A Unified Dialogic Pedagogy
The Detection Deception, Chapter 7
Fellow Augmented Educators,
Welcome to week seven of ‘The Detection Deception’ book serialization. This week’s chapter opens the third part of the book by synthesizing the philosophical traditions we’ve explored into a unified pedagogical framework. It argues that Socratic inquiry, Freirean problem-posing, and Bakhtinian dialogism, despite emerging from vastly different contexts, converge on a single insight: authentic learning resides not in the final product a student produces but in the process of articulation through which understanding develops.
Last week established why dialogue is the medium through which knowledge emerges. This chapter extends that foundation in two directions. First, it shows how three distinct philosophical traditions support a coherent alternative to surveillance-based education. Second, it confronts the serious practical challenges that dialogic pedagogy presents—problems of scale, individual assessment within collective learning, and the risk of echo chambers—while arguing that these are problems worth having because attempting to solve them makes us better educators.
The chapter ultimately offers a pragmatic path forward, one that acknowledges imperfection while insisting that flawed dialogue between humans remains superior to the detection arms race.
Thank you for reading along! See you in the comments.
Michael G Wagner (The Augmented Educator)
Contents
Chapter 1: The Castle Built on Sand
Chapter 2: A History of Academic Dishonesty
Chapter 3: The Surveillance Impasse
Chapter 4: Making Thinking Visible
Chapter 5: The Banking Model and Its Automated End
Chapter 6: Knowledge as a Social Symphony
Chapter 7: A Unified Dialogic Pedagogy
Chapter 8: Asynchronous and Embodied Models
Chapter 9: Dialogue Across the Disciplines
Chapter 10: The AI as a Sparring Partner
Chapter 11: Algorithmic Literacy
Chapter 12: From the Classroom to the Institution
Chapter 7: A Unified Dialogic Pedagogy
The promise of dialogue in education has never been simple. Those who champion dialogic pedagogy—whether drawing from Socrates, Freire, or Bakhtin—often present it as a transformative alternative to traditional teaching methods. In theory, it sounds compelling: replace the passive reception of information with active co-construction of knowledge and assess not what students can reproduce but how they participate in collective meaning-making. These visions align beautifully with what we know about how humans actually learn. Yet anyone who has attempted to implement these approaches knows the gap between ideal and reality can be vast. The lecture hall with two hundred students resists Socratic questioning. And the pressure for individual grades conflicts with collective knowledge construction. Most importantly, however, discussions meant to be constructive can become echo chambers, with the loudest opinions ultimately being the only ones heard.
These are not minor implementation challenges but fundamental tensions that reveal deep contradictions between dialogic principles and institutional structures. As artificial intelligence makes traditional assessment obsolete, forcing us to reconsider basic educational practices, we must confront these tensions honestly. The question is not whether dialogic pedagogy offers a perfect solution—it clearly does not. The question is whether its flaws are more fixable than the alternatives, whether its problems push us to become better educators, and whether the imperfect dialogue between human beings still offers something essential that no algorithmic system can replicate. This chapter examines both the unified philosophy emerging from dialogic traditions and the serious challenges that complicate their implementation, seeking not idealistic answers but pragmatic paths forward.
From Product to Process: A Unified Principle
The philosophical traditions we have explored—Socratic inquiry, Freirean problem-posing, and Bakhtinian dialogism—emerged from different centuries, different continents, and different political contexts. Socrates walked the streets of ancient Athens, challenging citizens to examine their beliefs. Freire developed his pedagogy in the favelas of Brazil, working with illiterate adults whom society had marginalized. Bakhtin wrote in Stalin’s Soviet Union, where his ideas about dialogue and plurality of voices stood in quiet opposition to totalitarian monologism. Yet despite these vast differences in context and purpose, these three traditions converge on a single, powerful insight that speaks directly to our current moment: authentic evidence of learning resides not in the final product a student can produce, but in the process of articulation through which understanding emerges.
This convergence is not coincidental. Each thinker recognized that the dominant educational models of their time fundamentally misunderstood the nature of human understanding. They saw that when we reduce learning to the transmission and reproduction of information, we not only impoverish education but also mistake what knowledge actually is. Knowledge is not a commodity to be transferred or a possession to be demonstrated through isolated performance. It is a capacity for participation in ongoing inquiry, an ability to engage productively with others in the collaborative construction of meaning.
