Page 71 - Beyond Methods

Maximizing learning opportunities 59
learners and teachers together explore all the available avenues to generate learning opportunities in and outside the classroom.
One such avenue is to try to connect the classroom with the local community and with the global community, and thereby enhance the creation and utilization of learning opportunities.
CONNECTING WITH THE LOCAL COMMUNITY
Among those suggesting several variations of participatory research aimed at creating opportunities for teachers and learners to connect with the community outside the classroom are Shirley Brice Heath (1983, 1993), Sudia McCaleb (1994), Bonny Norton Pierce (1995), Kumaravadivelu, (1999b), and Geneva Smitherman (2000). They all emphasize the necessity to create opportunities for the learners to develop their oral and written communication skills as well as their critical thinking skills by analyzing and understanding how language rules and language use operate in various communicative settings.
The following five recommendations about the aims and activi- ties of participatory research that are useful for teachers and learn- ers can be derived from a close reading of the authors cited above:
(1) Formcommunitiesoflearners.Thegoalhereistobringtogether teachers, students, family members, and community activists to form what may be called learning communities: socially cohesive and mutually supportive groups seeking self-awareness and self- improvement. In order to realize that goal, participants may be en- couraged to assume the role of mini-ethnographers so that they can, at a personal level, investigate their own difficulties in adjust- ing to a new culture, or a new educational system, or a new lan- guage, and, at a social level, explore family and community con- cerns and aspirations, and their impact on their education.
(2) Interact with competent speakers of the target language. This can be done by encouraging the learners to use their still developing tar- get language and engage in conversations with competent speakers of the language during social and cultural events whether at school, in the neighborhood, or in the community at large. To make that engagement meaningful and critical, the learners may be asked, at lower levels of proficiency, to give a brief oral or written report about their social interaction. At higher levels of proficiency, they may be asked to reflect on and write about how language use is so- cially structured in terms of power and prestige.