Subject: Re: reply to Ania Lian
From: Ania Lian (ania@lingua.arts.uq.edu.au)
Date: Wed 08 Dec 1999 - 01:54:50 MET
Date: Wed, 8 Dec 1999 10:54:50 +1000 (EST) From: Ania Lian <ania@lingua.arts.uq.edu.au> Subject: Re: reply to Ania Lian
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On Tue, 7 Dec 1999, Allan Bordow wrote:
> I agree with your pedagogy in the main obviously as long as students
> have some sense of what the course is vaguely about and as to how they
> will be assessed/graded there. My question--what do you do when either
> or both of these considerations are minimally given or you yourself
> are unclear as to what the new students expect from the course?
First of all, I would like to pose the meaning of the goal of the
specific course as a semiotic problem. As teachers, we may always think
that we know what the goal is. However, when asked 'what does it mean?',
we find ourselves in all sorts of troubles to explain exactly wha is it
that *we* mean or what is it that it seems to mean. In second language
(L2) education, we wantthem to speak an L2, but what does it mean? One can
say, it means to use it communicatively, but what does that mean? And the
circle of questions regarding the meaning never ends.
Another difficulty is that even if we could explain what it all means, we
know that our understanding of the goal does not necesary mean that all
our 35 lovely angels will understand the goal the same way. In fact, the
theory of meaning will tell us that we have no chance of making them see
exactly what we see.
The solution I propose is to engage learners in the process of exploring
the meaning of the goal. The meaning thus comes from the problems that the
task of exploration poses. And yes, in the begining nobody is clear about
what the course is about. I would go further and say that, at least in my
field, nobody is clear about what is it that educators are suposed to do.
My experience tells me that the same may be the case everywhere. In fact I
would suggest that the definition of the goals of the discipline (and, in
my case, of the pedagogic question) is the hardest task. What is it that
we try to do and why? Once we have this is place, we can go on and ask
the question 'how?'
Thus the process of learning needs to be turned into a "dialectical game
of research" (Lyotard, Postmodern condition: 24) where the novice is an
expert and where experts are novices: doing a course is engaging in the
game of equals.
This really hits again the currently fashionable model of an expert
guiding the novice. What I suggest is for students to look for the meaning
of the goals that they see fit the course through a continuous process of
reassessment of things that the various understandings developed let them
do. For example, you may think that language learning is about learning to
ask for a bus ticket. You may be right, but you will be able to reassess
how right you are in contexts where you will have to rely on your own
understandings as to how to do things or how things hang together.
Thus in my course there are no experts, just ways of doing things. The
critical aspect of learning is in the design of the course. It is not an
add on. Learners cannot tell what they did and how they see that things
should be done without assessing the value of how things are being done.
Questions regarding legitimation of own actions (in theoretical courses)
or assessment of learners' ability to manage complex sets of communicative
demands (in practical courses) are standard assessment procedures which I
employ. My exam question is no secret. As I once said, the sole secret is
with the learner and regards the ways in which they appoach the answer:-)
The methodology that I propose attacks the presumed uniformity of
the professional fields, and their supposed separation from other
fields (or contexts) of knowledge.
While no exploration can be uninformed (exploration is about finding out
how things stand), one thing I always aim to achieve is: to avoid the
situation, where, in the world where quoting is the prove of knowledge,
our students end up heavily over-read but at the same time heavily
underthought. Thus if we want critical learners, we cannot reduce our
teaching to realisation of objectives which are established prior to the
course and externally to the experiences which our learners encounter. It
is this task of allowing learners to formulate the objectives against the
contexs which call upon their understandings that can allow them to push
the borders of current modes of thinking and bring in experiences which
can enrich the field(s).
(I do avoid the words like activities or tasks because of the narrow
meaning which is usually attached to them.)
Things change only if our educational models legitimise a need for change.
If, however, legitimation of learners' thought is derived solely from the
old rules, explorative attempts of our learners will also be reduced to an
exploration of these old rules (or the hidden course agenda, if you like).
As you would agree, in such models, there is little room for impulsive,
critical, emotional, rational, enthusiastic, brave, motivated, and
curiousity driven need for understanding the world, changing it or
contributing in one form or another.
Regarding assessment, thus, what matters is not what they know but how
they can mobilise their expertise in contexts which call upon it. This may
involve an ability to argue your point or an ability to practically apply
one's own understandings/skills etc. The structure of the course does not
assess what it does not teach. If critical evaluation is the process
facilitated for developing knowledge, critical evaluation is what is
assessed when we judge learners' ability to handle/resolve/manage
problems. Thus what is valued is a decision process which is based on
maximal information about the likely outcomes. Any attempts to narrow the
contexts for obtaining this information, in fact, reduce the potential to
facilitate the achievement of this goal.
I hope I did answer some of the concerns which my previous mail might have
raised.
Ania Lian
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