Grateful apprenticeship: A new aspect of M. Bakhtin’s Living Biography

Following certain trends in contemporary education theory, the authors of this article seek to expand upon Bakhtinian foundations of dialogic pedagogy. Considering Bakhtinian dialogism an effective tool for the educational process, they believe that Mikhail Bakhtin’s pedagogical practice itself, which has not yet been sufficiently studied, provides answers to a number of important questions of contemporary pedagogy and especially its dialogic educational regimes. Bakhtin’s idea of dialogue in his book on Dostoevsky (1929, 1963), goes far beyond the novel space, therefore, the understanding of dialogue is treated in this article as an opportunity to enter the social, ideological, and educational spheres as well. In this respect, the authors introduce the concept of "grateful apprenticeship", arguing that Bakhtin’s own communication with his disciples creates a unique phenomenon documented in both Bakhtin’s own memoirs and memoirs about him, in his correspondence and other authentic sources. The new documents discovered by the authors in Bakhtin’s archive and other sources enable us to speak of the phenomenon of "grateful apprenticeship" as the real result of the kind of dialogue Bakhtin carried out both in the practice of interpersonal communication and in his pedagogical activity.