Toward a dialogic theory of learning: Bakhtin's contribution to understanding learning in settings of collaboration

I propose here a new theoretical framework for understanding learning as a socially-grounded phenomenon based the writings of the Russian philologist, M. M. Bakhtin. Bakhtin's writings on the dialogic nature of all texts provide the basis for a new view of language, knowledge, and learning. From this perspective, learning is seen as the process of multiple voices coming into contact, both within and across speaker-produced utterances. Examples are provided of two types of studies based on such a theory of learning: studies of the appropriation of a social language and studies of speech genres. I conclude by recounting the potential advantages of adopting dialogicality as a conceptual basis for ongoing work in