Making space for critical pedagogy: Challenges and opportunities

Inclusivity, Inspiration, pedagogy

by Joanna Joseph Jeyaraj, Malaysia

When I was first asked to contribute to this blog all I could think of was how I did not have a story of inspiration. Instead, my story is one of struggle and despair. However, as I think about all the challenges I am facing as a new academic, I am beginning to see that amidst these struggles, lies immense opportunity – and that I should be transforming these challenges into productive pathways.

I teach in a university in Malaysia and started about six months ago, eager and excited to begin my career in academia. Before coming here, I lived in New Zealand, where I pursued my doctoral studies in higher education. My research focused on English language teachers in higher education who used critical pedagogy in their teaching. As you may know, critical pedagogy is generally attributed to the ideas of Paulo Freire and has a strong agenda for social change and justice through the development of active and engaged citizens (Freire, 2005; McArthur, 2010; Crookes, 2013). Thus, having read the scholarship in this area, I came to strongly believe that education should bring forth societal reform and that my role as a teacher is to nurture intellectual development as well as social activism among students. My research explored the experiences of critical pedagogues from different parts of the world who sought to transform society through language education. After listening to numerous stories of how these teachers strove to make a difference in students’ lives and the communities that students lived in, I was inspired and motivated to do the same in my own teaching.

Instead, my eagerness and perhaps naiveté was quickly replaced with frustration because I felt restricted in the higher education environment that I had entered. Viewed from the perspectives of critical pedagogy, many things in the new system seemed to make education less meaningful and purposeful. The first big challenge was teaching a course that was so focussed on assessments; it seemed to take out the joy of the whole learning process for students. Students were piled with assignments and exams, and teachers were mostly required to prepare  students for these various assessments. After a few weeks wallowing in self-pity, I decided to contemplate and reflect on what I could learn from teaching in this environment. I believed that I could turn my struggles into a learning experience for students, and find answers and solutions to their problems. So, here are just a few of my thoughts and observations that teachers in similar situations may find useful:

1.     To “do” critical pedagogy, you have to struggle. Freire struggled. In the process, he was accused of being subversive and subsequently jailed and exiled. Although my struggles are not as extreme as Freire’s, still critical pedagogy is all about facing resistance. Sometimes, it comes in the form of facing opposition from the institution that one is in, or even from other colleagues or students. The path is not an easy one, and if I want to take the critical pedagogy route, I should be prepared to persevere and keep on fighting to create a legitimate space for critical pedagogy.

2.    In many educational systems around the world, creativity and autonomy are destroyed in the name of ‘consistency’ and ‘standardisation’. To ensure teachers mark fairly and consistently, certain standardized processes are put in place. For instance, although I had worked with my students over 9 weeks on their research topics, their reports as a rule are marked by a different teacher. This allowed no flexibility and I found myself wanting to stick strictly to the prescribed syllabus as it is expected of all teachers. There were times when I felt stifled and constrained, because having to focus almost exclusively on preparing students for their assignments and exams often clashed with my pedagogical values as a teacher.

However, there came a point of realisation that helped me feel less powerless against a system that limited my students’ and my own creativity. I remembered the  words of a TESOL teacher educator whom I had interviewed for my research project on critical pedagogy. Although our interview took place some years back when I was still a graduate student, his words could not have rang truer as they do right now. He told me that he constantly reminded his students: ‘… no matter how many constraints there are, you have to find ways to subvert the system … you are trailblazers in this area’. I was keenly aware that the structure of the course I was teaching differed greatly from a typical critical pedagogy class which Shor (1987) mentions is dialogic, creative and invented in-progress. I realised that learning was not student-driven and knowledge was not negotiated and co-constructed between the teacher and the student.  When knowledge is jointly created, students have the right to co-develop and evaluate the syllabus (Shor, 1993). Instead autonomy was restricted because students were assigned research topics and many were given strict instructions on how their research topics should be interpreted.  And yet, I started realising that if I tried, I could find small ways of engaging students in critical discourse, motivating them about the content of the curriculum and helping them master the skills to be successful within the current system.

