Meanings and Methods of Pedagogical Innovation

As a companion to SHARMED training presented in chapter 10, this chapter evaluates how an array of actions, such as questions, invitations to talk, minimal responses, reformulations of children’s contributions and facilitators’ personal initiatives can support children’s voices in actual classroom practice of facilitation. Several video-recorded and transcribed examples from the three participating countries are used for this purpose.
The chapter argues that facilitation can be successful in promoting children’s agency as authorship of knowledge, towards the construction of communities of dialogue in the classroom that celebrate children’s active contribution to their learning.
The chapter concludes by reminding that the aim of facilitation is to extend the range of actions available for children’s autonomous choices, which is the key aspect of agency and genuine dialogic pedagogy. When facilitation is successful, non-hierarchical interactions are created where facilitators waive the possibility to control interaction, because this is requested by the support of children’s agency.