NN39, October 2007
Best Practice in Education and Training: Hype or Hope?
Meaningful Experiences: Reformulating Best Practices
By Graciela Messina and Enrique Pieck, Universidad Iberoamericana, Mexico
KeywordsLatin America, Best practice
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No solid theory of innovation, advanced from the Latin American viewpoint, underpins the neo-liberal educational-reform movements which, in the nineties, hoisted the flag of innovation, taking schools as their main arena of action. Educational researchers have warned us that these school-centered reforms have not resulted in the desired transformation, since they focus on ?applying? innovation as an end in itself, without taking all its dimensions and consequences - above all in the labour and organizational spheres - into account. Like an unfulfilled promise, an embryonic theory, emerging from Latin America, can be glimpsed - consisting in disjointed reflections defining innovation as a cultural practice, and assigning value to the singularity of experience and the decisive role played by context - of which social and political relevance, the fomenting of social-participation processes, and an acknowledgement of the changes wrought by innovation when applied at the local level, and of its ability to transform practice, form a part (Blanco & Messina, 2000). A review of historical developments reveals that the concept of ?innovation? was not introduced into the educational context until the sixties. Classic authors on the topic reassert the idea that a sine qua non of innovation is the extent to which it can be generalized and replicated to suit other realities (Havelock and Huberman, 1973). However, at the global level, the theory of innovation has undergone transformation, since the seventies, so as to incorporate conceptualizations that eschew the idea of associating validity with sustainability and generalizability and, on the contrary, attribute the value of innovation to the singular nature of each experience. Moreover, such theories link innovation to research processes and value it to the extent that it helps to foster quality and equity in education. Likewise, they acknowledge that the connection between knowledge and power and the lack of equal educational opportunity affect innovation.
The innovations implemented by governments in the region, based on the human-capital concept, have paid lip service to the arguments that consider educational quality and equity to be indispensable preconditions for countries to become economically competitive, while resulting in practices that, far from doing away with educational inequality, have given rise to homogenizing programmes that tend to discourage diversity. Such innovations are posited as a local ?response? or an ?application? of pre-established centralized policies, and consist of projects that are standardized by requiring all proposals to fit into a framework that seeks both to impose a common modus operandi and to legitimize a single line of thought.
Faced with this reality, other authors have opted to create a new category called ?best practices?, which alludes to practice as a basis for knowledge, and, above all, to certain educational practices that have been classified as ?exemplary? and can be identified in accordance with certain criteria such as: contextual relevance, the degree of systematicity and effectiveness, explicit role definition, the existence of rules to be followed and of effective leadership that fosters the participation of the various people or entities involved, and educational quality and equity as a guiding principle. Since ?best practices?, understood as practices that are under siege from bureaucrats or unions, are always perceived as learning opportunities, one of the main tenets of the authors who came up with the said concept has pertained to sharing such practices so that others can learn from them. Unlike the concept of innovation, which gave rise to successive reformulations, the concept of ?best practices? is defined ?by inference? or casuistically, based on the identification and description of particular experiences. Even though the advent of the aforesaid concept of ?best practices? reflects a commitment to citizens? participation in education, the interest in results -above all, results categorized as ?successful? or effective- subsists, as does the criterion that such results should, at least to some extent, be reproducible. It is no less true that the ?best practices? concept has fuzzy boundaries, is elusive, and emphasizes ?educational effects? while passing over the relationship between knowledge and power, due to its use of an evaluative concept (?best?) that is, in reality, complex and open to questioning, being reminiscent of the liberal myth that education is ?a thing in itself?, and, moreover, ?a good thing?.
Reflection on the theory of innovation and the concept of best practices leads us to believe that the concept of ?meaningful experiences? is more open and more promising. As in the case of best practices, the latter concept is not ?user-friendly?. However, referring to experience rather than practice allows us to acknowledge the importance of reflecting upon experience, since, without such reflection, practice turns into mimesis. This concept reminds us that experience is always subjective, always mediated by the self; likewise, the said concept makes it clear that experience is not only what happens to us, but what we think about what happens to us ? i.e. the account given by a subject within a context. Furthermore, thinking in terms of experience obliges us to acknowledge that experience has become an impossible phenomenon, since contemporary society deprives us of singular experiences capable of transforming us, obliging us to engage in meaningless, stereotyped activities and subjecting us to experience as a burden, and to experiences so painful that those who go through them are left empty and devoid of any experience whatsoever (Benjamín, 1991).