Applying Socratic questioning makes thinking visible in real time. When a student struggles to answer a probing question, when they recognize a contradiction in their own reasoning and revise their position in response to a challenge, we witness learning as it actually occurs. There is no way to fake or outsource this visible process. An AI system can generate responses to Socratic questions, but it cannot genuinely experience the cognitive dissonance that drives learning. It cannot have its assumptions challenged because it holds no genuine assumptions and cannot experience the breakthrough that comes from resolving a deep confusion because it never truly experiences confusion.
Following Freire’s problem-posing approach transforms the emotional and political dimensions of the classroom. Learning becomes not a process of submission to authority but an exercise in intellectual freedom. The classroom becomes a space where students develop their capacity to read not just the word but the world, to recognize and challenge the structures of power that shape their reality. This critical mindset cannot be delivered as content; it must be developed through the practice of dialogue itself. Students learn to question by questioning, to critique by critiquing, and to imagine alternatives by imagining them together.
Building on Bakhtin’s dialogic principle helps us understand why process-focused assessment is not just a pragmatic response to AI but a more accurate recognition of how learning actually works. The traditional essay presents itself as evidence of what the student knows, but from a dialogic perspective, it is at best a trace of the ongoing dialogue through which the student’s understanding continues to develop. The real evidence of learning lies not in any single textual product but in the student’s evolving capacity to participate productively in dialogue.
These three pillars—method, ethos, and theory—support a unified philosophy that centers on capacities that are conceptually distinct from what generative AI does. Current AI systems, no matter how sophisticated, operate through pattern matching and statistical prediction. They can produce artifacts that resemble the products of human understanding, such as essays that make arguments, answers that seem insightful, or text that appears meaningful. But they cannot engage in the embodied, social, and contingent process through which human understanding actually develops.
The distinction becomes clearer when we consider specific examples. An AI can generate an essay about justice that cites appropriate philosophers and makes coherent arguments. But it cannot sit in a seminar room and have its conception of justice transformed by a classmate’s personal story about experiencing injustice. It cannot feel the discomfort of recognizing its own unconscious biases when challenged by a peer. It cannot experience the satisfaction of finally understanding a concept that had long confused it. These are not merely emotional additions to learning. They are fundamental aspects of human understanding.
This unified philosophy has practical implications for how we structure learning experiences. If the process of articulation is where learning occurs, then classroom time should prioritize dialogue over information delivery. If understanding emerges through social interaction, then students need sustained opportunities to engage with the same group of peers over time, building the relationships and shared references that enable deep dialogue. And if genuine learning requires the capacity to have one’s thinking transformed, then assessment should reward intellectual flexibility and growth rather than the mere reproduction of established positions.
The philosophy also suggests criteria for evaluating pedagogical practices. We should not ask “Does this technique efficiently deliver information?” but instead “Does this approach make thinking visible?” We should avoid questions like “Can students reproduce the correct answers?” and instead ask “Can students articulate their reasoning and respond to challenges?” And we should not obsess with analysing “Have students mastered the content?” but rather with “Have students developed their capacity for productive dialogue?”
This shift from product to process does not mean abandoning rigor or standards. If anything, it demands more from both students and teachers. Producing a polished essay that makes a conventional argument is in many ways easier than engaging in sustained dialogue where one’s thinking is constantly visible and subject to challenge. Reading and grading final papers is often simpler for instructors than facilitating complex dialogues and assessing students’ growing capacities for participation.
The Challenge of Scale and the Individual
The question arrives with predictable regularity at every conference presentation, every faculty workshop, or every discussion about dialogic pedagogy: “This sounds wonderful in theory, but how does it scale?” The questioner, usually a harried instructor teaching multiple large sections, or an administrator concerned with budgets, points out the obvious mathematical problem. If learning happens through sustained dialogue, if assessment requires observing process rather than grading products, if education means facilitating complex group dynamics rather than delivering standardized content, then how can this possibly work with the institutional realities of modern education—the lecture halls with hundreds of students, the adjunct instructors teaching at multiple institutions, or the standardized curricula that must prepare thousands for professional exams?