3.     Oral feedback is just as important as written feedback, and it should be provided by the person who has marked the assignment. One problem I found was justifying another teacher’s marks to my students. Many came to me and asked why they were given a particular grade, and I noticed myself saying ‘Maybe the marker thought…’, or ‘I think the marker did this because…’. There were some rare occasions when I could not understand why students were marked down, especially for things that were not specified in the marking criteria. I understand that in mass-higher education, managers put certain systems in place to maintain standards – but at times, good intentions become an obstacle to learning. Perhaps another alternative would be to have a moderation system – where teachers grade their own students, but another teacher moderates to ensure consistency.

4.     Whatever the intentions may be, technologies like  ‘SafeAssign’ (a text-matching detection tool) and stringent ‘plagiarism’ policies too often frighten and intimidate students. My students are right out of high school – some in their second semester of university while others in their first. Throughout primary and secondary school, students mostly write guided and creative essays. The world of academic writing is something new that they encounter only at university. From conversations with students, I learnt that they were neither taught nor encouraged to paraphrase in high school. Instead, most teachers would tell students to copy or memorise ‘model’ essays and phrases for examination purposes. These conversations brought back memories of when I first started teaching. I encountered students who would blatantly copy chunks of text and not bother paraphrasing or citing sources. I initially became very frustrated and thought students were deliberately being lazy. But after talking to my students, I was told that this is how they had been taught to write. Many students, especially those who studied in Chinese vernacular schools were often asked to copy ‘good’ pieces of writing. To alter the words of another writer was deemed inappropriate – it would not be acceptable to change the words of the original writer who is perceived as being the knowledge source and expert on the subject. However, upon entering university, students are expected to unlearn the way of writing learnt in primary and secondary school. Many students find this challenging, especially because they have not been taught the necessary skills. In university, students are suddenly confronted with the big ‘plagiarism’ word and there is suddenly so much distrust. For the subject I teach, almost everything (except for mid and final exams) is SafeAssigned – questionnaires that students send out to respondents, PowerPoint presentations and even speech outlines. Most students are so petrified that they would be called in for a plagiarism hearing and be penalised and many attempt to change important keywords and generic phrases just to avoid text matching. Oddly enough, one of the reasons why I think there is a high SafeAssign text matching rate is because of the very structure of the course. Research topics are recycled year after year and student intakes are large each semester. While there is no easy solution, perhaps new topics should be introduced or students should be given the freedom to choose their own topics. I believe that giving students the option to choose their own topics will empower and enable them to develop their own ideas and voice.

It is my first time teaching this subject and maybe these struggles are just part of the difficulties that beginner teachers face. For now, I plan to turn my challenges into opportunities. Hopefully, I will continue to find ways to engage and empower students in spite of the challenges. I may not have answers and solutions to all or even most of my challenges, but I will use the perspectives and inspiration of critical pedagogy to keep striving for a more equal playing field for all involved and make teaching and learning more connected, purposeful and relevant to students’ lives.

JoannaAbout the Author

Joanna Joseph Jeyaraj currently works and lives in Sarawak, land of the hornbills. She is interested in researching critical pedagogies in English language teaching and is eager to make connections and collaborate with others who have similar interests.

References

Crookes, G. (2013). Critical ELT in action : Foundations, promises, praxis   Retrieved fromhttp://otago.eblib.com.au/patron/FullRecord.aspx?p=1157739

Freire, P. (2005). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Continuum

McArthur, J. (2010). Achieving social justice within and through higher education: The challenge for critical pedagogy. Teaching in Higher Education, 15(5), 493-504.

Shor, I. (1987). A pedagogy for liberation: Dialogues on transforming education Basingstoke, Hampshire: Macmillan.

Shor, I. (1993). Education is politics : Paulo Freire’s critical pedagogy. In P. McLaren & P. Leonard (Eds.), Paulo Freire: a critical encounter. New York: Routledge

How Class War Punk Improves My Teaching

Inspiration, pedagogy, Teaching,

By gz, USA

What moves me as an educator are contexts where participants – teachers, learners, citizens, anyone present – are engaged and care about the content. As an instructional designer, I’m engaged when the material and the content shifts from connecting with the learner, to scaffolding knowledge and engaging with the learners and where they are at, and then progressing further. As a human being, I’m engaged when people speak to me and treat me as an equal, as a peer. Finally, I am engaged as a teacher, instructional designer, and human when individuals or groups synthesize attention, learning, inspiration, and ethics in short, powerful pieces.

