Dialogue, Awareness, and the Limits of Measurement in Higher Education

Emerge Working Paper Series | Education and Consciousness | 2026 Devesh Gupta Founder, Emerge Publications ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0003-4980-2493 Suggested Citation Gupta, D. (2026). Dialogue, awareness, and the limits of measurement in higher education. Emerge Working Paper Series. Emerge Publications. https://doi.org/10.65169/dialogue-awareness-measurement

Abstract This scholarly commentary engages with the study Bohmian Dialogue Supporting Student Well-being in a Higher Education English Course to explore a broader question within contemporary education: how forms of learning grounded in awareness and inquiry relate to evaluation frameworks primarily designed to detect measurable psychological change. While the study reports no statistically significant improvements in well-being, students’ qualitative reflections suggest shifts in attentiveness to assumptions, judgments, and patterns of communication. Rather than interpreting this divergence as a methodological limitation, the article considers whether it points to a deeper tension between dialogic learning and outcome-oriented models of assessment. It explores the possibility that certain educational transformations may not unfold linearly or present themselves in forms readily captured by standardized instruments. When education becomes a relational space of shared inquiry rather than targeted intervention, meaningful change may involve shifts in perception rather than increments in psychological state. The article suggests that the study invites renewed attention to the epistemic assumptions underlying measurement practices in higher education and raises questions about how awareness-centered learning might be recognized within institutions increasingly organized around demonstrable outcomes.

Keywords: Dialogic learning; awareness; higher education; educational measurement; student well-being; inquiry-based learning; perception.

This paper offers a scholarly commentary on Hämäläinen and Lappalainen (2026), engaging their study to further dialogue on awareness, inquiry, and evaluation in higher education.

The recent study, Bohmian Dialogue Supporting Student Well-being in a Higher Education English Course (Hämäläinen & Lappalainen, 2026), offers an unusually candid glimpse into what unfolds when dialogue, rather than instruction or intervention, becomes the ground of learning. Although framed within the discourse of well-being and psychological flexibility, the study points toward a deeper educational question: whether forms of learning rooted in awareness and perception can be adequately understood through conventional outcome measures.

The authors set out to examine whether a university English course based on Bohmian dialogue could improve student well-being. Quantitative measures of life satisfaction and psychological flexibility revealed no statistically significant change at the group level. Yet the qualitative findings portray a different movement. Students report becoming more aware of their values, judgments, assumptions, and communication patterns. They describe shifts in how they listen, speak, relate to others, and notice their own thinking. The study itself acknowledges that such changes may not be captured by standardized instruments and may unfold gradually over time.

This apparent gap between measurement and lived experience should not be read merely as a methodological limitation. It may instead signal a deeper tension within contemporary educational research: the tendency to evaluate inquiry-driven learning through frameworks designed primarily to detect incremental psychological change.

Dialogue Beyond Instrumentality

A central tension in the study lies in its conceptual alignment of Bohmian dialogue with Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), particularly through the construct of psychological flexibility. This alignment is understandable within current interdisciplinary research, where educational practices are often interpreted through established psychological models. However, this framing may subtly reposition dialogue as a means toward predefined outcomes.

In Bohm’s understanding, dialogue is not a technique for producing effects, nor a practice intended to strengthen particular capacities. Rather, it is an open-ended inquiry into the movement of thought, both individually and collectively. Awareness, in this context, is not something that can be systematically developed or accumulated. It appears when defensive structures relax and when the impulse to control interpretation gives way to observation.

By contrast, ACT approaches awareness more instrumentally, as something that can be supported through practices that enhance adaptability and resilience. When Bohmian dialogue is viewed primarily through this lens, a quiet conceptual shift may occur: dialogue risks being understood as a therapeutic intervention even when the authors explicitly distinguish it from therapy.

Interestingly, the students’ reflections often seem to extend beyond this instrumental frame. They do not merely describe coping more effectively or regulating emotions. Instead, many accounts suggest moments in which habitual judgments become visible, assumptions loosen, and listening changes when persuasion is no longer the dominant aim. Such descriptions may indicate less a therapeutic adjustment than a shift in perception itself.

When Metrics Do Not Capture Movement

The absence of statistically significant change is treated cautiously by the authors, who point to factors such as sample size, response rates, and the non-clinical nature of the population. These are valid methodological considerations. Yet the findings also invite a more fundamental question: what kinds of educational transformation are available to measurement in the first place?

Standardized instruments generally assume continuity, progression, and improvement over time. They are well suited to detecting additive change. Dialogue, however, may not operate according to this logic. Insights into one’s own patterns of judgment or assumption do not necessarily accumulate in a linear fashion. At times, they appear discontinuously, often when previously unnoticed structures of thought come into view.

Seen in this light, the quantitative results need not be interpreted as evidence of ineffectiveness. Rather, they may suggest a possible mismatch between the phenomenon under study and the tools used to assess it. When education becomes a space of inquiry rather than intervention, success cannot always be specified in advance as an outcome variable. Indeed, increased awareness may not immediately correspond with higher reported life satisfaction. To perceive fragmentation within one’s own thinking can initially unsettle familiar psychological coordinates. What appears, from a measurement perspective, as the absence of improvement may therefore coexist with a deepening sensitivity to experience.

Education as a Site of Perception

Perhaps the study’s most significant contribution lies in its educational implications. The dialogue course described does not rely heavily on authority, persuasion, or performance pressure. The teacher’s role shifts from expert toward facilitator, and gradually even this role recedes as students assume shared responsibility for the quality of attention within the group. Participants describe a sense of equality, psychological safety, and freedom from evaluation-driven anxiety. Communication changes not because it is corrected, but because it is noticed.

Such conditions raise important questions for current approaches to student well-being. Much contemporary discourse assumes that well-being must be integrated into curricula through targeted practices, tools, or specialized interventions. The present study gestures toward another possibility: when the relational structure of the classroom changes, well-being may cease to be something directly pursued. It may instead emerge as a secondary effect of an environment in which fear of judgment diminishes and attention is no longer organized primarily around performance.

Importantly, this does not imply that awareness can be produced by method. The course itself included structured elements: reflective exercises, themes, and facilitated sessions, yet the findings suggest that no structure can guarantee the emergence of perception. At most, educational conditions can make such perception more likely by reducing defensiveness and inviting attentive participation.

What the Study Quietly Reveals

The study does not conclusively demonstrate that dialogue improves well-being. It reveals something more subtle and arguably more consequential. It invites reconsideration of an assumption that often remains implicit in educational reform: that meaningful learning must ultimately justify itself through measurable outcomes. If certain dimensions of transformation involve shifts in how experience is perceived rather than increments in psychological state, then evaluation frameworks oriented solely toward improvement may overlook precisely what is most significant.

In this sense, the study’s careful reporting of null quantitative findings becomes one of its strengths. It draws attention, perhaps unintentionally, to the limits of improvement-oriented thinking in educational contexts that engage perception rather than performance. Some of the deepest transformations in learning may not occur when new competencies are added. At times, they unfold when something unnecessary: a defended assumption, an unexamined judgment, or a habitual posture toward others begins to fall away.

That possibility, though not asserted explicitly, may be among the study’s most enduring contributions for ongoing conversations about dialogue, well-being, and the future of higher education. The questions this study opens may remain especially relevant as higher education continues to explore forms of learning that engage awareness alongside knowledge.

References

Hämäläinen, M., & Lappalainen, P. (2026). Bohmian dialogue supporting student well-being in a higher education English course. Journal of Language Teaching and Learning, 16(1), 93–109. https://www.jltl.com.tr/index.php/jltl/article/view/730