Deja-vu

Reading Sumida and Meyers' "Teaching to the 4th power" brought back in waves bits and pieces of my training and education as a teacher and trainer. It's strange how, throughout my career and my studies the same ideas keep coming back with different labels. Perhaps it's not strange at all but in fact verifies the value of these ideas. The interdependent types of learning described by Sumida and Meyers, Transmission, Transaction, Transmediation, and Transformation reminded me of the methods I was taught to use in my first educational training as a teacher of English as a second language. The methodology of "communicative" language teaching was all the rage. In my opinion, it worked. In the school, where I first taught, only "transmission" was present. The communicative methods I used built on that in adding "transaction" as well as "transmediation" to an extent. Students were finally given the space to use the language in a somewhat natural context....to communicate with each other. Go figure. I don't know that we went so far as to include transformation.

The 4T model also nested in rather well with the experiential learning cycle as well as the methodologies of other theorists (like Jane Vella) who represent the heart of Adult Learning Theory and Training. What I liked about this article is how it highlighted different aspects of the different parts of the learning cycle as well as synthesing it in my mind. It addressed an important question that always came up for me when considering multicultural education, education for marginalized groups and indigenous education. Sumida and Meyers finally answer with conrete methods the question of how to incorporate and even build the education around the learner's personal experience and culture, they create the spaceand the inlet for the students personal experience. They use the arts and creative activities for this. In the article this part comes at the end in the Transmediation and Transformation stage, however I think in reality it also comes at the beginning, with the learner making choices about the project they will undertake and then seeking the "tools" (tansmission) to accomplish it while using the newly acquired tools all along the way (transaction)

I definately found this article informative, it helps place critical literacy in a wholistic picture of education. (oddly the 4 competencies of literacy model coincides with the 4T model, too) More than a model for providing education to indigenous children, or children of other marginalized groups, I think this is a new way of defining the goals of education and of creating an education that brings children of all societal groups to the table.