Conflict, an anarchist class war punk band from England, do all these in tracks across multiple albums. Unlike most punk bands (commercial or underground), Conflict does not limit themselves to breaking taboos, challenging authority, critiquing power relations, celebrating intoxication or property destruction, or promoting having fun for it’s own sake. Given punk’s history – over 40 years now – the movement and the history is far richer than a sentence or paragraph can cover. What is notable is that a majority of Conflict’s fans are or were drawn to punk out of anti-authoritarianism, interest in the “lifestyle,” overt leftist or anarchist politics, or simply a desire to participate in a scene where music and politics blended together.

When searching punk in the record bins or online, Conflict is rarely the first band you’ll find. They never get radio play. Their concerts sometimes ended with police rioting and attacking fans. To outsiders, Conflict are pretty niche: they are an early, aggressive, non-pacifist political band. This is a significant deviation from other political and anarcho-punk bands like Cr@ss and A.P.P.L.E. who were, of political punk bands, also peace punks and pacifists. Conflict was not pacifist. They encouraged confrontations with power, police, Nazis, and nationalists. As such, many of Conflict’s fans arguably have a good idea of what they want to hear: brash, aggressive music with anti-state and anti-authoritarian messages. While fans could find similar messages in some mainstream punk and almost all political and anarcho-punk band tracks, Conflict took confrontation to a whole new level. While some bands might match their aggressive stance towards police and fascists, for example Oi Polloi’s “Bash the Fash,” [lyrics: http://www.metrolyrics.com/bash-the-fash-lyrics-oi-polloi.html  video: https://youtu.be/f7mRG88KPbA ] and the first part of MDC’s “Dead Cops/America’s So Straight” [lyrics: http://www.plyrics.com/lyrics/mdc/deadcopsamericassostraight.html video: https://youtu.be/L1DbydIMZuw ], rarely do these bands move past ethos and reaffirming their standpoint, into instruction and mentoring rebellion for social justice.

Throughout their albums, Conflict performs consistently like other anarcho-punk bands, pointing out fascist and police violence, creating solidarity to resist attacks, and engaging in abbreviated forms of political education for interested listeners. These tracks lyrically trash the state, oppression, big business, and colonization. However, Conflict moves past analysis and into education in at least one song, “This is the A.L.F.” [lyrics: http://www.plyrics.com/lyrics/conflict/thisisthealf.html video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=7NZpEm_M5E8 ].

“This is the A.L.F. [Animal Liberation Front]”’s opening text explains what direct action is. Initially discussing dying children in Ethiopia and the cameraman who brought the story to the world, they summon up sympathy and imagery that some first world youth from the era of the album’s release would recognise. Conflict present a situation where a single individual, the photographer, is both moral and heroic. It’s an appealing role for idealists. After presenting this role model, Conflict ask the listener if they’re willing to do the same. While the initial example is on dying children, that pathos is then transferred to animals being tortured and the heroic role, the ethos and pathos, can be transferred from the photographer to the listener. The listener is instantly framed as potential hero, as liberator, to help free tortured animals.

For youth in a different era or different environment, these lyrics can serve to expand their understanding of oppression, violence, and corporate greed. Rather than thinking of corporate and government malice as a general malaise, references to specific abuses and atrocities help the listeners know more about the world around them. While entertaining and unifying their audience, Conflict is also educating some of them.

As an educator, we rarely have the chance to position our students as liberators, warriors for the good, or with the ability to save the lives of dying children or tortured animals. However, we can open up our lessons, either each week or day that we teach, with strong ethical and emotional appeals. Rather than relying on stolid, “Today we’re going to learn how to write a full-block business letter,” we could shift to, “You can use this if you are harassed at work to report the incident, to document workplace problems to your union, to file a complaint with your cell phone service provider, or to contact your Senator.” While filing a complaint or contacting a Telco does not seem very heroic or liberatory, by framing what we teach our students as forms for self-advocacy, conflict resolution or self-defense, we can do more than appeal to their interest. We can support their right and ability to claim autonomy, or at least a world with less harassment.

