Egalitarian dialogue

Although previously used widely in the social sciences and in reference to the Bakhtinian philosophy of dialogue,[1] it was first systematically applied to dialogical education by Ramón Flecha in his 2000 work Sharing Words.

Egalitarian dialogue is one of the seven principles of dialogic learning (Flecha, 2000), the others being cultural intelligence, equality of differences, creation of meaning, instrumental dimension, solidarity, and transformation.

Those interactions create Zone of Proximal Development (Vygotsky, 1978), this showing that meaning-making and learning do not depend solely on the intervention of professionals, but on all the knowledge brought by anyone related to the students (Flecha, 2000).

Habermas' concept of lifeworld refers to the everyday contexts where people relate to each other and create meaning and structures to organize themselves.

In this process, meaning is created and recovered because music escapes the system and goes back to people's lifeworld tearing down the walls of cultural elitism.

In education without dialogue, every single item becomes a target for power claims, even methods and instruments for learning, and therefore, the bureaucratization of those elements is inevitable.

For instance, in the School for Adults La Verneda-Sant Martí (Sánchez, 1999; Flecha, 2000) all the activities are open to anyone from the community and the city, and are also deeply integrated in the neighborhood.

In this regard, solidarity goes beyond rebellious attitudes that do not propose an alternative, and reaches a more radically critical and dialogical position that implies the transformation of oneself, institutions, and the world.