Postmodernism and TEFL:

Postmodernism and TEFL:

The future of language teaching?

Zeno’s arrow: Rene Magritte

April 23, 2008, CREOLE, University of Bristol

Dr. Andrew E. Finch

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Postmodern Architecture

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Postmodern School Architecture

The postmodern campus of the new High School for the Visual and Performing Arts (LAUSD Central High School #9) — is completely redefining a strip of Cesar Chavez at Grand Avenue with its eye-catching architecture.

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A postmodern (self-reflexive, self-contradictory, self-undermining) joke

…

Q: What do you get when you cross a mafia Godfather with a postmodernist?

A: “someone who will make you an offer you can’t understand.”(Claire O’Farrell, 1999)

The murderer threatened: Rene Magritte

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Contents

• Introduction• Changing definitions• Changing sciences• Changing worlds• Changing educations• Changing Englishes• The way ahead?• Conclusion

The human condition: Rene Magritte

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Introduction

We are faced with an entirely new situation in which the goal of education, if we are to survive, is the facilitation of change and learning.

The only person who is educated is the person who has learned how to learn; the person who has learned how to adapt and change. (Rogers, 1969, pp. 151-153)

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IntroductionEducation “is itself

going through profound change in terms of purposes, content and methods”

Education “is both a symptom of and a contributor to the socio-cultural condition of postmodernity” (Edwards & Usher, 1994, p. 3).

Auf-der-suche-nach-dem-absoluten: Rene Magritte

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Introduction

This presentation aims to identify postmodern features of ELT theory and to relate them to postmodern society.

We can then examine implications for the future of language teaching and learning.

Golconde: Rene Magritte

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Changing Definitions

• Postmodernism is a phenomenon whose mode is resolutely contradictory as well as unavoidably political. (Hutcheon, 1989, p. 1)

La lunette d’approche: Rene Magritte• Postmodernism resists

being conveniently summarized in easy ‘soundbites’ and refuses to lend itself to any single cut and dried definition (Ward, 2003, p. 1).

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Changing Definitions

The postmodern’s initial concern is to de-naturalize our way of life; to point out that those entities that we experience as ‘natural’ (capitalism, patriarchy, liberal humanism), are in fact ‘cultural’; made by us, not given to us.

The human condition: Rene Magritte

Even nature, postmodernism might point out, doesn’t grow on trees.

(Hutcheon, 1989, pp. 1-2)

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Common themes of postmodernism

• Society, culture and lifestyle are significantly different today from 100, 50 or even 30 years ago (10 years ago?).

• There have been huge developments in mass media, the consumer society and information technology.

• These developments have an impact on our understanding of matters like meaning, identity and even reality.

• Old styles of analysis are no longer useful. New approaches and new vocabularies need to be created in order to understand the present.(Ward, 2003, p. 6)

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Categories of postmodernism

Crossing of borders (breaking down of barriers)De-colonization (diversification and regionalism)Decentralization (lateral decision-making)Deconstruction (questioning traditional assumptions)Eclecticism (borrowing from different systems and

fields)Pastiche (imitating the works of others, often satirically)Relativism (time, space, truth and moral values are

relative to the persons or groups holding them)Self-contradiction (doubleness; duplicity; the conscious

making of self-undermining statements) Self-reference and self-reflexiveness (use of meta-

language and self-constructing forms)

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Changing sciences Lyotard (1984), identified

various ‘metanarratives’ of the ‘modern’ Age of Reason, which influenced all Western thought:

– progress; – optimism; – rationality; – the search for absolute

knowledge; – the idea that gaining

knowledge of the true self was the only foundation for all other knowledge (Ward, 2003, p. 9).

Where Euclid Walked: Rene Magritte

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Changing sciences

• Einstein developed a cosmos of relativity.

• Gödel showed that every mathematical and scientific system is incomplete and contains its own contradictions.

