A PC Critique of “A NEW PEDAGOGICAL PARADIGM FOR EDUCATION IN THE CLASSROOM”
By Lorenzo Tébar Belmonte
[[This PC critique simply spot checks PC’s application and offers few details as to how PC accomplishes the ideas and proposals presented in the article. As always, the PC critique is in double bracketed italics.]]
SUMMARY
Education is experiencing a change as important as that caused by the discoveries of Copernicus: in fact we are witnesses to a genuine revolution forming a new foundation, based on cognitivist psychology, but which nevertheless retains the best methodologies, resources and strategies of modern science.
Although the changes in teaching are required by the dazzling changes experienced in our present society, the educational world, resists the changes, and therefore needs to be given justification for them which will awaken the acceptance of them by professional educators. It is indispensable to invest in bringing professionals up to date through the formation of teachers, so that they can assimilate and accept these new ideas through what we might call a fresh apprenticeship in teaching. This present paper offers the keys, pillars and necessary foundations to define what we could call “A pedagogical prototype for sociological mediation”, that is a method of convincing teachers of the present need to change. This will require an effort, because of its all-embracing nature and its expanse, because it affects the whole of society for, after all, education is the business of us all. [[Producer Consciousness suffers from teacher resistance. The logic of PC is rejected.]]
An outline of present day educational theories.
Very few educational sociologists have analysed as successfully and diagnosed present day schooling so wisely as Andy Hargreaves, who is utterly convinced of the need of change in our educational systems. In this paper there are listed the reasons and justification for his conclusions on educational needs.
Every teacher has had his own experiences in education in the classroom and each one has his own ideal of how education should be run; we assess by means of different criteria and we recognise its wide impact on the life of every human being. Although we cannot deny the positive aspects which enrich today’s educational world, it is equally undeniable that it leaves scars and that it lacks a great deal by holding fast to so complicated a system as is that of education. International evaluations are regrettable. (PISA 2009)We regret the poverty of educational innovations, which is noticeable in so many countries. There is a lot of talk about discovering how to reduce the failures and the abandoning of education by more than 20% of students in the European Community. And these discussions might help decidedly in assisting teachers to regain their former prestige in our society. [[Each teacher has his/her own Matrix filled with Idea Vectors, Method Vectors, and Best Practice Vectors on how education should be run. Unfortunately, many of the inputs in these Vectors have FARTs that lead to the resistance to new ideas.]]
There is however a noticeable sense of tiredness and a lack of morale in teachers who would like to act against present trends; the content of education is reduced as well as the length of schooling at the most delicate levels of early education; budgets for education are curtailed so that the permanent formation of teachers and keeping them up to date is neglected. There exists only a superficial analysis of the genuine causes of our failure, judging by reading the results of international surveys. In fact we find plenty of reasons to introduce a fresh plan for education and to allow a breath of fresh air to enter our classroom. It seems that the crisis which is paralysing society, which is traumatising families, is implacably affecting the life in the centres of education. [[Everyone needs PC. Teacher burnout is related to having to deal with so many different Matrices (students, administrators, parents, other teachers, and stakeholders). PC has a common language and easily applied ideas that aid the teacher to navigate all of the Matrices. Having a way to talk to everyone in the same way liberates the body, mind, and spirit. The same PC language and ideas are applied in pedagogy, further assisting the need to emotionally and intellectually connect with each student.]]
We don’t think we are exaggerating the conclusions of our examination when we affirm that there is very little political desire to introduce an education which is inclusive and successful, which will prevent school failures and which will be able to give the answer to the real needs of students and attain a multicultural diversity in our classrooms. Why not attack the very roots of why students fail or have to repeat courses, and halt more and more the growing risk of students abandoning education all together, after they have left secondary school After all there has been no effort to take the means to prevent the failure and find a solution to the problem which some students have dragged along with them since their earliest years in school. [[PC is inclusive. It’s an intellectual hub for ALL pedagogical theories and practices (including ideas about student needs and multiculturalism). What students drag along with them since their earliest years in school is a Matrix filled with Red (negative) FARTs. This has to be put on the table before any subject matter is delivered (and during the delivery of the subject matter).]]
