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10.3. CONCLUSION
This final chapter has looked at the postmethod predicament. The brief
discussion has showed that the transitional path from the long established
methods-based pedagogy to an emerging postmethod pedagogy is, no
doubt, paved with challenging barriers. There are, however, encouraging
signposts that point to useful directions that might help us negotiate the
stumbling blocks. The short account of facilitating factors provides indica-
tions of a growing awareness to tap local resources to solve local problems
using local expertise and experiences. Such awareness may also, in due
course, move the conflict between central control and local initiative to a
higher plane of thought and action. Clearly, there are concerted, but not in
any sense coordinated, actions being carried out on several fronts, which,
when they come to cumulative fruition, are likely to bring the idea of
teacher-generated postmethod pedagogies closer to reality.
POSTMETHOD PREDICAMENT
223
The central goal of this book has been to explore the pattern which con-
nects the higher order philosophical, pedagogical, and ideological tenets
and norms of language teaching enterprise. We started the exploration by
looking at the landscape of language, learning, and teaching, with all their
systemic, discoursal, and ideological terrains. We then proceeded to survey,
with a critical eye, the historical exigencies, the theoretical principles, and
the classroom procedures associated with language-, learner-, and learning-
centered methods. Finally, after recognizing the limitations of the concept
of method, we moved beyond methods, entered the uncertain arena of
postmethod condition, and took a peek into the still-evolving world of
postmethod pedagogies. In all this, we tried to notice the pattern which
connects.
In a sense, the book seeks to contribute to a true understanding of lan-
guage teaching methods, in addition to being both a critique of, and a cor-
rective to, method-based approaches to language teaching. By exposing the
problems of method, and by expounding the potential of postmethod, it
seeks to open up certain options that, hopefully, will lead to a re-view of the
way we conceive pedagogic principles and procedures, and to a re-visioning
of the way we conduct language teaching and teacher education.
The challenge, of course, is how to meet the demands the concept of
postmethod makes in its effort to advance a context-sensitive, location-
specific pedagogy that is based on a true understanding of local linguistic,
sociocultural, and political particularities. And, how to help prospective
and practicing teachers acquire and sharpen the knowledge, skill, attitude,
and autonomy necessary to devise for themselves a systematic, coherent,
Postscript: The Pattern
Which Comforts
224
and relevant theory of practice. In presenting three different frameworks
on the foundations of a postmethod pedagogy, the book points to the on-
going process of change.
I work under the assumption that change is not only desirable and possi-
ble, but it is also inevitable. If we take a historical perspective to the process
of change in language teaching, we see a pattern which comforts. We seem
to go through the same cycle of action and reaction in which we first have
absolute, and sometimes almost evangelical, faith in a method, only to de-
velop serious doubts about its efficacy in due course. A new method
wrapped in a new package comes along, faces initial resistance only to even-
tually become popular, and get entrenched in a short period of time.
When the audiolingual method was introduced, it was hailed as scien-
tific, systematic, and teacher friendly, and soon it replaced the “discredited”
grammar-translation method that held sway for a long time. The textbook
industry gladly seized the commercial opportunities opened up by the new
method, and produced instructional materials for the global market.
Again, when the communicative language teaching came along, there was a
hue and cry about how it demands too much from practicing teachers, how
ill-prepared they are to embrace it, and how it is bound to fail, and so forth.
Within a decade, almost everybody was swearing by it, and it has easily de-
throned the “discredited” audiolingual method. The textbook industry,
once again, gladly seized the commercial opportunities opened up by the
new method, and produced instructional materials for the global market.
The pattern we see is the pattern which comforts. Change, after all, does
come about. Eventually.
History also shows that change produces anxiety, particularly if it in-
volves a move from a comfortable climate of familiarity to an unpredictable
arena of uncertainty. But, such a change can be less disorienting if it devel-
ops within a context in which the participants themselves play a role in mak-
ing decisions and in implementing those decisions. In the context of educa-
tional change, this means making change part of the learning process itself.
As Kahaney (1993) aptly puts it,
. . . if change can be viewed as a component in an ongoing process called
“learning,” instead of as a product or a “thing,” then it would be easier to have
a different relationship to change itself. Instead of experiencing resistance to
change as an obstacle, we as teachers could come to expect resistance to
change as part of the learning process and thus plan for various kinds of and
degrees of resistance. (p. 193)
We can also draw comfort from the fact that, as history shows, we have all
along been engaged in the learning process, absorbed in a relentless pur-
suit of continuous improvement. Change is an integral part of that pursuit.
POSTSCRIPT
225
As educationist Pradl (1993) rightly observes, change “is not some material
object or process over there waiting to be discovered. Instead,
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