Page 46 - Beyond Methods

34 Understanding postmethod pedagogy
teachers’ sense of plausibility is not linked to the concept of method, an important concern is “not whether it implies a good or bad method, but more basically, whether it is active, alive, or operational enough to create a sense of involvement for both the teacher and the student” (Ibid., p. 173).
The three major attributes of the postmethod condition outlined above provide a solid foundation on which the fundamental param- eters of a postmethod pedagogy can be conceived and constructed.
Reflective task 2.4
Pause for a minute and consider what possible criteria a postmethod ped- agogy has to meet in order to overcome the limitations of a method-based pedagogy.
Postmethod Pedagogy
Postmethod pedagogy allows us to go beyond, and overcome the limitations of, method-based pedagogy. Incidentally, I use the term pedagogy in a broad sense to include not only issues pertaining to classroom strategies, instructional materials, curricular objectives, and evaluation measures but also a wide range of historiopolitical and sociocultural experiences that directly or indirectly influence L2 education. Within such a broad-based definition, I visualize post- method pedagogy as a three-dimensional system consisting of ped- agogic parameters of particularity, practicality, and possibility. I briefly outline below the salient features of each of these parame- ters indicating how they interweave and interact with each other (for more details, see Kumaravadivelu, 2001).
The Parameter of Particularity
The parameter of particularity requires that any language peda- gogy, to be relevant, must be sensitive to a particular group of teach- ers teaching a particular group of learners pursuing a particular set of goals within a particular institutional context embedded in a par- ticular sociocultural milieu. The parameter of particularity then is