"Toward a Post-method Pedagogy"
B. KUMARAVADIVELU
San José State University
San José, California, United States
(TESOL QUARTERLY Vol. 35, No. 4, Winter 2001)
(TESOL QUARTERLY Vol. 35, No. 4, Winter 2001)
Section 1: Introduction
In this article, the parameters of a post-method pedagogy are conceptualized and also some suggestions are given for implementing and actualizing it and some of the problems which may arise while implementing this kind of pedagogy are discussed.
The post-method condition can reshape the character and content of L2 teaching, teacher education, and classroom research. In practical terms, it motivates a search for an open-ended, coherent framework based on current theoretical, empirical, and pedagogical insights that will enable teachers to theorize from practice and practice what they theorize. (Kumaravadivelu, 1994).
Richards and Rodgers (2001:247) refer to the major criticisms made of approaches and methods as: “top-down criticism, the role of contextual factors, the need for curriculum development processes, and the lack of research basis and the similarity of classroom practices”.
The gradual emergence of critical thought called the very nature and scope of method into question. Additionally, the appearance of innovative ideas refigured our understanding of method. Since the end of 1980s, language teaching pedagogy had reached the “point of maturity” (Brown, 2001)
Summary
In the first section of the present article, fundamentals of a post-method pedagogy are introduced. A post-method pedagogy is a three-dimensional system consisting of three pedagogic parameters: particularity, practicality, and possibility. Firstly particularity is dealt with. Any post-method pedagogy has to be pedagogy of particularity. That is to say, language pedagogy, to be relevant, must be sensitive to a particular group of teachers teaching a particular group of learners pursuing a particular set of goals within a particular institutional context embedded in a particular sociocultural milieu. From a pedagogic point of view, particularity is at once a goal and a process. One simultaneously works for and through particularity. It is a progressive advancement of means and ends. The second dimension is practicality. It pertains to a much larger issue that has a direct impact on the practice of classroom teaching, namely, the relationship between theory and practice. A pedagogy of practicality aims for a teacher-generated rather than an expert-generated theory of practice. In other words, no theory of practice can be useful and unless it is generated through practice. In fact, it is the practicing teacher that is best suited to produce such a practical theory. As a pedagogy of possibility, post-method pedagogy rejects the narrow view of language education that confines itself to the linguistic functional elements that obtain inside the classroom. Instead, it seeks to branch out to tap the sociopolitical consciousness that participants bring with them
to the classroom so that it can also function as a catalyst for a continual quest for identity formation and social transformation.
The second section of this article deals with the answer to this crucial question: how should this pedagogy be actualized? And what are the needs for doing so? In this regard, anticipated roles of learners, teachers, and teacher educators should be taken into account. Accordingly, in order to realize a post-method pedagogy, there should be a post-method learner, a post-method teacher and a post-method teacher educator. These are discussed briefly. The post-method learner is an autonomous learner. In other words, post-method learners are capable of: 1. identifying their learning strategies and styles 2. stretching their strategies and styles by incorporating some of those employed by successful language learners 3. reaching out for opportunities for additional language reception or production beyond what they get in the class.4.evaluating their ongoing learning outcomes by monitoring language learning progress 5.seeking their teachers’ intervention to get adequate feedback on areas of difficulty and to solve problems. 6. collaborating with other learners to pool information on a specific project they are working on. 7. taking advantage of opportunities to communicate with competent speakers of the language. The post-method teacher, like the post-method learner, is an autonomous individual. A post-method teacher should be a researcher. This research involves keeping one’s eyes, ears, and mind open in the classroom to see what works and what does not, with what group(s) of learners, and for what reason, and assessing what changes are necessary to make instruction achieve its desired goals. The goal of teacher research and teacher autonomy is not the easy reproduction of any ready-made package of knowledge but, rather, the continued recreation of personal meaning. Teachers create and re-create personal meaning when they exploit and extend their intuitively held pedagogic beliefs based on their educational histories and personal biographies by conducting more structured and more goal-oriented teacher research based on the parameters of particularity, practicality, and possibility. And finally the roles of a post-method teacher educator are to recognize and help student teachers recognize, the inequalities built into the current teacher education programs that treat teacher educators as producers of knowledge and practicing teachers as consumers of knowledge, to enable prospective teachers to articulate their voices and visions in an electronic journal in which they record and share with other student teachers in class their evolving personal beliefs, assumptions, and knowledge about language learning and teaching, to encourage prospective teachers to think critically so that they may relate their personal knowledge to the professional knowledge, to create conditions for prospective teachers to acquire basic skills in classroom discourse analysis. Therefore, current teacher education programs, if they are to produce self-directing and self-determining teachers, require a fundamental changing that transforms an information-oriented system into an inquiry-oriented one. [my italics]
Pedagogic exploration is an integral part of post-method pedagogy. Contrary to the commonly held view that research belongs to the domain of the researcher, post-method pedagogy considers research as belonging to the multiple domains of learners, teachers, and teacher educators alike. A post-method pedagogy, like any other innovative practice, imposes an extraordinary degree of responsibility on all the participants, particularly the teacher and the teacher educator.
