Milestone reporting as middleclass narcissism

Thanks to:  "I am only holding the mantle not crocheting it!", Janet, and  37 Days

The invitation to the next ictpd cluster Auckland Regional Meeting asks participants to come prepared to share a celebration...

Cluster ‘snapshots’ – 5-10 mins per cluster (dependent on the number of clusters) Choose 1 ‘celebration’ you would like to share with us all    

We often assume that we are facilitating learning when we provide an edu_space where teachers “feel safe” to speak.

And yet participating in these edu_speak spaces seldom feels like learning.

In re reading Freire’s "Pedagogy of the Oppressed" I am reminded that “Dialogue” nowadays has been debased ... it is another word I can add to my “Call of the mustelid” Folder

When all contributions are celebrated, and listened to without dissent, when right remains indexed to the individual presenting, knowledge is not progressed.

When Donaldo Macedo writes about the dangers of “exoticising” discussing lived experience as a process of coming to voice” ...

when he cautions that ....

“The over celebration of one’s own location and history often eclipses the possibility of engaging the object of knowledge”

he is not only explaining Freire’s argument that “dialogue”  is never an end in itself – he is also explaining why the MoE ictpd cluster Regional /Home Group Meetings do not leverage deep learning and for that matter why the ictpd cluster milestone reporting is mostly an experience of "middleclass narcissism".

The process of milestone reporting is increasingly one where each school’s “lived experience” is given “primacy”

When we are asked to couch this "lived experience" in the language of business and management –

.... when our goal is  to make the 21^st century learner more successful in meeting the needs of New Zealand’s economic productivity ....

... when there is a whole section “intended to give clusters the opportunity to showcase change stories in a rich narrative style using full examples of the supporting evidence.”

we become vulnerable to middleclass narcissism  ... we lose ourselves  “in the disconnectedness of practice”      

Macedo’s “Losing oneself in the disconnectedness of practice” is an interesting idea – I am suspicious that this may be what has happened me ....

Thinking about it makes me end up "if only wistful",

If only, the ictpd cluster Home Group Meetings and Regional Group Meetings and Milestone templates were an opportunity to be curious about ideas.

If only milestone reporting and the ictpd Regional Meetings were more about asking those Paulo Friere questions of the cluster schools and teachers and students

What is my experience?

How does power, agency and history interact with who I am (or think I am)?

How does power, agency and history interact with my experience (or what I think is my experience)?

I end up thinking about all the Home Group and Regional Group Meetings I have attended, all the milestones I have written (and even worse blogged about).

It all makes me ask ... when will I stop posting ideas about how others might change what they are doing and start taking responsibility for my own lack of learning within the institution?

... "Why have I not infiltrated, or built my own radar/control station?"

Reference:  Donaldo Macedo Distinguished Professor of Liberal Arts and Education, University of Massachusetts, Boston. Introduction  Pedagogy of the Oppressed    Paulo Freire 30^th Anniversary Edition

Comments

[Janet Hawtin]

=)

[nix]

"It all makes me ask ... when will I stop posting ideas about how others might change what they are doing and start taking responsibility for my own lack of learning within the institution?

... "Why have I not infiltrated, or built my own radar/control station?"

I'm having a Ghandi versus Enid Blyton moment here, Arti. A sort of mash-up of "be the change you want to see" vs "to have friends you need to be one" moment. There are so many "if only's" that you need to reduce it down to what you can or cannot work with.

As a postscript ... I haven't yet received an invitation to the Regional Meeting next week. Perhaps I need to make some alternative arrangements.

[Artichoke]

Omg Nix, do think I have blog fantasis(e)d the contents of the Auckland Regional Meeting Agenda ... it is possible ...I have been over-thinking goals and mission statements recently ... who knows what an unfettered and feverish mind might imagine ....?

And if I have, does that mean that I will soon find myself “speaking in tongu(e)s” aka spiritual podcasting and “raising the d(e)ad” aka embracing “ancient pedagogy” ?

One of the things I am certain of is that the childhood literature I owe an intellectual debt to, the literature that has formed my earliest thinking, aligned my moral compass, formed my earliest imaginings was Blyton’s ....

I have never fully recovered from the anxiety created by the plot lines in Noddy goes to Sea

That bit when Noddy’s car makes a potentially suicidal leap from the wharf into the sea ... a reckless and senseless act precipitated by friendship ... was life changing ....it has created lifelong harrowing imaginings about what it means to allow another to get close ...

[nix]

I never really got into Noddy myself. I found Big Ears just a little too much to cope with. But The Famous Five - George in particular - well...

Enid Blyton as the escape route for the middle classes?