A team leaves a training day convinced, and three months later nothing has changed. It is not a problem of motivation, it is a problem of method: validation is not transformation. I have been working on this question for thirty years, with children, teenagers, professionals and university students, and I am releasing a documentary film on progressive education, « Droit à la parole ! ». Pedagogy is a subject that matters well beyond school: cultural venues, artists and companies ask me about it, each for their own reasons.
First direction: the frame authorises, it does not forbid
A pedagogical frame exists so that each person has a place and can take a risk. Most of the frames we build actually serve to prevent overflow, which produces exactly the opposite of what we are looking for. This direction provides concrete criteria for building an authorising frame, and it works particularly well for people who lead groups without ever having been trained to do so. It draws on What is a « good frame » for pedagogy ?, Listening to the Other and Framework, purpose and transgression.
Second direction: fear prevents learning
There are simple, verifiable elements of neuroscience here, rarely taken seriously in the concrete organisation of a course or a training session. What the fear of being wrong produces, the fear of other people’s gaze, the fear of the grade. To which I add something I practise and which surprises people: leaving thirty seconds of silence to someone who is stuck, instead of helping them. See Fear, a learning inhibitor and The Thirty Seconds That Belong to Them.
Third direction: departing from the instruction is information
When a person does something other than what was asked, the reflex is to bring them back into line. Yet that is often where the most interesting thing lies, and the way this departure is received decides what the group will allow itself afterwards. A very concrete direction, with examples taken from real workshops. See Respecting Instructions and When the instruction is not followed.
Fourth direction: making oneself dispensable
Good transmission organises its own disappearance. That is an uncomfortable position for many trainers, teachers and artists, whose professional identity rests on being necessary. I have formalised this under the name of an ecology of dispensability, and it is probably the talk that sparks the liveliest discussions. See For an ecology of dispensability and Pedagogical Innovation.
Fifth direction: sincerity as a working tool
Taking the risk of telling the truth in a pedagogical relationship, including about what one does not know, is not a moral quality but a technical lever. This direction suits companies and organisations well, where the question of truthful speech arises differently than at school. See Taking the Risk of Truth and Truth and lies.
Sixth direction: progressive education, and what it had understood
Freinet, Freire, Dewey, and the schools that practise democratic organisation of the classroom today. This direction starts from the film I have just completed, which gives children a democratic place within the film itself. It interests structures working on their governance as much as those working on their pedagogy. See The Freinet method applied to digital mediation, Is pedagogy revolutionary ? and Secret violence.
What happens in the room
This talk would be absurd as a lecture, so I build it entirely as a demonstration: every method I mention, we experience it, then we analyse it. Participants leave with a repertoire of methods they can use the very next day, not with principles. This is the subject of The Implementation of Methods.
What remains
The analyses the group produces about its own exercises stay online, on a platform we host, and form the beginning of a shared repertoire. For a team that wants to continue, it is this document, rather than training material brought in from outside, that serves as the basis for the next session.
Formats and preparation
An hour and a half opening a pedagogical day, a training day, or support over several sessions when a team truly wants to change its practices. The preparation happens with the people who lead the team, because what they dare not say to their colleagues is often the real subject. And since transmission is the very subject of this page, I can support a member of your team in building and giving the talk themselves: it is the most direct application of what it says [see the page “What if someone from your team did the talking?”, to be linked once published]. Talks are given in French and in English.
Some past talks
Working with Artists in the Social Field; Evaluating Arts and Cultural Education from the Artist’s Perspective, a course at INSEAC.
All the resources: Pedagogy.