Editorial
This is a revised and expanded version of a paper Freinet Pedagogy and Intercultural Networking, IATEFL Global Issues SIG Newsletter 31, Spring 2014, 8-10.
Intercultural Networking and Freinet Pedagogy: Creating Transcultural Learning Partnerships Focused on a Locally Relevant Issue
Bill Templer, Bulgaria
Bill Templer is a Chicago-born educator and translator with research interests in English as a lingua franca, critical pedagogy, socialist/Marxist transformative policy for education, and Extensive Reading methodologies. He has taught in the U.S., Ireland, Germany, Israel/Palestine, Austria, Bulgaria, Iran, Nepal, Thailand, Laos and Malaysia. Bill is on the IATEFL GISIG Committee (gisig.iatefl.org/about-us), is editor/Eastern Europe with the Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies (www.jceps.com), and a widely published translator from German. He is chief translator for the Simon Dubnow Institute for Jewish History and Culture, University of Leipzig (www.dubnow.de) and is based as an independent researcher in Shumen in eastern Bulgaria. E-mail: bill_templer@yahoo.com
Menu
Place-based intercultural networking / eTwinning
Freinet pedagogy as a constructivist, student-centered frame
Step 1
Step 2
Step 3
Transnational grassroots interconnectivity
Notes
References
The core proposal is to share curricular activities with a distant partner class, firmly rooted in community-anchored, place-based learning (Ormond, 2013). A class could decide on a single important local issue or problem in their own community―one with a tangible impact on the lives of the students and their families. This can be connected with the environment, with food supply, water quality, transport, jobs for youth, democratic voice of students at their school or university, minority rights and diversity, economic inequality, unemployment, inadequate playgrounds, social justice and many other issues. And to share that focus with a partner class elsewhere, transnationally.
In some key respects, this can be nested inside the frame of eTwinning developed by the Council of Europe since 2005:
The main concept behind eTwinning is that schools are paired with another school elsewhere in the Europe and they collaboratively develop a project, also known as eTwinning project. The two schools then communicate using the Internet (for example, by e-mail or video conferencing) to collaborate, share and learn from each other. eTwinning encourages and develops ICT skills as the main activities inherently use information technology. Being 'twinned' with a foreign school also encourages cross-cultural exchanges of knowledge, fosters students' intercultural awareness, and improves their communication skills. (goo.gl/ZcqKjL).
The twinning matrix proposed here is a form of “intercultural networking” (Cummins and Sayers, 1995, 120; Kohn, 2014).
Such transnational learning networking was actually pioneered from the mid-1920s in France especially by Célestin Freinet (1896-1966), who created the Mouvement de l’École Moderne (Modern School Movement), centered especially on radically democratic alternative schools and proletarian education—a pedagogy of critical collaborative inquiry and democratic schools that is still very much alive today in France, Belgium, Germany, Latin America, and Francophone Africa. Yet it remains relatively unknown in the English-speaking world.2 This radical pedagogy focuses on critical literacy instruction rooted in students’ authentic experience, and “stimulated by their desire to communicate with real audiences of peers” (Cummins and Sayers, 139), and is reflected in today’s Modern School Movement Federation (FIMEM) (www.fimem-freinet.org). In the 1950s, Mario Lodi’s Cooperative Education Movement in Italy developed Freinet-inspired networking geared to Italian schooling realities. (Cummins and Sayers, 131-34), continued today by the Movimento di Cooperazione Educativa (www.mce-fimem.it/home.html).
Freinet was a major socialist ‘free school’ educator for working-class students, long associated with the French CP, and with strong progressive even revolutionary political aims (Acker, 2007; Clanfield and Sivell, 1990). Beattie (2002, 312) notes that for Johannes Beck, a key Freinet revolutionary educator in West Germany in the 1970s, Freinet was “in the same line as Paulo Freire, the School of Barbiana in Italy, the liberated schools of the Vietnamese Resistance in the Mekong Delta and the peasant schools of southern Portugal, newly liberated from fascism. This was ‘a people’s pedagogy’…” Significantly, Paolo Freire saw explicit core affinities between his own work and that of Freinet, stating: “I am flattered to have my work associated with that of Célestin Freinet … one of the great contemporaries in education for freedom” (quoted in Cummins and Sayers, 334).
