Dialogical Engagement and the Co-Creation of Cultures of Exploration

Abstract

The aim of this chapter is to argue for, discuss and outline conditions for a pedagogy that promote exploration and how they contribute to children’s cultural formation as it can be understood in the complex context of early childhood education. The conditions and characteristics of explorative practices, found in earlier literature and experiences, interact in dynamic ways and are therefore difficult to grasp. Central to the chapter is the attempt to visualise how characteristics of explorative practices interact with some central conditions in local settings. I formulated a pedagogical model of exploration as dialogical engagement. Moreover, I will present a setup of binary pairs of educational cultures, principles and practices to answer a curiosity about what the characteristics in cultures of exploration will be. By such a setup, the importance of pedagogical dialogical engagement is highlighted. The chapter is anchored in a cultural historical approach, drawing on concepts like heteroglossia, speech genres and Mikhail Bakhtin’s loophole, among others (Bakhtin MM, The problem of the speech genre. In McGee VW (trans.), Speech genres and other late essays. University of Texas Press, Austin, TX, 60–102, 1986); The chapter argues that dialogism is central to cultures of exploration. Also, Seth Chaiklin and Mariane Hedegaard’s arguments and ideas for a radical local pedagogical approach (Chaiklin Z, Hedegaard M, Radical-local teaching and learning. Århus University Press, London, 2005) are a thinking tool, along with Roland Robertson’s (Featherstone M, Lash S, Robertson R, Global modernities. Sage, London, 1995) concept of ‘glocalisation’ (Khondker HH, Bangladesh J Sociol, 1(2): 1–9. Retrieved from http://muktomona.net/Articles/habibul_haque/Globalization.pdf, 2004). Alternative viewpoints and awareness of the local and the global in framing and recognising children’s experiences are set out in order to argue for a respectful exchange when considering the content and values of the ‘what’ in exploration. Cultures of exploration in early childhood education introduce a promise of a pedagogy where the teacher co-creates kindergarten content when operating in practice, in planning and meeting children and families in their local community and in considering activities, relations, place and space.