In accordance with Larrosa (2007), we posit the concept of ?experience? in order to explore its potential in the area of pedagogy, in the belief that we urgently need to formulate a new concept of education as experience-based, acknowledging that it is unclassifiable per se, and freeing it from all pretensions of objectivity and universality, from all arrogant references to expert knowledge, and from all fetishisms. While traditional science captures and reduces experience - jumping, too fast, to concepts - Larrosa?s proposal make experience a part of the flux of life. In traditional research, experience becomes ?experiment?,seeking to control the dimensions of reality, which become ?variable? - i.e. measurable and observable attributes- while, on the contrary, by recognizing that our experience is both a draining of experience and an acknowledgment that our experience has become impoverished we are able to start afresh. At this point in time, we need to realize that we live in a whirlpool of facts that causes us to react like automata, repeating existing practices. It is important that we in the field of education, besieged by indices, criteria and results, take stock of what is happening and of what people think about what happens to them, neither seeking to convert this awareness into categories and sub-categories nor breaking everything up into its parts or components, but just allowing the said experiences to happen to us and be converted into a narrative, and then expressing it.
?Meaningfulness? has to do with the satisfying of many different needs, with commitment to complex contexts and realities, and with the feeling that all those subjected to education are participants. It has to do with the very meaning of experience in terms of the links set up, with the denaturalization of official knowledge, with the social relationships produced, with the way of facing adversities and challenges, with innovation per se and the positing of alternative models, with the personal and collective processes unleashed in the participants, with the degree of solidarity, and with the very history of the program. ?Meaningful experiences? are those that leave something behind in those who take part in them because they are eloquent in what they have to say, because they speak of educational possibility and of manifold alternatives, and because they offer answers and bring education closer to people. They are singular experiences in a world that tends towards homogeneity and the obliteration of the subjective, in which experience constitutes a burden rather than a heritage.
A ?meaningful experience? in education is one that doubts itself, deconstructs the official account of experience and builds another one that is inter-subjective and critical. This reflective process leads ?readers? to think about their own practice, where they see themselves reflected and are able to learn to the extent that they are prepared to risk not being tied to a given world vision. Significant experiences permit radical reflection, an untrammeled look at the knowledge-power equation, and an extension of the boundaries themselves. In short, significant experience allows us to reassert the idea that the world is still a habitable place.
References
Benjamn, W. (1991) El narrador, en Para una crítica de la violencia y otros ensayos. Madrid: Pub. Taurus.
Blanco, R. y Messina, G. (2000) Estado del arte sobre las innovaciones educativas en América Latina. Santiago, Chile: SECAB.
Havelock, R. and Huberman, A. (1973) Innovación y problemas de la educación. Teoría y realidad en los países en desarrollo. Paris: UNESCO, 1980. Huberman, A.M. Cómo se realizan los cambios en la educación: una contribución al estudio de la innovación. Experiencias e innovaciones en educación, n° 4. Paris: UNESCO.
Larrosa, J. (2007) La experiencia y sus lenguajes, a conference accessed via Internet in March, 2007.
Further reading
Aguerrondo, I. (1992) 'La innovación educativa en América Latina: balance de cuatro décadas'. In Perspectivas. Vol .XXII, n°3: pp. 381-394. UNESCO.
Benjamn., W. (1998) 'Experiencia y pobreza' in: Discursos interrumpidos I. Madrid: Editorial Tauros. pp. 167-173
De Andraca, A. (2003) Buenas prácticas para mejorar la educación en América Latina. Santiago: PREAL.
Ezpeleta, J. (2004) 'Innovaciones educativas. Reflexiones sobre los contextos y su implementación'. In Revista Mexicana de Investigación Educativa. RMIE: abril-junio 2004, Vol. IX, n° 21, pp. 403-424
CEAL-ILCE (2004) Buenas prácticas de educación en América Latina. La primera generación. México: CEAL-ILCE
UNESCO-Orealc (1995) Innovaciones en educación básica de adultos. Sistematización de seis experiencias. Santiago, Chile.
Zorrilla, M. (2005) Hacer visibles buenas prácticas. México: COMIE, http://innovemos.unesco.cl/
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