Of course we realise what a big problem this is, and how difficult it would be to remedy the situation when classes are so diverse. The ideal is to adapt to the needs of students and to pay attention to those students in greatest risk of failure and of leaving school all together. It looks as though we are confronted by a wall which is difficult to knock down. The barriers against sharing and succeeding seem insurmountable. They are opposed if a school centre tries to satisfy the needs of students by revising its methodology and widening what it offers. Alternatively they are confronted by a stubborn immobility which kills any idea of change. [[CC makes it a big problem. No! Don’t adapt to the needs of the students. Simply, consider their Matrices and force them to adapt to your PC language and ideas. CC has caused the problems, CC is being used to solve the problems, and CC is behind the resistance to any proposals to solve the problems.]]
It is evident that there would be opposition to changes on the part of teachers, not because of any fault on their part, but because there is no adequate training for authentic professional needs and because there is no other methodology which can make them feel as secure as the methods they have relied on for years. Very few teachers have any scientific training or a research mentality, nor do they possess the necessary means to change their way of teaching. The case for change in the structures of the educational system is weakened. Teachers are given no real autonomy to experiment in teaching in their educational centres. [[Authentic professional needs starts with relationships. PC provides the foundation to produce relationships (with the other and with oneself). PC is a fast track to scientific training and a research mentality. PC gives teachers the means to change their way of teaching. PC gives them real autonomy by way of metacognition and being an intellectual hub for all pedagogical ideas. Change comes by way of consciousness. CC has locked teachers into FARTing without autonomy, PC frees their FART production for any inputs they encounter from any source.]]
Solutions and educational models are not transferable, because the conditions and resources of countries are different. Finland, Korea and Singapore are good examples in many ways, but their methods cannot be practised in other countries. Discussions and statements on content show a complete ignorance of the psycho-pedagogical principles which need to the grasped if change is desired in the present socio-cognitive programmes. The same could be said of the reductionist ideas of education and an integral formation bringing them to a simple harmless but useless kind of instruction. [[?? PC’s attribute of intellectual hub overcomes non-transferability. The key is that all humans are Producers and with PC language and ideas methods can be interchangeable. The psycho-pedagogical principles will be translated into PC.]]
1. Change is needed in educational programmes.
Actual suggestions and recommendations (European Community, UNESCO, PISA, the new system of Boulogne etc) insist on a necessary and urgent change in systems of education. They talk of finding a practical answer to the genuine challenges existing in our globalised, technical society, which have had influence in all the surroundings of our doubting educative world. The three essential elements in education are:
Anthropology, teleology and educatioal psychology which need an updating in the inspirational principles behind the way teachers teach..We need to revise the concepts and the belief systems which guide the way today’s teachers act, to help masters and teachers to be real professionals in the undertaking of their work. This is for many experts the real Achilles heel in present day education. Teachers are supposed to be proficient in their speciality and know how to teach it in the most efficient way within the context of the inclusive school, so that they will arrive at a safe habour. “Education is now obliged to give out nautical charts in a complex world constantly disturbed. Educaion experts have to provide a compass to help teacchers to navigate. J.Delors (1996”)Education contains treasures” Madrid: Santillana-UNESCO, page kk. 95).We need to train the competences of teachers with a vision for the future. [[The historical way teachers act is under the influence of CC. Being real professionals means both knowledge of subject and interpersonal skills. PC helps in both efforts. The future cannot be predicted. However, we can prepare minds to navigate most waters that future citizens may travel. PC is the nautical chart to be utilized by teachers.]]
2. Which are the pedagogical currents of thought which can be the foundation for this change in education?
A varied summary must show a global vision of Education lacking none of the elements which are essential in every aspect of education. Leaving aside present psycho-pedagogical systems like psycho-analysis, conductism, humanism, personalism and other “isms” which have affected our culture, we have concentrated on the most widely known and complementary of the following.
[[In one form or another, each of the six types have been PC critiqued.]]
Pedagogical
Types
BRINGING ELEMENTS OF THE SOCIO-GOGNITIVE TO THE PEDAGOGICAL PARAGIGM
1. The new school
This highlights the pre-eminence of early education.
It recognises the dignity of the person of the student, which is unique and irreplaceable; for it contains what it holds valuable and it is the chief influence in its own development.
2. The pedagogy of freedom
This realises the need of humanising change: how everything around one is linked, is connected to popular culture.
Being a transformer of society: Freedom is in the hands of each person.
3. Cognitive pedagogy
This imples Epistemological principles, cognitive processes. Taxonomy of abilities.
