I was initially rather ambivalent about week five's focus topic, perhaps because I'm not directly engaged as a teacher in the field, and so I tended to regard it as not entirely relevant to my needs and interests. Also, I was unable to draw upon my own experiences as a resource. Consequently, I felt rather distant from the debate, an outsider with no investment in it.
That feeling changed, however, after reading Teresa Lillis's (2003) paper arising from her experiences with students at the Open University in the UK. Her opening positional comment regarding the shift in the UK "from an elite to a mass higher education system where there is greater cultural, linguistic and social diversity" (p.192)struck a chord. It got me thinking about tertiary education in the New Zealand context, and particularly about the principles of adult education and lifelong learning and the institution I work for -- Te Wananga o Aotearoa (TWOA).
TWOA (now called "Open Wananga") was established in response to the bi-cultural context of New Zealand in which Maori (as first people of this Land) were subsumed under the educational norms and values of the non-Maori colonists who imposed their cultural values and ideas about education to the detriment of Maori development. TWOA arose as a response to the recognition by Maori intelligentia that the educational needs and aspirations of young Maori and others of polynesian heritage living in Aotearoa have not been met by the educational system. Although the Open Wananga's target population (or market to use a neo-liberal concept) is Maori, it is open to adults of all races (hence its offering of ESOL courses to migrants). However, it's not my intention to explore that here.
The Open Wananga's philosophy of education is uniquely Maori - that is, to use a Maori term Ako. Ako is like a two-way street. Indeed, it is dialogic. Teaching and learning is a mutually beneficial, interactive process in which teachers can sometimes play the role of learners and learners can also, on occasion, become teachers. Scaffolding is fundamental to Maori education and has been that way long before colonisation and long before Vygotsky was born.
Open Wananga's hilosophy is fundamentally that anyone can learn and has a right to advance their education regardless of whether they had encountered past difficulties with education - even "failure". Learning is open to all regardless of age or ability and is a regarded as a lifelong process. What's really key is motivation and commitment. The TWOA Open Wananga's adult education programmes incorporate Maori learning principles that have in more recent times been articulated as "adult learning principles" by various contemporary contributors such as Brookfield (1986), Draper (1992) Draves (1997), Grissom (1992, Knowles (1992), Vella (1994)and others. Some of the key principles are: 1) Courses designed for adult learners should involve the learners in planning and implementing learning activities, including assessment; 2) Such courses should draw upon learners' experiences as a resource; 3) Tutors should strive to cultivate self-direction in learners; 4) They should try at all times to create a climate that encourages and supports learning; 5) Tutors should foster a spirit of collaboration in the learning setting, consistent with Ako, or the idea that the roles of tutors and students can be interchangeable. 6)The use of small groups is a critical precept in adult education, having deep historical roots in Maoridom. Groups promote teamwork and encourage co-operation and collaboration among learners and support learning from peers,so adults learning in small groups should be embedded in adult education practice.
I believe most of these ideas would fit well within the critical EAP debate. Yet, interestingly, in all these papers I've been reading about EAP and critical EAP, the students are not cast as adults. Rather, they are projected as being in some twilight zone of half-formed, still-to-be-shaped entity caught between youth and adulthood. I suppose this arises at least partly from perceptions that they are, as non-native users of English, regarded as insufficiently literate and so deficient. In fact, they are not deficient. Actually, they just come from another discourse. The students that Lillis (2003) writes about in her paper "echo Batkin's emphasis on meaning making as the encounter between difference, on constructing meanings which keep such difference in play. They indicate that the bringing together of different discourses is something they desire in their making of new meanings in academia, and thus exemplify the potential creative forms of hybridity/hybrid texts which are, Bakhtin (1981, p36) says: 'pregnant with potential for new world views, with new 'internal forms' for perceiving the world in words'(p.205)."
On reflection, I see parallels here with the Open Wananga, the institution for which I work. Many Maori and Pacific Island young adults, but also many non-Maori adults, including the immigrant learners who are in my ESOL class who want to engage with lifelong learning often stand outside the dominant discourse of the monologic institutions. Nevertheless, they are intent on meaning making consistent with their own unique world views, which may be either culturally distinct or individually unique. So, The Open Wananga fills a void and opens up a new space. In doing so, who knows what potential it might give birth to.
Ka kite ano,
Mike
Bakhtin, M. (1981). Discourse in the novel. In M. Holquist (ed). The Dialogic Imagination. Four Essays by M. Bakhtin (trans. C. Emerson and M. Holquist). Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.
Brookfield, S. D. (1986). Understanding and Facilitating Adult Learning. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Draper, J. A. (1992). The Dynamic Mandala of Adult Education. Convergence 23(6): 73-81.
Draves, W.A. (1997). How to Teach Adults. 2nd ed. Manhattan, KS: Learnining Resources Network.
Grissom, B. M. (1992. Fosteriing Adult Learning Principles for Your Staff: One Administrator's Perspective of teh Value of Conferences. Adult Learning 4, (1): 15-17.
Knowles, M.S. (1992). Aplying Principles of Adult Learning in Conference Presentations." Adult Learning 4, (2): 11-14.
Lillis, 2003. Student writing as 'Academic Literacies': Drawing on Bakhtin to Move from Critique to Design. Language and Education, 17,(3).
Vella, J. (1994). Learning to listen, learning to teach: the power of dialogue in educating adults. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. ED 368 926
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Learning is a life-long process. It is true to every individual. But a common tendency to consider life-long leaning is to conduct formal adult education. All kinds of informal education and self-study should also be included.
ReplyDeleteTherefore, considering school-education, the importance lies in the idea that teachers should teach students how to learn, not just what to learn. It is only with this "how-to" can students fulfill a "life-long" learning.
Or, to put what you've said in other words, and relate it to being an ESOL teacher: "We hear more and more frequently nowadays that the role of the teacher is not so much to teach as to manage learning -- to create an environment in which learners can operate effectively. Sometimes this is taken further, and the job oof the teacher is to help learners manage their own learning. This is the teacher helping learners to discover for themselves the best and most efective way for them to learn. Certainly there is a move to much greater focus on the learner, and greater recognition of the fact that the most important variable in the language learning process is the individual learner" (Willis, 1990).
ReplyDeleteMike
Willis, D. (1990). The Lexical Syllabus: A new Approach to Language Teaching. London and Glasgow: Collins ELT.