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8.2.1.3. The Parameter of Possibility.
The parameter of possibility owes
much of its origin to the educational philosophy of the Brazilian intellec-
tual, Paulo Freire. He and his followers (e.g., Giroux, 1988; Simon, 1988)
took the position that pedagogy, any pedagogy, is closely linked to power
and dominance, and is aimed at creating and sustaining social inequalities.
They stress the importance of acknowledging and highlighting students’
and teachers’ individual identity, and they encourage them to question the
status quo that keeps them subjugated. They also stress the “the need to de-
velop theories, forms of knowledge, and social practices that
work with
the
experiences that people bring to the pedagogical setting” (Giroux, 1988, p.
134, emphasis in original).
The experiences participants bring to the pedagogical setting are
shaped, not just by what they experience in the classroom, but also by a
broader social, economic, and political environment in which they grow
up. These experiences have the potential to alter classroom aims and activi-
ties in ways unintended and unexpected by policy planners or curriculum
designers or textbook producers. For instance, Canagarajah (1999) re-
ported how Tamil students of English in the civil war-torn Sri Lanka offered
resistance to Western representations of English language and culture and
how they, motivated by their own cultural and historical backgrounds, ap-
propriated the language and used it in their own terms according to their
own aspirations, needs, and values. He reported how the students, through
marginal comments and graphics, actually reframed, reinterpreted and re-
wrote the content of their ESL textbooks written and produced by Anglo-
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CHAPTER 8
American authors. The students’ resistance, Canagarajah concluded, sug-
gests “the strategic ways by which discourses may be negotiated, intimating
the resilient ability of human subjects to creatively fashion a voice for them-
selves from amidst the deafening channels of domination” (p. 197).
The parameter of possibility is also concerned with language ideology
and learner identity. As we saw in chapter 1, more than any other educa-
tional enterprise, language education provides its participants with chal-
lenges and opportunities for a continual quest for subjectivity and self-
identity; for, as Weeden (1987) pointed out “language is the place where
actual and possible forms of social organization and their likely social and
political consequences are defined and contested. Yet it is also the place
where our sense of ourselves, our subjectivity, is constructed” (p. 21). This
is even more applicable to L2 education, which brings languages and cul-
tures in contact. That this contact results in identity conflicts has been
convincingly brought out by Norton’s study of immigrant women in Can-
ada. “The historically and socially constructed identity of learners,” Nor-
ton (2000) wrote, “influences the subject position they take up in the lan-
guage classroom and the relationship they establish with the language
teacher” (p. 142).
Applying such a critical stance to teach English to speakers of other lan-
guages, Auerbach (1995), Benesch (2001), Morgan (1998) and others have
suggested new ways of broadening the nature and scope of classroom aims
and activities. More specifically, Auerbach has showed us how participatory
pedagogy can bring together learners, teachers, and community activists in
mutually beneficial, collaborative projects. Morgan has demonstrated how
even in teaching units of language as system, such as phonological and gram-
matical features, the values of critical practice and community development
can be profitably used. Similarly, Benesch has suggested ways and means of
linking the linguistic text and sociopolitical context as well as the academic
content and the larger community for the purpose of turning classroom in-
put and interaction into effective instruments of transformation.
What follows from the aforementioned discussion is that language teach-
ers can ill afford to ignore the sociocultural reality that influences identity
formation in the classroom nor can they afford to separate the linguistic
needs of learners from their social needs. They will be able to reconcile
these seemingly competing forces if they “achieve a deepening awareness
both of the sociocultural reality that shapes their lives and of their capacity
to transform that reality” (van Manen, 1977, p. 222). Such a deepening
awareness has a built-in quality to transform the life of the teachers them-
selves. Studies by Clandinin and her colleagues attest to this self-trans-
forming phenomenon: “As we worked together we talked about ways of see-
ing new possibility in our practices as teachers, as teacher educators, and
with children in our classroom. As we saw possibilities in our professional
POSTMETHOD CONDITION
175
lives we also came to see new possibilities in our personal lives” (Clandinin,
Davis, Hogan, & Kennard, 1993, p. 209).
In sum, the three pedagogic parameters of particularity, practicality, and
possibility constitute the conceptual foundation for a postmethod peda-
gogy. They have the potential to function as operating principles, guiding
various aspects of L2 learning and teaching. These operating principles
manifest themselves in what may be called pedagogic indicators.
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