Pedadogy Of The Oppressed
Jul 16th, 2007 by alexanderhayes
[ image : Bill & Ted by Taniwhaiti ]
Welcome back to those of you fortunate enough to have an employer who pays for time out.
It is indeed a privilege to have the opportunity to spend time with children which may be labeled as “holidays”. Other’s would denote this as a luxury and push for workers to be nose-up against the grind wheel sooner than later.
I firmly believe that our lives and our families need time with us. It allows us to give more when we return to the timetabled existence we have as Educators.
Take heart if during that time out you have cast your thoughts back upon your NSW LearnScope team experience and feel a lack in progress towards project outcomes.
This perception often occurs at this mid-way point in LearnScope projects. This time is when it gets interesting.
Take stock also of the manner by which you are engaging the individuals within your team, being conscious to the bureaucratic pressure that seeks to find leaders amongst it’s professional assemblage to conduct activities as guest speakers in foreign locations. It’s time to focus and look back over those project plans and truly and honestly determine whether the plan now reflects the direction of the project.
If not…….not why not…….change it. In fact do so URGENTLY as your project payments depend on it !!!
It’s also a sobering thoughts for those engaged in leadership teams or courses - mlearning, pedagogy and virtual worlds.
I’m re-re -reading “Pedagogy Of The Oppressed” by Paulo Friere ( translated by Myra Berman Ramos , Penguin Books, 1996 Edition ) who speaks of many things including his perception of oppressive cultural action of dedicated but naive professionals who place an emphasis on a focalised view of problems rather than seeing them as dimensions of a totality.
Paulo also speaks critically of leadership courses where individuals are singled out as different, imbued further difference otherwise known as status and then allowed time to inculcate and manipulate the very people whom they had set out to assist in the first place.
Leaves little room for those of us who speak of colleagues rather than comrades.
More than light reading……. for a chilly winters morning…… on the bus……..as I venture into the cacophony of the city to find out whether I’ve been unlocked from the web portal nightmare of my digital identity.
