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From Ivory Tower to Town Hall : Using Dialogic Inquiry as a Critical Pedagogy
LEIGH ANNE HOWARD American Behavioral Scientist 2002 45: 1125 DOI: 10.1177/0002764202045007006 The online version of this article can be found at: http://abs.sagepub.com/content/45/7/1125

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Howard / USING DIALOGIC INQUIRY AMERICAN BEHAVIORAL SCIENTIST

From Ivory Tower to Town Hall

Using Dialogic Inquiry as a Critical Pedagogy

LEIGH ANNE HOWARD

University of Southern Indiana

This article explains how dialogic communication and critical pedagogy might work together to build educational practices that build a tradition of public discourse. After summarizing contemporary problems that separate the classroom from the community, the article positions Martin Bubers dialogue as a way to realize critical pedagogy. The article concludes by advocating that educators use a dialogical approach to pedagogy so that students understand their role in creating and sustaining a community that is mutually beneficial.

Spoonfeeding in the long run teaches us nothing but the shape of the spoon. E. M. Forster (1951)

Education may well be, as of right, the instrument whereby every individual, in a society like our own, can gain access to any kind of discourse. But we well know that in its distribution, in what it permits and in what it prevents, it follows the well-trodden battle-lines of social conflict. Every educational system is a political means of maintaining or of modifying the appropriation of discourse, with the knowledge and the powers it carries with it. Michel Foucault (1972, p. 227)

When Allan Blooms The Closing of the American Mind hit the shelves in 1987, academics and nonacademics alike lost little time in either attacking Bloom or jumping on his bandwagon in support of the thesis that America and American education are in big trouble. For some, the ensuing discussion revived an old debate between Robert Hutchins and John Dewey over what should be taught in our schools (Hoover & Howard, 1995). Others argued that teaching methods were faulty, that our society was slipping because we were focusing on values clarification rather than character education (Kilpatrick, 1992). Still others moved away from the educational arena to discuss a lack of critical thinking and the role of postmodernity (Mestrovic, 1996). George Ritzers (1993) study of the changing nature of the rationalization of society introduced a new
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metaphor, McDonaldization. Ritzers idea regarding efficiency, predictability, and reliance on nonhuman technology parallels some of the works by Neil Postman (1985, 1992), who extended Marshall McLuhans (1964) theories about the medias role in changing society and consciousness. Although other scholars from a variety of disciplines have described and critiqued modern and postmodern trends in society, Blooms book was pivotal in stimulating discussion about education and social trends in more public, nonacademic audiences. Although I disagree with Blooms (1987) rationale for why the United States faces its current challenges, I am concerned with the lack of civic involvement and civil discourse, especially among our students, as well as with how educators can work to halt this trend. Not long ago, in one of my classes, a student chose to organize a research project about how students at our school felt about violence. The study came after media coverage of Michael Carneal, a student who gunned down his classmates at a Paducah, Kentucky high school, and after Louisville Mayor David Armstrong fired the local police chief, who had just decorated two policemen who were implicated in the death of a suspect. Yet, nearly all student participants in this study reported that they did not believe violence was a problem because it did not affect them. These expressions of noninvolvement echoed the comments I received when I polled students in a senior-level course to see if they were registered to vote. In all, 5 out of 25 raised their hands, and of the 5, none thought they would vote because they did not know anything about the candidates, did not think the election had anything to do with them, and considered the election stupid because our generation does not trust any politician. I was surprised and disappointed by these responses. After all, how could they not have access to information in this age when information has never been more accessible? And, more to the point of this article, how could they think they were so powerless to find information, make a decision, and take action? Although educators cannot solve all problems, they can adopt a critical educational praxis that can help students become more invested in learning, understanding, imagining, and knowing (Howard, 1999). Educators should serve as models who illustrate the importance of community involvement, critical thinking, and public discourse and who help others gain confidence and take risks to do the same. David Garrison describes the university as a place where the ability to critique oneself and the institutions that surround us is valued and taught (Garrison, 1997, p. 2). How can educators create the kind of place that helps students better inform themselves, make decisions on public issues, and take civic action? To respond to this question, I want to describe a dialectic between individual and community, for I believe that an imbalance in this dialectic is at the root of contemporary isolation and polarization. I speculate about how we as a society have become more individualistic, and I review the relationship between communication and community to examine how our models of communication and educational practices reinforce monologue rather than build a tradition of public discourse.

