Creole teaching

Just came across this great gem about teaching and collaboration from Howard Rheingold, who blogs a presentation about cultural appropriation:

European cathedral builders in the Americas left blank spaces around the specified iconography of the churches' facades, and encouraged native craftsmen to fill it in with references to their own culture,

I love the pedagogical sense this makes.  How we teachers provide content, guide students to content, and how students create content that can fill in gaps.  How students will find gaps and create within them, regardless of instructor's desire.  A great form of constructivism, this.

Howard has a previous post covering the first half of the talk.

Comments

[David Reed]

Hi Brian,

That is a gem. Thanks! (And I dig Howard Rheingold's work).

But it strikes my ominous-minded disposition (so please forgive me) that there is something manipulative going on here too -- of having 'students' reconstruct their knowledge into a context imposed upon them, a context that may have nothing to do with their native knowledge, and which may even be, in some ways, antithetical to what they have intellectually and culturally constructed thus far.

That being said, I agree with you (and Rheingold) that learners can re-appropriate such structures (and contexts) in ways that may subvert the 'teacher's' intentions.