Becoming a Facilitator for Dialogic Teaching: Building Trust and Joy in Confronting Ideas as a Basis for Learning
Roč.30,č.2(2025)
Facilitating Teacher Continuous Professional Development: How, Why and by Whom?
Maribel Calderón Soto
Maximiliano Silva Barrueto
Teachers' professional learning is a complex process that requires active participation and a willingness to transform teaching practices. In dialogic teaching, as in other teaching approaches, successful professional development programs are characterized by being well organized and structured in close collaboration with teachers. However, knowledge about the role of the facilitators who lead and implement these activities remains scarce. This single-case study investigates how a novice facilitator without dialogic teaching experience reconstructed her own experience and learning after conducting three versions of a teacher development program with Chilean primary school teachers to become a skilled dialogic facilitator. The study findings reveal the sources of knowledge and experience that this novice facilitator used to cope with her role, some of which were consistent with dialogic pedagogy, such as a genuine interest in promoting thoughtful development through the exchange of ideas, and an emphasis on creating trusting environments in which ideas can be freely shared and explored. These results show how a combination of disciplinary knowledge and socio-affective dimensions in learning and teaching were used to build a kind of new identity: "dialogic teaching facilitator." The importance of these characteristics for a facilitator is discussed, as is the contribution of narrative techniques to deepen the knowledge of dialogic teaching from the facilitator's perspective.
facilitator; dialogic teaching; case study; identity; narrative; affective dimensions
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This work was supported by funding from Agencia Nacional de Investigación y Desarrollo (ANID) Chile, under project Fondecyt de Iniciación 11200371. We gratefully acknowledge the support and resources provided, which contributed significantly to the development of this research.
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