Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:11] Speaker B: Welcome back to Talking elt, the easiest place to learn about the big issues in language teaching. Today we're continuing our meaty discussion of compassion based language education. I'm joined by Professor Sarah Mercer, author of our new book titled Compassion Based Language Education. And so she really is the expert in this area. And by Charlotte Rance, a senior professional development consultant, bringing her extensive practical experience of working with teachers all around the world.
In the first episode, we looked at what we really mean by compassion based language education and why it's so important in today's classrooms.
In this second episode, we'll continue that conversation by focusing in on the link between compassion and critical thinking.
[00:01:07] Speaker A: One of the myths that maybe goes with compassion is the idea that it's just thinking nicely and being kind to people. But if you really are talking about empathy and you're serious about what you mean by empathy, you don't go with a Pollyanna rose tinted glasses view of the world. You have to, if you want to understand how somebody else is thinking and feeling, you have to really put yourself into their shoes. And what does it mean to be there? What does the system, what does the system, how does it position them? What are they empowered with? What are they held back with? So one of the things that I've put in the book is that for me, compassion based language education is based on the three Cs. Compassion is the kind of driving value and principle that is the heart of everything. But it needs to be accompanied by a sense of criticality and a sense of courage. You do need to be courageous, to be compassionate. It is easy to be dismissed. It is easy to get things wrong. It requires courage to identify as being a compassionate based educator and to act on that. Now, now the criticality for me is central to this is that if we are going to have compassion for others, we have to take a critical view of power systems, relationships, the way that people are positioned in the world and how we in discourse and who's got voice and who doesn't have voice. So compassion isn't blind. It isn't ignoring reality and creating some kind of rose spectacle colored view of the world. Compassion, if it is authentic, has to be critical. It has to really look at the big picture if you want to understand how other people are experiencing their education or their lives in the world.
[00:02:53] Speaker C: Yeah, I think I've been talking a lot to teachers about the relationship between critical thinking and AI because this is kind of one of the topics that teachers often ask about and one of the key components of critical thinking Is that ability, ability to see an issue or a question from other points of view, from other perspectives. And so that feels to me like there's a bit of a Venn diagram there with critical thinking and compassion. That ability to see things from other people's points of view.
Yeah, so I can see that connection.
[00:03:30] Speaker D: And that's something that you can start to learn from a very young age as well. I mean, you know, you, you mentioned your, your three year old grandchild. I have a three year old. And you can see, you know, as she's starting to, to develop her understanding of the world around her, as she becomes less centralized in her thinking, she becomes more curious. And I think curiosity is a very key. I mean, it's, it's not in those three Cs of compassion, but I think you need a little bit of it to be able to be compassionate, to start to see things from that other perspective as well. And we can, we can bring that out in the classroom. Even with, you know, our young learners. We can start to think about different ways and what things mean to different people.
[00:04:19] Speaker C: Yeah. As well, I think there's, you know, we kind of need to look a bit about why this is such an important topic at this time. And I feel one of those factors is the way that our digital universes are full of echo chambers, filter bubbles, which are making us live in worlds where we don't hear other points of view and to see others as being completely incomprehensible in some way and dangerous in some way.
And so I think that gives an added reason for having to push people to think beyond their own perspectives.
[00:05:04] Speaker D: And as we live in, you know, more and more of a globalized world. I mean, you mentioned AI, you've mentioned sort of the echo chambers we exist in online, but also the fact that, that we are so globalized in, in many ways now and having that, that cross cultural aspect that is part of our daily lives. You know, if I think back to my childhood, I would have thought that the chances of me traveling to work in another country or live in another country or work with teachers in another country would have seemed like an alien idea. But now, I mean, obviously the, the benefits of becoming an English language teacher have opened certain doors to travel. But to be able to, to live and work in that globalized environment, you do need that understanding of others and that criticality to be able to question your own understanding of the world and your own beliefs, because that's formed by culture as well.
[00:06:09] Speaker C: Sarah. I mean, that related a little bit to what you were saying before about effective communication.
[00:06:13] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:06:14] Speaker A: I think that this criticality, that if we, if we start to unpack compassion, we look at the fact that it's about empathy. It's about persistent perspective switching. It's got this cognitive and this affective dimension. And then it's about empowering people to feel willing and able to act. So if you start to unpack that criticality is like, it's foundational to it. It's about the ability to take somebody else's perspective, to put yourself in their mind means also, why might they think like that? Thinking critically about why might there be another perspective? What might that mean? Where does that come from? So for me, it's.
I think it's just laziness, if I'm honest. When people think that compassion is just kindness and fluff, they haven't taken the time to think about what that really means and to be honest about the depth of criticality that would have to be involved. If you're serious about having empathy with people, people that you may not agree with, people that you may disagree very strongly with, Empathy doesn't mean agreement. It means trying to understand somebody else's view of the world. World and somebody else's experience of the world. And that means not just looking at them as individuals, but also looking at them as individuals within a social system and how that all fits together. Now, there are various degrees of how you can do that depending on the maturity of your learners and depending on the level of language you've got and so on. So it's not that everybody's going to go about this the same way, but if you're asking principally whether compassion has got a criticality element, absolutely. I can't imagine how you would think it's not.