- A different role as organiser, as guide or as planner on the part of the educator.
4. Construc-tive pedagogy
Central role of the student
He decides what is to be learnt, its structures and plans.
Interpretation of how adaptations are adopted.
- The teacher introduces routes to learning: warns of conflicts, there is cognitive balance.
5. Sociologi-cal pedagogy
Society forms us. We reach our being, thanks to other people.
- The importance of interaction and words used in planning and in structure situations and ourselves.
- Apprenticeship (learning situation) is the basis of the potential development even at the highest levels of learning.
6. Pedagogy of mediation or “Pedagogywith a human face.
A series of anthropological and psycho-pedagogical principles which show the relationship in education implying the role of the teacher as mediator. Programme of the mediator as back-up mediator and development of the process.(PEI).
A proposal of how to act (a cognitive Map) which contains all the necessary elements (cognitive functions, mental operations, the criteria of mediation, the levels of interaction). It rejects all negative determinism.
Battery of psycho-diagnostic dynamism (LPAD): it aims at creating surroundings which can change things or adapt them to the students’ needs.
We enjoy today great benefits from the discoveries of science which assure us that the social progress of post-industrial society results from the sum total of the discoveries made by human beings throughout the centuries. Education too has travelled through routes and cultures of many different kinds, and this has handed down to us an inheritance of immense wealth.The difficulty today is to decide on a coherence synthesis which can give unity to the varied psycho-pedagogical currents with their different shades of light and shadow which have reached us. Aiming at this nevertheless we are making efforts to study an all-embracing system, inspired by the human sciences and the Pedagogy of mediation (interaction) and re-inforced by applying what has been learnt from peoples’ formative experiences. The three major aspects (content/objectives, teacher and taught) of education must be integrated into and harmonised in our proposal. [[Science can be just as bad as religious explanations of reality. Science has almost become a zero sum game with its great contributions and its great harms. Science is framed by CC. PC, as an intellectual hub, provides a coherence synthesis that can guide science to reduce the number of harms that it produces. PC facilitates a pedagogy of interaction and captures peoples’ formative experiences. CC prevents the desired harmonizing. PC naturally builds the integration and harmonizing.]]
3. Proposal for a new educative paradigm for the XXI century:
All teachers recognise themselves as capable of filling an essential function in our society, which, paradoxically, when teachers’ training is longer and their teaching aids more available, becomes more and more difficult and complicated. That is why it is essential to be aware of changes occurring in our society and of the impact those changes have on the educational world, because of their all-pervading influence on the life of persons and because of the changes made in society itself. [[Teachers operate under CC. CC makes teachers’ training longer. PC, as an intellectual hub, helps teachers to be aware of changes occurring in our society and recognize the impacts of those changes.]]
Resistence to change is understandable when one has not worked out alternative solutions for improvement, or if one is ignorant of theories, methods and experiments which have succeeded in countries which are in the vanguard in education ((PISA: OCDE, UNESCO). That is why in education it is essential to justify any change of programme or paradigm with arguments so convincing that they will answer any escapist excuse which says that some modern fashions will sink into oblivion. One has to be professional in education as in any other walk of life and be able to give reasons which will capture the convictions of educators, of their students and in fact of the whole of society. This will raise the status of teachers and their self-esteem. To achieve all this, it is essential to have pedagogical training and to present practical ideas. [[The alternative solution is PC. CC is strong, it prevents any new Vectors that challenges how it have infected MOP and GOP. PC contains its own reasons for being a framework for educators and students and society. Self-esteem is measured in terms of the ME Vector. The complexities in having to interact with so many Vectors (students, administrators, parents, other teachers, and stakeholders) overwhelms MOP and GOP. PC provides a common language and ideas that helps teachers integrate all of these Vectors and enhance teaching qualities.]]
The school must revise its ideas on what it is for, since many of its competences are being taken over by other organisations and institutions of society. It must revise its methodologies, by means of its instruments and resources, to be open to more creative horizons and be constantly renewing itself. The unforeseen changes of a society which is developing and making irreversible progress, needs educators who think deeply and who are open to the unsuspected creativity of human intelligence, which is the heir to immeasurable discoveries in every branch of knowledge which all converge in our area. [[The school is for nurturing young Producers to be wise Producers. It’s methodologies were always to be PC, but CC never allowed this to occur and other organizations stepped in. The unsuspected creativity of human intelligence embodies PC.]]
