Exploring and developing children's understandings of sustainable development with dialogic diaries

Abstract

Dialogue is often promoted as a means with which to improve students' conceptual understanding within school, as well as to explore their experiences of the world. More often than not the assumption is that this dialogue is spoken. This article focuses on the use of written ‘dialogic diaries’ to explore and develop the subject-understanding of a class of 14- and 15-year-old geography students in England. I used diaries as a medium for discussion, holding a ‘conversation’ with students about their learning of sustainable development across the course of one academic year. The findings of this study suggest that dialogic diaries can be used to develop students' conceptual understandings within the classroom. Further, as a research method they enable the researcher to explore those subject-understandings, considering how (and why) these develop with time.

Keywords:

• children's understandings
• dialogue
• diary
• sustainable development
• research methods

Acknowledgement

A huge thanks to the Year 10 Geography students I worked with for the enthusiasm with which they responded to the diary-writing process across the year.