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Dialogue seminars as a tool in post graduate education

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Abstract

This paper describes and discusses a new postgraduate course based on the dialogue-seminar method. The course and the method have been developed within the research area of skill and technology, based at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm. The main features of the course were dialogue and reflection on practice of research inspired by reading of the source texts from the history of science and philosophy written by: Descartes, Leibniz, Diderot, D’Alembert, Gadamer, Galileo and Darwin. The concept of liberal education was of importance in the design of the course. Doctoral students were all adults interested in applying of research in order to improve practices at their own work places.

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Notes

  1. Manual of the dialogue seminar method can be downloaded from http://www.dialoger.se, link Forskning. A short presentation of the method is included in this paper, in section on method.

  2. This early research was presented to an international audience through the two international conferences held in Stockholm in 1988 and 1993. Papers from these conferences have been collected in a series of six books edited by Bo Göranzon, Magnus Florin and Ingela Josefson, published between 1988 and 1995 at Springer Verlags series on Artificial intelligence and society.

  3. In some other publications, e.g. in Göranzon and Hammarén (2006) and in the grant application for this project, we have used word “minutes of ideas”. After reading several articles on learning in ERIC database about courses based on similar ideas as ours, where people talk about dialogue journals, reflection journals, etc., I decided to call the record of the dialogue for “journal of ideas” instead of “minutes of ideas”.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Skill and Technology, School of Industrial Engineering and Management, Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Lindstedtsv. 30, 100 44, Stockholm, Sweden

    Adrian Ratkić

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  1. Adrian Ratkić
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Correspondence to Adrian Ratkić.

Additional information

Funds for this project were granted by the Swedish Council for the Renewal of Higher Education.

Appendix: course readings

Appendix: course readings

Here are the titles of the classical texts read in three doctoral courses on the philosophy of science and method which together constituted our pedagogical project. Titles are in Swedish with English translations enclosed in brackets.

Autumn 2002

Gadamer, Hans-Georg, Sanning och metod i urval (Truth and method—selected chapters), Göteborg: Daidalos, 1997. First published 1960

Descartes, René, Avhandling om metoden (Discourse on method), Stockholm: Natur och Kultur, 1998. First published 1637

Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm, “Om et universelt tegnsystem” (On a universal system of signs), in Norwegian philosophical journal AGORA, nr. 3–4 (1990), original “De numeris characteristicis ad linguam universalem constituendam”

Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm, Den förutbestämda harmonien (The pre-established harmony; ten texts by Leibniz selected by G. Nordstrand ), Stockholm: Björck and Börjesson, 1927

D’ Alembert, Jean Le Rond, Inledning till Encyklopedin (Discours préliminaire), Carmina, 1981. First published 1751

Spring and autmn 2003, spring 2004

Diderot, Denis, Skådespelaren och hans roll (The paradox of the actor), Prisma, 1963. First published 1830, rewritten in different versions between 1770 and 1784

Galilei, Galileo, Dialogen om de två värlsdssystemen (Dialogue concerning the two chief world systems), Stockholm: Atlantis, 1993. First published 1632

Autumn and spring 2005

Darwin, Charles, Om arternas uppkomst (The origin of species), Stockholm: Hiertas, 1871. First published 1859

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Ratkić, A. Dialogue seminars as a tool in post graduate education. AI & Soc 23, 99–109 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-007-0160-z

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