April, as T.S. Eliot almost put it, is the coolest month. This year at any rate. First Istek and Istanbul, then a workshop at the British Council in London, then Iatefl in sunny Brighton. Spring gardens, spring seas.

As it draws to a close, I thought I’d reprise my contribution to the dogme symposium in Brighton – an event which buzzed with energy, despite being assigned the Monday afternoon slot when sleep beckons like the sirens (or the smell of doughnuts on the parade) to weary sailors.

It was great to see so many dogme practitioners there, many of whom had also attended Dale Coulter’s wonderful talk on unplugging post-Celta a couple of days before¹. More big steps for dogme this year - or as Willy Cardoso put it: ‘The dogmest conference ever, hope next year is even dogmer.’

My introduction summarised some of the themes I’ve been exploring in talks and workshops this year. I’ve done a few overdubs, but hopefully it’ll still feel – sort of – live.

DOGBUZZ: No dozing here

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Less is More, Take 1

My guest house in Brighton was green. It featured recycled toilet paper and organic eggs were served at breakfast. But there was one problem – every morning at 5.30am I was woken by creaking floorboards overhead, followed by the machine gun sound of a dodgy bathroom shower.

And I asked myself – what’s the point of a guest house? And I thought: sleep (or at least a decent mattress). And I found myself wondering: how would you start to build a guest house around sleep? With deep carpeting and good plumbing, for starters. Recycled paper and organic eggs are good, but they’re extras. Without the sleep, they don’t count for much.

That got me thinking, what do we build a class around? And I thought: interaction between people. You need real conversation and good listening for starters. Other things might be nice to have, but they’re extras. If the experience isn’t built around the people, the add-ons don’t count for much.

Dogme lessons are based on learner lives and learner language. The lives supply the content, and the language supplies the form.

Dogme isn’t about what we must do in class, or what we mustn’t do. It’s about what we can do using our primary resource: the learners.  

 Teachers are learners too. As Chia Suan Chong said after Dale’s talk, being a dogme practitioner means rethinking the way we see our role. We become facilitators – participants in the process.

Now there are different ways to build a class around people. For example, one can teach dogme without using technology. And one can teach dogme with technology, provided the tech is used in harmony with the core approach, to enhance and to connect. How one navigates these options depends on the teaching context – dogme isn’t a fixed method.

So if it isn’t a method – what is it? And how do we know it’s dogme?

Dogme has evolved from a critique of materials overuse into a framework approach that proposes three core characteristics for unplugged practice: conversation-driven, materials-light and focused on emergent language. 

So far so good, some might say: ‘Isn’t this just what good teachers do?’ Well, not entirely. It might be what some of us already do, but the implications of teaching unplugged represent a serious challenge to the view of education enshrined in most pre- and in-service training.

Because the more we unplug, the more we find ourselves doing the following:

1 Keeping timings open to allow for cycles of interaction and reflection (rather than sticking to the timings in the lesson plan – though see point 3!)

2 Thinking in terms of bottom-up learning, not top-down teaching (we’re learners too: this relates to Freire’s notion of a reciprocal relationship between the teacher, who also learns, and the student, who also teaches²)

3 Recording the lesson after it’s happened (instead of planning it in detail beforehand)

Maybe this is my version of Lindsay Clandfield’s ‘power of three’ – and combined with the big three characteristics of unplugged teaching it makes three to the power of three, which is, umm, six? Nine? Ninety-nine? I flunked math – or math flunked me. So I’m going to go three-crazy and introduce a trio of ideas from my colleagues’ presentations that made a big impact on me.

The first was Candy van Olst’s impassioned argument for opening the classroom space to the learners’ own stories of life and work:

Instead of doing it ‘my’ way, they develop the confidence to do it ‘their’ way.

(Candy actually went a lot further and said: ‘Learning cannot be self-directed unless it’s in a dogme classroom.’)

The second is an idea expressed with great clarity by Anthony Gaughan:

A teacher only needs to be one step ahead to help.

(This is of critical importance to the ongoing debate about teacher experience and language competence in the dogme classroom.)

The third is Howard Vickers’s positioning of technology as a bridge between lo-tech classes and the hi-tech world we increasingly inhabit:

Using mobile technology to capture learning opportunities slows down the noticing process.

(So the camera on a mobile phone can be used to capture text outside class, allowing for reflection, analysis and problem-solving in class).

Finally, I noted the following phrase, but I didn’t note the context – an object lesson on the importance of good note-taking in dogme. I wonder if anyone can place this: ‘The socks are history!’

So dogme is more than ‘what good teachers do already’. But it isn’t new. We didn’t invent it. The experimental practice existed, and the theories of learning that support it (including socio-cultural theory and dialogic teaching) existed too.

Why, then, does it matter? Because without a shared vocabulary that situates unplugged teaching within ELT, without a framework against which to measure one’s own practice, teachers can feel isolated. 

When people share their thoughts after talks and workshops, it’s not to say: ‘This is a revolution!’ It’s usually to say, often with considerable feeling: ‘This is how I teach!’ Or, quite often: ‘This is how I used to teach!’ Or, excitedly: ‘Have you heard of Paulo Freire?’ And people are so relieved to learn that they aren’t on their own.

Dogme isn’t rocket science. It isn’t a mystery. It doesn’t require us to be cod-psychologists or part-time neurologists. It’s fundamentally pragmatic, and it poses a simple, human question: how can we learn together, using what we have to hand?

 . . . . .

DOGCREW: Willy, Howard, Scott, Candy, Anthony, Chia, Luke

Notes, links and training events

Notes

¹ Transcending limitations on newly qualified teachers; unplugging in week one

² A useful summary here – any one of Freire’s ideas will provide inspiration

Links

Scott Thornbury addresses five responses to dogme in this excellent video post 

I also discussed dogme in an interview with Andi White and Rob Lewis in Brighton – the jerky movement in the film is the streaming, not me trying to do robotics (thanks Andi and Rob for helping me relax!). 

http://authenticteaching.wordpress.com/2011/04/29/dogme-symposium-iatefl/ (Willy Cardoso)

http://teachertrainingunplugged.wordpress.com/2011/04/24/every-dogme-has-its-day/ (Anthony Gaughan)

http://ydnacblog.wordpress.com/2011/04/20/conference-itis/ (Candy van Olst – who pursues her theme in subsequent posts)

http://managementspique.wordpress.com/2011/04/22/questions-which-dog-me/ (Diarmuid Fogarty – who also pursues the theme in his latest post)

http://languagemoments.wordpress.com/2011/04/24/a-spot-of-surfing/ (Dale Coulter)

Finally, it’s well worth catching up with the summary of last week’s lively #eltchat about dogme, here:

http://theteacherjames.blogspot.com/2011/04/eltchat-summary-revisiting-dogme.html (James Taylor)

All of these educators are on Twitter, so if you’ve found your way to this blog and you’re still not sure about Twitter, give it a go. You’ll make friends, and they’ll influence you!

Training events

The conversation will soon continue at the TDSIG Unplugged Conference

And (even sooner) on the in-service training course I'm running with Nick Bilbrough at Horizon Language Training in Devon: a few places are available at a special PLN price now the EU funding deadline has passed – apply to me personally via Twitter for details if you’re interested.

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