Freinet founded and edited the journal L’Éducateur Prolétarien for a number of years, and established what remained for many decades the “largest long-distance global learning network in history” (ibid., 124). Freinet critical-constructivist pedagogy, centered on cooperative learning and small-group work in its current forms is very germane for the work of educators interested in critical pedagogy and learner autonomy, and as Cummins and Sayers (120-141) argue, is particularly relevant for today’s digitalized world. Freinet pedagogy “encourages students to exercise the powerful tools of literacy in direct social action on issues that have an impact on themselves, their families, and their communities” (ibid., 136). This, I would argue, is especially relevant in Bulgaria today from where I write, in post-socialist free fall, where, as UNICEF notes: “fifty percent or more of the children in Bulgaria live in poverty or at the risk of poverty and these are the highest rates in Europe” (Novinite 2014). Twenty-five years after the dismantling of socialism, nearly half of the Bulgarian population lives at or near the poverty line, and many far below (StandartNews 2014)./
Dietrich (1982/1998) provides analysis on the anti-authoritarian revolutionary socialist political aims of Freinet pedagogy (esp. 115-72), fighting for a “school of cooperation” and radical pupil autonomy plus solidarity within the context of a “socialisme autogestionnaire” (124), centered on the politics of autogestion. She also details Freinet’s own communist politics as a proletarian educator (149-52). A good brief overview is Schlemminger (1999). Beattie (375-86) discusses why the Freinet pedagogy and its international movement has to date failed to impact in the English-speaking world, in part clearly for political reasons, but is sanguine that can change.
The Freinet-pedagogical focus on learner autonomy and the need to make learners more responsible for their own learning is germane to the work of LASIG within IATEFL. As Kelland (2013, 12) stresses: “our students have a digital mother tongue and having a major part of their lives played out, stored and enjoyed online is part and parcel of their everyday lives.” He stresses that teachers need to learn “how best to channel into this autonomous desire” among students today “to use technology to log, diarise and communicate in languages other than L1.” Rosenberg (2013) outlines what autonomy means for the teacher and the learner, as discussed at the June 2012 LASIG conference in Austria. Likewise an inherent focus in contemporary Freinet pedagogy is on ‘multicultural learning,’ since such transborder networking inevitably raises aspects of the cultures of the ‘Other,’ and can serve for intercultural bridge-building and, in Au’s (2008) classic phrase, for “decolonizing the classroom.”
Dietrich and Hövel (1995) describe in detail some of the key approaches of teaching English as FL in a Freinet framework, such as rejection of textbooks (222-23) and any kind of ‘frontal’ teaching. Hövel (229-39) chronicles his year-long experiment teaching beginning English to German 5th-graders in a pronounced Freinet framework. Dogme/‘teaching unplugged’ (Meddings and Thornbury, 2009) is very much in line with a number of Freinet pedagogy broader principles, such as getting away from set textbooks and boilerplate, having students create their own, and a much more improvisational, student-centered, materials-light, conversation-driven syllabus, in part inspired by the work of Sylvia Ashton-Warner (1963) and her radical pedagogy with Maori kids in New Zealand. The Spracherfahrungsansatz (language experience approach) developed by Hans Brügelmann (1983/2013) in Germany also builds on ideas of Freinet and Ashton-Warner, where young learners write and exchange their own texts (goo.gl/0rTLCX ; see also goo.gl/esDra1).
If you have the technology, start with a student-created video: “If I could change the world …”, by students at the University of Prince Edward Island, in Canada (goo.gl/aX7Cs). In six minutes, it suggests plenty of foci. Moreover, it serves as the basis for an “eLesson Inspiration,” with a good worksheet, as developed by Margit Szesztay (2014a). Another such eLesson Inspiration is focused on “Black Friday” and consumerism as an issue (gisig.iatefl.org/elessons/black-friday), and new eLessons have regularly been added to the site (Templer 2014). A further option, depending on student interest is to explore an issue in the framework of Transition Towns (goo.gl/8LG91), initially watching this video (bit.ly/HNBaaK). For more advanced students, this more detailed video with TT activist Rob Hopkins is very stimulating (goo.gl/xermt). For athletic starters, one hands-on Freinet technique is the “learning walk,” where students and teachers go on exploratory walks in their village, town or neighborhood, gathering new information and impressions about community life and local problems.