The second paragraph of Conflict’s track describes a multiplicity of physical and militant moves that can be used to destroy property of the oppressor or at least deprive them of capital. These range from gluing locks to not eating meat or wearing leather. Opening with the most aggressive moves keeps in tune with the angsty, fast, and raging guitar. Ending with personal options and choice allows those who are reticent about committing illegal, criminal acts of property destruction a way to engage with the song, with the movement, and with the feeling of supporting the Animal Liberation Front.

The third paragraph brings the direct action phase to a close and suggests a strategic approach or working in groups. It also reminds the listener of the opening appeal, that doing work in support of ALF is part of a larger agenda for human freedom, and that freedom is close.

Few things may be as exciting or terrifying as direct action or physical conflict. Fortunately, these elements are rarely present in the classroom – at least in terms of explicit violence. What we can learn from the second paragraph is that Conflict differentiates instruction for the audience and provides multiple points of entry for the audience. Not everyone needs to glue locks. People can do what they think and feel is best. After a brief exposure to the variety of tools available, the listener is reminded of the overall goal: why they are being educated. The short term stakes for most of our students rarely happen at a level comparable with animal liberation. For example, some of the direct actions Conflict describes might lead to freeing a handful or hundreds of animals (rabbits, monkeys, cats, or dogs) from ongoing tests or experiments – many of which are painful. Other direct actions, graffiti or gluing locks, might be punitive and designed to cost the corporation or agency doing the testing hundreds or thousands of dollars. Saving scores of cats from torture surely feels more heroic and intense – and comes at a far greater risk – than learning proper business letter formatting. Thus, when we plan to engage with our students and look to outside models, such as punk performances and music, we need to understand that our appeal and ability to engage our students is less strong than Conflict’s are with their self-selecting audience. However, with some work and creative thinking, we can work with our students to identify applications which will likely engage them more than our current lessons.

Paragraph four presents the challenges: being labeled a ‘crank’, a crazy person, a political or social extremist. However, these challenges are small when compared with human freedom and liberating animals from pain. While the song’s hyperbole of “black v. white or the nazis versus the jews (sic)” is quite strong, it’s there to make a point: if you do this, you will be labeled. You will have problems. But the struggle is worthwhile. Rather than hide the challenges, Conflict makes them explicit.

As educators, we can learn a lot from this by reminding our students that everything will not be easy. That others will not agree with what they do all the time, that they will not be coddled by others, and that simply being present is not a guarantee of a good life. Instead, if they choose to be educated, to pursue their work, they will, inevitably, have confrontations. When these occur, we can get lost in the names and the hurt or we can remember why we are doing this. We need to remember to help our students prepare for pain, rejection, and potential abuse. Rather than training them to be obedient, we need to help them remember why, at core, they are learning or studying or choosing their path. We can also help train our students to be purposeful and constructive, to reject the aggression, and to defend themselves. By supporting students’ ability to identify solutions that align with their ethics, we can support students’ safe and smart engagement in meaningful social and political causes.

The final paragraph delineates animal testing’s crimes, connects it to human rights, and closes by claiming the moral high ground: “Compassion and emotion are our most important safety values. If we lose them, then ‘we lose’ the vitality of life itself.” Again, Conflict situates this struggle as one of supporting the ALF, and thus supporting human dignity, versus aligning ourselves with those who torture, kill, and profit from emotional and physical torture and abuse.

Just as the opening paragraph, or opening portion of our classes, could touch on the moral and social issues at stake in our environment – either local or global – we can close our teaching, our lessons, with similar points. Rather than just thinking about teaching or educating for a simple goal or content exchange or licensure, we can work on reconnecting our students to the world around them. We could brainstorm specific situations where a person might need the tool or tools we’re working on this week. We could ask, “When might being able to write a formal letter help?” or “When could you use pathos to help increase community?”

I listen to Conflict not just because it recalls my edgy days as a punk. I listen to Conflict because, nearly 25 years later, their music and lyrics still appeal to me. Once it was their radical message and anti-authoritarian stance. Now Conflict appeals because they not only challenge authority, they show their audience how they might fight for their beliefs. I listen to Conflict because, in under three minutes, they offer an educational structure, ethos, pathos, and logos, that is more effective than 95% of the courses taught in “proper” schools.

We have a lot to learn from anarcho-punk.

 

About the Author:
GZ profile picture

gz lives in a library in Oregon's Willamette Valley surrounded by iris and orchids. He is inspired by ravens, Gysin, Fanon, Lao Tzu, and Nutella.

