Chapter 6: Collaborative Work, Dialogical Self and Inter-/Intra-Empowerment Mechanisms: (Re)constructing Life Trajectories of Participation

The Interaction and Knowledge (IK) is a research project developed all over Portugal and based in collaborative work. It was a joint enterprise. This is why the designation “we” is used even in single-authored papers. The IK began in 1994–1995 and ended in 2005–2006. Thus, it lasted 12 years. At first it did not include the dialogical self (DS) theory in its theoretical background and in the data analysis. We came into contact with the DS theory in Ghent Conference, in 2002. By then, most papers on DS theory referred to its clinical use. But our main goal was to use it in education as a lens to view the data we had collected (César, 2003) and also as an inspiration for future data collecting, particularly in the follow-up. The IK empirical evidences allowed us to go back to DS theory and to expand it by crossing it with other notions like power relations (Apple, 1995; César, 2010), situated learning and legitimate participation (César, 2007; Lave & Wenger, 1991), or voices and meaning (Bakhtin, 1929/1981).