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Books & Papers

Dialogue in Teacher Training at University Level - Heike de Boer and Daniela Merklinger

Heike de Boer and Daniela Merklinger

A student-teacher asked two arguing children to consider how the other felt. What emerged transformed both. Heike de Boer and Daniela Merklinger document teaching dialogue to future teachers, and the 'pattern breaks' that challenge everything they thought they knew about good conversation.

This paper documents introducing Bohmian dialogue to student-teachers at a German university. It opens with a striking case: when a student-teacher asked two conflicting fourth-graders to consider how the other felt, one boy revealed something personal about his home situation. The girl's response shifted from blame to empathy; she offered to help him. The paper identifies 'pattern breaks'; moments when students question conversational practices they'd taken for granted. One student realised that being told to 'formulate the correct answer in your head before asking' was 'completely counterproductive.' Another discovered the importance of slowing down and allowing pauses. COVID-era online teaching unexpectedly helped: self-reflection tasks let implicit experiences surface. Students realised many children 'are not at all used to being asked what they think.' A new pattern break emerged: becoming aware of one's own blind spots; connecting to Bohm's insight that we look *through* our assumptions, making them hardest to see.

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Dialogue in education

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