Dialogical epistemologies have spanned both teleological and nonteleological orientations to knowledge that is, both knowledge conceived as convergent on pre-determined epistemic goals and knowledge as divergent, moving centrifugally towards as-yet-unknown outcomes. Nonteleological conceptions of dialogue have challenged absolutist views. Bakhtin teaches us that what is frequently treated as finalized is inescapably unfinalized.
The interdependence between communication and cognition assumed by dialogists foregrounds that question of how producing meaning and understanding interpersonally is related to appropriating knowledge and pedagogy. In accounts of social interaction, an intersubjectivity paradigm has long been privileged. Less attention has been paid to the transformative effects of communicative counteraction. This study explores the relationship between intersubjectivity as involving agreement and attunement in orienting to others and alterity with a focus on divergence and disagreement in other-orientedness. It aims to show the importance of intersubjectivity for explicating part of the logic of classroom interaction and to clarify empirically some ways in which alterity generates significant expansion of consciousness in the classroom.
Data analysis indicates the strategic work teaches and students do to secure agreement and unity around goal-stipulated knowledge in instructional activity. The study also examines classroom data where divergent voices give rise to alternative views and novel understanding of a topic or action. In one episode, students’ resistance to the teacher’s explanation creates a counter movement to the official lesson. As a consequence, the teacher’s epistemic position is decentralized and a meeting of two consciousnesses illuminates a range of meanings related to a French term. In such encounters, participants’ cohesion-building strategies provide interactionally for opposition. In the classroom, both intersubjectivity and alterity are needed to resist reducing other-orientation to a single consciousness and to maximize the meaning-making advantages of bringing a second consciousness to bear on the consciousness of the other.