Dialogue as a Subjective Process: Impacts on Learning and Development in Schools

Abstract

At the end of the twentieth century, theoretical and methodological issues produced impasses to understand the complexity of human phenomena. Conceptions regarding linguistic-discursive aspects, became center stage, eliminating the role of individuals in their teaching and learning experiences in the context of classrooms, excluding the productive aspect of such processes. These dynamic phenomena were represented with a focus on the instrumental objectivity of “content delivery,” without considering individuals’ production of those same contents. Criticizing these approaches, this chapter addresses González Rey’s Theory of Subjectivity’s heuristic contributions, in which the subject’s active and complex role in his/her learning and development is re-assumed, both understood as subjective processes constituted through a continuous symbolic-emotional production. In this way, they enable the comprehension of complexities regarding curiosity, interest, and imagination of those involved; communication and dialogue organization in these processes; and the transformations that take place in subjective developments throughout these movements. The concept of dialogue is the conductive thread of the textual organization and educational practices of a field study, which emphasizes the heuristic value of the Theory of Subjectivity for the understanding of these human processes.