[ProfessionalDevelopment 2310] from David, Critical thinking and learner leadership scenarioTaylor, Jackie jataylor at utk.eduTue Jul 15 09:09:39 EDT 2008
The following message is from David J. Rosen, please read on ~ Best...Jackie Taylor, List Moderator, jataylor at utk.edu ________________________________ From: David J. Rosen [mailto:djrosen1 at gmail.com] Sent: Tuesday, July 15, 2008 8:06 AM To: The Adult Literacy Professional Development Discussion List Subject: Critical thinking and learner leadership scenario Cynthia, Marty and others, Sometimes learners, as individuals or as a group, have a strongly-held opinion, for example about how their English language class should be taught. Their view of what the class should be like is based on their experience in school in their own country/countries. It involves having a textbook, memorizing passages of text, and having the teacher stand in front of the class and lecture, especially lecturing about grammar. Their teacher may have a different view about how the class should be organized, for example that it should include some language learning games to reduce anxiety in producing sentences in the new language and for practice. The teacher may also believe that the new language being learned should be used to discuss issues of concern to the students in their workplace (for example whether or not they are being exploited at work, and if so what they can do about it, an issue,let's say, that some students have asked about). Suppose some of the learners hold a meeting to discuss this and that one learner steps forward to tell the teacher they want a textbook and grammar. Is this learner leadership? Is it critical thinking? Is it activism? How should a teacher who believes that learner leadership and critical thinking are important respond to this? Does this scenario resonate with anyone who has taught adults English? David J. Rosen djrosen at comcast.net -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.nifl.gov/pipermail/professionaldevelopment/attachments/20080715/c27fb4e4/attachment.html
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