What if learning began with listening?
Is knowledge something we receive - or create together?
How does learning from experience differ from being taught?
How do we learn collectively?
How does learning stay with you?
28 - 30 October 2025, Online Conference
Dialogue as a Way of Learning
Why attend?
Whether you're an educator, student, or manager, modern challenges are pushing us to reimagine what learning can be - when it’s shared, generative, and co-created.
Join global experts as we help design the Dialogic Classroom, Campus and Workplace.
Enjoy 3 months of Academy membership free with each ticket purchase, offering you community, research access, and support.
Discover what’s possible when no one teaches - but everyone learns.
Dates: Three online half-days on Oct 28, 29 & 30, 2025
Time: 1:00 - 6:00 PM (UK time)
Format: Live plenaries, breakout dialogues, small-group sessions
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SAVE BIG ON GROUP TICKETS
Single ticket - £150 NOW £120
Member discount - £100 NOW £80
Groups of 3+ staff - £75pp NOW £60pp
Students of attendees (<2pp) - £30pp NOW £24pp
Prices adjusted to the Big Mac Index for your country for fairness.
We will consider three learning spaces
Across the world different cultures have the same institutions at their core, and three primary learning spaces:
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In the classroom, as a child
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On the university campus, as a youth
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In the workplace, as an adult
Each day of the conference we will consider our experiences in these spaces, and what it would mean to people’s lives if this experience included dialogue.
From traditional learning to dialogic learning
Traditional learning dominates schools, universities, and workplaces:
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Teaching, lecturing, and training assume the answer is already known.
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Authority lies with the expert, who conveys and judges knowledge.
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Good for technical skills with right/wrong answers, but limited for complexity and personal meaning.
Dialogic learning is different:
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Knowledge emerges through shared inquiry and diverse perspectives.
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Authority is distributed - everyone’s voice matters.
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It fosters curiosity, creativity, and deeper understanding in contexts where answers aren’t fixed.
Traditional learning delivers answers, dialogic learning creates understanding.
Learning is changing
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Traditional teaching delivers ready-made answers.
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Dialogic learning invites us into inquiry, where knowledge is co-created through conversation.
At this conference, we'll explore and experience how dialogue transforms learning into curiosity, creativity, and shared understanding - in the classroom, on the campus and in the workplace.
Dialogue – an enhanced learning method
Dialogue is an important additional method for learning in the classroom, on the campus and in the workplace.
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In dialogue the activity of talking and thinking together is primary.
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Here people assume the learning is not already known and that curiosity can lead to new learning for oneself and others.
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The learning is generated with others by participants revealing and exploring their first-hand experiences - from the past using reflection, and from the present using the internal voice.
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Dialogue is well-suited to social and adaptive situations, to giving meaning to what has been taught, and to working with others in fast changing situations.
Three days with a sequence of enquiries
During the three online half-days (from 1pm to 6pm UK) we will meet in plenary sessions with all participants, in smaller groupings to experience participatory dialogues and go deeper into the classroom, campus or workplace, and in break-out trios to meet other participants and exchange learnings.
How are things working now? What helps and what interferes with learning in the school classroom, the university campus and the employment workplace? We want to draw on first-hand experiences between the pupil and teacher, the student and lecturer, and the employee and manager. Is dialogue needed? And if so, what difference would it make? What would it change?
Learning is currently dominated by teaching, lecturing and training that have technical and social advantages and disadvantages. Is dialogue relevant?
There will be participants present with the experience of introducing dialogue into the school classrooms, the university campus and the employment workplace.
Stepping back from the face-to-face situation in the room, there are other stakeholders whose interests impact the learning environment:
The classroom is within a school that has its own ethos, policies, finances and governance; within an educational system that defines the curriculum and measures that drive many decisions; children come from homes and families, with their own lifestyles and values.
The university has a history, tradition and a reputation to uphold, and a business to run; staff and students bring wide-ranging cultural, social and economic values; future employers and industries judge the value of qualifications.
Organizational performance is often the key driver of decisions in the workplace; prospects for career advancement; industry changes; the impact of technological advances such as Artificial Intelligence; working from home.
A celebration of dialogue as a way of learning, led by people who have created a dialogic classroom, are working to create a dialogic campus, and have developed a dialogic organization formally acknowledged by the Academy.
We will explore how to learn through dialogue and what difference it makes, and reflect on our own experience at the conference.
Who will participate?
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Teachers, head teachers and principals from Dialogic Classrooms
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Students, lecturers and professors creating Dialogic Campuses
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Employees, managers and leaders from certified Dialogic Organizations
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Learning and development professionals
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Dialogue practitioners and coaches
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Accredited Professional Dialogue Practitioners and Members of the Academy of Professional Dialogue
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Anyone who is new to dialogue and wants to learn about it
Why Attend?
Whether you're an educator, student, manager, or dialogue practitioner, this conference invites you to reimagine what learning can be - when it’s shared, generative, and co-created.
Discover what’s possible when no one teaches - but everyone learns.
As an educational not-for-profit charity, scholarships and student discounts are available on request. Please contact hello@aofpd.org for information.