This question of scale is not merely practical but reveals a fundamental tension between the dialogic philosophy of learning and the industrial model of education that dominates most institutions. The modern university, particularly in its treatment of introductory courses, often operates on an economy of scale that treats education as a product to be delivered efficiently to the maximum number of consumers. Dialogic pedagogy, with its emphasis on relationships, context, and sustained interaction, seems to resist such efficiencies. A Socratic dialogue works brilliantly with fifteen students but seems impossible with one hundred fifty.
Yet before we accept this limitation as fatal to the dialogic model, we should examine what the supposedly efficient traditional model actually accomplishes at scale. Large lecture courses with machine-graded exams may process hundreds of students efficiently, but what kind of learning do they produce? If students can pass these courses by memorizing information that they forget within weeks and if they can succeed by skillfully selecting multiple-choice answers while developing no capacity for critical thinking, then what exactly is being accomplished efficiently? We may process large numbers of students, but are we educating them?
The challenge of scale forces us to confront uncomfortable questions about educational priorities. When an institution runs an introduction to psychology with five hundred students in an auditorium rather than twenty sections of twenty-five, it makes a statement about what matters. The choice prioritizes cost reduction over educational quality and efficiency over effectiveness. The dialogic model does not create the resource problem; it reveals it. It shows that what we call education at scale is often not education at all but a kind of academic theater where professors perform knowledge and students perform attention. A theater where the credits are earned, but the understanding is optional.
This is not to deny the real resource constraints that educational institutions face. Public universities struggling with budget cuts, community colleges serving populations with limited means, or schools in developing countries trying to expand access to education—these institutions face genuine dilemmas about how to serve their missions with limited resources. The principal argument made here is that rather than investing in the failed detection systems documented in Chapter 2, institutions could redirect resources toward pedagogical approaches that actually support learning.
Some innovative approaches also suggest that dialogic methods can be adapted for larger numbers of students without completely sacrificing their essential qualities. The technique of “think-pair-share,” for instance, can create moments of dialogue even in large lectures. Students think about a question individually, discuss it with a neighbor, then share insights with the larger group. While this is not sustained Socratic dialogue, it activates dialogic processes that passive listening does not. The professor can circulate during pair discussions, dropping into conversations, getting a sense of student thinking that would be invisible in a traditional lecture.
Technology, paradoxically, might enable certain forms of dialogue at scale. Online discussion forums, when well-facilitated, can allow forms of asynchronous dialogue that include more students than could practically participate in face-to-face discussion. The key is that these must be genuine dialogues where students respond to each other, build on ideas over time, and have their thinking transformed through interaction. They cannot be the all-too-common discussion boards where students post their required response and two replies without any genuine engagement, performing dialogue rather than practicing it.
But even as we explore these adaptations, we must acknowledge that the full richness of dialogic learning probably cannot be achieved at the scale that current institutional structures often demand. This is not a flaw in the pedagogy but a truth about the nature of education that we have been reluctant to acknowledge. Genuine education is labor-intensive because it involves human relationships. It requires time because understanding develops gradually through sustained engagement. And it resists standardization because learning is always contextual, always embedded in particular communities of inquiry.
The tension between the collective and the individual presents another challenge that goes beyond mere logistics. Educational institutions, for all their collaborative activities, ultimately issue individual grades and individual degrees. Students may learn through dialogue, but they are assessed as individuals. They may develop understanding collectively, but they receive individual transcripts. This creates both practical and philosophical problems for dialogic pedagogy.
The practical problem is straightforward: if knowledge emerges through dialogue, how do we fairly assess individual contributions? In a vibrant seminar discussion, ideas build on each other in complex ways. One student’s question prompts another’s insight, which leads to a third student’s synthesis. The understanding that emerges belongs to the group, arising from their interaction. How do we parse individual grades from this collective achievement? The student who asks the crucial question that unlocks everyone’s understanding might appear less knowledgeable than the student who articulates the final synthesis, yet without the question, there would be no synthesis.
