What Axioms Inform Your Research? Dialogizing for Innovation in English Language and Literacy Pedagogy

On 19 April 2019, The Sony Entertainment Center in Toronto filled with 3,000 people, all ready to listen to what Professor Slavoj Žižek, one of the key western philosophers of the present era, called the “duel of the century.” The popularity of the debate between Slavoj Žižek and Jordan Peterson is reflective of a new yet largely invisible preoccupation by the public at large with intellectual matters engendered by the widespread availability of information technology. Yet, the debate was met with no interest from the field of education, despite the massive interest from the general public. Is there truly nothing that Slavoj Žižek or Jordan Peterson have to offer to education? Or are educators just tired of “philosophising”? This paper does not focus specifically on the debate between Slavoj Žižek and Jordan Peterson, but on the concept of interdisciplinary dialogue as a method for designing innovation that the debate has exemplified. The paper will discuss the process of innovation and will illustrate examples developed by the author together with her postgraduate students. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate the point that a lot can be learned about second language and literacy pedagogy when researchers do not hide behind the illusory walls of disciplines but, instead, venture out to better understand what they do and why.