I have been working with a local Thai teacher on a teaching project she is working on. Her first initiative was to focus on the teaching writing through creative writing; however, I have included the critical aspect of teaching writing to her project in which she has not really been properly introduced. I have proposed to her a community-based/service learning pedagogy to this writing project. The service learning pedagogy grows out from critical/feminist approach by giving more value to local knowledge, background, and wisdom.
By proposing this topic, I asked her to use local knowledge and local wisdom as writing assignments to be assigned to students. Students can introduce tourist attractions with historical background attached to the brochures or drawing maps with different routes for different activities for tourists to use. Another assignment would be writing on local culture, foods, and religions. This could help both teachers and students to integrate local knowledge in English language as well. This could help counter the stereotypes in which others think.
This is an on-going project that I am still working with this local teacher. I will come and add more progress about this project.
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have been seeing you throwing the word "critical" here and there...how do "you" define the term? how does this set of activities promote "critical" literacy?
ReplyDeleteThank you for your question. As you know that the western way of education/culture has always privileged and separated the us and them dichotomy. In this sense, the 'us' will be devalued and not worth discussing, while the 'them' is better. This is what Pennycook defines "cultural politics".
ReplyDeleteCritical in this sense will be defined with Pennycook's 1995 concept of reflecting and valuing the ideas or knowledge of 'us' the local wisdom and experiences. Then this will help students to be more "critical" in the sense that they will know more about themselves as well as others. They will learn how people look at them, stereotype them, and how this affects the way they live in the society.
in the same vein, the critical in this connection can be to the local contexts where the learning is taking place. By using information and knowledge around students, they will learn, by default, the similarity and differences of information they know vs what they think they know. This is similar to the way we learn culture. When we learn about other cultures, we actually learn more about our own culture.
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