Abstract
The problem of defining and analyzing the concept of comprehension as a social phenomenon is arguably one of the key issues in psychology and education. At its core, the problem entails asking what sort of social relationship is at the basis of comprehension. Traditionally, agreement among participants is viewed as the basis of social comprehension. I analyze and criticize two major traditional agreement-based approaches to comprehension: fundamentalist and constructivist. My critique of traditional approaches focuses on their arguably wrong assumption about the principal transparency of human consciousnesses. Based on the work of Bakhtin, I develop a dialogic authorial approach to comprehension predicated on the dialogic nature of social relationships—and on the principal opaqueness of human consciousnesses. I use an educational case from my own teaching in which I abstract and analyze the key features of my concept of a dialogic authorial approach to comprehension.
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