He blogs at http://zobelg.posthaven.com/

There’s a Place for Us

Accessibility, Diversity, Inclusivity

By Yin Wah Kreher, USA; Singapore

I was born and obtained my undergraduate education in Singapore, “the little red dot” or “the Lion City.” In late 1999, I relocated to the USA and have had much adventure navigating cross-cultural zones of change. As a Singaporean Chinese, I am often perceived as someone from the Republic of China, which is not a problem or a bad thing at all. It is when I am expected to exhibit behaviors that go along with that misperception that things get awkward and challenging. What follows are little snippets of the faux pas some people have committed in an attempt to relate to me. These illustrations highlight the fact that there is substantial work to be done in the area of education and awareness about dealing with difference.

**********************************************************

American White Male prof: “The opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics was wonderful. Those Chinese girls didn’t smile at all while performing.” (Looks at Yin to explain why.)

Yin: *scratches head* [couldn’t explain to prof]

Note: This is a faux pas that tends to happen because most people see me as Chinese, but I am a Singaporean. My grandparents migrated to Malaya (pre-independent Singapore was a part of Malaya) and then to Singapore.

********************************************************

American White Male: “You speak such good English compared to other Chinese. How is that so?”

Note: Again, this is a social blunder that happens because most people see me as a Chinese from China, but I am a Singaporean. And there is a presumption that Chinese internationals don’t speak or write good English. This is an overgeneralization. I’m always amused more than offended to see the shock on people’s faces when they read my writing or hear me speak.

********************************************************
American White Male: “So do you eat dog meat or cat meat?”

Note: This is a bad joke. The perception and assumption that I’m Chinese is associated with the idea that Chinese people eat strange stuff like monkey brains or dog meat. This is an overgeneralization.

********************************************************
International Female faculty client. I interacted with her substantially at our Center’s training sessions. I presented her my business card and offered to work with her. She subsequently chose to work with a Female White designer.

Note: This is not an indictment of the faculty decision. She has her reasons for her choices. I chose to include these next three examples because I want to highlight that sometimes, we may not be aware of our unconscious decisions. In Singapore, for instance, we were a colony of Britain and at times, the colonial mentality remains and is exhibited in some behaviors. Some Singaporeans consider Caucasians to be superior to Asians and look to them for solutions to their problems. It could work the other way too; people may be intimidated by the supposedly model minority, Asians.

********************************************************
Black Female client contacts African colleague to work with her on accessibility issues after checking out our web bios. She was redirected to me.

Note: People are comfortable with people who appear to be more like them. It’s human nature.

********************************************************
White Female client was assigned to work with me. Emailed me subsequently to say she was going to switch and work with another Female designer (who also happened to be White).

Note: Same rationale as above.

********************************************************
Invited to a large corporate firm for an interview which was then delayed for some time. At the meeting, interviewers made snide remarks about my being overqualified. I was subsequently not hired.

Note: This happened quite frequently to me and my international friends who were selected for interviews to meet diversity requirements. Unfortunately, I think this is how people play games to beat bureaucracy.

*********************************************************

Diversity. Accessibility. Inclusivity. These are buzzwords in higher education. We hear them mentioned so often, I wonder if they lose their meaning for those in privileged circumstances. To me, diversity includes supporting accessibility, that is, the ability to access information and services. More often, it relates to the design of products and services for people with disability. Our VCU Institute for Inclusive Teaching planning committee regards inclusivity as a fluid concept:

Moving towards inclusivity includes an intention of reflecting on ideas and assumptions, and becoming aware of differences in order to gain insight and transform our practices.

How is accessibility related to diversity, many might ask? Individuals with disability are often not able to participate or have access to information and services because of differences that require special accommodations. When I think of diversity and accessibility, I include the discussion of people with disability too, because to some people with disability, disability is not pathological nor an impairment. It is an identity they proudly embrace and I support their desire to be a community of their own with their specific norms and values. Society is filled with individuals and groups with different traits, norms, values and ways of communicating, and it may be maddeningly chaotic, but perplexingly charming at the same time. It is okay to be different.

