Teaching through Dialogue. Learning from Heidegger and Arendt

Over the last couple of decades, extensive analyses have been provided over what we may loosely call ‘teaching thinking through dialogue’. Scholars from different perspectives and disciplines have offered a variety of approaches and methods to deal with this most important topic. In this paper, by intersecting Heidegger’s and Arendt’s oeuvre with current educational literature, I wish to display the possibilities a phenomenological approach may offer when it comes to teaching through dialogue. The paper is phrased into two sections and a conclusion. In the first section, I shall unravel what we may call the thoroughly relational nature of Dasein Heidegger developed from 1927 to 1930, and the Arendtian question of togetherness, thus displaying their educational bearings. In the second section, I shall intersect the findings of my first step with current educational literature. As an example, I shall draw from Wegerif’s influential book Mind Expanding. Teaching for Thinking and Creativity in Primary Education, thus displaying the potential of phenomenological analysis for learning and education through dialogue. In the third section, I shall conclude my attempt while offering some remarks about two pivotal educational questions, namely, teachers’ freedom and responsibility. I shall display how these two interrelated questions are not just the pillars of any and every attempt to teach through dialogue, but, moreover, the source of purposes and practices of society as a whole.