ABSTRACT
Dialogic education has a long history going back to the 1970s and has different theoretical backgrounds. In Piaget’s aftermath, researchers first aimed at testing the influence of social interactions on development and learning. They did so through quasi-experimental designs that measured the outcomes of group work and tried to account for the interaction processes most likely to foster development and learning. Under Vygotsky’s growing influence, studies were then mainly carried out in “natural” settings, particularly schools. Quasi-experimental designs were gradually abandoned in favour of analyses of teacher–students interactions dealing with curricular subject matters. In what can be seen as a linguistic turn, research began to be more sensitive to language, drawing on the sciences of language to expand both theory and methodology. More recently, under the increasing influence of Bakhtin’s theory and its contemporary proponents, research took a new turn by focusing on the dialogical tensions between various situations and voices. Today, research is very much focused on the development of educational practices that encourage learners to adopt an active and reflexive stance.
