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Showing posts with the label Critical Pedagogy

A vignette of IATL, in the dark would (wood) 13th May 2015

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  ‘You remind me,’ said the woman on the other side, ‘of Alice in Wonderland.’ I had left my belongings back in the other world, including my shoes, and crawled through a tunnel of lights into an Aladdin’s cave of pedagogy. There were no giant, talking flowers but there were: mossy pillows to stand on, the smell of purple flowers and rosemary, the feel of marbles and chickpeas scattered in a box; a large hoop skirt to reimagine ones childhood; bubbles, Lego, Play Doh, costumes and more to explore.  I wrote a postcard, to my eight year old self, Believe in your creativity and forge your own path. I felt constrained by the Curriculum as it came into force in the late 1980s. They had asked us to think for ourselves then trained us how to act: realistic, practical, confined by opportunities we did not understand. At home my existence was one of curiosity and imagination that wasn’t valid in the classroom where they recited, ‘learn this, say this, be th...

Teachers’ Views on Returning Schools: ‘A trampoline to future opportunities’

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5th March, 4-6pm, Reinvention Centre at Westwood, Warwick Campus [ Flickr, https://www.flickr.com/photos/alexreyes/ ] Dr Analia Meo from the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina, came to discuss a short documentary called Teachers' Views on Returning Schools. The Film looks at the experiences and views of teachers and young people at schools in Buenos Aires, which cater for kids who have been excluded from education.    In Buenos Aires (2002) a national education policy was created to keep young people in secondary school education. As a result all inclusive schools were set up in 2004. These were experimental. The idea being that they would transfer the knowledge gained back from the school system to shape educational policy. Ten years later their work is not acknowledged. These returning schools are invisible to the wider education system the hoped to influence. During the film one phrase from a teacher struck me, she said, that their school was ‘...