Traditional solutions to this problem often feel unsatisfactory. We might grade students on the frequency of their participation, but this rewards quantity over quality and privileges students who are comfortable speaking in groups. We might assign individual papers based on class dialogue, but this returns us to the problematic focus on final products. Or we might use peer evaluation, but this can create competitive dynamics that undermine the collaborative spirit essential to dialogue.
Some instructors have experimented with more nuanced approaches. They might maintain observational notes throughout the semester, tracking not just what students say but how they contribute to collective understanding. Does a student build productively on others’ ideas? Do they ask questions that open new avenues of inquiry? Do they help create the supportive atmosphere necessary for intellectual risk-taking? Credit can then be given for these efforts, regardless of whether they lead to outstanding individual achievements.
Portfolio assessment offers another approach that can honor both individual and collective dimensions of learning. Students might compile evidence of their participation in dialogue containing transcripts of particularly productive discussions they contributed to, or reflections on how their thinking changed through engagement with peers. The portfolio can show individual growth while acknowledging the social nature of learning. It can demonstrate a student’s increasing capacity for dialogue rather than simply their ability to produce isolated artifacts.
The philosophical problem runs deeper than assessment mechanics. The very demand for individual grades reflects an ideological commitment to individual achievement that stands in tension with dialogic principles. When we insist on parsing individual contributions from collective understanding, we reinforce a competitive, individualistic model of education even as we try to foster collaborative learning. Students receive mixed messages: we tell them learning is social and collaborative, then we rank them individually and competitively.
This tension cannot be fully resolved within current institutional structures, but acknowledging it openly can be pedagogically valuable. Teachers can discuss with students the artificiality of individual assessment in collaborative learning contexts. They can make explicit that grades are institutional requirements that imperfectly capture learning rather than complete measures of understanding. And they can design assessments that, while meeting institutional requirements for individual grades, minimize competitive dynamics and maximize collaborative learning.
The Problem of Power and the Echo Chamber
The seminar had been discussing immigration policy for forty minutes when the uncomfortable silence descended. After weeks of productive dialogue on other topics, the class had suddenly split along predictable lines. The five students from immigrant families sat on one side of the discussion, their voices carrying personal weight. The others, mostly from established American families, occupied a different argumentative territory. What had been a collaborative exploration of ideas transformed into entrenched position-taking. The instructor watched as the very dialogue meant to expand understanding instead calcified existing perspectives. Each side marshaled evidence that confirmed their views while dismissing contradictory information. The echo chamber had formed within the very space designed to challenge it.
This scenario illustrates one of the most serious challenges to dialogic pedagogy: the risk that what we call “dialogue” becomes merely the reinforcement of dominant perspectives or, alternatively, the hardening of opposing camps. The problem is not simply that people disagree—disagreement can be productive in dialogue. The problem is when the dialogic form masks what is actually happening: the circulation and amplification of existing beliefs rather than their examination and potential transformation.
The echo chamber risk is particularly acute in classrooms where students share similar backgrounds, whether socioeconomic, cultural, or ideological. A seminar at an elite private college where most students come from privileged backgrounds might engage in what appears to be vigorous dialogue about economic inequality. Students debate different solutions, cite various theorists, challenge each other’s interpretations. But if everyone in the room shares fundamental assumptions about meritocracy, individual responsibility, and the legitimacy of current economic structures, then the dialogue occurs within such narrow boundaries that it reinforces rather than challenges the collective worldview.
Even when classrooms include diverse perspectives, power dynamics can transform dialogue into a more subtle form of domination. The student who speaks with the confident cadence of preparatory school education, who casually references summer travels or family connections, who deploys academic vocabulary with ease—this student’s voice often carries more weight in classroom dialogue, not because their ideas are better but because they perform authority more convincingly. Meanwhile, the first-generation college student, the international student navigating a second language, the student from a working-class background who learned different conventions of argument—these students might have profound insights that get lost because they are expressed in ways that do not match academic expectations.
The Socratic tradition itself, for all its value in making thinking visible, carries cultural baggage that can exclude. The model of direct intellectual confrontation, of arguments as combat where positions are attacked and defended, reflects particular cultural values about how knowledge should be pursued. For students from backgrounds that emphasize harmony over confrontation, that value narrative and personal experience over abstract argumentation, or that consider direct challenge to be disrespectful, the Socratic method can feel alienating or even violent.
