Teaching for the 21st century: A case for dialogic pedagogy

Abstract

In the past two decades, there has been a call for educators around the whole to prepare students for the 21st century to help them navigate an increasingly globalized world and inter-connected landscape. This creates a need for educators to equip students with a holistic education that emphasizes life skills like communication, cross-cultural collaboration, and critical thinking. Against this backdrop, this paper examines the viability of ‘dialogic teaching’ as a pedagogy for the 21st century. The paper begins with a discussion of the features of the 21st century education landscape and the principles and tenets of ‘dialogic teaching’. It then surveys and synthesizes the findings of empirical studies in various parts of the world focusing on the role of discourse in fostering dialogic interactions, with a focus on language learning, in order to establish possible links between dialogic teaching and the demands of the 21st century. The paper concludes with a brief discussion of the challenges and implications of adopting a dialogic approach to teaching as a pedagogy for the 21st century.