A Dialogical Approach for Learning Communities Between Positioning and Reformulation

Abstract

In Dialogical Self Theory a methodological need is currently growing, to investigate the relationship between voices of the self and others at the interpersonal level in social relations. This need is particularly evident in educational contexts where the interplay between community processes and dialogical construction of identity leads to intersubjectivity as a notion linking Dialogical Self Theory and the Theory of Communities of Practice. This link is converted in a new methodological approach, suitable to investigate identity construction in the interpersonal relationships of communities and different kinds of learning communities. This chapter proposes a device that makes the positioning construct operational through the joint use of two tools, Positioning Network Analysis and discursive reformulation. Positioning Network Analysis qualitatively employs Social Network Analysis to identify the positioning of individual participants and whole community. Discursive reformulation is an interpretive movement by which the speaker dialogically constructs his or her own position by rewording others’ statements. An integrated use of Positioning Network Analysis and discursive reformulation provides a static and dynamic picture of the dialogical construction of identity in communities of practice, with this article providing a research example of this twofold device on three blended learning communities. The correlation between specific categories of positioning and reformulation marks the in-depth nature of this device, whose use in educational contexts could prove helpful in promoting experiences of action-research.