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In the second section of this article, I describe how educators can adopt and encourage an inquiry of dialogue as a tool for critical pedagogy. An inquiry of dialogue requires that we adopt a dialogical stance when we interact with others. When we act from such a stance, dialogue can become our communication praxis, and the stance and the praxis together form a strategy of critical pedagogy that can better prepare students for understanding community problems and making informed public decisions.

THE INDIVIDUAL VERSUS COMMUNITY We can exemplify tensions between the individual and community with an example. A vice president of human resources explains to employees that their health insurance policy will be increasing in cost and decreasing in benefits. She reports that regretfully, the competitive environment of the firm dictates this cost-cutting adjustment to keep the firm viable for the good of us all. In such a discourse, what is the relationship between the firm and its members? What obligations do individuals have to organizations and organizations to individuals? Do we support those who do not support us? Do we give because we hope to get? When we get, do we have to give? In this particular scenario, we see a crisis between the telos of the individual and the telos of the system (Mackin, 1997, p. 72). The firm seems to be looking out for a limited set of stakeholders/ stockholders rather than the employees. In response, employees will be more guarded with management and less motivated for high work performance. Both sides operate more from adversarial positions than from positions that engender mutual respect and responsibility. Over the past 20 years, we have seen more of this us-versus-them (or meversus-them) position instead of a we response that comes when various segments of a community are more in balance with each other. Yet, when we look at business, government, personal relations, advertising, and the academy, we see a turn toward a more calculating or instrumental approach. Perhaps this pessimistic perspective stems from real social conditions and experiences. The hopes for social change that many nurtured in the 1960s were shattered with the deaths of Martin Luther King, Jr., John F. Kennedy, and Robert Kennedy, as well as by the Vietnam War and subsequent protest. Distrust of government was not improved with the scandals of Watergate in the early 1970s, Iran-gate in the 1980s, and Monica-gate in the 1990s and the election crisis of 2000. Disillusion has grown as we have witnessed increasing economic polarization and an increase in the role of money in politics. Too often, discussion within the academy resembles paired monologues that by accident, fatigue, (or) indifference collapse into lukewarm agreement (Sanders, 1998, p. 10) or brings withdrawal, silence, anger, polarization, or even death in the form of hate crimes and school shootings. The academy is increasingly dominated by business metaphors and money, which situates students as clients who can one-stop shop for their education.

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Student-clients explain that they should get a good grade not for their comprehension but because they paid their tuition. Students get a degree but not necessarily an education. Students can get a degree at their own pace through weekend and accelerated programs, and we eliminate most human interaction and all of the collaborative when we adopt Web-based and/or distance learning. When we no longer are directly faced with collaboration, however, an important component of intellectual growth and community is abandoned. More than in other countries, America has perpetuated individualism as a key value. The nation was built by rugged individuals who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps to settle the frontier: the Wild West, outer space, or global markets and technologies. Today, however, individualism when dealing with others has given way to individual isolation or a me-firstism. We tend not to use communication in ways that establish relationships that create and sustain community. Barry Sanders (1998) suggested that current communication practices have bankrupted our communities. He explained that the desire to be right or stake a claim destroys all chances for effective conversation, an art that takes patience, concern, and an interest in others. Critical thinking in our communication and sympathetic understanding are especially needed at this point in history as our experience becomes more globalized and our societies more diverse. Rather than critical understanding, we latch onto media-generated, prepackaged ideas and viewpoints. Public discourse has become confused with public bullying, and what communication does occur often has been reduced to the clerical or technical transmission of information (Goodall, 1996, p. 1). Such a reduction has occurred at the expense of communications role as a practical construction of community. Unfortunately, many of our communication models and pedagogical practices reinforce monologue and silence rather than build public discourse that creates and sustains community. For example, the study of communication typically begins with a comparison between models of linear communication (sender encodes a message and the process ends) and transactional communication (all participants are senders and receivers who encode messages for specific channels depending on the situation, frame of reference, etc.). However, neither of these models effectively addresses the idea that communication is soaked in layers of meaning and voices or how one makes appropriate interpretations given those multiple meanings and voices. Also, when any discussion about communications communal nature can be found, it is often hidden under the guise of context. Although context is obviously important, when we collapse the communal within the contextual, we distance communication from community. Models of communication directly correlate to practices of pedagogy. When we focus on argumentation and victory in debate, we situate communication as a bipolar process, one with specific boundaries and distinct sides. In this model, participants have little incentive to explore each others positions in a collaborative way.

