Week 6: Paulo Freire and Ramón Flecha - Transformative, holistic and decolonial approaches to dialogue

‘There’s no such thing as neutral education. Education either functions as an instrument to bring about conformity or freedom.’ ― Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed

In this final week of the course, we look at Paulo’s Freire’s conceptualisation of dialogic pedagogy which precedes much of the work that we have looked at so far, and in many ways arises from a very different starting point. We then look at how Freire’s ideas have been picked up by Ramón Flecha and operationalised in schools worldwide. This is only one example of Freirian pedagogy in action, Freire has been a hugely influential thinker and his work is very important to the global movement to decolonise education. We build on one of the core questions from last week: Is dialogue a ‘western’ idea? Freire’s work is one way of answering this question, as he proposes a radical approach to dialogic pedagogy as a form of resistance to the ongoing impact of colonialism and slavery. The ‘Successful Educational Actions for All’ project offers an example of this approach to dialogic pedagogy, through targeted actions such as ‘Interactive Groups’ and ‘Dialogic Literary Gatherings’. We also briefly refer to Confucian and Islamic approaches to educational dialogue and invite you to continue your learning journey through further MOOCs in our series.

Reflective Journal Template

Use the Week 6 reflective journal template to make notes as you work through the following tasks.

Watch

Watch the following video for an overview of the week’s theme:

You can download the video transcript here.

Watch this video interview where Ramón Flecha joins us to discuss his work:

Note that this interview is also available as an audio resource (you may prefer to listen to the interview whilst on a walk!):

Read

This week’s readings and resources for you to review are as follows:

• Core reading 1: Course handout for Week 6
• Core reading 2: Paulo Freire’s Five Ideas for Dialogical Learning
• Core reading 3: Ramon Flecha’s Step4SEAs Brochure

Optional further readings and resources:

• Website: https://www.step4seas.org
• Teacher Resources: Dialogic Literary Gatherings Resource 1
• Teacher Resources: Dialogic Literary Gatherings Resource 2
• Blog: https://oracycambridge.org/finding-the-voice-to-tell-our-stories/
• Wikipedia page on Dialogic Learning
• Journal Article: Garcia-Carrion et al. (2020). Exploring the Impact of Dialogic Literary Gatherings on Students’ Relationships With a Communicative Approach. Qualitative Inquiry. Sage Journals.

Additional resources for you to access following the completion of this course:

• As we outlined in the video for this week, this course is the first in a three-part series. Course 2 ‘Conducting a Reflective Inquiry’ will be launched in the autumn (2022) and you can sign up here. Course 3 ‘Supporting your Colleagues through Facilitation’ is for individuals who are interested in taking their knowledge of educational dialogue a step further and supporting their colleagues to use T-SEDA to improve their dialogic practices. There is also an additional course, Course 1A ‘Dialogue in Islamic Classrooms: Using Halaqah to Develop Shakhsiyah’, which will be offered May 9 - June 17, 2022. All are welcome to join and you can sign up here.
• A range of other sites might also be of interest as you continue to develop your understanding of educational dialogue: CEDiR, Edudialogue.org, and Camtree as well as the ones cited throughout the last six weeks.
  
  

  Do

  In your reflective learning journal for Week 6, write responses to the following questions:

• Thinking about your context, are there individuals or groups of learners who are affected by the ongoing impacts of colonialism and slavery? In what ways have they been impacted? What power structures do you as an educator operate in? How do they affect you? How do they affect your learners?
• Within your practice is there anything you can do to ‘decolonise’ education? If you can think of some ideas and wish to work towards decolonising education, then think about some practical steps you can take. If you have the opportunity to try out your ideas, write an account of what they are and what happens when you trial them.

To receive a Certificate of Completion, please complete your Reflective Report and submit it to Meaghan at meb78@cam.ac.uk. We have developed a tentative template for your Reflective Report here, but we encourage you to adapt this and make it your own.

Lastly, we would be grateful if you could fill out this survey regarding your experience in the course. Your perspective is highly valuable to us as we aim to strengthen the course for the next iteration! Please note that you do not need to have completed all weeks in order to submit the survey.

Discuss

In the Week 6 channel, please post a response to at least one of these questions.

• Thinking about the Paulo Freire quote: “There’s no such thing as neutral education. Education either functions as an instrument to bring about conformity or freedom”, do you agree? Please explain.
• Are you educating learners for conformity or freedom? Does dialogue lead to freedom? If so, how?
• Thinking again about intercultural dialogue, are conformity and freedom necessarily oppositional to each other? Is freedom a neutral term, or has ‘freedom’ also been used to maintain cultural dominance by declaring other cultures less free?

Now, read through others’ responses to these questions and reply with your ideas to at least one person.

Discussion forum

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