By Barbara Dieu · November 19, 2005
I’ll translate the extremes Aaron mentions to our EFL/ESL environment. Each one in this room belongs to a different educational reality but I believe we can all identify somehow with these situations and in this way better visualize our pedagogical approach on the continuum line between
the extremes of vertical, centralized, artificial, curriculum-based “knowledge-pushing” teacher-centric design patterns and a horizontal, distributed, organic, “knowledge-pulling” architecture based on learner interest and curiosity.
Conventional, formal institutions like schools, universities, language institutes many of us belong to or have come from are very often hierarchical, closed within themselves and selective in that they favour only those who conform or adapt to their logic.
Heads of departments hand down the syllabus and the teachers’role becomes that of implementing it, forcing it on the students within a given time and place. The syllabus may change but the method and approach remain the same, year after year. The whole class must complete the same activities at the same pace if they are to acquire the desired skills. Emphasis is on the outcome rather than on progress and process.
Classes are usually big and last fifty minutes so there is very little time for communication between teacher and students on subjects other than those prescribed by the syllabus. Interaction in the target language occurs through classroom simulations, listening, reading material selected and presented by the teacher. No or very little interaction occurs with people outside this environment so students who have access to the language through contacts at home/at work or who can afford to travel are miles ahead of those who have to rely on what happens in the classroom.
Learners are assessed according to their mastery of the subject and, in secondary schools at least, labelled as performing, lazy, nice, disruptive in relation to scores and degree of adaptation to the logic of the system. The institution, teachers, students and parents measure their success and are identified with the results of standardized testing which discipline and shape all to fit the same mould – the winners. In many cases, those who do not manage to follow the pace or do not accept to wear the strait-jacket are expelled, drop out or fail – the losers.
Although many institutions have implemented ICT in the curriculum, the pedagogical approach has not changed. In the same way, topical materials are downloaded to complement the classes so as to extend the books just in case students may need the information sometime in some distant future. No or very little real-life participation in real modes of communication is attempted. Many learning management systems replicate the conventional transmission of the classroom mode. Learners perform simulated structured activities in passive/receptive mode and the communicative and expressive potential of the web is untapped.
Now the world, physical and virtual, is not homogeneous, structured and standardized but increasingly complex, heterogeneous, fluid and unpredictable. Learners have different abilities, different skill sets, and different goals and yet in the classroom they are very rarely encouraged to show their talents, create their own content, take control over their own learning and reflect on it. Students can only learn if they put to work the knowledge and skills they already have, put to work their creativity and inventiveness,learn from one another, work efficiently together and reach out for new knowledge and skills.
So instead of forcing the knowledge upon the learners, how can we guide them to acquire what they need so they can express their thoughts, share them with others, negotiate meaning and communicate with the world at large in self-directed ways? How do we, educators and learners move from dependence towards greater independence and inter-dependence? How do we adopt a more process-oriented approach and interact in a more open and decentralized fashion which allows for self-directed participation, informal communication, inter-cultural and inter-linguistic development?
I do not have ready-made answers nor a how-to book with 10 steps to success. However, these questions are fundamental and as educators we must constantly try to answer them in our practice. This is the reflective stance we should adopt.
No language programme will provide learners with all the knowledge they will later require in life. But we believe that by moving from the conventional, fragmented way of experiencing the world to a more holistic approach like P2P, by promoting dialogue and opening our classrooms to the world we will not only help our learners develop their competence in the target language but also make a contribution to the culture of peace.
Force-feeding resisting students is un-peace-ful just like spoon-feeding passive students. Peace-ful learning is self-discovery and the discovery of the other through dialogue. Peace cannot be achieved if learners cannot fulfill their potential and do not talk to their neighbours – whether these are in other countries, across the border, living next door or in the classroom itself.
I think we should be aware of the great potential the Net offers us, what it allows us to do which cannot be done in conventional settings. We must also be very much aware of the fact that although we work on the Net and use the latest tools this does not mean we automatically leave behind conventional pedagogy.
Take blogs for instance.
Blogging gives learners a place that they can call their own. They can publish their thoughts, their links, their feelings, and views to a potential worldwide audience. A blog is an immersive environment. Anybody with an Internet connection can engage with anybody else, link back, discuss. When used consistently, weblogs also record the learning process and progress towards autonomy. A potential P2P tool.
And yet, many times these blogs are shut off just like the conventional classroom. Instead of fostering communication, they hamper interaction and free expression, perpetuating the same sterility Aaron and I described before. Why? Because teachers continue in the same authoritarian command and control mode. So here are some more questions to be answered.
Are the posts open for discussion or are they blanket assignments for a mark like “this week, please analyse the document we studied in class.� which leads to posts that are impossible to comment on. Can outsiders who do not know what happened in class read the weblog, participate and feel included in the conversation? Do we encourage reading other blogs,linking and social networking building?
Anne Davis makes an excellent post on the basics of blogging in which she stresses the importance of making connections to students learning by exploring what others have written about it on the web, striving for writing that matters and asking questions that will make a reader think and want to comment.
So what does P2P pedagogy look like?
In EFL, it would mean putting the learners in a situation where they can use the language in self-directed ways to converse with peers all over the world. It would mean plugging them into a network of peers and making sure they can use all the available tools. It would also mean that teachers provide assistance, both educational and moral.
