Pedagogical implications of the findings and suggestions for further research
5.1 Pedagogical implications of the findings
Chapter 5
Pedagogical implications of the findings and suggestions for
to actively participate In any discursive practices that impact on their social constructions.
When educators become aware of the difference between pedagogy and teaching, they should actively seek to transform their lessons by allowing opportunities for criticism and debate. They will have to adopt different approaches to their relationship with learners as well. On a personal level, one would need to be more empathetic and understanding of learners' lives in different Discourses. Familiarising yourself with them takes time, and the dialogue journals are an effective way of encouraging a better teacher- pupil relationship in the classroom. In order to project a sincere and bona fide image to the learners, this empathy should be grounded in the realities of their home lives and extended to the expectations of the school in order to make this Discourse more meaningful to them. It is obvious that schools should therefore have qualified school psychologists and counsellors who are able to address the issues which will arise from the information that teachers gain about their learners' lives. In many instances where there is conflict at home, or even at school, these issues will have to be dealt with in a sensitive manner, and expertise in this field is required if the risk of undermining and destroying the people involved to be avoided.
For learners to become au fait with the discursive practices of a school, especially in cases where they have not been apprenticed by the Discourse of the home, teachers need to ensure that there is scaffolded and supported interaction with people who have mastered the Discourse of the school already. These people could be teachers
themselves, who develop teaching programmes to assist those who are at risk of being outsiders because of their lack of apprenticeship. Gee (1990) exhorts teachers,
especially teachers of English to take responsibility for apprenticing learners to dominant, school-based social practices. Through the teaching of English, these educators are also passing on a particular world view of certain social groups, a view which is complicit with certain values and beliefs. In apprenticing the learner into the practices of the dominant Discourse, educators need to be fully aware that this may be in conflict with her initial enculturation and socialisation, and with various other identities which are part of other social practices in which she engages.
Strategies to assist these learners whose identities might be in crisis must be created.
This can be done by opening up these issues for debate, by validating different ways of being in different contexts, and by emphasising the possibility of multiple
identities. Educators become curriculum developers by acknowledging the diverse cultures and complex social issues which characterise their learners, and selecting texts that validate this in the classroom. Learners' vernacular language, registers of speech, genre of music, and even accessible and informal comic books can be used to tap into their ways of thinking and doing. Diversity in its many guises must be acknowledged, exposed and discussed in the classrooms if our learners are to develop tolerance and respect for each other. In this way, stereotypes and prejudices are exposed and discussed, and learners are then able to question their own discursive practices, and transform them to become more inclusive of differences. By including texts that reveal diversity in our society, the teacher is validating the alternative ways of being that are exemplified in a multi-cultural classroom. Inter-discursive conflict that arises when cultures and traditions of the home discourse are vastly different to that of the school, will be ameliorated by this type of pedagogical intervention. In a very thought-provoking discussion of English teachers and their roles as gate-keepers, Gee compellingly states that
The English teacher can contribute to her own marginalisation by seeing herself as a language teacher with no connections to social or political issues.
Or she can accept the paradox of literacy being a form of interethnic communication that often involves conflicts of values and identities, and accept her role as one who socialises students into a world view that has constant possibilities for change.
(Gee, 1990: 67)
Furthermore, the extent of mastery in a discourse determines the positioning of a subject, and if mastery is achieved, then a sense of belonging and empowerment is the ultimate consequence. As gatekeepers of this discourse, teachers should be actively seeking out different ways to facilitate this mastery. Supportive interaction could also be supplied by senior learners who act as mentors for the new admissions to a school, or for those learners who approach counsellors with personal problems which impact negatively on their identities at school. Two innovative schools in Pietermaritzburg have established groups of these mentors under the leadership and direction of the school counsellor, and are examples of how these supportive strategies breach the gap between the home and school, and assist with creating the school as a place where learners can feel a sense of belonging, instead of alienation.
Where it is clear that learners are not mastering the school discourse because of a lack of apprenticeship from the home, schools should involve parents through creative strategies designed to expose parents to literary and other practices which are validated at schools. Schools need to create ways in which this involvement could be developed, since according to past experience at Caliban High School, the majority of parents do not support Parents' Days. The need for parental involvement is boldly stated in the data in this study, with many subjects feeling disempowered and presenting themselves as outsiders in the school discourse because their parents do not
support their academic endeavours - the trick is how to harness and sustain the interest of these parents, many of whom are struggling to cope with the daily grind of life.
Educators and management of schools must revisit the conventions of the school, focussing on ways in which these practices position the learners and collude to create positive or negative identities. The setting of school rules and issues of discipline need to involve learners right from the outset in order for them to gain a sense of belonging and ownership in the school, instead of alienating them from it.
As educators, we are naturally concerned with issues such as completion of the syllabus and tests and examinations. Congruent with this is the valorisation of learners who comply with our notion of what is correct within the discourse of the school.
They are viewed as one dimensional beings who either succeed at school, or not.
However, learners should be viewed as "lifelong trajectories through these sites and institutions, as stories with multiple twists and turns" (Lankshear and Knobel, 1998).
Learning is achieved through diverse contexts and in many different discourses. Gee is critical of schools that focus on children and schooling and ignore the role of social practices and Discourses. Teachers who are aware of the ways in which different discourses collude to position their learners and even themselves, are concomitantly aware that within the classroom, they are engaged in creating discourses and social realities through the interaction and the projection of certain values and beliefs of both the teacher and the learners. Our beliefs and values are important in constructing our identities, they combine to create a social reality which is " caught up in networks of power and desire, and resistance to power and desire" (Gee, 1990: 9)
What this research has highlighted is that the learners' identities are not unitary and stable, but are constantly being transformed, and constantly affected by the ways in which they are positioned in different discourses. Gee supports this stance by unequivocally stating that as educators we need to afford our learners the opportunity to critique their primary and secondary discourses, by exposing them to a number of discourses which will allow them to challenge some of their own discursive practices, and even transform them. We mistakenly assume that all learners have acquired the conventions of their primary discourse, and focus on learning at schools. However, many learners are non-mainstream and have not been effectively socialised into the discourse of the school. We need to move away from the conventional and limiting view that those who master the discourse of the school, are successful, and the rest are failures. Instead we need to explore other ways of reaching these learners who do not show successful apprenticeship into the conventions of the school. Gee sums it up in the following words:
Mainstream dominant discourses in our society, especially school-based discourses, privilege us who have mastered them and do significant harm to others. They involved us in foolish views about other human beings and their Discourses, they foreshorten our views of human nature, human diversity, and the capacities for human change and development. They render us complicit with a denial of goods, including full human worth, to other humans, including many children. They imply that some children mean less than other children.
(Gee, 1990: 191)