Learning Together: Fostering Communities of Dialogic Inquiry

Solidly grounded in theory and empirical evidence, this book presents a novel methodological framework for fostering Communities of Dialogic Inquiry in primary education called Learning Together. These communities create collaborative networks of distributed cognition among school, university, and local community members to equip “apprentices” with a firm scientific foundation, complemented by a robust humanistic citizenship culture, enabling their participation in socioscientific practices in an informed, critical, responsible and inclusive fashion. Learning Together provides concrete, articulated, and richly illustrated teaching-learning strategies for cultivating these communities in diverse school and community settings.

“In this book, the authors make a distinctive, strong and important contribution to our understanding of how education can be made most productive. They draw on a wealth of schools-based research, including their own, to link what is known about the ways humans learn and what can and should happen in classrooms. It should help to promote a more accurate conception of education as a social, cultural, communicative activity, rather than a process whereby teachers simply transmit knowledge to students. I hope it is read by teachers, researchers and others involved in education everywhere”. – Neil Mercer, Emeritus Professor of Education, University of Cambridge, UK

“For the authors of this fascinating and timely volume, communities of dialogic inquiry have two main aims: fostering skills that support a key human activity (learning for dialogue) and applying those skills in knowledge acquisition (learning through dialogue). The authors ground those aims in a novel yet convincing interpretation of sociocultural theory: the insightful and wide-ranging literature review that underpins their approach will be appreciated by researchers and practitioners alike. At the same time, the volume goes far beyond theory: it concludes with case studies, which indicate in detail how dialogic inquiry can be embedded in classrooms”. – Christine Howe, Emeritus Professor, University of Cambridge, UK

Sylvia Rojas-Drummond is a Professor at the Faculty of Psychology, National Autonomous University of Mexico, where she directs the Laboratory of Cognition and Communication. She received her PhD in Experimental Psychology from the University of Tennessee, USA, and has been awarded ‘Fulbright Scholar’, ‘Distinguished Professor’ and ‘National System of Researchers’ distinctions. She has been a visiting scholar at the UK universities of Oxford, Cambridge, Bristol, Exeter, and the Open University, and the universities of California in the USA, Utrecht and Groningen in the Netherlands, and Lausanne in Switzerland. She has spent more than four decades investigating children’s social, cognitive, and psycholinguistic development, and designing and testing educational innovations to foster it. She has authored over 70 publications in these areas, which have been cited 1,241 times. She has mentored multiple generations of undergraduate and graduate students, directing 92 theses and dissertations. She has served as a methodological advisor to the National Institute for Educational Evaluation, the Ministry of Education, and the ‘Dialogue and Argumentation for Cultural Literacy Learning in Schools’ European Union initiative. She is a member of the Editorial Board of ‘Human Development’, ‘Learning and Instruction’, ‘Learning, Culture and Social Interaction’, ‘Thinking Skills and Creativity’ and ‘Theory into Practice’.

Ana Luisa Rubio-Jimenez is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Psychology, National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). She holds a PhD in Education and a Master’s in Psychology and Education from the University of Cambridge, UK. She is a recognised member of Mexico’s ‘National System of Researchers’ (SECIHTI). Her work focuses on educational dialogue in teaching and learning processes, collaborative learning, scientific and cultural literacy, and the inclusion and self-determination of students with intellectual disability. She has led educational innovations in these areas, including technology-supported initiatives. Dr. Rubio-Jimenez has published in national and international journals and edited volumes, both as the lead author and as a co-author. She has participated in numerous academic forums in Mexico and abroad as a speaker and by conducting workshops. She has also served as a consultant for SUMMA, the Laboratory for Research and Innovation in Education for Latin America and the Caribbean, which was created by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB). At UNAM, she teaches undergraduate courses and directs and supervises undergraduate theses.

Ana Laura Trigo-Clapés is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Psychology at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, specialising in educational psychology. She has an MPhil in Psychology and Education and a PhD in Education from the Faculty of Education at the University of Cambridge (United Kingdom). Dr. Trigo-Clapés specialises in social interactions in educational contexts, inclusive education, autism spectrum conditions, cultural literacy, and teacher professional development. Her line of research focuses on designing and promoting specialised dialogic teaching strategies for supporting autistic students' participation in classroom discussions in regular educational contexts (aligning with the neurodiversity paradigm). She has published and disseminated the results of her work, as well as the results of research projects in which she has participated with collaborators in Mexico, Chile, the United Kingdom, and Japan. She has also participated as a speaker in multiple national and international conferences. As part of her current role, she teaches and supervises undergraduate students and directs and revises undergraduate theses. ​In addition, as part of her research, she contributes to teachers' professionalisation by offering workshops in primary and secondary schools.