Ministry of Education and Science, Youth and Sport of Ukraine

Ternopil National Economic University

Faculty of International Business and Management

Department of Foreign Languages for International Economic Activity

COMPLEX PRACTICAL INDIVIDUAL TASK

Psychology and Pedagogy

Trends of modern foreign pedagogics. Scientific schools

Student of IEEE-11 group

Yura Muchinsky

Scientific supervisor: I.I. Stetsko

Ternopil – 2013 content

Introduction

The notion of autonomy in learning has long been part of a wide range of educational philosophies and has recently been identified in educational policy as crucial to the development of Lifelong Learning in ‘the learning society”. Piaget (1965), for example, maintains that the ultimate aim of education is for the individual to develop the autonomy of thought to create new, original ideas rather than just recycle old ones. Besides, autonomy is one of the most fundamental values in modern western culture. As an educational aim, the development of autonomy is “the development of a kind of person whose thought and action in important areas of his life are to be explained by reference to his own choices, decisions, reflections, deliberations—in short, his own activity of mind” (Dearden, 1972, p. 70). There is a considerable agreement among educators that autonomy ought to be taken as a highly desirable aim of education. Within pedagogy as discipline, the goals of teacher development are then often formulated in terms that imply familiarity with the concepts of autonomy such as maturity, personal responsibility, self-esteem, self-awareness, and self-determination, among others.

In many European countries, autonomy has acquired central prominence in most official curricula for modern languages. The relevance of the notion of learner autonomy as a goal in formal education contexts has in turn produced a need for teachers to develop expertise in pedagogy for autonomy. This centrality requires new teacher education/development efforts that address ways of aligning teacher education programmes with the new demands of education systems. These attempts need to tackle the resistance to pedagogical innovations that assign a new role to them. The EuroPAL[1] project was developed as a response to the need to promote reflection about the role of learner autonomy in school practice. EuroPAL focussed on teacher education for learner autonomy in modern language pedagogy.

Chapter I Trends of modern foreign pedagogics

1.1. Critical Pedagogy hystory

Critical Pedagogy has its roots in the well-known Frankfurt School and had its peak in the 1960s to 80s in the western world. In this paper, the essential concepts of Critical Theory and Critical Pedagogy will be defined on hand of their historical roots as well as their main propagators such as Theodor Adorno of the Frankfurt School, later Paulo Freire and modern-day Henry Giroux. Subsequently the meaning and impact of these theories on contemporary education will be explored on the example of Saint Mary's University. Lastly, suggestions of coeval critical pedagogist Henry Giroux will be considered with a personal proposal and interpretation of education for the future.

Critical Theory has its origin in the 1930s in Germany and was mainly shaped by the theoreticians of the Frankfurt School. It followed Karl Marx's critique of society and capitalism, particularly from the “Thesis on Feuerbach”, where he argued: “The Philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point, however, is to change it” (Burbeles and Burk 1999). The idea was to develop a critique of the contemporary era, especially society and culture. The first main theoreticians were directors Theodore Adorno and Max Horkheimer who argued that Marx's lessons did not emphasize enough the importance of culture and media as catalyzes of capitalism, for example advertising to prompt consumption (Burbules and Berk, 1999). Comprised of Jews, Marxists, scientists, economists and intellectuals such as author Erich Fromm these philosophers founded the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt, Germany in 1923, hence the name (The Frankfurt School, 2010). It was an independent institute with the goal of making sense of and interpreting 1920s post-World War I Germany (BBC 2010). They saw critical theory as necessity to be dynamic, constantly moving and critiquing ideology and the individual with the goal of social emancipation and future interest in the oppressed (Kritische Theorie; The Frankfurt School BBC 2010).

After the takeover of the Nazis, the Frankfurt School first and foremost Adorno had to escape persecution for religious and political reasons and emigrated temporarily to the United States (The Frankfurt School Youtube). There it became more liberal, that is to say they redefined the opposite of an 'authoritarian personality' as 'democratic' as opposed to 'revolutionary' as it was termed previously. This was due to the American ideals of liberal socialism as part of the 'New Deal' policy, although they kept their 'cultural Marxist' objectives (Atkinson 1999). In 1950 the institute returned to Frankfurt with now Jürgen Habermas as its director and most influential figure (The Frankfurt School mingo).

For education this meant the emancipation of the student, to think critically and also critically self-reflect in order to prevent another Auschwitz as Theodor Adorno put it (Cho 75). Yet he argues that the conditions which lead to the Holocaust are still present in the school and education systems (Cho 76). Post-Auschwitz education should thus focus especially on early childhood education and then “general enlightenment that provides an intellectual, cultural, and social climate in which a recurrence would no longer be possible, a climate, therefore, in which the motives that lead to the horror would become relatively conscious” (Cho 85). The education of his era, Adorno termed 'half-education', a standardization of education that leaves people largely uneducated and breeds them into consumers rather than raising them towards a critical consciousness with a potential of skepticism (Cho 86). This anti-intellectual milieu of alienation may then turn into paranoia and could easily be used for anti-semitism and physical violence. Constant critical self-reflection would thus be needed to prevent another genocide (Cho 87-88).