Issue Home Volume 12: Issue 2

Where We Started: Reflections on Dialogue and Teaching
Bryan Sokol, Ph.D
Assistant Professor
Department of Psychology

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time
(from T.S. Eliot, Little Gidding)

Twenty years ago, I sat in a classroom at SLU as an undergraduate. I can vividly remember reading, for the first time, Paulo Freire’s (1970) Pedagogy of the Oppressed in Father Kevin O’Higgins’ ethics course. Now, I am a faculty member at SLU in the Psychology Department, returning as it were to the classroom of my youth and with a new appreciation of Freire’s work.

In the Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Freire describes two concepts, or models, of education: the banking and the problem-posing models. According to Freire, education in the banking model boils down to “an act of depositing” (p. 58). Students’ minds are akin to a bank vault into which teachers deposit information. The prevailing attitude in this unilateral approach to instruction is that “the teacher talks and the students listen” (p. 59). Freire contrasts this model with a more discussion-oriented, or dialogical form, of education. Problem-posing education, as he calls the alternative, leads to the mutual transformation of both students’ and teachers’ understanding. In this model, a more equalitarian approach to instruction is used, in which, as Freire claims: “The teacher is no longer merely the-one-who-teaches, but one who is himself [or herself] taught in dialogue with the students, who in turn while being taught also teach” (p. 67).

Twenty years later, as I return to the classroom, I try to be sensitive to Freire’s words. I remember as an undergraduate being struck by their significance, but not really understanding how they could impact my life. Like many undergraduates at that time (and perhaps even now), I was simply confused by what was expected from me in this alternative, dialogical approach. Using Freire’s language, the words did not transform me, or so I thought.

Reflecting on my teaching experiences now, I recognize how my own learning and personal transformation has occurred on at least two fronts. The first of these has to do simply with the preparation involved in teaching any course. I find that through this process of putting myself in the shoes of those who are new to the field I discover nuances to course materials that I had not yet fully appreciated. The second, and perhaps most significant aspect of teaching, grows directly from the many discussions I have with my students and research team. It is in these more dialogical encounters – our collective efforts to clarify and elaborate some idea – that I feel the most authentic learning takes place, and where, quite often, the traditional boundaries of teacher and student become blurred. Of course, this was Freire’s point all along. Some lessons, it seems, just require arriving again at the place where it all started.

Last updated 11.24.09