Dialogkompetens i skolans vardag - Publikationer - LTU - Luleå ...

knowledge, and, as Wenger emphasises, the driving force for new knowledge is
knowledge that already exists. The participating teachers would not be where they
are today without the driving force of history. I interpret their statements as implying
that new concepts and theories that they did not have before have also served
as support for concretising the present and forming the future.
Wenger’s theory entails a view of knowledge development showing that the
meaning of teachers’ competence development needs widening. When competence
development implies learning from one another’s practices, this may mean
taking part in shadowing, facilitation or video documentation. Teachers regarding
themselves as actors will demand alternative forms of competence development.
Only the teachers themselves can give one another legitimacy for being actors on
the improvement arenas of schools – going from peripheral to full participation.
Concluding remarks
The action research approach of this study was a way of making more actors takes
part in school improvement in a national context. The Dialogue project contained
several ‘advanced balancing acts’, where benefits were sometimes reaped from a
situation of imbalance. Teachers’ practice is too complex for the optimal balance
to be assessed in advance. Since choices between different solutions are seldom
simple, situations sometimes have to be tested in their extreme positions. The
results from this study show that improvement of activities has to consist of advanced
balancing acts in order to contribute to real improvements for the pupils.
Acting in the classroom dialogue as a pupil or on the school improvement arena as
a teacher requires participation and dialogue competence. The oral dialogue between
the pupils was influenced by their awareness of external conditions in the
environment, while the professional dialogue between the teachers was influenced
by their ability to be a critical friend. Participation in the dialogue required that all
actors (pupils, teachers and the researcher) took part in order to develop their participation
and their dialogue competence. A challenge for the future is that the
world of researchers, teacher colleagues and headteachers give the teachers who
contributed to development and research the legitimacy to use and spread their
new competence.
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