Dr. Ben-Zion Slakmon
The Jaime and Joan Constantiner School of Education
The Lester and Sally Entin Faculty of Humanities
I lead a research group on educational dialogues. We understand the term educational dialogue quite broadly. We are interested in different aspects of dialogue for learning purposes, including the dimensions of knowledge building, social relationships, personal and group emotions, and the existential and political dimensions of dialogue, which are all related to the difficulties and challenges of living together and sharing space with others.
We operate with children in schools and with adults, as they interact as citizens. In schools, my group deals with microanalytic processes such as:
• Analysis of learning interactions among learners and between learners and teachers
• Linguistic construction of optimal and harmful relations between teachers and students
• Teachers’ monitoring and noticing in collaborative settings
• Building assessment processes for dialogic teaching
• Connections between narrative and social cognition
• Educating children for advanced civic engagement.
In addition, we engage in a studying the processes involved in turning dialogic teaching into a comprehensive pedagogy, a school philosophy, and a comprehensive educational policy. We also study the philosophical and pedagogical dimension implemented in democratic and Montessori schools.
Part of my research deals with dialogues and collaborative learning in computer-mediated environments and in this context, I was privileged to take part in research and development of a number of learning environments and discussion of projects in Israel and the European Union.
Outside of schools, my group operates, trains, and studies civil deliberative processes aimed at democratic innovation, in frameworks such as Israel's Climate Conferences (2020-2021) and Citizens' Assemblies (2021).