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Lecture Information:  

Dialectical Pedagogy (Social Constructivism)

1. Location of Knowledge:

   1. For this style of teaching & learning, the knowledge is both inside the learner and outside of the learner.  In fact a social constructivist would probably say that the inside and outside dichotomy is a necessary part of the learning process.  The key concept here is co-constructed knowledge, that is to say that knowledge is almost considered useless it is shared by others as a valid piece of a puzzle. 

2. Content:

   1. The sharing between people is where the greatest depth of understanding comes from, with all of the give and take, the challenges & insights, the multiple perspectives inherent in social situations.  There are many euphemisms for such topics such as "inter-subjectivity" that is to say that one person's subjective point of view and another person's subjective point of view overlap enough for there to be a degree of understanding between them.

3. Values:

   1. This approach highly values contributions from many different sources and people.  The emphasis is on obtaining multiple points of view and molding all of them into a viable product at the end.  Teaching and learning in this approach puts students into collaborative groups with a shared investment of a group quality product at the end of the work together.  Collaboration is highly valued, along with teamwork, cooperation, acceptance of roles within the group.  Learning happens best in the context of social groups.

4. Role of the Teacher:

   1. The role of dialectical teacher is to be both an expert/lecturer and a facilitator/coach of learning activities.  This is a rather hybrid role for the teacher and can get rather tricky.  You are asking the students to follow you through the adjustments in the processing of the subject from passive note-taker to active participant.  This kind of teacher needs to be very good at managing the transition points for students.

5. Assessment:

   1. The assessment most commonly associated with this approach is small group projects where there is a shared grade at the end.  The mechanism works best when each member of the group has a part to play that is vital to the success of the whole.  It is a sort of interlocking dependence on one another.  The drawback to it is that some students are very adept at flying under the teacher's radar, and so when you give the group a grade, each of the members get the same grade regardless of true contribution from each individual.

6. Metaphor:

   1. A metaphor to describe this approach would be again that of a river that is "sort of deep and sort of wide."  It is in the position of "happy medium."  This approach can get deeper into subject matter than the traditional lecturer can get, but not as deep as the endogenous teacher gets.  Also, this teacher can cover more information than the endogenous teacher can, but not as much as the traditional exogenous teacher.

7. Student Behavior:

   1. A student who prefers this style of learning would likely be the one who raises her hand and says something like, "Can we get into groups or something.  I need to talk things out in order to really understand them."  They tend to be organizers, leaders, vocal in class.