This is my truth, tell me yours. Positioning children as authors of knowledge through facilitation of narratives in dialogic interactions

Abstract

ABSTRACT The article discusses data from educational workshops in English and Italian classrooms, in the context of a research project funded by the European Union. The research promoted children’s work on personal memories and the dialogical exchange in the classroom of narratives related to memories. Facilitation was utilised to foster children’s contributions to interactions, empowering children's epistemic status as authors of valid knowledge to create favourable conditions for dialogue in the classroom. The article discusses a facilitative action that impacted on the promotion of children’s narratives: facilitators’ comments on narratives. Facilitators’ comments take form as 1) personal stories; 2) displacements. Both types of comments proved particularly effective in supporting children’s agency as authorship of narratives during workshops as a component of dialogic learning.