The Participatory Approach to Language Teaching
Demonstration
Background
Methodology/Discussion
Principles
Role of Student/Teacher
- Based on content, which is taken from students' lives, experiences, and critical analysis of social and political issues
- Strong version of the Communicative Approach
- Teacher goals are to empower students through language and raise political awareness, helping them advocate for themselves
- Students' native language is valued
- The teacher takes the role of a guide, to help the students engage in dialogue and problem solving
- The students gradually take on more power, and become their own advocates through education.
- Collaboration between students is encouraged
- Students are encouraged to self-evaluate and self-correct, to take responsibility for their own learning
- Developed from the work of Paulo Freire in the late 1950s
- Freire criticized the "banking model" of education, and advocated for learners to co-create knowledge
- Based on the idea that education has a role in shaping power dynamics, and perpetuating a societal hierarchy
- "Language is never neutral" (Pedagogy of the Oppressed); it is an instrument of power
- Literacy is key to gaining entry to the culture of power
- Language education can be used to help people become aware of and to solve the issues in their society and in their lives
Topic: Inequality in Education
- Introduction/dialoguing
- Problem posing
- Creating a text (manifesto)
- Student feedback/revisions
Techniques
Skills emphasized
- Dialoguing
- Teacher and students engage in dialogue about issues students lives and issues of power in society
- Problem Posing
- Teacher identifies a problem based on dialoguing, and students work collaboratively to solve the problem. Teacher empowers students to take action in their own lives and in the world
- Literacy is stressed, particularly with regard to multiple literacies and literacy as it relates to power
- Self-evaluation, self-assessment and self-correction are valued
- Oral communication skills are also developed through dialoguing and collaboration