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In addition to focusing on argument and debate, educators encourage monologue in their own mode of communication when they stand before a class and deliver a lecture. Henry Giroux and Peter McLaren (1989), as well as David Trend (1992) noted that such traditional teaching practices discourage mutual, interactive learning (Howard, 1999). Just as faculty members are frequently poor models for effective communication, the university itself is often a poor model for community. Colleges and universities are highly hierarchical and often anomic. Yet, perhaps by taking a more critical stance toward our pedagogical practices, we can facilitate academic practices and discourse that engender civic-minded community members.

DIALOGUE AS CRITICAL PEDAGOGY One way educators can begin to structure their teaching practices as a form of critical pedagogy is by developing an inquiry of dialogue. After summarizing critical pedagogy and articulating its role in forming community, I describe an inquiry of dialogue, its stance and practices, that we can use to help achieve the goals of critical pedagogy. Advocates of critical pedagogy maintain that education requires more than a transmission of knowledge. In addition, education is a form of political and cultural production implicated (Giroux, 1992, pp. vii-xi) in how knowledge, subjectivity, and social interaction are constructed. In this view, schools serve as models that should expand peoples capacities to intervene in the formation of their own subjectivities and to be able to exercise power in the interest of transforming the ideological and material conditions of domination (Giroux, Simon, 1988, p. 10) into democratic social practices. Such a pedagogy engages student-learners in a more active role in the educational process. It also encourages teacher-learners who inspire imagination, demystify what is reified, and put their own beliefs at risk. Critical pedagogy works to incorporate the lived experience of students into the curriculum. Thus, education becomes a student-centered collaborative process in contrast to a teacher-centered transmission of (often) disconnected facts and figures. Paulo Freire (1998) elaborated many of these ideas in Pedagogy of Freedom: Ethics, Democracy, and Civic Courage. For Freire, by helping individuals recognize themselves as social, historical, thinking, communicating, transformative creative persons (p. 45) education is a form of intervention in the world (p. 90). To develop their own agency and political presence, educators reject the notion that education is neutral and objective. Instead, a critical pedagogy entails an openness toward others and an open-ended curiosity toward life (pp. 120-121). In Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Freire (1970/1972) called dialogue an existential necessity (p. 77) for personal and social transformation. He stipulated that dialogue is not the conveyance of information or the imposition of truth but an encounter among men [and women] who name

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the world in an act of creation rather than using language as a crafty instrument for domination (p. 77). In the past several years, scholars have worked to understand dialogue as a stance and practice by drawing from a variety of disciplines and perspectives, as shown in a recent issue of Southern Communication Journal (Cissna, 2000). In explaining their own pedagogy of dialogue, Hyde and Bineham (2000) spoke of dialogue as a form of discourse and also as a relational space. Dialogue as a collaborative, nonpolarizing discourse coalesces multiple voices into a consensual perspective. With this form, dialogue may incorporate elements of argument and debate to engage and explore rather than clash and prove. By contrast, dialogue as a relational space refers to a way of interacting with others. Drawing on Martin Bubers (1923/1970) concepts of the between, the Interhuman, and the I-Thou relationship, this interpretation of dialogue as a stance is characterized by openness, trust, presentness, and mutual understanding. Participants nurture responsibility, appreciate difference, and promote mutual respect. While noting the overlaps of the two types of dialogue, Hyde and Bineham (2000) based their pedagogy on the first: dialogue as discourse. They contended that students and teachers may open dialogue, whereas educators cannot guarantee an I-thou experience within a relational space, describe it on a syllabus, or assess a students understanding and skill in this area. Although I appreciate Hyde and Binehams (2000) call for a pedagogy of dialogue, I question their position that dialogue as relational space is too illusive to become a component of pedagogy. Can this sort of dialogue be any more illusive than teaching critical thinking, moral reasoning, logic, or ethics given the contingencies of each? Perhaps dialogue as relational space is illusive because in Western cultures we are accustomed to individualism, competition, and self-reliance to the exclusion of receptivity, negotiation, and collaboration (Noddings, 1984). Furthermore, whereas we can engage in dialogical discourse without the stance and will to form a dialogical space, I doubt that we can enrich understanding or community without a dialogical discourse that genuinely emerges because we understand and live from a dialogical stance. By working toward both models of dialogue, people can approach interaction, learn from others, make decisions, and work to renovate community interests.

