Learning Conversations: The Skill of Managing Learning

Abstract

It is the aim of this paper to explore how far a ‘skill theory’ of conversation can shed light on the process of effective teaching. For hundreds, if not thousands, of years the art of teaching has been analysed and discussed. The belief that great teachers are born not trained persists despite numerous attempts to formulate and empirically evaluate some science of teaching. Socrates and Confucius were revered for their outstanding powers as teachers. Jesus Christ is often acknowledged, even among the ungodly, as the greatest teacher who ever lived. Great teachers spend their lives conversing with people. Occasionally they talk at people; and since it is relatively easy to record such set pieces as the sermon, the speech, the oration and the lecture it is these that get published and are passed down as ‘The Teachings of...’. Recording the essence of conversation is infinitely more difficult. Despite the quality of what was being taught even Plato could only reproduce Socrates’ teachings as a series of rather clever, if slightly unfair, question and answer games.