Page 52 - Beyond Methods

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Understanding postmethod pedagogy
• Raise cultural consciousness: This macrostrategy emphasizes the need to treat learners as cultural informants so that they are en- couraged to engage in a process of classroom participation that puts a premium on their power/knowledge.
Reflective task 2.6
Individually or with a peer partner, go over the list of macrostrategies again. Which ones already inform your day-to-day teaching? Which ones are not relevant to your learning/teaching context? Based on your professional and experiential knowledge, can you add to this list of macrostrategies?
The basic insights for the macrostrategic framework are drawn mostly from theoretical, empirical, and experiential knowledge grounded in classroom-oriented research. The classroom research perspective adopted here is governed by the belief that a pedagogic framework must emerge from classroom experience and experi- mentation. It is also motivated by the fact that a solid body of class- room research findings is available for careful consideration and judicious application. It should, however, be recognized that the classroom research path is by no means the only path that has the potential to lead to the construction of a pedagogic framework. There may very well be other, equally valid paths one can take.
Whatever orientation one pursues, what should be remembered is that practicing and prospective teachers need a framework that can enable them to develop the knowledge, skill, attitude, and au- tonomy necessary to devise for themselves a systematic, coherent, and relevant personal theory of practice that is informed by the pa- rameters of particularity, practicality, and possibility. While the pur- pose of such a framework is to help teachers become autonomous decision-makers, it should, without denying the value of individual autonomy, provide adequate conceptual underpinnings based on cur- rent theoretical, empirical, and experiential insights so that their teaching act may come about in a principled fashion.
The parameters of particularity, practicality, and possibility along with the suggested macrostrategies constitute the operating prin- ciples that can guide practicing teachers in their effort to construct their own situation-specific pedagogic knowledge in the emerging