Transformative pedagogy

Draft

Alain Senteni, University of Mauritius

Origin

Transformative pedagogy - close to critical pedagogy (Giroux, 1997, Giroux et al., 1999) and radical pedagogy (Gore,1993; McWilliams, 1997; Parkes, 2000ab) - finds its theoretical roots in the neo-Marxian critical theory of the Frankfurt School. The emancipatory work of Paolo Freire, known as the pedagogy of the oppressed (1970) is certainly the most famous example of application of this school's critical theory. A comprehensive online resource on critical pedagogy, its definitions, its history, its theories and other related links, can be found on the university of Iowa's website. When browsing this site, one notices that TP is still an ongoing process shifting over time to follow social transformation:

Although there is no static definition of "critical pedagogy," as the term has undergone many transformations as educators have deployed new strategies to confront changing social and historical contexts, the term has traditionally refered to educational theory and teaching and learning practices that are designed to raise learners' critical consciousness regarding oppressive social conditions. [...] Critical pedagogy is particularly concerned with reconfiguring the traditional student/teacher relationship, where the teacher is the active agent, the one who knows, and the students are the passive recipients of the teacher's knowledge (the "banking concept of education"). Instead, the classroom is envisioned as a site where new knowledge, grounded in the experiences of students and teachers alike, is produced through meaningful dialogue (dialogical method).

[1], retrieved 18:42, 10 July 2007 (MEST).

However, the underlying appeal to a meta-narrative of liberation omnipresent in critical pedagogy makes it unsuitable for learning discurses in the context of so-called "globalised knowledge economies". At the beginning of the XXI-st century, the trend would rather be to use reflection, dialogism and critical consciousness as the vehicle of an harmonious evolution towards a global knowledge society in which conflict resolution would take precedence over the struggle against oppressive social conditions. Though, getting rid of a meta-narrative of liberation without abandoning a notion of the political in pedagogy is not an easy task. As the saying warns, "one needs to be careful not to flush out the baby with the water in the bathtub".

Goals

In nowadays moving reality, the term pedagogy - the art or science of being a teacher - refers not only to strategies or styles of instruction but also to the facilitation and management of sustainable transformations, whether individual, social, structural or institutional. In this respect, most pedagogies should be regarded as inherently formative with respect to the role they play in the development of individuals, but their trans-formative dimension deserves to be clarified, revisited and eventually bent with regard to a) the responsibility of educators to transcend their traditional role and expand the scope of their work towards an active participation to knowledge advancement, and b) the role given to information and communications technologies (ICT) to act as mediating artifact of emerging networked educational systems, supporting peer-to-peer collaboration as well as learners' autonomy and responsibility for learning :

(1)�.A�N the responsibility of educators, practitioners, teachers, academics or stakeholders, to question, transform and expand the scope of their work towards an active participation to knowledge advancement1. Expanding the mandate of educators requires proactive policies aiming at a flexible redistribution of roles in schools and classrooms, departing from narrow transmissive models of teaching and learning. On the other hand, it requires an open vision of the curriculum.

As Parkes (2000b) rightly points out “what Freire (1970) calls transmissive "banking" pedagogies [...] presupposes docile human beings, constructed as receptacles for the grand narratives of the official curriculum”

Far from this conception of the curriculum based on a "mind-as-a-container" vision strongly criticised by many researchers in education (Bereiter, 2002) (Paavola et al., 2004), transformative pedagogy advocate an evolving, socially constructed curriculum, understood as a set of values and beliefs reflecting power relations between competing cultures. The consequence of this change of standpoint is the re-introduction in pedagogy of new forms of subjectivity, based on a multi-voiced, negotiated vision of knowledge, subject to power relations that determine what is to be considered the truth (Foucault, 1977). In such perspective, knowledge can no longer be considered as the neutral content of pedagogy. Transformative pedagogies must have on their agenda the process of knowledge creation, its facilitation, and its relation to power, at the periphery of "knowledge-as-a-product" based curricula.

(2) the role of information and communications technologies (ICT) to serve as the mediating artifact of emerging networked educational systems, supporting Open Distance Learning (ODL). Nowadays, ODL is presented to developing countries as the panacea allowing to democratise education; ODL systems are seen as the most viable means for broadening educational access while improving the quality of education, advocating peer-to-peer collaboration and giving the learners a greater sense of autonomy and responsibility for learning (Calvert, 2006). However, as Virkkunen argues(2003), although ICT opens a wide range of possibilities for the enhancement and support of learning, its effective impact is restricted by narrow conceptualizations of learning that are based on three pervasive but problematic dichotomies: the one between informal and formal learning; the one between individual and collective learning; and the one between learning and the development of societal practices. Overcoming these problematic dichotomies forms part of the research agenda on transformative pedagogies.

Links

• http://mingo.info-science.uiowa.edu/~stevens/critped/index.htm
• http://mingo.info-science.uiowa.edu/~stevens/critped/definitions.htm