Personally, I was desensitized to these popularly used terms (that is, diversity, accessibility, and inclusivity), because I grew up in a multiracial society in Singapore and race was hardly an issue. I became aware of the need to be culturally responsive when I increasingly encountered these social blunders in America, began working on my dissertation and when I first got involved with a planning committee that does work related to inclusivity (which to us encompasses diversity and accessibility).

To be a tad more precise, I believe my advocacy and work for inclusivity began when I first taught a deaf student in Singapore just before I came over to the USA. I experienced first-hand the challenges of designing lessons for her without adequate training in inclusive design. Another watershed moment for me was when I worked with a faculty member to design his first online course. He had mobility and vision challenges, the severity of which I was ignorant of until I met him in person. Little wonder he took so long to reply to my emails! He had to use a screen reader and a screen magnifier which expanded small portions of text, a chunk at a time. With mobility challenges, he could not use the mouse easily. For those of us without any disabilities, such challenges are not the first things we think of when we wonder why someone does not respond to our emails. After all, we scan web pages and skim for content without much hesitation.

During doctoral studies, I joined the Access Project team, an interdisciplinary research and community education project directed by Professors Marjorie DeVault (my dissertation advisor), Rebecca Garden and Michael Schwartz (faculty members at Syracuse University and Upstate Medical University in Syracuse, NY). Combining perspectives from law, social science, and health humanities, the Access team explored communication access in health care (DeVault, Schwartz & Garden, 2011). Drawing from Schwartz’s research on deaf people’s perspectives (Schwartz, 2006), the team engaged in research and community outreach activities meant to illuminate and address the social and organizational barriers to quality health care for deaf patients. The central goal of the project was to engage healthcare professionals with deaf perspectives on the healthcare encounter, and our discussions raised questions about the most effective approaches to designing and delivering healthcare education in this area.

In VCU, I missed the opportunity to work with the community as I had done during graduate school. I was grateful to be invited to be a part of the  Institute on Inclusive Teaching (May 18-22, 2015).

It is one work project that keeps me going, even on days when I feel irrelevant and wonder what all my 30 years of specialized training in Instructional Design is for. When I do anything, no matter how small, for the project, I feel that I’m making a difference, and I know that what I’m doing will have a ripple effect, through time. There are real problems to solve, awareness to create, educational sessions to design and facilitate. There is a reason why I’m there, in the committee. There’s a reason for all those years of education.

When I’m with the committee, I work less at making people understand the implications of diversity. I don’t have to negotiate so hard at the intersections. People in the committee have been misunderstood in some way by someone (unintentionally?), have lived experiences of these issues and thus know how important it is to be inclusive and to educate people to be inclusive. I am at home in such a diverse multicultural setting like Singapore.

“If you don’t live it, it won’t come out of your horn.” – Charlie Parker, musician.

Among my committee friends, I find myself. And in turn I can help others to find themselves and not feel lost.

The Institute focuses on issues of access and equity in education, core goals of education. We touch on issues of social justice, stereotype threats, solo status, inclusive learning design, international students’ acculturative stress and facilitate the transfer of this knowledge to instructors’ design of courses. A week is not enough time to learn everything there is about inclusivity, but we try our best to design and model a learning experience that has the potential to make participants rethink their perspectives towards making their classrooms more inclusive.

At the 2009 UNESCO World Conference on Higher Ed, the OECD Secretary-General said:

“The first priority is access and equity… the second priority area is efficiency and effectiveness [and] the third area is quality and relevance.”

– Angel Gurria, OECD Secretary-General.

Access and equity. These are two priority areas that make me get up in the morning to go to work. If I don’t find myself in a position to fight for these causes anymore, I think my work will have lost a significant bout of meaning.

By highlighting challenges of difference that many others and I face, I work at contributing to and becoming a part of the solution; at using education to create awareness. Working on the Access project with my professors, I saw that litigation could not resolve the complex challenges that deaf patients face; it could not narrow health disparities between them and other ethnic or minority groups. Addressing the top priority area of concern in education does not eliminate the need to work on other priority areas. As a learning innovation designer, efforts to innovate and transform education can also serve to improve access and equity. I look forward to a society that increasingly recognizes that difference is not a problem, but a beautiful gift that contributes to creative expression and transformative learning experiences.

