Narrative Pedagogy
Learning and Narrative Pedagogy
Pedagogy is defined as ‘The art, occupation, or practice of teaching. Also: the theory or principles of education; a method of teaching based on such a theory’ (Oxford English Dictionary). Its etymology suggests that the original meaning be ‘to lead the child’ or ‘to guide the learner’. It was from Latin, educare which means to lead from; to lead/guide. The concept of pedagogy has been criticised by many scholars for being interpreted as focusing on instruction and content-based teaching, power and authoritarianism. For instance, in Chapter Two of Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed, the author listed the following ‘pedagogic principles’ that underpin what he termed a ‘banking’ model of education that aims at oppressing the people:
- the teacher teaches and the students are taught;
- the teacher knows everything and the students know nothing;
- the teacher thinks and the students are thought about;
- the teacher talks and the students listen -- meekly;
- the teacher disciplines and the students are disciplined;
- the teacher chooses and enforces his choice, and the students comply;
- the teacher acts and the students have the illusion of acting through the action of the teacher;
- the teacher chooses the program content, and the students (who were not consulted) adapt to it;
- the teacher confuses the authority of knowledge with his or her own professional authority, which she or he sets in opposition to the freedom of the students;
- the teacher is the subject of the learning process, while the students are mere objects.
In a climate where education is being conceptualised instrumentally in many societies, no wonder the notion of pedagogy suffers from such a negative connotation. Therefore in this book, we want to reclaim the importance of pedagogy as a set of principles underpinning educative activities and highlight the noble work that teachers and educators do in order to enable and guide the learners’ learning. So for us, pedagogy is more than principles of instruction. We define narrative pedagogy as the facilitation of an educative journey through which learning takes place in profound encounters, and by engaging in meaning-making and deep dialogue and exchange.