MARTIN BUBER AND CRITICAL PEDAGOGY Martin Bubers (1965/1990) concept of the Interhuman can help us achieve such critical pedagogical praxis. Arnett (1986) suggests that although Buber did not regard his philosophy as a technique, others disagree when they assert that his ideas are helpful when making decisions about our interactions and communication (Stewart, 1990; Stewart & Zediker, 2000). By embracing Bubers philosophy and following his guidelines, I argue, students and teachers can enter

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into a relationship characterized by mutual respect and responsibility, honesty and directness, sincerity and empathy, and an authentic accepting vision. Buber (1965/1990) began his discussion of the Interhuman by explaining that Interhuman relationships differ from social relationships. Believing that social relationships suppress the individual, Buber noted that in an Interhuman relationship,
The only thing that matters is that . . . each becomes aware of the other and is thus related to him in such a way that he does not regard and use him as his object, but as his partner in a living event. (p. 451)

Only in partnership can my being be perceived as an existing whole. Buber (1965/1990) also identified three barriers to forming Interhuman relationships: being versus seeming, the personal making present, and imposing versus unfolding. Each of these forms barriers to our pedagogical practices that prevent people from reflexively considering their roles at the personal, professional, and civic levels. First, Buber explained that dialogue cannot happen if all people are seeming rather than being. When a person seems, he or she is concerned with a certain image and works to create that image to further personal goals. Communication becomes less spontaneous and oriented toward others because the seemer calculates conversation based on its desired effect or ability to support that cultivated image. Being, in contrast, does not involve creating an image. Being entails an authentic relationship focused on the interaction as it happens. Without being, Buber explained, a person yields to cowardice because revealing oneself to others takes courage and confidence. In the academy, the being-versus-seeming duality appears when teachers approach the classroom with a desire for control. Lectures, of course, are obvious ways to control students and keep what teachers know and say as the primary focus of education. Teachers use a lecture mode to impart knowledge and situate themselves as the expert who offers definitive statements about topics that fall within the rubric of the course. Teachers control when they refrain from adapting the syllabus to meet the needs of particular learners. This type of inflexibility prevents the depth and discussion that comes when students participate in an exploration that extends beyond the immediate topic or even beyond the course or the discipline. Teachers control when and how they assess students, often using multiple choice tests rather than a variety of assignments and essay examinations that pose less definitive solutions and that require students to integrate different kinds of knowledge. Teachers use these controlling practices to cultivate the authority and superiority of seeming. In addition to our own seeming behaviors, we encourage seeming in our students when we communicate critically rather than constructively. Many times, students are afraid to participate in discussion because they feel insecure about their understandings and abilities. Rather than appear inadequate with a wrong answer or risk humiliation in front of their peers, they hide behind a protective shield of silence or calculated

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performance. Although being takes more courage and requires more risk than seeming, if we open the educational process and dismantle old student-teacher boundaries, we may help students do the same. A second, but related, barrier to dialogue involves how we perceive others (Stewart, 1990, p. 448). Although in one sense we can only know ourselves, Buber (1965/1990) explained that even this is impossible until we make contact with the other without objectification. Buber described this as accepting the other as
the very one he [or she] is. I become aware of him, aware that he is different, essentially different from myself, in the definite, unique way which is peculiar to him (Buber, 1965/1990, p. 454)

This type of interaction, what Buber called the personal making present, enables us to affirm the other, to approach the other with empathy (not sympathy), and to imagine the real of the other. Too often in the academy, particularly in larger institutions, we do not see students in this way. Perhaps we regard students as empty vessels to be filled with knowledge or as names (or social security numbers) and grades on a computer screen. Perhaps we consider them clients and consumers in the university marketplace, and so we discount their abilities and offer little challenge. Perhaps we belittle them when we see them as students rather than collaborators with multiple roles and responsibilities in and out of the classroom. In these cases, students are not learners in the process of becoming but obstacles to avoid in the pursuit of the status maintenance of teachers. A third problem in developing Bubers (1965/1990) dialogue of space occurs when people impose themselves on the other rather than unfolding. An imposer is not concerned with the other unless the other is to be exploited or defeated, whereas an unfolder is one who understands and enriches the life of the other (Buber, 1965/1990). Buber explained that his idea of unfolding is epitomized in an educator, who sees himself or herself as a shaper to those in the process of becoming, who unfold[s] what is right (p. 457). Although educators certainly have the capacity to accomplish unfolding, I doubt that our traditional, hierarchical teaching practices can accomplish the type of unfolding Buber described. Unfolding comes when we meet the other and establish a mutual respect that leads to growth and development. Unfolding is not a matter of teaching or imparting knowledge but of helping students develop habits of heart and mind that can spur growth on all fronts. Buber (1965/1990) encouraged people to seem as little as possible, to engage in genuine dialogue by imagining the perspective of the other, and to unfold as a form of interaction. To achieve Bubers dialogue, we must turn toward the other out of mutual respect and responsibility. This turning means imagining as the other might, helping the other become and to be, and affirming the person even if his or her ideas do not coincide with our own. We must participate by engaging

