reading comics. Her introduction, nearly a third of the volume, draws out the theoretical frameworks and scholarship for her interest in the healing and transformation process in the artist and reader of autobiographical comics. The oft repeated goals established in the first three chapters center on vulnerability as a "central experience expressed by drawing," while chapters four and five focus on reader [End Page 351] engagement and performance in dialogue with one's own vulnerability and/or that of the Other (50). Non-fiction graphic narratives by Lynda Barry, Ken Dahl, Katie Green, Miriam Katin, and Joe Sacco explore self-esteem, trauma, and paths to healing across the authors' and their avatars' experiences with drawing, herpes, anorexia, Caesarean, and war. Szép makes a painstaking case for the specific medium of nonfiction comics as a mediated interaction between three bodies: the drawer, the reader, and the material comic. Representing and re-drawing the body of the authors' avatars is serious business. In Chapter One, readers of Lynda Barry's books like Syllabus and What It Is, will recognize the author's nearsighted monkey and the hair-tie Lynda avatars. Szép's reading of Barry's texts focuses on the active line and the state of mind produced by the drawer while drawing. Ken Dahl's Monsters, in Chapter Two, invites the drawer to illustrate how the Herpes virus transforms not only the avatar Ken's body but self-image as Dahl personifies the ever-changing virus. Without question, this redrawing of the body and its virus destabilizes form and identity. What Elisabeth El Refaie calls "pictorial embodiment" invites the drawer to redraw and reimagine the personality's diverse aspects in discrete modifications of the avatar (83). In the case of Miriam Katin's Letting it Go in Chapter Four, her avatar's vulnerability spans several pages of an involuntary defecation and clean-up. These texts, for Szép, affirm that "[d]rawing is interpretation; it is a way to organize reality" (39). The drawer-writer's perspective is an interpretation of the events experienced. Comics transform the metaphor into an embodied reality to foster dialogue about vulnerability. While bodies are indeed the subject of Szép's chosen graphic memoirs, the style of lines are a technique for "[expressing] engagement and compassion with the pain and vulnerability of others" (109). In Chapter Three, Szép zeroes in on Joe Sacco's Bosnian war reportage and his haptic use of crosshatched backgrounds and textures. She makes a compelling case for how Sacco's "compulsive" crosshatching (121) allows the author-drawer to dwell with the drawn stories and their avatars. This dwelling opens a temporal space wherein Sacco sits with and engages with his subjects, showing a form of bodily engagement. However, in Chapter Five, the use of scribbling in Katie Green's memoir Lighter Than My Shadow performs a different function; according to Szép, this particular style permits one "to visualize...