La C

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• However:

• Heisenberg proposed his “uncertainty principle” and quantum mechanics.

• The French philosopher, Jacques Derrida, showed that there is no system, no theory, and no science or political system which rests on entirely rational foundations.

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Changing sciences The idea of benign, philanthropic scientific enquiry was

found to a myth, for a number of reasons:

– the contribution of science to ecological disasters;

– the commercialization of science;

– the loss of faith in the ability to measure reality;

– the division of science into a mass of specialisms.

Les valeurs personnelles: Rene Magritte

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Changing worlds erosion of conventional

distinctions between high and low culture; definitions of human identity are changing, or ought to change. (Ward, 2003, p. 11).

‘non-spaces’ of postmodern geography (Soja, 1989)

Le sens propre II: Rene Magritte

fascination with how our lives seem increasingly dominated by visual media;

questioning of ideas about meaning, communication, and about how signs refer to the world;

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Changing educations

“The project of liberal mass schooling and higher education in the late twentieth century is built around the intellectual authority inherited from the Enlightenment.” (Peters, 1995, p. xxx)

“Postmodernism’s emphasis on the inscribed, decentred subject constructed by language, discourses, desire and the unconscious, seems to contradict the very purpose of education and the basis of educational activity.” (Edwards & Usher, 1994, p. 2)

Le domaine d'Arnheim: Renee Magritte

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Changing Attitudes

“The strict application of nurturing and protective attitudes toward children has created a paradoxical situation in which protection has come to mean excluding the young from meaningful involvement in their own communities.” (Postman, 1995, p. 102)

Les Amants: Rene Magritte

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Changing Englishes

“Teaching a language is not a value-free, or transparent, activity. What we do in the classroom is affected by who we are, the views we hold, and the societies we are part of.” (Harrison, 1990, p. 1)

Le model rouge: Rene Magritte

“Social scientists … have hardly recognized the importance of theories and descriptions of society and culture for language teaching.” (Stern, 1983, p. 282)

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Modern metanarratives Postmodern metanarratives

High-stakes, standardized testing (Absolute measurement; focus on the product of learning)

Classroom-Based Assessment using portfolios, journals, formative self- and peer-assessment (Relativistic focus on process; deconstruction of the standardized testing paradigm)

Competition (aggression, competitive individualization, survival of the fittest, first-past-the-post)

Collaboration (Social learning, decentralization) balanced by a new form of individualization – autonomous learning and self-access learning

Studying English through elitist English literature (Strict boundaries; restrictions of genre)

Learning English through pop-culture, comics, the internet, etc. (Plurality of genres; crossing boundaries; eclecticism)

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Linguistic imperialism (Colonialism)

The English ‘native-speaker’

Postcolonialism (De-colonization - Expressing local cultures through diverse Englishes - lingua francas)

Death of the ‘native speaker’

Structural syllabi (Totalization)

Task-based and project-based process syllabi (Deconstruction of proposit-ional language learning concepts)

Quantitative, ‘objective’ research (Absolute measurement of rigorously isolated, independently observed ‘truths’)

Qualitative, subjective, action research (Relativistic description of perceptions; eclectic systems of analysis of learning environments)

Behaviorist view of learning as predictable and independent of emotions

Recognition of affective and social filters (language learning as social, cultural, emotional and unpredictable - Deconstruction)

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Standardized, Western English (Totalization)

Regional Englishes, dialects and pronunciations (Decentralization, regionalization, diversification)

Linear, sequential learning, language as code (Absolute, grammatical ‘truths’)

Use of meta-language and learning strategies in a non-linear learning format (Self-reflexiveness)

Teacher-centered learning (Centralization)

Student-centered learning (Decentralization)

Teacher-controlled learning (Totalization)

Student autonomy, self-directed learning (Decentralization, regionalism, self-reflexiveness)

Studying the culture of the target language (Centralization, colonialism)

Studying regional and global cultures through the target language (Regionalism, globalism).

