Pedagogies for Teaching Reading and Writing

1. Traditional2. Progressivist

3. Postmodern Progressive4. Neo-conservative

all contribute to today’s pedagogy

Petrus Ramus•Classical canon of literature•Great Men of History•Christianity

Knowledge in books

.

Pedagogical Spaces 1: Traditional

The Enlightenment

Renee Descartes

Pedagogical Spaces 1: Traditional

•Institutionalised•Mass schooling•Rigid systems

Pedagogical Spaces 1: Traditional

‘Literacy learning was…used as an instrument to inculcate ‘puncutality, respect, discipline, subordination…a medium for tutelage in values and morality’

Graff, 1987:p.262 cited in Katzinger and Cross

Pedagogical Spaces 1: Traditional

Pedagogy as Ideology

Max Weber

(1846-1920)

The ‘iron cages’ of rationalisation

Pedagogical Spaces 1: Traditional

Testing

John Holt – ‘most children fail’

John Dewey

Maria Montessori

movement, change and progress

Pedagogical Space 2: Progressivist

John Dewey 1900

‘To imposition from above is opposed expression and cultivation of individuality; to external discipline is opposed free activity; to learning from teachers, learning through experience; to acquisition of isolated skills and techniques by drill is opposed acquisition of them as means of attaining ends which make direct appeal; to preparation for a more or less remote future is opposed to making the most of the opportunities of present life; to static aims and materials is opposed acquaintance with a changing world’

cited in Katzinger and Cross, 1993: pp45-6

Pedagogical Space 2: Progressivist

John Dewey

‘Textbooks and lectures give the result of other men’s discoveries, and thus seem to provide a short cut to knowledge; but the outcome is just a meaningless reflecting back of symbols with no understanding of the facts themselves’Dewey and Dewey 1915 cited in Cross and Katzinger, 1993: p.46

Pedagogical Space 2: Progressivist

•progress not in a textbook•active relationship with the world•creativity at the heart of society

Pedagogical Space 2: Progressivist

Your experiences of child-centred education

Progressive Pedagogy•The idea of progress•Standard English was to be the conclusion•Correct acquisition served an industrial purpose

Pedagogical Space 2: Progressivist

John Dewey

‘having something to say rather than having to say something’ Dewey 1900 cited in Cross and Katzinger, 1993:p.47

Literacy in Progressivist Pedagogy

Pedagogical Space 2: Progressivist

•difference•discontinuity•cultural fragmentation•linguistic fragmentation

‘the postmodernists pronounce the end of history; the decadence of grand metanarratives…the demise of progress’

Cross and Katzinger, 1993: p.48

Pedagogical Space 3: The Progressivist Pedagogy of Postmodernism

Post-modernism

Lyotard - an incredulity towards metanarratives

Pedagogical Space 3: The Progressivist Pedagogy of Postmodernism

Richard Hoggart

The Uses of Literacy

“an all-pervading culture”

Pedagogical Space 3: The Progressivist Pedagogy of Postmodernism

Shared working-class life in the 1930s

Superstition - touch wood, black cats

Attitude - family, neighbour

Fixed gender roles

wife - corner shop, clothes line,

husband - work, pub

Language - mam, our Alice

Food - chops, chips

Richard Hoggart - The Uses of Literacy

Pedagogical Space 3: The Progressivist Pedagogy of Postmodernism

metanarratives

Church God creates world

People go bad

Jesus dies to save people from Hell

Repent and go to HeavenLife is a trial

Pedagogical Space 3: The Progressivist Pedagogy of Postmodernism

metanarratives 2

Science By understanding the world we will control it

The universe was made by a Big Bang

People evolved from apes

People keep improving life

We exist to make the world better

Pedagogical Space 3: The Progressivist Pedagogy of Postmodernism

metanarratives 3

AuthoritySome people have special skills

These people should use them to serve society

We must respect those who serve for our good

Life is about knowing your place in society and serving where you can

Pedagogical Space 3: The Progressivist Pedagogy of Postmodernism

High Windows

When I see a couple of kidsAnd guess he's fucking her and she'sTaking pills or wearing a diaphragm,I know this is paradise

Everyone old has dreamed of all their lives--Bonds and gestures pushed to one sideLike an outdated combine harvester,And everyone young going down the long slide

To happiness, endlessly. I wonder ifAnyone looked at me, forty years back,And thought, That'll be the life;No God any more, or sweating in the dark

About hell and that, or having to hideWhat you think of the priest. HeAnd his lot will all go down the long slideLike free bloody birds. And immediately

Rather than words comes the thought of high windows:The sun-comprehending glass,And beyond it, the deep blue air, that showsNothing, and is nowhere, and is endless.

Pedagogical Space 3: The Progressivist Pedagogy of Postmodernism

The death of God

Pedagogical Space 3: The Progressivist Pedagogy of Postmodernism

Postmodernism = Post-structuralism

no privileged discourses

music food drinkbookstelevision

Pedagogical Space 3: The Progressivist Pedagogy of Postmodernism

•humans are active meaning makers•no universal meaning - polysemic•no privileged discourses•the death of the author (Eco)

a curriculum relevant to experience

power to marginalised discourses e.g. Creole

Literacy in Progressivists Pedagogy of Postmodernism

Pedagogical Space 3: The Progressivist Pedagogy of Postmodernism

Language is

‘a system of signs structured in the infinite play of difference’ Aronwitz and Giroux, 1991: p.13 cited in Cross and Katzinger, 1993: p.50

Neoliberalism and Neo-conservatism

Neoliberalism1970s• financial and oil crises bring social unrest• crisis of the welfare state1980s• Rise of new socio-economic and political doctrines– Chicago school of Economics, Milton Friedman– Centre for Policy Studies, Friedrich Hayek– Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan1990s• Demise of contrasting ideologies– Fall of the Berlin Wall– Dissolution of the Soviet Union

The 1980s

Key ideas•Culture•Thatcherism (UK) Reagan (US)•Lifestyles•Hedonism•Display•Individualism•extravagance

Music

Fashion

Leisure

Dance

Films

TV

Hair

Greed is Good

Hedonism

‘modern hedonism is characterized by a longing to experience in reality those pleasures created or enjoyed in the imagination, a longing which results in the ceaseless consumption of novelty’ Celia Lury Consumer Culture. Oxford: Blackwell, 1997: 73

Lead us into temptation

‘People now work...not just to stay alive, but in order to be able to afford to buy consumer products. The goods which are advertised serve as goals and rewards for working... consumption has taken off into an almost ethereal, or hyper-real, symbolic level so that it is the idea of purchasing as much as the act of purchasing which operates as a motivation for many in doing paid work’

Robert Bocock, Consumption. London: Routledge1995: 50

Work