Tag Archives: Education

Reflections on Barrett and Jansen – studying theory or practice?

The papers by Barrett and Jansen came from different directions with a huge gulf in their sense of pragmatism.

Barrett is research for its own sake. Introspective, indulgent, semantic – indeed anything but practical. When one eventually gleans some meaning out of the flowery language, there is some sense in the analysis of personality type among teachers and how it governs their teaching behaviour – but it doesn’t take us anywhere. There is a broad conclusion that, for progress to be likely, it has to build on teachers’ experience and their sense of their role but I think we might have guessed that!

Jansen by comparison is ruthlessly practical. He demolishes the development education target setting process from conceptual, methodological and organisational points of view and concludes that the process is more to do with meeting the political needs of donor and donee than any expectation of targets being met. The only disappointment is that he does not offer advice on a better path, only concludes that target setting does drive some beneficial action.

My own preference would be to talk about reference data rather than targets and about “straw-men”* rather than firm propositions. Individual situations can then be mapped against the reference and a framework for action devised that can replace all or part of the straw-man. That would achieve the same progress in a more meaningful process with more likelihood of local buy-in.

* A “straw-man” proposal is US parlance for a model proposal that is intentionally simplistic and designed to be changed and improved but triggers focused discussion more effectively than a blank sheet of paper.

Commentary on Bartlett

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Lesley Bartlett (2007) The comparative ethnography of educational projects: youth and adult literacy programmes in Brazil, Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education, 37:2, 151-166, DOI: 10.1080/03057920601165421

Having lived and worked in Brazil this article interested me in how closely the findings mapped onto my own experience. I had previously learned languages at school over long periods using traditional “autonomous” methods. I started learning Portuguese in this way but rapidly found that I could not understand or communicate with only this base. To enable communication in the real world required idioms and conversational speech in relevant contexts. I realised I had to make an initial choice – to be accurate or to be fluent. Because I had little requirement for formal written output, I (implicitly) chose fluency, to be able to be understood and to influence people.

This created interesting reactions. My well educated staff would frequently correct my grammar. After I had talked to staff as a group people would confide “we knew what you meant”! However, people in the local community could understand me reasonably well and taught me lots of idioms which certainly would not reach the textbooks! This highlights the significant contrast between language as a badge of education and status and language as a means to communicate – very much Bartlett’s point.

Interestingly however, the traditional method is the one which has persisted better. I still remember more French vocabulary and grammar than I do Portuguese – which may say more about the structured way in which my particular brain works than anything to do with the better way to teach and learn language.

Film clips

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Reactions to film clips

Finance
Dilemmas: Poor students vs. needs of teachers to be paid
Hidden Actors: Government, inadequate teacher base salaries. Policy of requiring part-payment for secondary education.
Resonance: Similar conflict with special education funding in UK

Displaced
Dilemmas: Repressed, destabilised students, uncertain class sizes/funding, no parental support
Hidden Actors: Government, refugee policies and support, designation/funding of displacement destinations
Resonance: Closure of deaf school in UK, loss of specialist provision

English medium
Dilemmas: Perpetuation of hierarchy via English fluency, double learning load of language and subject
Hidden Actors: Government, policy re language, authors of education materials only in English
Resonance: Problem of trying to work abroad between English and local language.

Caste
Dilemmas: Perpetuation of hierarchy via caste, limited solution of quotas cf. full solution of more equal quality in schools
Hidden Actors: Government, policy re caste, residual social attitudes
Resonance: Failure to get into Oxbridge

Commentary on Chambers and Freire

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Chambers, R. (1997) ‘Normal teaching’ and ‘Normal (successful) careers’, Whose Reality Counts? Putting the First Last, London, Intermediate Technology Publications, pp. 59–63.

Freire, P. (1998) Pedagogy of Hope. Reliving Pedagogy of the Oppressed, New York, Continuum. pp. 18–27.

Both pieces came from a similar point of view, though in different styles. The idea that education, in its style and hierarchies, tends to produce a reproduction of society, such that education becomes an imposition of old, elitist values on the young, needy or impressionable.

This fits well with some of the views of development read earlier, the concern that development becomes a colonial, normalising exercise of cultural and societal hegemony.

What is worse is that development education risks being a dialogue of the deaf. The messages provided are not contextually relevant so are not heard or the process of transmission does not accept the reality of an education culture which requires a “spoon feeding” approach, at least at first, because of lack of experience of anything else. Africa generally has little experience of constructivism and challenge in many cultures is seen as insubordinate.

It comes back to the same themes of taking note of cultural and practical demand, not just an imposition of supply however well intentioned.