Pedagogy asfor human development and social transformation

1
Pedagogy as/for human development and social
transformation

• There is no way to transformation
  transformation is the way. (Paolo Freire)

2

• There is one one right way to teach human
  development, no prescription about what works
  for every student in all contexts.

3
Integrating content (curriculum) and form
(pedagogy)

• Why do we need to integrate what we teach with
  the way we teach it?
• If we value human development and ideas from
  human development (dignity, agency, well being,
  equalities, freedom, valuable beings and doings)
  ought we to foster these in our own pedagogies?
• How do we /are we doing this?
• Is a human development pedagogy also a pedagogy
  of capabilities and rights?

4
What is pedagogy?

• In some European languages other than English,
  pedagogy is paired up with didactics to describe
  the role of the teacher. Neither word has a
  direct English translation. Didactics is roughly
  synonymous with instructional techniques or
  methods, but is also used to refer to the
  teachers command of the subject matter
  knowledge, ability to interpret student
  responses, and other personal competencies. In
  complement, pedagogy, is more a reference to the
  teachers interpersonal competencies, and is thus
  used to refer to the moral and ethical as
  opposed to the technical aspects of the
  teachers work with learners. It is this sense
  of responsibility to learners that prompted many
  critical education theorists to adopt the noun
  pedagogy(Davis 2004143-144)
• Pedagogy refers to an ethical relationship
  between teacher and student grounded in teaching
  a particular curriculum.

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But

• However, teachers and learners import
  biographies, hierarchies, inequalities, and power
  dynamics into classrooms. Inclusive and
  empowering dialogue and critical and ethical
  conversations therefore seldom just happen.
• How do I/we teach in ways which foster the
  ethical and democratic political imagination of
  our students so that they are able to see the
  world from other points of view, understand
  themselves in relation to society, and grasp
  their own agency in relation to knowledge and
  action in the world?

6
Freire, reading the word and reading the world

• teaching and learning are political processes
• key to Freires pedagogy is the idea of becoming
  more fully human. We are beings of praxis and
  hence capable of transforming the world. (Does
  this link his pedagogical philosophy to human
  development practice?)
• We humanise ourselves when we engage in critical,
  dialogical praxis. We dehumanise ourselves and
  others when we actively prevent this. Knowledge
  and knowing is never complete and both arise from
  dialogue, human practice and engagement with the
  messy realities of life (and human development).

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Praxis

• For apart from inquiry, part from praxis,
  individuals cannot be truly human. Knowledge
  emerges only through invention and reinvention,
  through the restless, impatient, continuing,
  hopeful inquiry human beings pursue in the world,
  with the world, and with each other (Freire,
  1998, p.68).

8
Education as the practice of freedom

• banking education is oppressive and involves
  transmitting or pouring ideas into blank and
  docile containers who then reproduce these ideas
  uncritically. Criticism and questioning are
  suppressed and alternative ways of understanding
  the world are not encouraged. Learners are
  passive spectators rather than agents in their
  own learning.
• problem-posing education involves learners as
  agents in dialogical and critical approach to
  education. It builds on and from the experiences
  of learners (but not uncritically) and welcomes
  questions, debate and discussion. A critical
  mode of being is the key pedagogical purpose and
  practice. Students learn to ask questions, not
  just to answer them. Education is something
  students do, rather than something that is done
  to them.

9

• Freirean pedagogy has three key features
• learners are active participants and
  co-constructors of knowledge
• learning should be meaningful/purposeful to the
  learners
• learning should have a critical focus.

10
Dialogue and voice

• Dialogue is absolutely key a culture of
  silence excludes and oppresses speech/voice
  and freedom are intimately connected.
  Emancipation becomes the process of finding ones
  own voice and this can occur only in conditions
  of justice and equality (even if such justice and
  equality is only in the classroom). It also
  involves coming to understand what informs other
  voices and knowing whose voice is speaking.

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Critical pedagogies

• Attention to history, power relations,
  domination, and participation in educational
  settings.
• Conditions in society, such as forms of
  inequality, penetrate education how barriers are
  shaped by social, economic and political
  obstacles to social justice and democracy
• Critique of formal education as a site of
  reproduction of capitalism and capitalist values
  , but also of resistance and change
• Challenges us to recognize, engage and critique
  (so as to transform) any existing undemocratic
  social practices and institutional structures
  that produce and sustain inequalities and
  oppressive social identities and relations
  (Leistnya et al, 1996 2).
• Dynamic, struggle formation of self-identity
  who we are and who we learn to be.

