Theories and Thinkers...

• Public pedagogy as necessary for democracy. How do we create/maintain a society with public spaces, with dialogue?  How do we become aware of the public pedagogies at work in society?

• Paolo Freire—grappling with central issues of power relationships and participation in education/development work, acknowledging responsibilities on both the “oppressor” and the “oppressed”

• John Dewey—seeing learning as continuously exploring what we want with our society and reflecting and having dialogue about experience/action. What we know cannot be isolated from how we know it and in what circumstances. Seeing each learner in a holistic way recognises the importance of diversity and each unique context. Communication is important for freedom.

• Donald Schön—single and double loop learning- testing assumptions, integrating reflection in action.

• Etienne Wenger and Jean Lave—allowing space for formal and informal communities of practice around common enterprises- this is where learning and legitimate peripheral learning can take place. The importance of understanding negotiations that take place around identities, around culture, and how reifications, or artefacts that we use, can become part of this negotiation in an organisation. Exciting stuff!

• James V. Wertsch—the potential of learning/changed behaviour through the use of various cultural tools and through giving different roles to people. Reflection on the affordances and constraints of each tool.

• Lauvås and Handal—that effective learning takes place in coaching/mentoring/supervising through a warm, and supportive pedagogy, not a set of right answers.

• Helen Timperley—involving persons/groups at all levels of a learning system in cycles of learning. These cycles relate to the persons they are “leading” as well as the learning of the target group in mind, i.e. students in a school setting.

• Stacey—that if we want to see change, conversation is important. We cannot control organisational change, but we can start and make room for conversation! Each conversation becomes part of a continued complex responsive process.

• Social constructivism— that truths and realities can be very different, depending on perspectives, contexts which have constructed these truths and realities.

• Systems thinking and complexity thinking (Snowden, Hummelbrummer, Williams, etc.)—that the various relationships, boundaries, and perspectives of people in a context make it dynamic and interrelated, and consequently make work towards social change in such a context unpredictable!

• Doing Development Differently- movements from best practice to best fit and adaptive management requiring learning.

• Jayakuma Christian/Bryant Myers—the idea of poverty being related to people having marred identities; people needing restored relationships with themselves, with each other, with nature, and with God.

• Student-centred/participant centred learning—pragmatic ways to deal with the roles of participants and reflect on facilitation!

• Robert Chambers—The many tools for participatory methods needing an approach that believes in the participants own ability to analyse, decide, and take action on their needs.

• Jim Cummins—the power dynamics associated with linguistic and cultural diversity.  How paying attention to linguistic and cultural diversity provides the basis for effective education and a healthy society for all (not just the minorities of a context).

• Michael Quinn Patton—thoroughly describes how developmental and utility-focused evaluation is able to transform practice by being useful, timely, and paying attention to power dynamics.

​