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Changing EnglishesThe educational context,

with the classroom at its center, is viewed as a complex system.

Events do not occur in linear causal fashion.

A multitude of forces interact in complex, self-organizing ways, and create changes and patterns that are part predictable, part unpredictable.(Van Lier, 1996, p. 148) The art of conversation: Rene

Magritte

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Deconstruction: Questioning traditional assumptions

i) the death of the ‘native speaker’;

ii) the death of structuralism; iii)the death of imperialism; iv) the death of the ‘teacher’;v) the death of method;vi)The death of EFL.

La reproduction interdite: Rene Magritte

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Re-construction: Starting anew

New births:

“If education can be a machine for social conformity, it can also be a machine for the investigation of new horizons and new possibilities.”

Time transfixed: Rene Magritte

New births:

“The proliferation of ‘difference’ and uncertainty in the postmodern world, far from being a problem, is a constant invitation to imagine the unimaginable.” (O’Farrell, 1999, p. 17)

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Re-construction: Starting anew

• These deaths take us to a new place in language teaching and learning.

• Here are some broad topics that might well be important in the near future:

• Content-based language teaching (CLIL);

• Immersion programs;• Bilingual/Multilingual/Pluri-

lingual programs;• Network-based learning

(without schools);• Venture-learning (assisted

by companies)• Internet-based universities• Community learning

L'entree en scene: Rene Magritte

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A postmodern approach to ELT/EIL/EGL/ELF/

Border Crossing

•Use of any texts (newspapers, comics, novels, songs, films, Internet, pop).•Content-based teaching and learning

De-colonization •World Englishes•Death of linguistic imperialism•Death of EFL

Decentralization

•Regional Englishes, ELF•Multilingual teachers from the L1 contry and culture – role-models,

Deconstruction •Challenging (and breaking down) traditional assumptions about teaching, learning, assessment, etc.

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Eclecticism •Borrowing ideas from science, sociology, psychology•Immersion (teaching other subjects in the target language)

Pastiche •Focus on authenticity – imitating real life situations and needs.

Relativism •No absolute truths in teaching or assessment. •Many different, relative truths: learning styles, backgrounds, beliefs, perceptions, affect, cultures.•Classroom-based Assessment

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Self-contradiction

•Neo-liberal and neo-conservative views on education reform .•The modernist concept of ‘School’

Self-reference and Self-reflexiveness

•Alternative assessment•Language learning strategies• Self-assessment•Peer-feedback•Peer-assessment•Teachers as learners•Learners as teachers (ZPD)

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The Future

• The British Council is investigating how English language teaching and learning is already changing due to economic pressures, movement of population, globalization, etc.

• http://www.britishcouncil.org/learning-research-englishnext.htm• http://www.britishcouncil.org/learning-research-english-next.pdf• http://www.britishcouncil.org/learning-research-futureofenglish.htm• http://www.britishcouncil.org/learning-elt-future.pdf

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The Future

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The Future

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The Future

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The FutureSome commentators say we are on

the verge of a learning revolution:

• Instant information and interactive technology are forcing a complete rethink of everything we've ever believed about education,

• New interlocking networks are creating dramatic new models for learning

• New teaching methods are revolutionizing schooling in pockets around the world

• http://www.thelearningweb.net/

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This is not a teacher

“… through an awareness of how we use language, how language uses us, and what measures are available to clarify our knowledge of the world we make.” (Postman, 1995, p. 87).

The Schoolmaster: Rene Magritte

Le bouquet tout fait: Rene Magritte

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Thank you for your time!

• Andrew Finch can be contacted at [email protected]

• His teaching resources are at www.finchpark.com/courses

• His teaching books can be seen at www.finchpark.com/books/

• This presentation (and the handout) can be viewed at: www.finchpark.com/ppp/

L’act de foi: Rene Magritte

Documents

Postmodernism and TEFL: