LOM#33: Dialogue, learning and materiality

2025-04-11

Editor: Thorkild Hanghøj, thorkild@ikp.aau.dk, Aalborg University
Editor: Tina Høegh, thoegh@sdu.dk, University of Southern Denmark
Editor: Jens Jørgen Hansen, jjh@sdu.dk, University of Southern Denmark

In this thematic issue of LOM, we focus on links between learning and materiality from a dialogical perspective. Recent research – including previous LOM issues – shows that it is important to shed light on links between learning and materiality, here understood as people's perception of and use of digital and analog tools. Neither the pedagogical nor the material should take precedence, as both aspects are central.

At the same time, with this theme issue we will highlight the importance of dialogic aspects in relation to learning and technology. In everyday speech, dialogue means conversation or communication. Much of the research into dialogic teaching draws on Bakhtin's dialogic philosophy, which has been interpreted and applied in an educational context. For Bakhtin, dialogue can be understood as an ontological basic condition, as mutual relations between people and as communication. Similarly, Wegerif argues that the dialogic has both epistemological and ontological meanings in an educational context. That is, it deals with both knowledge construction and participation possibilities.

Research into dialogic teaching is important because it can shed light on pedagogical relationships and communication patterns, as well as how to redesign them. Several reviews of research into dialogic teaching have shown how teaching often follows the traditional IRE (Initiation, Response, Evaluation) structure, where the teacher's thinking and direction are the only control of activities. Digital technologies do not necessarily change this distribution of power. In fact, digital technologies can often cement the distribution of power in practice, for example through teachers' step-by-step use of digital learning platforms that control the processes by which learners must participate in teaching. Conversely, digital technologies, such as tools for creative writing processes, can open up many new ways of participating and thinking. In teaching practice, it is rarely either-or, but often combinations of different technologies and learning spaces.

At the same time, design-oriented dialogic research shows how to strengthen participation opportunities and learning outcomes through experiments. It is about, for example, the teacher's dialogic approach to inviting participants into exploratory conversations, and how digital technologies can play a crucial role in this. Another focus could be to (re-)design certain technologies or learning spaces so that they qualify the participants' learning processes.

We are therefore looking for articles in this theme issue that, for example, deal with:

  • Teachers and students’ dialogic approaches to using different types of analogue and digital tools

  • Collegial issues and opportunities associated with developing dialogic teaching as a shared pedagogical approach

  • Ways of working, which supports dialogic interaction and communication, such as group work, project work, exploratory conversations, etc.

  • Student perspectives and possibilities for participation, e.g. with a focus on special student groups

  • Conditions for dialogic teaching in an educational system with a focus on efficiency and management, where there is limited focus on facilitating open dialogues

We are interested in contributions written from many different theoretical perspectives, including sociocultural learning theory, cognitive understandings of dialogic argumentation, dialogic philosophy, and post-digital theories. However, it is essential that the contributions' studies address dialogic aspects of learning and materiality.

Contributions based on both theoretical and empirical studies are welcome.

This call is based on ongoing discussions in the research network FiDU (www.fidu.dk) - Forskning i Dialogisk Undervisning (Research on Dialogic Teaching).

Timeline

  • Expressions of interest in the form of an abstract of 200–400 words should be submitted to the editors of the theme issue via e-mail no later than September 1, 2025. The abstract should contain research questions as well as considerations on theory, method, empirical basis and the article's (expected) contribution of new knowledge on pedagogical and/or learning implications.

  • The editorial team will announce provisional acceptance/rejection no later than September 19, 2025.

  • Manuscripts must be submitted no later than December 1, 2025. Manuscripts can be written in one of the Scandinavian languages ​​or English.

  • We expect to be able to send reviews to the authors during February 2026.

  • Final manuscript is submitted one month after receiving the review.

  • Articles for the theme issue will be published on an ongoing basis, expected to start in April 2026.