Learning 117at least two individuals must necessarily be considered for learning –
learning does not occur in one isolated subject; second, not only the learner
but also the teacher will be changed and affected by the learning situation –
learning is a bidirectional process; and third, language is not information
retrieved from one head and poured into the other but a specific social
activity between people talking to each other as whole persons (gender,
race, social class, historical context, and situational context). This activity
has its peculiar forms and experiences (do we hear a lecture?, do we
participate in an interactive discussion?, do we write an essay or a blog?,
etc.) – and these forms, and how we experience them matter for how we
use language for ourselves while learning. Learning is a language
mediated, dialogic activity that is culturally and socially specific and that
needs common social activities in order to occur on the individual level;
the brain as a processing organ is not as much a focus as mind and
consciousness are: these are highly complex cultural and social
psychological phenomena embodied, and lived, by individuals with their
others; the teacher is a sensitive and flexible partner in a dialogic
conversation with the students, being time and again a facilitator of
“exploratory talk” (Mercer & Sams, 2006), a navigator through hindrances
and possibilities, or a fellow co-investigator; the learner is the teacher’s
partner in dialogic conversations, also a partner to peers with whom there
might be shifts in positions (knowing more, sometimes less than another),
and a collaborator in the construction of questions, hypotheses, and
answers – that is, of knowledge.
4. DIALOGIC LEARNING
The last step into dialogism and dialogic learning allows us to conceive
the individual as related to others in learning and development; dialogism
is a framework that enables us to go beyond the individualism prevalent in
the learning theories of behaviorism and cognitivism and at least in some
of the learning approaches in social constructionism. In contrast, dialogic
learning situates the learner explicitly within a net of certain significant