Culturally relevant pedagogy.

In her address at the University of Colorado "The Best Should Teach Awards, 2012", Gloria Ladson Billings notes that knowing more about the culture of your students makes one better able to reach them and to help them to learn.  I think that most teachers already know this, although they may not term what they do as culturally relevant pedagogy. We are taught during our B.Ed. to "know your students" and while often this means know what they know, understand their learning needs, and be sensitive to their behavioural or emotional needs - a good teacher will instinctively take the time to understand the demographic of his school, the socio-political factors facing families, and the economics of the catchment area (I'm talking about K-12 more than adult education where students may emanate from a wider net than is possible to generalize), it almost goes without saying that he will also be sensitive to, and may educate himself on the cultural issues of his students.

In the 2013 Tisdell et al article that reported findings related to teaching beliefs and pedagogical practices of educators of FL, it is made abundantly clear that the role of the FL teacher is more than the commonly stated goal of "helping learners understand financial information" (Tisdell, 2012 p. 343). In this article, the authors look at FLE in underserved population groups in community-based settings. It was found that imparting financial knowledge does not lead to behaviour change. The learners' attitudes towards money are affected by social context, and behaviour with money only changes with examination of attitudes. Indeed, "dollars are not the legacy. The attitudes are the legacy." The educators who participated in interviews allowed culture to inform their teaching. The culturally responsive approach taken by these educators involved adapting the curriculum and the pedagogy to align with their students' culture. "It is impossible to change people's financial behaviour without considering the beliefs that inform the behaviour" (Tisdell, 2012 p. 351). The authors also state the importance of drawing on students' prior knowledge, of engaging them in the telling of personal stories, and involving them in small and large group activities - all of which contribute to the building of collaborative learning communities where students trust one another, take risks, and learn from each other. Clearly, a parallel can be drawn here to the K-12 classroom.

More challenging I believe is the situation of the adult educator who teaches online. Not only does he need to address the learning needs, the personal needs, and the cultural needs of the learner, but he must also be capable of aligning his pedagogy to the type of learning that is expected by the new generation of students. And culture in this case is more than that which is encompassed by family background or community or locality - but the culture of the digital native. No longer do young adults accept learning by rote, they balk at the notion of Googling information to spew forth in a traditional essay. Today's learners (adults and children) are not only consumers. They are producers and contributors to the digital world around them. They want to mash up, remix, sample, and re-image. Their ability to create is vast and the affordances of digital technologies lend themselves to this so seamlessly. The trouble is that this explosion in digital technologies and digital literacies has taken place at such a rapid pace that the teaching profession is having a very hard time keeping up. Many teachers are uncomfortable with the new technologies, those who have a comfort level with them may have concerns about how to use them effectively - in other words, how to implement a new technology in a transformational manner rather than simply replacing an old technology with a new technology. In addition, there are the concerns surrounding copyright - if you allow your students to complete an assignment which involves remixing other people's intellectual property - and if those people take issue with what your student has done - who is liable? The student? The teacher? The institution? Before the vast expansion of digital technologies, our conception of writing meant text via alphabetization, print on a page, black and white. Today, writing usually involves digital technologies and encompasses images, or sound, or video, as well as traditional text, and often all of these modes at the same time, remixed to express something new - and adding to our culture. The problem with this, legally speaking, is that pre-digital age copyright laws remain in effect. In an  educational institution, one can only imagine how emphatic would be the desire of bureaucrats, dean  principals and teachers to steer clear of legal entanglements and how fearful they might be that students would put them in delicate situations should remixing projects become widely accepted practice in schools. The fact of the matter is however that most of our children, teens, and young adults are already criminals according to copyright law. What teenager does not habitually download "free" music from YouTube, or have an enviable library of torrent downloaded movies from sites such as PirateBay? 

(Lessig, 2008)

Criminalizing those (mostly young people) who embrace our "read-write" digital culture (Lessig, 2008), is utterly pointless as well as potentially culturally crippling. However, until the law makers develop a way out of it, I have to assume that school boards will continue to be wary of allowing students to "plagiarize" even while these same students develop healthy online followings as creative digital remixers outside of school. That's kind of messed up - as my sons would say.