What are the building blocks of the interactive process?
Brian Alger mentions people, places and things as three primary sources of design for learning and puts narrative, interactivity and mobility at the core of the learning process. It is through our identity – our background, our values, our views of the world that we make connections, interact, explore the world around us. And it is through this contact and friction with it that we become more aware of our ambiguities and question our assumptions.
Blogging (i.e. when used wisely)is just one of the tools that allows us to express our views and share them with the world. There are a number of different weblogging services and tools that you can choose from like for instance, Blogger, the most ubiquitous service or WordPress, a free tool you can download or have hosted at James Farmer’s Edublogs or Learner blogs.
There are some other tools online which can foster interaction and communication between students. Social networking tools, like 43things, 43Places, and Flickr for instance, allow learners to express their own interests and experience, connect to the world at large, build personal contacts and network more easily than by blogging.
43Things tags people’s dreams and goals just like its French version “36Trucs”. Who does not draw a list of resolutions hoping to achieve them in the short, mid or long run? Drink more water, learn French, worry less… Sharing your passions, goals and interests and reading what real people, talking real language is much more interesting than learning about them from a disembodied character in a pre-packaged standardized publication for the language classroom. When using these tools students can compare different narratives, identify with some, reject others, share them with their friends and talk about them after class and have access to the language as it is being used by native and non-native speakers around the world.
Instead of focusing on the English language per se and “classroom situational dialects” as Edward Hall calls them, learners should become aware of the paradoxes and subtleties of the “living language”, the variety of existing discourses and situational needs. This is clearly illustrated by a dialogue overheard at a restaurant during a trip I made with 44 teenagers to the USA. Four girls chose a nice salad from the menu and were very embarassed when they realized that the question “French, Italian?” was not to be answered by “No, I’m Brazilian” but by the choice of a salad dressing…
Travelling widens horizons and you can visit places and interact with people in 43Places. This is an online platform which allows you to describe where you live, places you have visited and your travelling destinations. You may also provide travel recommendations and encourage people to explore certain places. Through tags you can find out the most popular spots. You can share photos and find other people who have visited or want to go to the same places as you do.
One tool I have tried with my class this year was Flickr. Rudolf and Aaron have also used consistently with their groups. Digital cameras and mobile phones have brought photography to the reach of everyone and everyone loves either taking photos or sharing photos. Photographs trigger memories. We tell stories and talk about experiences. Through them we also discover different perspectives, different visions of the world and glimpses of a culture, of a human being through everyday scenes. You can share scenes from your city, your house, the typical food of your country, your pastimes, your pets.
Flickr is unique because it combines a photo-sharing tool with collaboration and community forming. There are groups that gather around themes, like for instance Remarkable Shop Signs or happenings, like the A Day on Earth project, to which people from all over the world contributed with one picture of a moment captured in their city on September 29th. There are narrative groups, like Grandparents, where you identify people and describe relationships. In the group My life you write about how that particular photo relates to some aspect of your life. There are also people we regularly meet and share our experience with. It’s an organic environment, a visual conversation enriched by comments, notes and tags.
It was in one of these Flickr communities, in the countryside, that I met Josef Stuefer, whose stunning photos Rudolf has used as headers for Dekita.org.
Aaron and I invited our students to view Josef’s photographs,suggest and justify their preferences for the new Dekita headers. Then, as many wanted to know more about Josef’s and Rudolf’s work, they posted a number of questions, which, to their delight, were thoroughly answered.
This is an example of a totally voluntary, unplanned, experiential activity that can happen if we open the space and allow the time for it to flow and develop. It brought together experts in their fields and learners interested in their work. It involved and engaged all participants in a real exchange and not a staged classroom event.
As an extension before the holidays, we also created two groups at Flickr: Holiday Surprises and Everyday Scenes, to which the students posted their own photos,inserted them in a context and commented on each other’s posts.
From what I read in the end- of- the-year evaluations on the students’ blogs this was definitely the high point of the course this year, together with the visit to the museum to see the Henry Moore exhibition. The main criticism was the forced nature of some of the posts, the lack of time to complete assignments (the hour went too fast) and the “not serious” character of the open assignments.
How can P2P pedagogy be achieved?
John Seely Brown in his talk “Learning, Working & Playing in the Digital Age” provides some clues. Instead of designing courses (or instruction that we assume will lead to learning), we should be “designing learning ecologies”.
George Siemens adds that in these environments “learners can forage for knowledge, information and derive meaning”. Martin Terre Blanche suggests “transitional ecologies that ease learners’ entry into the “real world” ecologies where seasoned practitioners work and learn”.
We should first examine where we stand between the hierarchical structure and the fluid network and look for ways to bring p2p approaches into the curriculum to complement the set learning goals for each course. When adopting a tool, think of the larger purpose it should serve: how its nature can best support the learners’ diverse needs. Some will need more guidance, others more freedom, while others will need to be encouraged and gently prodded to leave their snug environments and experience the wide open spaces before them.
While P2P is a way to look at the world and a way to interact with others, Dekita.org promotes peer-to-peer communication in language learning. We welcome the participation and contributions of anyone who shares our enthusiasm for bringing together EFL /ESL learners with people from all over the world in authentic and meaningful ways. Del.icio.us and the Dekita P2P in EFL/ESL Exchange Project can help you do so.
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