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Equalising capabilities and rights

• Does this approach connect education to the world
  beyond the classroom and the institution?
• Would this be a way to do social justice as we
  learn about social justice?

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Sen, education, process freedom

• Education has instrumental and intrinsic value,
  and transformative potential. Education is of
  intrinsic importance - being educated is a
  valuable achievement in itself. Having education
  affects the development and expansion of other
  capabilities so that an education capability
  expands human freedoms.
• Process freedom Freedom is valuable for at
  least two distinct reasons. First more freedom
  gives us more opportunity to achieve those things
  that we value, and have reason to value. This
  aspect of freedom is concerned primarily with our
  ability to achieve, rather than the process
  through which that achievement comes about.
  Second, the process through which things happen
  may also be of importance in assessing freedom
  (2002).
• Reasoned public discussion is central to
  democracy and we should seek opportunities for
  such discussion which includes all the members of
  a particular educational community

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and rights

• A pronouncement of rights includes an assertion
  of the importance of the corresponding freedoms -
  the freedoms that are identified and privileged
  in the formulation of the rights in question
  and is indeed motivated by that importance If we
  can agree on the importance of pedagogic/human
  rights we commit ourselves to giving reasonable
  consideration to the duties that follow from that
  ethical endorsement.(2004)

15
Nussbaum, education and capabilities

• Three central capabilities for education
• critical self-examination, (a critical
  perspective on our beliefs, traditions and
  habits, reasoning logically and testing ideas for
  consistency, correctness and accuracy of
  judgement as a democratic citizen)
• the ideal of the world citizen (bound to all
  other human beings by ties of recognition and
  concern in a global world)
• the development of the narrative imagination/
  imaginative understanding/training the
  imagination to go visiting (what it might be
  like to be in the place of a person different
  from oneself, to read such peoples stories
  intelligently, and to understand the emotions and
  desires that someone so placed might have)

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A pedagogy of capability

• What would a pedagogy of and for capability look
  like? What would students be doing, learning and
  becoming? What would we be doing? How would we
  know if students were developing their agency
  and their capabilities? What would be good
  practice and why?

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• Hannah Arendt argues that education is the
  point at which we decide whether we love the
  world enough to assume responsibility for it and
  by the same token save it from that ruin which,
  except for renewal, except for the coming of the
  new and the young, would be inevitable. She
  argues that teachers should not strike from
  their studentshands their chance of undertaking
  something new, something foreseen by no-one, but
  to prepare them in advance for the task of
  renewing the common world.the problem is simply
  to educate in such a way that a setting-right of
  the world remains actually possible, even though
  it can, of course never be assured.

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Workshop tasks Not just how but also why

• 1. Discuss the three approaches of a
  question-based approach, case study methods and
  ethnographic methods. Are these examples of good
  practice?
• 2. Develop a practical pedagogical approach for
  some aspect of a human development curriculum
  discussed yesterday and today/ or take a
  pedagogical problem eg how to teach a diverse
  student group. Decide who the learners are, and
  come up with one or more practical ideas for
  teaching and assessing students learning and
  capability development. In discussing your
  approaches and methods say how these constitute
  good practice in relation to your educational
  purposes and values, and how they articulate with
  human development concerns for human dignity,
  agency, well being and freedom.

19
A pedagogy of the question

• Questions scaffold learning knowledge as
  constructed and co-constructed, and revisable
• Questions that precede/guide reading
• Questions that follow reading
• Questions that organise a course/programme
• Questions that focus a teaching session are
  posed through the sessiondevils advocate-type
  questions
• Questions that structure group discussions
• Questions that students generate in class as
  discussion/group work outcomes
• Listening, silences, dialogue, informed and
  critical argument

20
Questions

• Which of these two policy measures better capture
  what is more important/effective for enhancing
  freedom?
• Have peoples freedoms expanded?
• What is missing in measures of womens
  empowerment? And missing in our own context?
• How do power structures impact on HD process,
  analysis and policies?
• How free are people to migrate? How free are they
  to remain at home?
• People who live in gated communities, or stay
  home rather than going out to the beach to avoid
  being robbed, are they making valued choices?