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a Bakhtinian homecoming

operationalizing dialogism in the context of an early childhood education centre in Wellington, New Zealand

Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, jayne.white{at}vuw.ac.nz

Dialogic research, building on the dialogic philosophy of Mikhail Bakhtin, is fundamentally concerned with the social, discursive nature of language. This article describes an application of dialogic research methods in a pilot study conducted in an Education and Care setting in Wellington, New Zealand focusing on an 18-month-old toddler and his teacher. The purpose of this exploratory study was to ‘operationalize’ dialogic research within this early childhood education context, in preparation for a larger investigation. Approaching the field through this dialogic research method offered an alternative means of investigating the acts of a toddler through genre (as the framework of analysis) and utterance (as the unit of analysis). This article argues for dialogic research as a method which enables toddler and teacher ‘voices’ to authentically inter-animate and contribute accordingly to the research process, thus promoting hermeneutic complexity rather than scientific truth.

Key Words: assessment • Bakhtin • dialogic research • early childhood education • methodology • teacher

Journal of Early Childhood Research, Vol. 7, No. 3, 299-323 (2009)
DOI: 10.1177/1476718X09336972


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