In the third section, the post-method pedagogy is problematized by raising questions and concerns that may happen while actualizing it. The essentials of a post-method pedagogy demand that both teachers and teacher educators successfully meet their primary challenges. Such a demand raises several questions and concerns: 1. If a post-method pedagogy requires an interpretation of pedagogic particularities, how can it be done? 2. In what ways can post-method practitioners monitor what they do in the classroom and how pedagogic particularity affects learning outcomes? 3. What are the characteristics of the tools that construct context-sensitive pedagogic knowledge? 4. How can appropriate coping strategies made available to the teachers? 5. To what extent can teacher preparation programs create a sensitivity to broad environment among student teachers? 6. What steps should teachers take in order to identify learners' needs? 7. How can learners improve their autonomy? 8. What can be done to help teachers and institutions meet the challenge of change in the amount of freedom and flexibility in making pedagogic decisions? 9. What potential problems are associated with the teacher researches? 10. How can learners, teachers, and teacher educator collaborate with each other in order to implement a post-method pedagogy?
The last section provides the reader with a conclusion as introduction. Here the writer again gives significance to the three dimensions of a post-method pedagogy and maintains that the choice of the pedagogic parameters as an organizing principle opens up unlimited opportunities for the emergence of post-method pedagogies that can truly serve the interests of those they are supposed to serve. In fact, the prospect of the parameters of a post-method pedagogy replaces the concept of method as an organizing principle for L2 learning, teaching, and teacher education.
Final comments
In regard to the dissatisfaction with the concept of method, it is clear that some approaches and methods are unlikely to be widely adopted. The reason for this is that they are difficult to understand and use, lack practical application, require special training, and necessitate changes in teachers’ practices and beliefs (Richards & Rodgers,2001: 247).
The Iranian educational system poses no exception. Taking a critical look at existing classroom procedures and activities (including available textbooks), one can unquestionably keep track of ill-utilized and somehow non-labeled method(s) and approach (es) in a typical classroom. With regard to the format of available textbooks and existing teaching methods and approaches, one can clearly witness that a combination of grammar-translation and audio-lingual methods in large measure plus some communicative-loaded tasks prevail in the typical Iranian classroom.
Section 2: Critique
Considering the topic of the article, it has partially achieved the goal. But we believe that this topic signifies the process in which a traditional method-based teaching changes to the era of post-method. However this article predominantly talks about the post-method essentials rather than the process of changing. Therefore we believe than another topic might be preferred.
The present article supports the post-method pedagogy. Moreover, the points and fundamentals discussed in this article have similarities to the social constructivist approach. Since it supports individualty, personalization, developing knowledge of self, needs analysis and so on.
Although there is coherence in the way, the information is presented and unity of the issues is present, but we believe that this article is not thorough considering the vast area of post-method pedagogy. Yet, the major subject of this article is the fundamentals of the post-method pedagogy.
The article presents practical suggestions regarding the achievement of a post-method pedagogy. And the most important thing is that this article gives clear picture of the roles of the teacher, learner and teacher educator, the three factors that are significant in order to actualize post-method pedagogy.
References
1. Richards, J.C., & Rodgers, T. S. (2001). Approaches and methods in language teaching. New York: C.U.P.
2. Brown, D.H. (2001). Teaching by principles: An interactive approach to language pedagogy. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
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