To illustrate this, consider an international student who might describe her experience in an American philosophy seminar: “Where I come from, directly telling a professor or older student they are wrong would be incredibly rude. But here, that seems to be what gets rewarded. I have thoughts about these texts, but I cannot make myself speak in the way that seems expected. So I stay quiet, and everyone probably thinks I have nothing to contribute.” Her silence is not evidence of a lack of understanding but of a collision between different cultural norms about how knowledge should be discussed.
The problem extends beyond cultural differences to encompass diverse personality types and learning styles. A dialogic classroom, especially one using the Socratic method, often prioritizes fast thinking, the ability to speak confidently in public, and a degree of intellectual assertiveness. The student who needs time to process ideas before articulating them, who thinks better in writing than in speech, or who finds confrontation anxiety-inducing rather than stimulating—this student can be systematically disadvantaged in dialogue-heavy pedagogies.
Power dynamics also shape what can be said in classroom dialogue. Despite an instructors’ best efforts to create inclusive spaces, students are acutely aware of what positions are acceptable within particular institutional contexts. They learn to perform the expected critical stances, to use the approved theoretical frameworks, to reach the conclusions that align with institutional values. This is not necessarily conscious dishonesty but a form of intellectual survival. A student who genuinely holds conservative views might learn to silence them in a progressive classroom, just as the radical student might self-censor in a traditional institution. The dialogue that results is impoverished, missing the genuine diversity of thought that could generate productive conflict.
The instructor’s role in these dynamics is complex and often problematic. Even instructors committed to Freire’s vision of teacher-student and student-teacher equality bring enormous power to the dialogue. They control grades, write recommendations, and serve as gatekeepers to academic advancement. No matter how much they try to minimize their authority, students know who ultimately evaluates them. This knowledge inevitably shapes what students are willing to say, what risks they are willing to take, and what positions they are willing to explore.
Furthermore, instructors bring their own assumptions, biases, and blind spots to dialogue facilitation. The literature professor who sees every text through the lens of post-colonial theory might unconsciously steer all discussions toward those themes while marginalizing other interpretive approaches. The economics instructor trained in neoclassical methods might have difficulty genuinely engaging with students who question fundamental assumptions about rational choice or market efficiency. Even when instructors believe they are facilitating open dialogue, they might be unconsciously rewarding contributions that align with their own perspectives while subtly discouraging those that challenge them.
The problem of groupthink is yet another serious challenge. Irving Janis’s classic research on group decision-making showed how groups can develop illusions of unanimity, where dissent is suppressed not through explicit censorship but through subtle social pressure. In a classroom that values dialogue and collaboration, the pressure to maintain group harmony can be intense. Students might avoid raising objections that could disrupt the comfortable flow of discussion. They might go along with the emerging consensus rather than voice doubts. The very emphasis on building understanding together can create pressure toward artificial agreement.
This risk is particularly acute when discussing sensitive topics around race, gender, sexuality, or other identity categories. Well-meaning attempts to create “safe spaces” for dialogue can sometimes become spaces where only certain perspectives feel safe to express. A white student might have genuine questions about racial dynamics but fear that asking them will make them appear racist. A religious student might hold traditional views about sexuality but remain silent rather than risk being labeled bigoted. The dialogue that results carefully avoids the very areas where genuine engagement might be most transformative.
None of these critiques negate the value of dialogic pedagogy, but they reveal that dialogue is not inherently liberating or transformative. It can become a vehicle for reinforcing existing power structures, for performing rather than pursuing understanding, and consequently for creating consensus without genuine agreement. The solution is not to abandon dialogue but to approach it with greater sophistication about these risks.
Creating a genuinely inclusive dialogue requires intentional design and constant vigilance. It means structuring discussions in a way that makes space for different cultural communication styles. This might involve incorporating written dialogue alongside oral discussion, creating small group conversations before large group discussions, or using structured protocols that ensure everyone has opportunities to contribute. It means explicitly discussing and questioning the cultural assumptions embedded in academic discourse itself.