The big issue here is the chasm between the law makers/owners of copyright and the right of the people to engage in cultural practices that include the remix and mash up of existing works to produce new ones. It's not like this is a new concept, it's just that never before has it been so easy, so rampant, and so disconcerting to the holders of the "original" works. In the entire history of art, literature, drama, and even dance, it is understood that re-inventing, or appropriating, rewriting, retelling, adapting - whatever you want to label it - has, and always will be how culture is fashioned and how it is rewritten to echo the realities of the current population. Only now is it criminal to do so... Take Romeo and Juliet for example, here's what I gleaned from www.historicalfiction.com:

1440's  Masuccio Salernitano's poem Mariotto and Ganozza

1531    Luigi da Porto, Newly Found Story of Two Noble Lovers

1554    Matteo Bandello, Romeo e Giulietta

1562    Arthur Brooke, The Tragic History of Romeus and Juliet

1582    William Painter, Palace of Pleasure

1590    Lope de Vega, (Spanish version)

1590's  Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

Restoration, William Davenant, wrote a revision of his uncle's (Shakespeare) play

1679    Thomas Otway, The History and Fall of Caius Marius

1744    Theophilus Cibber, revision

IMDB indexes over 34 films based on the story. These include West Side Story (don't forget that was on Broadway too), and my personal favourite, Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet.

2010    Robin Maxwell's novel O Juliet

...but today we can't adapt, remix, retell, appropriate using digital technologies because the world has gone crazy...

evolving adult educational practices

I've also been enjoying the picture that has begun to reveal itself in my mind's eye of what adult learning could look like. In attempting to put it into words, I came across a quote from Sharan Merriam:

"After some 80 years of study, we have no single answer, no one theory or model of adult learning. What we have instead is a colourful mosaic of theories, models, sets of principles, and explanations that combined create the knowledge base of adult learning" (Merriam, 2004).

When I first read this, it meant nothing to me. However, with a head full of andragogy, transformative learning theory, reflective practice, SDL, SRL and PBL, as well as ideas of non formal and incidental learning; I now have a significantly greater appreciation for what she was stating. I do wonder whether we need one theory or model for adult learning. Why should we? There isn't a single solitary, globally accepted theory for pedagogy. Surely the more we question, the more we hypothesize and test, the more we try stuff out, and the more we discover and add to our understanding of how people learn; the richer the knowledge base from which to draw. Why subscribe to a single philosophy? What's wrong with a little pot pourri?

To add to this argument - something that you said Laura, has stuck with me... These theories have evolved around a need to compartmentalize and name what has already existed for hundreds of years. Yes, our society is ever evolving and new technologies (I don't just mean digital) are developed that alter the way that we teach and learn; however, people have been learning since people arrived on planet Earth! We just seem to be compelled to label everything and sometimes (sorry!) I feel just a tad exasperated by this! Does it serve a purpose? Maybe. Sure; where there are issues of gross inequality for example; but sometimes I think we should just let the learning happen naturally.

I'm clearly no expert, but the other point I wanted to make is that the study of education is surely muddied by the very unpredictability of human behaviour. It is not pure science. On that same point, but approaching from the opposite end, the individual learner comes with his or her own travelling trunk burgeoning with issues of culture, sociology, perhaps gender bias, learning expectations, perceptions of self-efficacy, individual goals, questions surrounding power and who holds it, and needs. In other words - each student is different and will experience more or less success according to a) her background, b) the teaching theory(ies) / strategies / philosophies employed, c) motivation, d) ability beliefs.

A head full of acronyms.

This week we appear to be filling our heads with acronyms - PBL, SDL, SRL and all the models, factors for success, theories, and positions that go along with them. It is challenging to absorb so much new information week after week and still remember what I've read well enough to refer back to it or to use it to synthesize new content... Nonetheless, I'll try!

I found all the articles on this week's list incredibly interesting (if slow reading - sometimes the same paragraph three or four times until it sunk in) and yet I find myself with more questions than answers...

- Aha, a problem. Could this be a deliberate circumstance? Is this part of the plan for this course in  Adult Education I wonder? Are we in fact following a loosely constructed problem based learning model while at the same time becoming self-directed learners as a result of participating in this course? I'm thinking that the answer might just be a "yes". Particularly after having read the Loyens & Rikers and the Silén & Uhlin articles. While we do not actually begin with a problem (we begin with readings); I suspect that one purpose of blogging is to provide a platform for questioning, thinking, and expanding our suppositions.  As per Loyens, we begin with limited prior knowledge, any discussion we have, either self-reflectively, with you Laura, or in the class discussions, leads us to formulate issues for further self-directed learning. In my case, I chose to look further into theories of motivation by reading articles by Garrison, Whitfield & Eccles, as well as Deci for further illumination (again, I have more questions than answers!) Therefore, if blogging serves as a spring board for SDL, the readings themselves provide much needed background information. During the online component, we are stimulated to inquire further into our learning and we engage in group work which "is a means of inquiring into the situation". One aspect of synchronous learning that I believe poses a significant challenge to the success of a PBL model is that of developing fully functional, collaborative groups. "In a group that functions well, each individual student can use the group to develop her/his own learning process as well as contributing to the common goals of the tutorial" (Silén, 2008, p. 469). In synchronous learning, students do not (I believe) have the opportunity to form meaningful working relationships that build the type of trust that I think would be required for an open exchange of "ideas, beliefs, and experiences concerning the [learning] situation"(Silén, 2008, p. 465).

