Echoes
of Conversations Past
by
Dwayne Hodgson
GLP
International Programs Director
"When
did you get a sense of how big this Dialogue Education Movement was becoming?"
a participant in the audience at the Dialogue Education Institute asked Dr. Jane
Vella.
"About
6 minutes ago," Jane replied.
--
from an exchange at the 2005 Dialogue Education Institute
As
I reflect on our first ever Dialogue Education Institute Conference that we held
back in May, I'm struck by how important individual conversations can be.
One
of these took place around the year that I was born, when Jane Vella met Brazilian
educator, Paulo Freire, at the University of Dar-es-Salaam. Those initial conversations
were like a magical stone dropped into a pool of water. The ripples of that dialogue
have spread outward over time and across continents through the work of Jane and
countless others who are promoting learning through dialogue education.
By
Global Learning Partners' own records, over 3,000 people in 60 countries have
graduated from courses that we have organized and taught, either directly or through
our network of Associates and Certified Teachers. But as I learned at the Institute,
there are others who have also been dropping stones too, in Port-au-Prince, Boston,
Dhaka, Los Angeles, Nairobi, Toronto, Dakar, …. What started as a simple
conversation has become a movement!
The breadth of
this movement was clear from the range of people who attended the conference.
These included experienced Dialogue Education practitioners who have been with
GLP/Jubilee for 20 years, but also people who have not yet taken a course in Dialogue
Education, but who have been energized by what Jane has synthesized in her books..
The attendees are working in diverse settings: nutrition,
social justice, higher education, translation, animal rights, community development,
corporate training, computer software training, and social work. But all are interested
in promoting a better way of learning that respects adults as reservoirs of experience
and to create accountable and engaging approaches to participatory learning.
The
agenda for the Institute was as diverse as the participants. While the plenary
sessions focused on the Roots, Branches and Fruits of Dialogue Education and how
these were expressed in our own lives, the learning events covered an impressive
array of topics: evaluation practices, appreciative inquiry, brain-based learning,
quantum learning, using dialogue education in clinical settings, consultative
vs. deliberative voice….
This list is noteworthy
as it shows how the practitioners are engaging in "conversations" with
other schools of thought to push and stretch dialogue education in new directions.
We hope that some of these new expressions of dialogue education will take the
form of additional course offerings, but what we learned at the workshops will
certainly inform our own approach to learning design and facilitation.
But
equally important as the scheduled learning events were the myriad of opportunities
for people to exchange ideas and perspectives across diverse worldviews. As our
society becomes increasingly fragmented, it is wonderful to attend an event where
people of diverse religious, philosophical, ideological and other perspectives
can engage in deeper conversations in an atmosphere of safety and respect.
Certainly
this doesn't mean that we'll agree with each other, but we do agree on the ground
rules for how to have these conversations. That meaningful conversation was possible
at the DEI verified our assumption that a smaller conference of 40 people may
facilitate more and deeper interactions than a large one. Indeed, as E.F. Schumacher
wrote, "small is beautiful".
And what is
particularly exciting is imagining how a participant at this year's DEI may someday
recount the story of how their life's work was informed by a conversation 40 years
ago in Chapel Hill…another stone dropped in another pool, expanding outward
in ways we can't yet envision.
Although the conference
was a tonne of work, I'm looking forward to doing it all again next year for the
25th Anniversary of what began as Jubilee Popular Education Center and is now
Global Learning Partners. Please stay tuned for our planning announcements in
the Fall. We hope to meet you there.
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