The “slow school” movement emphasizes the value of time and space for critical inquiry and reflection.
Slow pedagogy can be described as freedom from rote learning. As Alison Clark (2021) describes, it’s freedom for children to participate, to choose, to act, to observe, to play, to be allowed time to absorb new knowledge at their own speed of learning. It aims at creating long periods of open-ended and uninterrupted time so that children become deeply involved in play and other learning activities. In other words, time is not ‘filled’ but is freed from all unnecessary interruptions.
These are some of the characteristics of slow pedagogy.
1. Slow pedagogy makes time for listening
Listening can bring into focus valuable aspects of children’s experiences that are difficult to quantify. Tolfree and Woodhead (1999, quoted in Clark, 2020: 135) highlight that listening must not wait until children are able to join in adult conversations, instead it should begin at birth, and be adapted to their developmental capacities for communication and participation in their social world.
2. Slow pedagogy values process over outcome
Although assessing children’s achievement and progress is an important part of teachers’ roles, measurement has become the dominant discourse in education. As an alternative to measurement, slow pedagogy suggests observation and documentation. Cowan and Flewitt (2020: 119) stress “the importance of observation and documentation for deepening understandings of children, for guiding teaching, and for enabling teachers to reflect on their own learning”. It is also believed that re-visiting documentation slows down our thinking and can highlight the aspects that had been overlooked in the moment.
3. Slow pedagogy values play and the present moment
Engaging with young learners is full of the unexpected, and “play is by its very nature unscripted” (Clark, 2020: 137). Play enables educators to understand children’s interests and capacities (Cowan and Flewitt, 2020: 130). Besides, it can challenge a measurement culture. According to Clark, when educators are asked to fill out a predefined checklist, what is measured (the measured characteristics, behaviours, achievements) acquires increasing visibility, and “what is not being measured can begin to fade into the background” (2020: 137).
It's Time to Start the Slow School Movement!
The "slow food" movement began as a protest against the global proliferation of McDonald's restaurants. Professor Maurice Holt calls for a similar backlash against today's "hamburger" approach toward education, which emphasizes uniformity, predictability, and measurability of processes and results (Holt, 2002: 1).
Comments