Dialogic Classrooms as Pathways to Democratic Habits in Uncertain Times

What happens in the world happens in our classrooms: post-truth claims, polarizing discourses, silencing, legislation designed to limit or prohibit the teaching and learning of specific ideas, students who are still learning to navigate social and scholarly realities after years of Covid isolation.  These challenges are not just academic.  What happens in our classrooms will happen in the world, and though higher education has long been conceived as a space where students learn the skills vital to a thriving democracy, current conditions make the creation of such spaces feel tenuous or even impossible.  This paper presents Dialogic Classrooms as one approach that equips our students to engage authentically and civically across differences such that they are able to cultivate the skills and habits necessary for robust and active citizenship, even under pressures that work against such vital engagement.