Practitioner Meets Philosopher: Bakhtinian musings on learning with Paul

Abstract

The stars and the planets must have been in alignment when Paul Hager needed a doctoral student to work on his research grant at the same time that I had transitioned from 20 years as business practitioner to become an educator interested in workplace learning. This paper explores the Bakhtinian ways in which I learned about learning with Paul, and how our process of engagement continues to influence my appreciation of the philosophy and practice of education. In such musings, I draw upon Bakhtin’s concepts of dialogism, answerability and ideological becoming to discuss how the invitational qualities of engagement sustain a pedagogy of practice that I am privileged to share with my guide and friend, Emeritus Professor Paul Hager.

Keywords:

• Bakhtin
• dialogic engagement
• practice
• pedagogy
• workplace learning
• side-by-side

Acknowledgements

The empirical work mentioned in this paper was funded by a Discovery grant from the Australian Research Council. Discussion of the three Bakhtinian concepts draws from an earlier paper discussed with philosophy colleagues at a University of Wollongong workshop on EPP: expertise, pedagogy and practice, held in December 2010.

Notes

1. An acknowledged Bakhtinian scholar, Holquist notes that Bakhtin himself never used the actual term ‘dialogism’ to classify his own body of work. Holquist defends the creation of this synthetic means of categorization as a way of unifying Bakhtin’s heterogeneous body of work that is centred upon an epistemology of dialogue (Holquist, 1990a, p. 15).