A potential textbook tie-in with many different focus issues explored, from beginner to advanced, is Lindsay Clandfield et al. Global (2010), a 6-level course. Sampedro and Hillyard (2004) is a good textbook on global issues in the ELT classroom, with units for a range of levels. Templer (2012) provides a wide-ranging introduction to approaching a spectrum of global issues, many with local dimensions, in the English language classroom. One issue I focus on there is the situation of the Roma in many European countries, and how students where you teach perceive their local Roma neighbors or perhaps Roma immigrants who have come to their town. A good link for the current situation of the Roma in Europe is Lista (2014). A classic inspiring analytical article by Alan Maley (2005) can serve teachers as an excellent introduction to focusing on such issues as part of their work in class. As Margit Szesztay (2014b) has commented on Maley’s article: “It reminds me that my main aim as an educator is to encourage a critical, non-conformist stance in my students. Encourage them to shake off social conditioning, see the world around them with fresh eyes, question taken-for-granted assumptions, and find personal meaning in the Aristotle quotation ‘Where your talents and the needs of the world cross; there lies your vocation.’”
Begin a cooperative student class project, collecting data, interviewing local people, writing this up in kind of booklet with contributions from different students, some ‘story’ approaching the issue in a few hundred words, maybe supplemented with photos or other media. This is in keeping with Freinet pedagogy’s notion of “texte libre,” written by students, shared between them in their own class—and with a distant ‘sister class’ elsewhere--contributing to a mosaic of student-written focused discourse relevant to their own lives. These texts can serve as “pre-texts” for taking action within the local community. All this would of course also be centered on using English, especially in creating student-written and student-organized materials. So in focusing on an issue, students would be seeking material perhaps in English, or translating, summarizing from another language into English. English as a medium, spoken and written, and also perhaps subject-focused, would be foregrounded. This is hands-on constructivist project-building, keeping motivation high, interest keen, with English as the communicative bond.
In a recent interview, Krashen (2013, from min. 20:40) discusses “handcrafted stories,” where students a bit more advanced write stories for more beginner learners. This idea of student-written stories and perhaps non-fiction texts at simple levels is something Krashen has long encouraged: students creating their own ‘comprehensible input’ for other students, or cooperatively for one another. He envisions “10,000 such stories handcrafted at different levels by students” available cost-free online. The “free texts” in the project proposed would be along these lines. Some students could also craft a video or an audio file as such an electronic “text libre.” Ideas from the IATEFL ‘Digital Storytelling for Young Learners’ (goo.gl/dkqQdN) could also be tapped.
These texts can be combined in a free text/classroom journal, which students produce as a collaborative written and printed project, considered in Freinet-inspired instruction a mainstay in the classroom as a “permanent window on the world” and a “live archive” of student activities and their cooperative autonomous learning (Acker, 70). In the original Freinet classroom, students used student-operated small printing presses to create classroom copies of their texts. Today new technologies make all this far easier. As Freinet wrote: “Having something to say, writing to be read, to be discussed, to be responded to critically—this is the grand motivation we should be seeking, and which is realized through classroom printing and interschool networks” (Cummins and Sayers, 129). The student newspapers were also given to parents. Our students in Laos produced an excellent student newspaper in English, printed by xerox, with some highly critical articles.
Through GISIG (gisig.iatefl.org) or a range of other networking options, a link could be forged with a class somewhere else, another teacher’s group in another country—what Freinet educators call “Correspondance scolaire,” interschool exchanging of material: in our terms, project X in one place and project Y in another, eTwinned. Perhaps creating a kind of newspaper-style written project combining material from the two classes. So students read what another class, possibly quite distant, has investigated a bit, maybe a quite different issue of their own choice. This is a kind of student journalism, shared between classes and cultures, transforming the classroom into “literacy learning laboratories” (Cummins and Sayers, 121-22). “Distancing” in this interschool transnational frame leads to increased awareness of the social, political, economic and other realities of one’s own community precisely as students describe these realities in response to questions from their distant peers (Cummins and Sayers, 137). Such ‘self-reflective’ dimensions are inherent in many modes of ‘multicultural education’ and ‘decolonizing the Eurocentric approach’ in numerous classrooms and curricula (Au, 2008), especially in the field of ELT.
The students in the original Freinet classes had two empty binders they made during the year into their main reader: Book of My Life, with daily written work, and Book of Their Lives, with written material from distant correspondents (Acker, 60). But this is not some pen-pal correspondence. It is a matrix for building critical literacy and serious intercultural networking, also geared if possible to ‘walking the talk’ in action, developing socially committed individuals (goo.gl/xBKH6), generating consciousness of and commitment to ‘English…for a change.’
Via Internet, this can create a link between two classes (teacher + students) in two different countries, sharing projects on some locally relevant but ‘bigger picture’ issue relevant to students’ lives, and building a class bridge of solid engaged personal living concrete bonds: eTwinning centered on global/glocal issues. A Facebook page or something similar could also be created. Or Skype could be used, uploading photos and other media, exchanging ideas and experience. Students can experiment with Voice Thread, utilizing it for topic discussion, project collaboration, students working in pairs to present two sides of a social issue, uploaded audios and many other applications (www.voicethread.com).
