Page 48 - Beyond Methods

36 Understanding postmethod pedagogy
ongoing encounters with learning and teaching is the teacher’s un- explained and sometimes unexplainable awareness of what consti- tutes good teaching. Teachers’ sense-making (van Manen, 1977) of good teaching matures over time as they learn to cope with compet- ing pulls and pressures representing the content and character of professional preparation, personal beliefs, institutional constraints, learner expectations, assessment instruments, and other factors.
The seemingly instinctive and idiosyncratic nature of the teacher’s sense-making disguises the fact that it is formed and re- formed by the pedagogic factors governing the microcosm of the classroom as well as by the sociopolitical forces emanating from outside. Consequently, sense-making requires that teachers view pedagogy not merely as a mechanism for maximizing learning op- portunities in the classroom but also as a means for understanding and transforming possibilities in and outside the classroom. In this sense, the parameter of practicality metamorphoses into the pa- rameter of possibility.
The Parameter of Possibility
The parameter of possibility is derived mainly from the works of critical pedagogists of Freirean persuasion. As discussed in Chapter 1, critical pedagogists take the position that any pedagogy is impli- cated in relations of power and dominance, and is implemented to create and sustain social inequalities. They call for recognition of learners’ and teachers’ subject-positions, that is, their class, race, gender, and ethnicity, and for sensitivity toward their impact on ed- ucation.
In the process of sensitizing itself to the prevailing sociopolitical reality, the parameter of possibility is also concerned with individ- ual identity. More than any other educational enterprise, language education provides its participants with challenges and opportu- nities for a continual quest for subjectivity and self-identity for, as Weeden (1987, p. 21) points out, “Language is the place where ac- tual and possible forms of social organization and their likely so- cial and political consequences are defined and contested. Yet it is also the place where our sense of ourselves, our subjectivity, is constructed.” This is even more applicable to L2 education, which brings languages and cultures in contact (see chapters 11 and 12 for more details).