Using e‐mail to create pedagogical dialogue in teacher education

Abstract

Dialogue has long been a central tool for literacy instruction. This paper reports on a project that engaged students in pedagogical e‐mail dialogue. All students were enrolled in a content area reading methods course at one of six geographically diverse universities: Appalachian State University, Arizona State University, the University of Georgia, the University of Utah, the University of Virginia, and Utah State University. “Read‐L” (a listserv) was created as an electronic dialogue community. The primary data source for this research was the slightly over 600 messages submitted by approximately 150 students during a single semester. Two extensive student‐initiated dialogues were selected from these messages and analyzed using Burbules’ (1993) dimensions of pedagogical dialogue and his criteria for educationally beneficial and detrimental forms. Results of these analyses are presented and implications for educational practice, specifically the use of e‐mail as a dialogue tool, are discussed.