Addressing power dynamics requires more than good intentions. It might mean instructors explicitly acknowledging their power and its limits, being transparent about how evaluation works, and creating assessment structures that minimize competitive dynamics. It could include students taking turns leading the discussion, teaching each other, and appreciating different ways of participating in the dialogue. And it certainly requires instructors to engage in ongoing self-reflection about their own biases and how these shape their facilitation.
Beyond an Ideal: A Pragmatic Path Forward
The critiques we have examined—the challenge of scale, the tension between individual and collective assessment, the risks of echo chambers and power dynamics—are serious. They reveal that dialogic pedagogy is not a perfect solution that will magically transform education once properly implemented. Like any educational approach, it has limitations, blind spots, and potential for misuse. The question is not whether dialogic pedagogy is flawless but whether its problems are more tractable than those of the alternatives.
Consider the two flawed systems between which educators must choose. On one side stands the surveillance model that has emerged as the dominant institutional response to AI. Rather than investing in the failed detection systems documented in Chapter 2, institutions could redirect resources toward pedagogical approaches that actually support learning.
On the other side stands the dialogic model with all the challenges we have honestly examined. It requires more resources than current institutional structures typically provide. It struggles to parse individual achievement from collective understanding. It risks reinforcing existing power dynamics and creating echo chambers. It demands sophisticated facilitation skills that many instructors have not developed. And it privileges certain cultural communication styles over others. These are actual challenges that won’t disappear just by saying that dialogue is the answer.
But here is the crucial difference: the problems of the dialogic classroom are pedagogical challenges that can be met through better practice, while the problems of the surveillance model are fundamental flaws that cannot be fixed at all. The difficulty in scaling dialogic teaching is primarily a matter of resources, which could be solved by adjusting institutional priorities. But on the other hand, the bias in AI detection is a conceptual problem built into the very definition of the task. The difficulty of assessing individual contributions to dialogue is a complex pedagogical puzzle that teachers can work to solve, but the unreliability of detection software is a mathematical certainty given what these systems are trying to do.
Put another way, the dialogic model presents us with the right problems to have. How do we create inclusive dialogue across cultural differences? This is a challenge worth tackling because it develops our capacity to teach in increasingly diverse classrooms. How do we assess collaborative learning fairly? This pushes us to develop a more sophisticated understanding of how learning actually happens. How do we prevent groupthink while maintaining supportive classroom communities? This requires us to become better facilitators of intellectual discourse. These are the kinds of problems that, even when not fully solved, make us better educators in the attempt to solve them.
A practical solution doesn’t require embracing dialogic pedagogy as the only answer, in a rigid, all-or-nothing way. Educational practice always involves compromise, adaptation, and context-specific judgment. A community college instructor teaching five sections of composition to students who work full-time cannot implement the same dialogic practices as a liberal arts professor teaching a senior seminar. But both can move toward more dialogic approaches within their constraints.
For the overloaded composition instructor, this might mean replacing one traditional essay with a structured peer review process where students engage in written dialogue about each other’s drafts. It might mean using the last ten minutes of each class for think-pair-share exercises that create moments of dialogue within a largely lecture-based structure. It might mean designing assignments that require students to respond to specific classroom discussions, making their work necessarily contextual even if time for dialogue is limited.
For institutions, the pragmatic path means recognizing that different courses might require different approaches. The large introductory lecture that provides foundational knowledge might remain largely traditional, while upper-level courses could be restructured around dialogic principles. Resources could be strategically allocated to create more small seminars in areas where dialogue is most crucial for learning. And technology could be deployed not for surveillance but to enable new forms of asynchronous dialogue that extend classroom discussions.
The pragmatic approach also means being honest with students about the constraints and compromises involved. Rather than pretending that current assessment systems perfectly capture learning, instructors can acknowledge their limitations while explaining why they are necessary within institutional requirements. Rather than claiming that dialogue is always inclusive and transformative, teachers can discuss the challenges openly and invite students to help address them. This transparency itself becomes pedagogically valuable, engaging students as partners in the educational process rather than passive recipients.