 

About the Author:

Yin Wah Kreher profile picture

Yin Wah Kreher 
I am a learning innovation design specialist at Virginia Commonwealth University. A multifaceted border-crosser, I believe that breakthroughs happen at intersections! I like to look for the exquisite in writing, design, learning, arts, life; to explore cross-cultural/cross-field engagement, creativity, cognition, arts. Originally from Singapore, I've spent most of my professional life anchored in the field of learning sciences. I write about learning design, mind, culture and life as it unfolds at http://justywk.blogspot.com

Writing New Paths

EdConteXts, Teaching,

By Éllen Cintra, Brasília, Brazil

“[Lat.,=day], a daily record of events and observations. As distinguished from memoir (an account of events placed in perspective by the author long after they have occurred), the diary derives its impact from its immediacy, requiring each generation of readers to supply its own perspective....” Source: www.seadict.com/en/en/diary

“Diary” is one of those words whose dictionary definition is unable to suggest the intensity and importance of what it means in real life. As a typical adolescent, I wrote quite a lot of diaries, but never had I imagined how strong the feelings shared could be or how much impact diaries could have on people’s lives and bonds.

2013. That was one of my best years teaching Portuguese to freshmen in High School. I had officially started to work as a public school teacher in October 2011, and I was fascinated by everything. I had many plans. I was excited and anxious to be with students and arouse their interest in literature and reading and writing, and creating… And… And that was it. Sadly enough, it seemed like I was the only one in such a desperate and passionate quest for learning. Continue reading Writing New Paths →

Jack of All Trades, Master of None

Contexts Matter, EdConteXts,

By Toni Rose Piñero , Manila, Philippines

I refer to myself as an educator and I have a Professional Teaching license, but I have never really taught inside a classroom. I have been a teaching assistant, a research assistant, an education consultant, a tutor and a director of a tutorial center. But I have never had a class I could call my “own”. I’ve never ventured into classroom teaching because I would always ask myself, what would I teach? I did not major in English, Math, Science or History but I knew I wanted to be in the context of the academic setting. It doesn’t necessarily have to do with being inside the classroom or being in contact with students. I just have that keen interest in education and the learning process. I have participated in the training of our country’s School Superintendents for the transition to K-12. Although I was just one of those organizers helping to facilitate the training, I really embraced the experience and the learning that the speakers shared. I learned why we were shifting to the K-12 system, the number of countries who still remain in the K-10 curriculum, how our schools would adapt to the new curriculum, and many more things related to the shift. There are so many implications caused by this shift. For example by 2016, we will have very few high school graduates because most of our 4th year high school students (i.e. 10th graders) will transition to 11th grade instead of entering college (in the old K-10 curriculum,  students would enter university/college education straight after 10th grade). Continue reading Jack of All Trades, Master of None →

Reflections on context

Contexts Matter, EdConteXts, Teaching

By Clarissa Bezerra, Brasília, Brazil

EdConteXts facilitator Clarissa Bezerra shares insights on the challenges of teaching English to Brazilian teenagers as she reflects on pedagogy, culture and schooling in her context.

I teach English as a foreign language to Brazilian upper-middle/middle class teenagers aged 14 to 17. All of them are at that stage of their educational trajectories where they are being primed for academic life in university. A vast majority of them go to renowned private high schools whose core goal rests in getting their students into the best universities and colleges in the country. That means that these kids are being prepared for competition, especially those who are aiming at prestigious careers, such as Medicine or Law, to name a few.

Pedagogically speaking, these kids’ regular schools are pretty conservative. Students are grouped in large numbers (30 to 40 students) and classes are delivered lecture-style, with the teacher being the expert in charge of passing on the knowledge necessary for these kids to make it to the next big thing in their lives – college and the prospect of a promising professional life, which will provide the means for ensuring a comfortable life, much like the one they already have with their parents. Another contextual aspect particular to our city (Brasília, the capital city of Brazil) is that a career in public service is also among many of these kids professional future prospects. Being able to pass a public examination for a prestigious career in Congress, for example, means high salaries and life-long professional stability. On top of that, many of these kids’ parents are civil servants themselves, naturally being role models for their kids. Continue reading Reflections on context →

Writing to order.

Contexts Matter, EdConteXts, pedagogy,

By Simon Ensor, Clermont Ferrand France

Why should writing to order having anything to do with feelings?

We shall see.

What image shall I use to illustrate how I feel here?

How will that image change how I feel?

