Dialogue-oriented Teaching
Education - and this is especially true for liberal education, which takes place in a community - is made up of thousands of little interactions between many different people. The quality of interactions you have when you talk to someone in the hallway, when a student talks to a professor, when you send an email, all those little interactions converge and form into something bigger. So if you just focus on making that interaction really purposeful and simple in a practical way, then it all comes together.
Prof. Dr. Teun Dekker - Interview
Participation, reflection and shared responsibility are essential elements of Leuphana's teaching and learning culture. This culture and the possibilities of Leuphana as a presence university open up spaces for encounter and dialogue. Dialogue - understood not only as a form of communication, but as an attitude - thus serves as a starting point for joint development and shared awareness. By shaping these interactions, teachers and students take joint responsibility for the success of teaching and learning.
With dialogue orientation as a field of interaction in teaching development, opportunities are to be highlighted and impulses given to initiate this development and to awaken this awareness. In line with the mission statement of Leuphana University, dialogue orientation implies self-determination, courage and the willingness to ask questions about freedom and responsibility. This idea concerns the university as a whole and thus goes beyond the design of teaching-learning processes.
The university is understood as a community and community as potential. Dialogue as a maxim for communication, encounter and joint development thus reaches various dimensions of everyday university life: in addition to dialogue orientation as a perspective in teaching, dialogue can also serve as a point of reference in the exchange about teaching as well as for teaching development and the realisation of Leuphana's mission statement. The basis for successful dialogue and partnership lies in the perception of shared responsibility, mutual trust and respect. Understood in this way, dialogue becomes an instrument for achieving common aspirations - not only in teaching, but for teaching and university development in general.
Dialogue Orientation ...
... as a university-wide process
- Continuous further development of the quality of teaching in a university-wide process of understanding
- Participation of students and teachers in the dialogue on quality development
- Making good teaching visible, e.g. through the Leuphana Teaching Award and the creation of framework conditions for a continuous exchange about teaching
... as a perspective in teaching
- Strengthened personal interaction between students and teachers in face-to-face teaching and promotion of teaching/learning quality through targeted promotion of dialogue in teaching, e.g. through
- Activating methods
- Collaborative learning
- Innovative dialogue formats
- Peer feedback and the qualitative feedback method SHIFT
... in the institutional guiding principle
- In a culture of learning from and with each other, students are prepared for their professional future and for shaping society in the sense of the mission statement of the humanistic and action-oriented university.
- Promoting the ability to engage in dialogue as a basic competence and establishing a dialogue-oriented study and teaching culture
Successful dialogue in teaching can symbolise the shared responsibility for the design and success of the learning process. Dialogue is not merely understood as a conversation or exchange of opinions between students and teachers, but rather as an attitude and a starting point for a collective thinking process. Dialogue competence serves as a basis for understanding and comprehension in teaching. Dialogue between students and teachers opens up spaces for contradictions and enables the strengthening of argumentative competence and critical judgement.
How can teaching be made dialogue-oriented?
Just as there are no universally valid recipes for good teaching, this also applies to the dialogue-oriented design of teaching. Nevertheless, some hints can be formulated and impulses given, as well as methods and formats presented, which can serve as a basis for the design of dialogue-oriented teaching.
In dialogue-oriented education, the student changes from a teaching object to a subject. He/she actively shapes the course in exchange with other students and teachers and takes responsibility for his/her own learning process. Ideally, this results in a learning community. Within this community and with an appropriate learning environment, students are encouraged to develop competences that contribute to the ability to dialogue:
- listen to each other and reflect on their own and others' points of view equally
- learn from and with each other
- confront each other with respect and mutual appreciation
- confronting each other without prejudice and giving constructive feedback
- being aware of and contributing through ones own professional background, as well as question it
- to recognise differences
- to develop argumentative skills
- to strengthen normative judgement
- to promote critical thinking
Notes on the attitude of the teacher
- Understood as a learning guide, the teacher supports and navigates the students in their learning process.
- The relationship is seen as a group rather than a hierarchy.
- The teacher has authority over procedure, not necessarily content, and provides space for students to discuss ideas and concerns.
- The teacher sees him/herself as a kind of "midwife" in the sense of Socratic meeutics for the development of content and the acquisition of knowledge by the group.
Here you will find a selection of activities and persons related to the interaction field of dialogue-oriented teaching:
SHIFT: Qualitative Feedback in Teaching
SHIFT is a qualitative feedback method that enables teachers and learners to change their perspective. Supported by an external moderator, the focus is on the dialogue about the teaching and learning situation in a course.
CREATES: A European Partnership for Creating Responsive, Engaging, and Tailored Education with Students
Leuphana University is part of the strategic partnership between six European universities. The aim of CREATES is to further develop methods and instruments of higher education. One focus is on the activation of students, their co-design of teaching and the promotion of competences with regard to participation and responsibility.
AStA AStA Alternative Teaching: autonomous teaching by and for students
The alternative teaching offer created by students themselves offers a space in which responsibility for shaping one's own education can be exercised and in which students can enter into exchange and dialogue in the sense of learning with and from each other.
Dialogue orientation in large lectures: Teaching Award 2018 for Prof. David Loschelder
Despite the large number of participants, Prof. David Loschelder's lecture on the social significance of psychology is interactive and places particular emphasis on open discussion and the tangibility of the content for the students.
Teaching development: "Cultural Studies in Conversation"
The teaching development project International Fellowships in Cultural Studies focuses on facilitating dialogue between international fellows as well as Leuphana's teaching staff and students - the project is characterised by an exchange on topics of cultural studies, impulses for the culture of teaching and learning as well as an international perspective.
Teaching development: Designing mathematics lectures as inverted classrooms
Prof. Dr. Silke Ruwisch and Dr. Thomas Lüthje redesigned their course "Elementary Number Theory" in a teaching development project with support from the project "Leuphana...on the Way". The transformation of the classic lecture format into an inverted classroom opens up the possibility of a more active personal contribution by the students and creates space for more exchange during the attendance phase. The pilot phase of the project was accompanied by continuous mutual feedback between students and teachers, which was incorporated into the further development of the course.