Subject: Re: reply to Ania Lian (slightly corrrected)
From: Ania Lian (ania@lingua.arts.uq.edu.au)
Date: Wed 08 Dec 1999 - 22:45:31 MET
Date: Thu, 9 Dec 1999 07:45:31 +1000 (EST) From: Ania Lian <ania@lingua.arts.uq.edu.au> Subject: Re: reply to Ania Lian (slightly corrrected)
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sorry for resending this corrected version but for some reason
it did not seeem to have gone through.
Ania
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 what is it that *we*
mean or what is it that it seems to mean. In second language (L2)
education, we want learners 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 this all means,
we know that our understanding of the goal does not necessary mean that
all our students 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 exploration
of the meaning of the goal. The meaning thus comes from the problems and
understandings that arise and develop in the process exploration of
possible solutions to problems which continuously engage us in evaluating
where we are and where we want to be (or what we want the knowledge to
enable us to do). 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 educators are supposed 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 which we need to answer) 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, The postmodern condition: 24) where the novice is
an expert and where experts are novices: doing a course is engaging in the
game of equals. In other words, learners learn to trust their sense of
confidence (or even the lack of it) and teachers learn that there is more
to see than it meets the eye.
This pedagogy really hits against 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 approach 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 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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