We shall see.

This one. I chose this one at this moment and inserted it here.
Simon_window

That was a surprise. (so now I am surprised)
Was it a surprise for you? Probably not. Continue reading Writing to order. →

Connecting on Whose Terms? Extending @pernilleripp Downsides of Being a Connected Educator

EdConteXts, MOOCs, pedagogy, Twitter, , ,

By Maha Bali, Cairo, Egypt

Becoming a connected educator is probably the best thing, career-wise, that has ever happened to me. I now have a support network of other educators, where I can draw inspiration, brainstorm solutions, share problems and victories, conduct research, carry out cross-cultural classroom collaborations, get emotional support and have loads of fun. It’s an incredible approach to professional development that is messy and yet helps me learn something new and important every single day; sometimes even every tweet or blogpost, such that I learn something new every minute I am online! (Maureen Crawford recently shared a great website on the value of Personal Learning Networks (PLNs) and how to develop them)

It’s Connected Educator Month (we need a month for this daily lifestyle?) and I thought I would write this post as a response to Pernille Ripp’s post The Downsides to Being a Connected Educator. I thought it might be appropriate to write about the perspective of a connected educator from Egypt and how the downsides differ slightly, because when I connect with other educators online, I am mostly connecting with educators from the global North, on their terms. In their language (English), on their timezone (unless they are in Europe, which is my timezone), discussing what is largely their context. The downsides from my perspective look different. Continue reading Connecting on Whose Terms? Extending @pernilleripp Downsides of Being a Connected Educator →

F5F for September

Contexts Matter

by EdContexts Facilitators

Our “#f5f” (“Find 5 Friday”) “picks” for September (thought-provoking or inspiring posts we’ve come across during the month that we ‘like’) ended up with a teaching and pedagogy focus - possibly due to the influence of the ‘Connected Courses’ MOOC (#ccourses), which some of us at EdConteXts are participating in.

Apostolos K. (“AK”) @koutropoulos (instructional designer, educator)
‘Critical Pedagogy: Intentions and Realities (Online Edition)’
In his post, AK uses a ‘Hybrid Ped’ article written by EdConteXts facilitator Maha Bali to reflect on his own teaching practices. Mirroring Maha’s article, AK takes the three intentions of critical pedagogy outlined by Maha and writes about how he sees each of them play out in the online class he teaches. The importance of considering context in teaching comes through: in valuing the diversity (in experience, background, age, culture) of all learners in the class, and by adapting standard assignments to provide an outlet for learners to express their culture and experience in the work they submit.

Helen Blunden @ActivateLearn (learning consultant)
‘Part 1 of a social onboarding – a case study…’
Helen Blunden outlines (part 1 of) a comprehensive case demonstrating how an effective learning needs analysis is undertaken in a corporate environment. It requires gaining a thorough understanding of the learner’s context, needs, and learning / work environment; the (business) purpose for the program, engaging the right people – often through sheer resourcefulness and determination, and identifying how to best use existing tools and technologies to achieve learning and business outcomes. In this context, designing an effective learning experience is all about making it directly relevant and bringing as much of it into the learner’s work context as possible. Continue reading F5F for September →

Alligators and crocodiles

Contexts Matter, Teaching

By Sherif Osman, Cairo, Egypt

Reflecting on my teaching is a valuable skill I learned and developed during my teacher training, but I often find myself reflecting on my learning as a student and why I behaved in a certain way. I remember the time I was relocating from Kuwait to Egypt during the first Gulf war and moving from a British school to an Egyptian ‘international’ school and some of those early classroom experiences that still live with me ‘til today.

I vividly remember the first day of class. I must have been around 6 years old. The teacher put up a picture and asked if we knew what we saw in the picture. After she paused for all but 4 seconds, she proceeded to inform us that: “This children, is a crocodile, we have them here in the Nile”. I remember my hand shooting upwards in enthusiasm and when given permission to speak I said “No miss! This is an alligator”. The teacher chuckled and said “They are the same thing, however, the alligator is a baby crocodile”. I immediately responded “No Miss, this can’t be. Crocodiles live in sea water but alligators prefer fresh water”.*  I can still remember the look on the teacher’s face – a mixture of confusion, shock and anger. Her response to me was to send me to see the principal. Continue reading Alligators and crocodiles →