In a related vein—in connection with Prof. Kurt Kohn’s transformative pedagogy ‘My English’—an approach toward learner-owned, more autonomous forms of English as a lingua franca—the project TILA (Telecollaboration for Intercultural Language Acquisition, www.tilaproject.eu) centres on intercultural telecollaboration in secondary education across the EU, aiming at the development of intercultural competence, empathy and tolerance through foreign language learning, using Internet. Pupils enjoy communicating from home, exchanging their own opinions and experiences. The use of BigBlueButton (video-conferencing), Moodle and OpenSim can serve as a synchronous medium (Kohn 2014). As Kohn stresses in discussing ‘My English’: “Excellence in TESOL takes a giant step forward when learners are given the space for developing their own English—for being themselves—in keeping with their individual and social identities” (Kohn 2012: slide 19).
This builds focused transnational interconnectivity between students and teachers, one of the important goals in classic and contemporary Freinet critical pedagogy (Acker, 85-7; Cummins and Sayers, 126). “Clusters” of several such projects can also be formed, creating a broader network and audience. In a concrete sense, this becomes a kind of long-distance team teaching as well. In Freinet’s networking, all this was done by the “snail mail” of the postal services.
Important in Freinet’s vision was that this was grassroots networking by teachers and their classes themselves, not controlled by the educational bureaucracies. Teachers learned through applying these very concrete flexible “techniques,” not some rigid abstract top-down “methods” and lockstep imposed curricula and their rigidities (Cummins and Sayers, 127). Techniques create an interactive laboratory where teachers can through constant feedback reflect on the dynamic interaction they are making happen, a form of reflective self-development.
On Freinet pedagogy, see also various essays in Dietrich 1995; Dietrich 1982/1998; Freinet 1957, 1977; 1987; Legrand 1993. Acker (2007) remains the only readily available book on Freinet pedagogical history and practice in English. Beattie (2002) is excellent but very costly to acquire; ditto for Clanfield and Sivell (1990) and Sivell (1994). Baillet (1993) is a useful practical guide in German, with numerous concrete examples. Links to articles by William B. Lee and others are available here: goo.gl/XSfgX. There is a Research Center for Freinet Pedagogy at the University of Kassel in Germany (http://fffp.de). The Amis de Freinet site has many links (www.amisdefreinet.org). The French Wikipedia article on Freinet is highly detailed (goo.gl/NXO7Dv). This video from a Freinet school in Cuernavaca/Mexico (in Spanish) is instructive, in two parts: (goo.gl/eAxun) (goo.gl/XCjYgr). A two-part video on Freinet pedagogy done at UFSC in Brazil is excellent (in Portuguese): (goo.gl/qmfN70). (goo.gl/UuqAPH). It is striking that among the many videos on Freinet pedagogy on youtube, none are in English. Perhaps the UFSC video could be subtitled in English. A French TV feature film (2006) on Freinet’s work, set in village France (Saint-Paul-de-Vence) in 1932, is now accessible on youtube and well worth watching if you can follow the French: ‘Célestin Freinet, le maître qui laissait réver les enfants’ (goo.gl/VG8Kp8).
Acker, Victor. 2007. The French Educator Célestin Freinet. Lanham, MD: Lexington.
Ashton-Warner, Sylvia. 1963. Teacher. New York: Simon and Shuster.
Au, Wayne. 2008. Decolonizing the Classroom: Lessons in Multicultural Education. Rethinking Schools 23(2). (goo.gl/PfIjb6).
Baillet, Dietlinde. 1993. Freinet – praktisch. Beispiele und Berichte aus Grundschule und Sekundarschule. Weinheim and Basel: Beltz.
Beattie, Nicholas. 2002. The Freinet Movements of France, Italy, and Germany, 1920–2000: Versions of Educational Progressivism. Lewiston/NY: Edwin Mellen.
Brügelmann, Hans. 1983/2013. Kinder auf dem Weg zur Schrift - eine Fibel für Lehrer und Laien. 3rd rev. ed. CH-Lengwi: Libelle.
Clandfield, Lindsay, et al. 2010. Global. London: Macmillan. (goo.gl/q3eh9q).
Clanfield, David, and Sivell, John. (eds). 1990. Cooperative Learning & Social Change: Selected Writings of Célestin Freinet. Toronto: Our Schools/OurSelves. (goo.gl/UA7Es0).
