Educational Psychology—Limitations and Possibilities

522 The Praeger Handbook of Education and Psychology
in the lives of many people, while at the same time we face a broader plurality of options to choose
our own lives and construct our own biographies. This new social environment provokes, on the
one hand, individualization, as a person’s role in society is not defined only by his or her
gender, status, or cultural tradition. However, individualization does not equate to individualism
or alienation, rather to a growth in communication, as people usually decide with those with
whom they live, work, and have relationships.
The dialogization of our environment is provoking a dialogic turn in the social sciences
and research. Flecha et al. (2003) explain this phenomenon in their analysis of contemporary
sociological theory, and also argue that the dialogic turn can be seen in a wide range of disciplines:
philosophy, psychology, education, sociology, linguistics, anthropology, women studies, etc.
Particularly, in the field of educational psychology we find a recovering of dialogic perspectives
both in developmental psychology and language acquisition, as well as new proposals of dialogic
learning and action in educational practice. Researchers from different disciplines are proposing
transformative solutions to social problems that are grounded in communication and mutual
recognition, taking into account the dialogic potential of current society. Therefore, we can see
that diverse authors have included the dialogic nature of language and human condition in their
theories (Bakhtin, Mead, Vygostky), and others have also used intersubjectivity to be able to
explain society, and stressed dialogue as the needed requirement for different people to live
together in society (Habermas, Freire, Beck).
Furthermore, when moving to the field of education, we see that due to the mentioned social
changes, learning has also changed. In the information society, learning is less related to what
happens within a classroom and increasingly associated with the coordination of the diverse
learning events that take place in the different spaces in which children interact with others: in
the classroom, in the school, in the home, in the street. Therefore, improving learning implies
taking into account all these spaces of interaction and development, achieving continuity between
school and life.
The dialogic approach to learning is framed by the social interactions among people mediated
through language. It assumes that there are different forms of knowledge that people bring
to the learning process, recognizing their capacity to further their knowledge and achieve the
knowledge and skills needed to fully participate in current society. Dialogic learning thus implies
intersubjectivity: diverse people exchanging ideas, acquiring and producing knowledge, and
creating new meanings that transform both the language and the content of their lives. From this
dialogic perspective, the learning process is not only understood as an individual and internal
process, but also inextricably linked to the multiple interactions that take place in diverse social
and cultural environments. This process can be defined through seven principles—egalitarian
dialogue, cultural intelligence, transformation, instrumental dimension, creation of meaning,
solidarity, and equality of differences—that also lay the ground for democratic and egalitarian
education, orienting school practice toward excellent outcomes for everyone, regardless of their
age, culture, socioeconomic status, or previous schooling.
In fact, it is precisely because society is becoming dialogic that the concept of learning is also
turning dialogic and recovering the interactionist tradition that existed previously (although not
often recognized as such) within the field of educational psychology. A clear example is the work
of Vygostky, Luria, and their Russian contemporaries. Their work was not broadly known within
the international scientific community until some American scholars like Michael Cole, Sylvia
Scribner, and Barbara Rogoff, among others, recovered them in the seventies and further developed
a socio-cultural-historical approach in the analysis of different contexts. Now, this approach
is still present and their focus on agents’ interactions stressed. For instance, Scribner’s studies on
practical thought in workplace environments are today a reference in adult education theory and
practice. Rogoff’s studies about learning in nonschool contexts (like rural Guatemala) through