Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-ndw9j Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-09T20:40:46.993Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Chapter 10 - Beyond language learning: perspectives on materials design

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 October 2012

Andrew Littlejohn
Affiliation:
University of Lancaster, Lancaster, England
Scott Windeatt
Affiliation:
University of Lancaster, Lancaster, England
Get access

Summary

In this paper we want to set out a number of perspectives on materials design which focus on learning outcomes other than those relating to the acquisition of the second/foreign language. The idea of looking beyond the immediate, stated objectives of educational materials is not a new one. Dewey, for example, remarked in 1938:

Perhaps the greatest of all pedagogical fallacies is the notion that a person learns only the particular thing he is studying at the time.

(1938:48)

More recently, however, Jackson (1968) has introduced the idea of a ‘hidden curriculum’ within teaching, referring to learning outcomes apart from those intended in the ‘manifest curriculum’. Similar ideas have been expressed by a number of other writers, who see a ‘sub-surface’ (and frequently pernicious) element to teaching or teaching materials. Freire (1972), for example, is in no doubt as to the ‘philosophy of man’ projected by conventional approaches to adult literacy:

We begin with the fact, inherent in the idea and use of the primer, that it is the teacher who chooses the words and proposes them to the learner. Insofar as the primer is the mediating object between the teacher and the students, and the students are to be ‘filled’ with the words the teachers have chosen, one can easily detect a first important dimension of the image of man which here begins to emerge. It is the profile of a man whose consciousness is ‘spatialized’, and must be ‘filled’ or ‘fed’ in order to know.

(1972: 23)
Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1989

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×