A new plan of campaign needs flexibility to be able to adapt itself to a new kind of anthropology – the students of today are different from what their parents were; they have different objectives: the school of today has different tasks to undertake and wider commitments to an integral education. It has a more enlightened psycho-pedagogy with a wider range of variety, where cultures become purified as also areas of knowledge are clarified. Today learning by heart is not enough; one must cultivate cognitive ability, to form the mind, since it is not enough merely to fill it. [[PC allows that flexibility. All generations have different sets of Matrices. But, the common frame is that goes on in the Matrix. All differences are simply different sets of Vectors, not a different process of production. An integral education starts with recognizing that we are not consumers with CC. PC’s processes of production in the Matrix is the cultivation of cognitive ability.]]
We should not underestimate theory, the very principal foundation of a coherent course of action, which develops our ability to put together what we have learnt, as at the same time we build up our mental abilities as all educators attempt to do. We are dealing with a leap foward, which cannot be made into the unknown or be merely improvised. We need to be familiar with experts’ findings, with up-to-date pedagogical research, to get to know programmes and methods which have succeeded, to know all the best methods of teachers who have preceded us in these indispensable changes. We are a community of apprentices who are to be taught new ideas in professionalism, founded on human sciences, and through work shared as a team. [[Building up one’s mental abilities is all about adding Vectors to the Matrix, but more importantly, interrelating the inputs within Vectors and among Vectors. First, we must understand PC, then know theories, then utilize PC to integrate the theories, then utilize PC to download the theories into the classroom. Note how the CC idea of best practices hangs on. All best practices are past tense. If we are arguing that things are changing, best practices can only be a temporary guide to developing new practices. Indeed best practices can impede the development and implementation of innovation. The horse and carriage does have seats and four wheels.]]
By definition a teacher must be an innovator, one who is creative, who provokes others to thought, but more especially an educator who is a mediator, able to be welcoming to adaptations to different characters and the different styles of learning of his students. His flexibility should be able to help him to be open to permanent formation/training in knowing how to exercise so noble a profession. The teacher should never fail to marvel each day as he begins to help in the permanent humanization and the wonders of the human intelligence as each educator has fresh surprises. Therefore whatever be the programme adopted, the educational task will have its own dynamism in the style of human relationship which the teacher will have to establish in the mini-world of personal interactions. [[Ditto. CC prevents innovation other than that which consumes. Provoking others to thought is what PC is all about. PC helps teachers to be mediators and adapt to different Matrices of students. PC, not CC, promotes flexibility for openness. PC’s language and ideas promote “ah ha” moments, continuously. As always stated in all PC critiques, it matters not the theory or program design, PC covers anything proposed for the classroom at the same time helping teachers to download information to any type of student Matrix.]]
And as we are dealing with a horizon of feeling, of apprenticeships and of values, there will always exist an ultimate Utopia, where there exist tensions admittedly in anyone hoping to forge himself into a free agent, yet who is happy, autonomous and free, capable of working in society and able to build a better world: a world which is at peace. [[As we are dealing with Matrices filled with FARTs there will always exist a potential Utopia, where PC language and ideas frees the Producer from CC to produce a better world of Producers who see themselves in a phenomenal series of complex human production chains.]]
All the terminology of our scheme (seen from within or from without), has its pshycho-pedagogical sense, based on the three central circles which support the dome of education (ED), keeping it within the determined limits of teaching, learning and pedagogy. In those three are expressed in their turn the distinct forms of how this education becomes a reality. It becomes real according to the relationship between society/family/mediator and the objectives (teaching) and between the subject and the objective. By “objective” we mean apprenticeship, or a plan which shows the complete outline of the structures and the means in which the educational context (pedagogy) is seen. We do not ignore the context, expressed in a double socio-cognitive dimention. It is the latter which creates the climate of external influence (socio-cultural background) and the internal one too – in the centre – (equalateralness – adaptation) This in turn determines and sets the conditions for what we do in the context of education. The filter or magnifying element of all the relationships is expressed by mediation, by means of a constant adaptation by the teacher, who assures the potential development , the motivation, the implied action and the success of the educator. [[PC captures all of the psycho-pedagogical structures that explain and address the society, family, mediator issues of teaching. Know thyself (i.e., know ones PC mental model) and all the sets of conditions, theoretical and practical, will resolve themselves without over politicking pedagogy.]]