Cummins, Jim, and Sayers, Dennis. 1995. Brave New Schools: Challenging Cultural Illiteracy Through Global Learning Networks. New York: St. Martin’s Press. (goo.gl/al3zF).
Dietrich, Ingrid (ed.). 1995. Handbuch Freinet-Pädagogik. Eine praxisbezogene Einführung. Weinheim and Basel: Beltz.
Dietrich, Ingrid (ed.). 1982/1998. Politische Ziele der Freinet-Pädagogik. Weinheim and Basel: Beltz.
Dietrich, Ingrid, and Hövel, Walter. 1995. Freinet-Pädagogik und Fremdsprachenunterricht. In: I. Dietrich (ed.), Handbuch Freinet-Pädagogik. Eine praxisbezogene Einführung (pp. 218-240). Weinheim and Basel: Beltz.
Freinet, Célestin. 1957. Le Journal Scolaire. Montmorillon: Ed. Rossignol.
Freinet, Célestin. 1977. Pour l’École du Peuple. Paris: Maspero.
Freinet, Célestin. 1987. Pädagogische Texte. Mit Beispielen aus der praktischen Arbeit nach Freinet. Reinbek: Rowohlt.
Kelland, Michael. 2013. Fostering Autonomy. IATEFL Voices 235, 12-13.
Kohn, Kurt. 2012. My English: Second language learning as individual and social construction. PowerPoint, TESOL Convention, Philadelphia, 28–31 March. (goo.gl/YEJzNe).
Kohn, Kurt. 2014. Observations and reflections from a TILA workshop with foreign language teachers and teacher educators in Germany. TILA website, 21 October. (goo.gl/LSKFd1).
Krashen, Stephen. 2013. The Everyday Language Learner Interview Series, Interview with Stephen Krashen, Feb. (goo.gl/G6vUf).
Legrand, Louis. 1993. Célestin Freinet. Prospects 23(1/2), 403-18. (goo.gl/j7J3F).
Lista, Annalisa. 2014. Roma inclusion, it’s time to dance another tune. West, 8 Nov. (goo.gl/ROgfIy)
Maley, Alan. 2005. MacDonald Duck Re-Visited: Implications for Culture, Society and Education.
GISIG Newsletter 17. (goo.gl/n10znE).
Meddings, Luke, and Thornbury, Scott. 2009. Teaching Unplugged: Dogme in English Language Teaching. Peaslake: Delta.
Novinite. (2014g). UNICEF: Bulgaria has highest child poverty rate in Europe. Novinite, 5 Nov. (goo.gl/WHPQb5).
Ormond, Carlos G.A. 2013. Place-based Education in Practice. In: David B. Zandvliet (ed.), The Ecology of School (pp. 19-28), Rotterdam: Sense Publishers. (goo.gl/gDlzq).
Rosenberg, Marjorie. 2013. Strategies for Autonomy. IATEFL Voices 235, 10-11.
Sampedro, Ricardo, and Hillyard, Susan. 2004. Global Issues. (Resource Books for Teachers) Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Schlemminger, Gerald. 1999. The Freinet Movement: Past and Present. In Yannick Lefranc (ed.), Plaisir d'apprendre et travail coopératif. Les méthodes éducatives et la philosophie pratique de Célestin Freinet (pp. 17-26). London: Alliance française. (goo.gl/jeds5q).
Sivell, John. 1994. Freinet Pedagogy: Theory and Practice. Lewiston/NY: Edwin Mellen.
Standart. (2014). Half of Bulgarians live beyond the poverty threshold. Standart, 5 November. (goo.gl/kCb2ss).
Szesztay, Margit. 2014a. eLesson Inspirations, Global Issues SIG, IATEFL (gisig.iatefl.org/elesson-inspirations).
Szesztay, Margit. 2014b. Introduction to Alan Maley, MacDonald Duck re-visited, GISIG Newsletter Highlights. (goo.gl/n10znE).
Templer, Bill. 2012. Changing the world, walking the talk: Global Issues hands on in the EFL classroom. BETA conference paper, Ruse/Bulgaria. (goo.gl/fWGE7).
Templer, Bill. 2014. Using ‘eLesson Inspirations’: A bank of intriguing building blocks for teachers. BETA E-Newsletter, 9, 11-18. (goo.gl/jlvX6Q).
Please check the How the Motivate your Students course at Pilgrims website.
Please check the Building Positive Group Dynamics course at Pilgrims website.
Please check the How to be a Teacher Trainer course at Pilgrims website.
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