Dialogic Imagination in Literacy Development

Abstract

This article focuses on a specific best practice in the teaching of language and literature: Dialogic Literary Gatherings. These gatherings involve adults, people without academic degrees, and usually in literacy programmes, who read and discuss the classics of universal literature: from Lorca's Gypsy Ballads to Joyce's Ulysses. Through an egalitarian dialogue, the participants in these gatherings develop new and deeper interpretations of the classic texts, something they could not do alone. This experience transforms their learning process and their personal lives, and even their socio-cultural context. To show why and how these gatherings help them acquire instrumental knowledge and increase the meaning they give to reading, the article analyses both their theoretical basis and their didactic components.