So the webfuscator has found a new word of the day. Dialectic however requires understanding, humility, good faith, good humour and implies empathy and 2 way communication. Qualities sadly lacking in some benighted corners of the blogosphere.
NW was speaking in some sense about asymmetric knowledge. Knowledge that is in some way transformative. Threshold concepts in pedagogy. ‘Threshold Concepts’ may be considered to be “akin to passing through a portal” or “conceptual gateway” that opens up “previously inaccessible way[s] of thinking about something” (Meyer and Land [9]). – http://www.ee.ucl.ac.uk/~mflanaga/thresholds.html –
The teacher and the student can inhabit a different universe and use a different language. Some may never make the transition for whatever reason. ‘Sometimes the convincing force is just time itself and the human toll it takes, Kuhn said, using a quote from Max Planck: “a new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.’