Dialogue
Education flies to Hong Kong
by Jonathan Chan
This year the course Learning
to Listen, Learning to Teach flew to us in Hong Kong!
The course was co-organized by the Fellowship of Evangelical
Students (where I work), a Christian NGO serving students and
educators. We had 10 participants staying, struggling, enjoying,
and stimulated together for 5 whole days. Nine ladies and myself,
all from Hong Kong, with one special participant from Australia.
I say all were greatly stimulated and challenged to take the
methodology back to their workplace and work it out with their
students. The biggest challenge is to translate it to the secondary
school setting and to make it happen with loaded content, following
the scheduled syllabus.
I first came to know Vella's idea of learning tasks and her
books through Peter
Noteboom some years ago and found her ideas useful and stimulating
in our work among students, as our way of engaging with students
is very different from what happens in ordinary schools. Paulo
Freire's idea of 'conscientization' takes root in what Dialogue
Education promises. The way to engage students with their world
through Dialogue Education eventually leads to empowerment of
their lives so that they can take up their role as a human being
and participate as an individual. I learned the hows and experienced
the whole process of Dialogue Education through the course,
finding the balance between content and time most challenging.
It certainly will change the way I conduct further trainings.
Within a month of the course I actually had opportunities to
put Dialogue Education into practice three times for sessions
of nine hours in Macau and Toronto on some very condensed content!
Feedback was that people enjoyed more than what I expected,
not only responding positively to me as a content provider but
experiencing themselves as active learners. I found myself changing
my own methods, spending more time in preparation, which is
worthwhile!
For me the two most challenging areas for follow-up include
nurturing positive values in a learning classroom, and applying
Dialogue Education in my teaching area, Life Education. These
certainly connect with Dialogue Education, and therefore GLP.