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in frank, sincere expression that comes from being. Furthermore, we must have positive attitudes, admit to error, submit graciously to the criticisms of others, commit to the dialogical process, and recognize that conflict forms a starting point rather than a conclusion (Buber, 1965/1990). At first, dialogue may seem simplistic, something that might appear in Robert Fulghums (1986) All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten. Yet, few of us work diligently to put these recommendations into practice. Educators, particularly, have this obligation as they prepare those in future generations to participate thoughtfully in affairs that arise beyond the confines of the university. By putting Bubers (1965/ 1990) ideas about dialogue into practice, educators can use dialogue as an approach to pedagogy that helps students understand themselves and others and that encourages them to create and sustain a community that mutually benefits all of its members.

REFERENCES
Arnett, R. (1986). Communication and community: Implications of Martin Bubers dialogue. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. Bloom, A. (1987). The closing of the American mind. New York: Simon & Schuster. Buber. M. (1970). I and thou (W. Kaufmann, Trans.). New York: Touchstone. (Original work published in 1923) Buber, M. (1990). Elements of the interhuman. In J. Stewart (Ed.), Bridges not walls (5th ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill. (Original work published 1965) Cissna, K. (Ed.). (2000). Studies in dialogue [Special Issue]. Southern Communication Journal, 65(2/3). Forster, E.M. (1951, October 7). Sayings of the week. The Observer. Retreived from http:www.lmmb.ncifcrf.gov/~blumenth/group/hlin/wit.htm Foucault, M. (1972). The archeology of knowledge & the discourse on language. (A.M. Sheridan Smith, Trans.). New York: Pantheon. (Original work published in 1971) Freire, P. (1972). Pedagogy of the oppressed (M. B. Ramos, Trans.). New York: Herder & Herder. (Original work published in 1972) Freire, P. (1998). Pedagogy of freedom: Ethics, democracy, and civil courage (P. Clarke, Trans.). New York: Rowman & Littlefield. Fulghum, R. (1986). All I really needed to know I learned in kindergarten. New York: Random House. Garrison, D. (1997, Fall). Accents on academics. [Brochure] Louisville, KY: Spalding University. Giroux, H. (1992). Foreword. In D. Trend (Ed.), Cultural pedagogy: Art/education/politics. New York: Bergin & Garvey. Giroux, H., & McLaren, P. (1989). Critical pedagogy, the state, and cultural struggle. Albany: State University of New York Press. Giroux, H., & Simon, R. (1988). Schooling, popular culture, and a pedagogy of possibility. Journal of Education, 170, 9-26. Goodall, H. L. (1996). Divine signs: Connecting spirit to community. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. Hoover, J., & Howard, L. A. (1995). The political correctness controversy revisited: Retreat from argumentation and affirmation of critical dialogue. American Behavioral Scientist, 38, 963-975. Howard, L. A. (1999). Primitives, progress, politics, and pedagogy. World Communication, 28, 3-16.

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Hyde, B., & Bineham, J. L. (2000). From debate to dialogue: Toward a pedagogy of nonpolarized discourse. Southern Communication Journal, 65, 208-223. Kilpatrick, W. (1992). Why Johnny cant tell right from wrong and what we can do about it. New York: Touchstone. Mackin., J., Jr. (1997). Community over chaos: An ecological perspective on communication ethics. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press. McLuhan, M. (1964). Understanding media: The extensions of man. New York: McGraw Hill. Mestrovic, S. (1996). Postemotional society. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Noddings, N. (1984). Caring: A feminine approach to ethics and moral education. Berkeley: University of California Press. Postman, N. (1985). Amusing ourselves to death. New York: Viking. Postman, N. (1992). Technopoly: The surrender of culture to technology. New York: Knopf. Ritzer, G. (1993). The McDonaldization of society. Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Sanders, B. (1998). The private death of public discourse. Boston: Beacon. Stewart, J. (Ed.). (1990). Bridges not walls (5th ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill. Stewart, J., & Zediker, K. (2000). Dialogue as tensional ethical practice. Southern Communication Journal, 65, 224-242. Trend, D. (1992). Cultural Pedagogy: Art/education/politics. New York: Bergin and Garvey.

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