Embracing dialogic principles should be viewed as a continuous exploration, not a rigid set of rules. Each classroom presents unique challenges and opportunities. What works in a graduate seminar might fail in an undergraduate survey course. What engages students at an urban community college might not work at a rural liberal arts school. The key is not to find the one right way to implement dialogue but to maintain thoughtful experimentation, honest reflection, and continuous adaptation.
This experimental attitude extends to assessment. Rather than seeing the tension between individual and collective evaluation as a problem to be definitively solved, we can approach it as a productive contradiction that generates innovation. Some instructors might experiment with contract grading, where students take part in setting their own goals and evaluating their progress. Others might try collaborative exams where groups work together but individuals write separate responses. Still others might use portfolio systems that capture both individual growth and collaborative participation. The diversity of approaches is not a weakness but a strength, generating collective knowledge about what works in different contexts.
The pragmatic path also requires realistic expectations about what dialogic pedagogy can and cannot accomplish. It will not eliminate all power dynamics from the classroom. It will not make every student equally comfortable with every form of participation. Neither will it prevent all instances of groupthink or echo chamber formation. But what it can do is create more opportunities for genuine intellectual engagement, make student thinking more visible, and develop capacities for collaborative inquiry that are increasingly valuable in a complex world.
Most importantly, the pragmatic approach recognizes that the perfect should not be the enemy of the good. A classroom that achieves imperfect dialogue, with all its problems and limitations, still offers something that the surveillance model cannot: the opportunity for students to develop their thinking through engagement with others. The reinforcement of existing perspectives through dialogue is preferable to the pseudo-learning found in AI-generated essays. Even assessment that imperfectly captures individual contributions to collective understanding is better than detection software that falsely accuses innocent students based on biased algorithms.
The choice before us is not between a perfect system and a flawed one. It is between two flawed systems with very different kinds of flaws. The surveillance model fails at its fundamental purpose—it cannot reliably detect AI use—while also damaging the trust necessary for education. The dialogic model, on the other hand, succeeds at its fundamental purpose—developing understanding through social interaction—even when it does so imperfectly. And while the surveillance model’s flaws get worse as technology advances, the dialogic model’s challenges can be addressed through continued pedagogical development.
As we move forward into an era where AI capabilities will only increase, the question is not whether we can create perfect educational systems but whether we can maintain spaces for genuinely human learning. The dialogic classroom, with all its tensions and challenges, offers such a space. It insists that understanding emerges through human interaction that no machine can replicate. It values the process of thinking together over the products that can be generated in isolation. And it recognizes that education is fundamentally about relationships, not just information transfer.
This is not a retreat into nostalgia or a rejection of technology. AI can play valuable roles in education when deployed thoughtfully within a dialogic framework. But those roles must support rather than substitute for the human interactions through which genuine learning occurs. The future demands that we recognize the strengths of humans and machines, then create learning experiences that use both effectively, rather than making a choice between them.
The pragmatic path is ultimately about courage—the courage to acknowledge that our current systems are failing, the courage to try imperfect alternatives, and the courage to make mistakes and learn from them. It requires administrators to support experimentation even when the outcomes are uncertain. It requires instructors to develop new skills and abandon comfortable routines. And it requires students to engage more actively in their own education. None of this is easy, but the alternative—surrendering education to an arms race between detection and evasion—is far worse.
Thank you for following Chapter 7 to its conclusion. If this synthesis of dialogic principles resonated with you, I hope you’ll continue with me as we move from philosophy to practice.
Next Saturday we continue Part 3 with Chapter 8: ‘Asynchronous and Embodied Models.’ Having established why authentic learning resides in process rather than product, we now examine concrete approaches for making that process visible and assessable. The chapter explores three practical strategies: grading the journey through drafts, revisions, and peer review; leveraging embodied and multimodal performances that reveal understanding in ways text cannot capture; and creating assignments so deeply rooted in the specific context of classroom dialogue that they become nearly impossible to complete without genuine participation. These are not perfect solutions but promising experiments in recognizing and valuing the actual work of learning.
P.S. I believe transparency builds the trust that AI detection systems fail to enforce. That’s why I’ve published an ethics and AI disclosure statement, which outlines how I integrate AI tools into my intellectual work.