The Bakhtin Primer offers a truly new and innovative approach to
leading and reforming schools. It delves into some of Bakhtin's most
salient concepts - chronotope, polyphony and heteroglossia, dialogue and
dialogism, and carnival - and presents them as the basis for a
comprehensive reform agenda - one that focuses on high levels of student
achievement and on socially just and inclusive educational practice. The
primer demonstrates the relevance of theory to educational practice and
presents it in clear, concise language coupled with numerous
illustrative examples to make the ideas accessible to readers. It
elaborates the importance of thinking about dialogue, not just as talk,
but as an ontological concept that informs how we embrace the diversity
inherent in our world. It explores how dialogue and carnival can disrupt
the status quo and confront inequitable practices and relationships. It
argues that education informed by Bakhtin's concepts would be more open,
more conscious of inquiry, ambiguity, incompleteness, complexity, and
relationships than traditional, more rational approaches. It would
challenge, and teach students to question authoritative views and
traditions and lead them to develop important understandings about our
interconnectedness as well as how to interact with and learn from
differences across time, place, class, and culture.