Dialogic pedagogy in democratically run schools: Introduction

Abstract

The introduction to this special issue has the particular purpose of presenting the philosophical and educational approach of democratic schooling and its practices to readers interested and knowledgeable in Dialogic Pedagogy but without enough information about Democratic education. Namely, many scholars of dialogic pedagogy are not very familiar with democratic schooling, if at all. The term “democratic education” is polysemic (Matusov, 2023), and many educationalists use it to refer to civic education in conventional schools. However, in this special issue, we explore the relationships between dialogic pedagogy and democratically run schools. In the article, I describe democratic education and its current spread and scarcity worldwide. Next, I examine the meaning and the uses of Dialogue in conventional and progressive education. Finally, I introduce the questions about the meaning and values of dialogic pedagogy in democratic education that guided us in putting together this Special Issue.