Browsing by Subject "Gadamer"

Dialogicality is an actual topic in pedagogical studies. Both in theoretical and ordinary speech, the term is often used as a synonym of discussion and interaction. The use of the concept, however, only seldom reveals the equivocal nature of the phenomenon. In pedagogical discourses, it is often difficult to discern the background conceptions or theories determining in each case the concept of dialogue. The aim of the present study is to address this challenge and help to clarify the situation by examining the various ways in which dialogicality has been understood in pedagogical studies in Finland in the 21st century. The research material consisted of 24 international research publications written in English. The material was first studied in relation to the notions and definitions of dialogicality put forward in them, and these were then analysed in the light of Hans-Georg Gadamer’s hermeneutical philosophy. The research questions to be answered were: 1. How is dialogicality defined in the pedagogical research in Finland during the las two decades 2. What do these conceptions reveal of the understanding of dialogicality, when related to Gadamer’s phenomenological-hermeneutical understanding of its nature? The research combines two different approaches: the material was organized with the method of systematic literature review and it was analysed through philosophical research. The study’s vantage point, and the theoretical framework directing its questioning, was constituted by the phenomenological-hermeneutical thought of Hans-Georg Gadamer. According to the results of the study, there are four central theoretical frameworks defining the research of dialogicality in the pedagogical research in Finland in the 21st century. Apparently, the studies are to a certain extent compatible with each other in their thematic content and in their descriptions of interconnected phenomena, but their ways of understanding the nature of dialogicality prove to be incommensurate. When analysed with the help of Gadamer’s hermeneutics, the research also shows itself as internally divided: the decisive differences are, firstly, whether dialogicality is understood as communication of knowledge, and secondly, whether dialogue is understood instrumentally as a method. With the help of Gadamer’s hermeneutical though, the study attempts to clarify the phenomenon of dialogue and to sharpen the required conceptual grasp and so to elaborate pedagogical research of dialogicality.