I have not delved deeper into the impact of online learning to PBL models of teaching, however I suspect that I might be at least a little bit right... One reason for this belief is that it is during small group work (tutorials) that the students begin to take control over their learning process. As well, according to Silén, it is during these times that the tutor must observe and challenge the students' thinking and, above all, avoid superficial brainstorming behaviours that do not lend themselves to deeper inquiry. I cannot begin to imagine how difficult that would be for any professor, facilitator, or tutor in an online learning environment. Laura I admire you!

Fun intermission drive in footage from the '50s.
Irrelevant but more interesting than my blog!

Another online difficulty that I suspect with SDL or PBL models of learning is that of control and politics. The Brookfield article actually left me wondering why anyone would even bother to try to adhere to SDL at all. I understand and celebrate Gelpi's view that "self-directed learning by individuals and of groups is a danger for every repressive force, and it is upon this self-direction that we must insist .... radical change in social, moral, aesthetic and political affairs is often the outcome of a process of self-directed learning in opposition to the educational message imposed from without. (Gelpi in Brookfield, 1993, p. 229). However realizing SD teaching methods seems practically impossible, or at least fraught with roadblocks and tempting or invisible wrong turns. Why? Because on the one side you have the educator for whom is it "quite possible to advocate self-directed approaches in good conscience, only to discover later that our efforts have served to bolster the oppressive structures that we thought we were opposing. It is possible, too, to have a good heart, boundless energy, and a deep well of compassion, but to lack political clarity." (Brookfield, 1993, p. 229). Or consider "from a critical perspective, the co-opting of the early free spirit of self-direction into a masked form of repressive practice can be seen as yet one more example of the infinite flexibility of hegemony, of the workings of a coldly efficient repressive tolerance" (Brookfield, 1993, p. 228). So it would seem that from the point of view of the teacher or the institution, try as one might to give control to the learner, to be free from bias, to respect the learner's dignity and experiences, and to break from authoritarian forms of education, it is not a simple task at all. We naturally fall into the comfortable slots carved out for us by whatever culture we inhabit, often unaware of that "coldly efficient repressive tolerance". Scary.

Now the point of view of the learner. For a learner to be genuinely self-directed, she must be in control of her access to resources, to all educational decisions, to everything that relates in any way to her educational goal. This doesn't sound terribly difficult. However, I think it is! Brookfield points out that it is not so easy to exercise authentic control in a culture which is itself highly controlling. If the educator sets out course readings then we are controlled. We are not clean slates, free from cultural influences, neither are we autonomous or innocent. "The most critically sophisticated and reflective adults cannot escape their own biographies"(Brookfield, 1993, p. 236). The author offers many more examples but the key issue is this: "A fully developed self-directed learning project would have at its centre an alertness to the possibility of hegemony." (Brookfield, 1993, p. 234). This to me reeks of paranoia.

Nonetheless, it would appear that galloping to the rescue comes the practice of reflection! This makes sense of course since reflection provides the opportunity for the learner to critically review who she is and how her biases may cause "knee-jerk" reactions. Reflecting then, may lead to better, more balanced choices.

What I appreciated most about this article was the way that Brookfield clarified for me Bullock's statement regarding collective action. He said that "many SDL theorists suggest that SDL experiences should include some sort of reflection by learners on the socio-political structures in which their learning occurs and the SD experiences should lead to collective action." This left me needing more. On the surface I found the statement ridiculous. After all, how would self-directedness lead to collectiveness? Brookfield discusses the difference between learning for short-term personal gain and for long-term structural change. In other words, when exploring options for and making choices in a learning project, the students might choose to use her power differently. Rather than focusing on her own success, what if she looks at the bigger picture. In doing so, she may well discover that her problem is a large-scale problem shared by a collective. "In focusing our self-directed learning efforts on our own long term best inerests, we would realize that these lay in collective action." Brookfield, 2008, p. 235).