Development Education and Dialogical Learning in the 21st Century

Abstract

This introductory paper on Development Education and dialogical learning attempts to briefly contextualise the emerging need of 'Development Education' (DE) as a new discipline of academic study and public action in the context of contemporary 'globalisation'. In the second part, I discuss in detail the specific aspects of a new learning relationship based on dialogical and communicative learning which, for a discussion in this paper, is based on a constructivist approach with comparative references drawn from a range of Asian and Western thinkers including Mahatma Gandhi and Paulo Freire.