• Learner centered; not banking (empty vessel) model
• Activism: real issues in real lives
• Empower students to find the power they already have to find solutions and take actions
• Ss become subjects of their own education
• Curriculum generated mostly by Ss
• S involvement is essential
• Rejects domination
• Access to education they need

PE came out of strong political movement in Brazil.

From Making Meaning, Making Change: A Participatory Curriculum Development for ESL Literacy, 1992. Elsa Auerbach. Washington, DC: Center for Applied Linguistics

The “why” of participatory literacy:

• Adult learning theory: self-directed learning (Ss determine content and direction of their education); experience centered; real needs

• SLA theory: shift away from grammar-based and behavioral approaches toward meaning-centered approaches; language no longer system of rules and behaviors with an autonomous existence independent of their usage; communicative competence; real communication subordinates form to elaboration of meaning. Content-based instruction; cooperative learning through peer interaction. Authentic dialog and purposeful language use.

• Literacy theory: Literacy practices, like language, are variable, context-dependent and culture-specific. The ways people read and write vary according to the task, the situation, the purpose, and the relationship between reader, writing, and setting. Norms of middle class students are most like those of our schools in US, thus greater success for that class. Each view of of literacy reflects a particular ideological perspective. In literacy theory, students can become ethnographers of their own literacy communities. Literacy is both the instrument and the object of study.

Guidelines for literacy instruction

1. Create a literate classroom environment: atmosphere of talk about language and literacy use; link reading and writingi to Ss everyday lives; treat Ss as though they are avid readers and writers.
2. Make literacy classroom activities real, student-centered and communicative: Start with personal writing (autobiographical, student-initiated topics); use literacy for real purposes and audiences (e.g. set up letter-writing teams)
3. Connect content inside the class to the community outside: have students investigate language, literacy, and variability of usage; identify contexts and purposes for literacy  practices.
4. Develop literate practices through research in which students: collect data (participant observation, interviews, reading inventories); record data (field notes, taping, transcribing); analyze data (finding patterns, comparing); report on the analysis and present findings; establish a community of researchers for responding, criticizing, refining, and producing a revised analysis.

Instruction must include explicit discussion of literacy learning itself: involve learners in investigating their own literacy practices; critically analyze with learners how the educational system has shaped their development, self-image, and possibilities by devaluing their knowledge and promoting one culture-specific norm at the expense of others; involved students in determining their own purposes, rather than prescribing practices for them.

Nina Wallerstein: Adult literacy scholar

Participatory approach needs some sort of catalyst. Like the PIM//MAT dialog she used. “Reading the world” first; then “reading the word.”

There’s great potential for documentary stuff in this arena. Photo stories, document people’s own lives. Disposable cameras: document your daily lives. Write narrative with it.

“Working with a code.” Code = any kind of stimulus or catalyst that represents people’s lives. See Auerbach guidelines for creating codes.

A code (comic strips, photos, etc.; if appropriate, get to know your students and take photos, etc.; maybe get PT to illustrate a problem for me for my Mexico teaching) should be:

• Familiar (represent a clearly recognizable daily concern)
• Emotionally charged/loaded (represent an issue that evokes emotion, invites involvement)
• Two-sided and problematized (represent a problem or contradiction, presented in a way that is complex enough to show its various contradictory aspects but simple enough for students to project their own experience onto it)
• Open-ended (without any implied solutions or obvious “right” or “wrong” interpretations.

Remainder of notes from “What is a Participatory Approach” (Reading 7 in Approaches binder):

Overview of Freire’s Curriculum Development Process

1. The Listening Phase: T identifies critical social issues from Ss’ lives, ones that trigger strong emotional responses in them
2. The Dialogue Phase: Ss in dialogue circles to reflect on problem, its root, possible solutions
3. The Decoding & Recoding Phase: After “reading the world” of a generative word, the “read the word”: from analyzing it in terms of Ss’ lives to analyzing it linguistically
4. The Action Phase: Doing something in real world as a result of reflection and dialogue

Freire’s “education for transformation” has been adapted for ESL, workplace, health, etc internationally.

Challenge in applying Freirean perspective: what is/isn’t relevant to given context.

Refinements to F’s practice: expansion of L role in curriculum development; variations e.g. not focusing on single method (code to dialog to generative word to syllabification to creating new words to action); questioning the idea the T role is to facilitate “conscientization” and analytic thinking, cuz that supposes T is more developed in understanding than Ss.

What Characterizes a Participatory Approach?

• Curriculum development involves Ss at every step (from Ss to curriculum instead of vice-versa): they decide what is to be done and how; produce their own forms and materials; share and analyze together

• Needs assessment: ongoing; students grouped by interest, literacy level, etc, and this is basis for curriculum development

• Content: emerges through ongoing classroom interaction: a retroactive account rather than blueprint or roadmap, a syllabus of how rather than what

• Teacher’s role: problem poser. Ss are the experts on their own reality; T is co-learner — member of group rather than expert. S/he draws out the experience and perspective of Ss and creates context where Ss feel comfortable

• Outcomes: cannot be predicted

• Qualitative change as important as quantitative change: address real-life concerns, take action, versus measurable changes in skill/grade level. Subjective as well as objective evidence of progress. Ss’ assessment of their progress important.

• Progress is cumulative and cyclical, not discrete and linear. Impact may take months to manifest.

Summary

• Ss engaged in curriculum development at every step
• Classroom is a model: what happens inside shapes the possibilities outside
• Focus on strengths rather than inadequacies
• T role as problem-poser, not problem-solver: “everyone teachers, everyone learns” (Arnold, et al 1985)
• Content comes from social context: starting point is concrete experience
• Language, literacy & culture explored as part of content because they are part of the context
• Content also comes from context of classroom dynamics, etc
• Individual experience is linked to social analysis: finding root causes of problems, depersonalizing them, providing support, basis for action
• Content carried back to social context: action outside classroom to make change in their lives. Literacy not end in itself but means for participants to shape reality