Rupert Wegerif is working with technology-supported learning. He has shown how technology can support students? collaboration through development of democratic dialogue principles. Furthermore, he is doing research in dialogic philosophy in the traditions from Bakhtin and Vygotsky, and he has developed dialogic principles for education in thinking and creativity. Read more about Rupert Wegerif on his home page www.rupertwegerif.name., where you will also find a number of his research articles and other texts.

Programme

13.00-13.15: Welcome by leader of the research programme Media and ICT in Learning Perspective/ Professor Birgitte Holm Sørensen

13.15-14.00: Dialogic Education: teaching for thinking and creativity by drawing learners into the space of dialogue/Professor Rupert Wegerif   

Abstract:
Situated accounts of cognition have challenged the very idea of teaching thinking or teaching creativity. Neo-Vygotskian socio-cultural theory, for example, understands cognition in terms of using cultural tools and since these tools are always specific to social and historical contexts this makes it hard to conceptualise teaching general thinking skills. I will argue that ?dialogic education?, understood as a education for dialogue and not simply education through dialogue, offers a way of teaching for thinking skills and creativity that is both situated and general. On this model reflection occurs within dialogues where two or more different perspectives are held in tension together. Using examples of classroom dialogue I argue that an understanding of teaching thinking as opening, expanding and deepening spaces of reflection offers a sound basis for pedagogical design with educational technology.

14.00-14.15: Coffee break

14.15-14.45: Debate games and playful talk/Thorkild Hanghøj
This presentation focus on how debate games frame students? talk seen from a dialogical learning perspective. The examples given are based upon an ICT-supported mock election called The Power Game, where upper secondary students are grouped in political parties and asked to present and debate various political issues in order to persuade their classmates as a part of the parliamentary election scenario. During their preparation, the students use computers to retrieve information on the political parties, but the actual presentations are made in the class, where students perform as politicians through various forms of ?playful talk?. The aim of the presentation is to discuss how debate games may be used to facilitate students? playful talk in relation to dialogical aspects of citizenship education.

14.45-15.15: PracSIP: Practice Scaffolding Interactive Platform/Jeppe Bundsgaard
The Danish newspaper Ekstra Bladet has introduced an Internet platform called Redaktionen (The Editorial Office) to support students? production of newspapers. The platform is an example of a PracSIP (Practice Scaffolding Interactive Platform). A PracSIP does not control all of the students activities, but initiates it, supports collaboration and provide tools from the practice which is simulated, whereby it supports an educational interaction structure which Rupert Wegerif has named IDRF (Initiation, Discussion, Response and Follow-up). The learning design principles of a PracSIP are aimed at supporting authentic situations, and at the same time at meeting the challenges of project based learning by organizing collaboration, structuring students? activity, and supporting their subject learning.

15.15-15.30: Coffee break

15.30-16.30: Discussion