[00:07:46] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, I know. It's. I just. You saying that reminds me of wonderful lessons I remember having when I taught English on the south coast of England, where we would get students from all over the world from, from Austria, from Spain, from Germany, from Brazil, from China, Japan, and the, the, the. Those lessons where they would tackle subjects where they had different points of view were always the most rewarding lessons. They had the most motivation to communicate, to say what they thought and felt, but the others were trying to understand them as well. And I remember, I mean, Now I'm talking 30 years ago, so things may have changed, but at that time, Spanish students who objected to the way that others saw bull fighting, which was such a, such a kind of part of the culture. I know things have changed since then, but they Felt that others were not understanding what was behind that. And so there would be really energetic discussions about what it really means and people trying to exchange ideas.
And that effort to understand other people was really important for their personal development, their motivation, but also their communication skills.
[00:09:13] Speaker A: Yeah, it's that effort to understand others. I think that's a beautiful way of expressing it.
[00:09:21] Speaker C: Okay, now we, we mentioned briefly AI technology.
I don't know, apart from what we were just talking about, kind of echo chambers and filter bubbles of social media, the subject of technology coming into the classroom. Now, does this present us with some challenges in terms of compassion or opportunities? I. I don't know how technology plays into this subject. I don't know what you think, Sarah.
[00:09:50] Speaker A: I find this quite difficult too, because I think we're at the beginning. I think AI has come so quickly and it's led to such dramatic changes that all of us are a little bit playing catch up with what that means.
Technology has great potential for differentiation, personalized learning, accessibility and inclusion. So we know that there's great potential there. There's also a risk of dehumanisation and a risk of distancing. And one of the things I've just come from some work with teachers in Singapore. One of the things that they talked about there is how the impact of AI has broken the trust in the relationship between teacher and students and how damaging that is. The fact that this notion of relational trust. Because there's a question, is it really from you? Is it not? Are you cheating? Are you not cheating?
So I think there's a lot of. I think there's a lot of potential that technology can help us to be more inclusive, that can allow for greater accommodation of individual learner differences. So I think there's a great positive potential with the technology, but there are problems in finding our way in working with it at the moment. And it's new. And so we, you know, we have to be patient and compassionate with ourselves and give ourselves time, but there are problems to be ironed out in how we work with it, to make sure that it doesn't depersonalize, that it doesn't distance and create distance, but also that it doesn't create an atmosphere of distrust. Yeah, that we learn to work with it explicitly, openly, critically, and that maybe that's the way that we need to start thinking, that if we want to be compassionate, we have to give it space. It's not going away, we can't ignore it. So maybe it's about that being explicit, working on the relationships, expectations and finding a Space to work with technology together with learners, and find a way that is satisfying for both. And I don't think we need to be too harsh on ourselves that this is a massive change that's happened very quickly. And so we're just going to need some time to try and work out how that is going to play out.
But we've been very busy. I know, Ben, that you and I have had conversations on this in the past. We've spent a lot of time talking about what AI, for example, can do, and it has incredible potential.
But maybe we need to also be talking about what it cannot do and it cannot forge those special relationships in the classroom where a teacher and the learners, where they connect as people, where you have that emotional relational connection where somebody feels seen and heard for who they are and that they are able to feel a sense of belonging in that space which motivates and inspires them to learn the language. You speak language. Be brave in taking risks with the language. So maybe that's another question to really engage with is what can AI not do that teachers can do? And they can do it with a big dose of compassion.
[00:12:57] Speaker C: That's wonderful that that has so many echoes of a. Another position paper that Oxford is about to bring out, which we've been writing, which is. It's called the Human Connection. And it's all about, yes, there are many positive sides of AI driven technology, but that we shouldn't forget the really important social side of learning, which is in the classroom. Even if it's a digital online classroom or it's a physical classroom, that human connection is such a key part of learning.
It's that balance. Yeah.
Are you finding this, Charlotte, with teachers as you're traveling around the world?
[00:13:42] Speaker D: I think that, I mean, you're. You're absolutely right. There is a lot of curiosity, a healthy amount of fear, a lot of skepticism, a lot of worry, and also a lot of excitement that's out there with teachers at the moment. But we are all sort of.
It feels like we're constantly playing catch up. So, you know, we might find an excellent tool that, as Sarah points out, can help us to personalize learning. But that will always come with questions. And I think for myself, I'm perhaps not the best. Best person to answer this. My. My natural inclination is to shy away from it, to. I find myself recoiling from it. So taking myself off social platforms, trying to avoid doing things in too techie away. It's. It's sort of made me more analog. And I think for me that a Lot of that comes from a personal fear of how do I manage this? Which is incredibly common across teachers in every country I visited.
[00:14:50] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:14:50] Speaker D: Over the last few years, you know, we're all in the same boat. And I think it is that human connection that can help us to find those answers. You know, talking with your, your sort of learning networks, the teachers that you know around you, whether that's in your staff room, whether that's at conferences or events or in online spaces, you know, we're all working towards the same aim here. We're all looking for ways that we can integrate these things together. And keeping that human conversation going around it, I think will help us to manage things better.
[00:15:28] Speaker C: Right? Yeah. I think there's this interesting thing with technology where on the one hand we talk about personalization and at the same time we talk about depersonalization. It seems to have both potentials in it.
[00:15:39] Speaker D: And I think it's, you know, really important to recognize that all of these programs that we see developing and cropping up, they're all based on a specific form of thought. Thought and the data that they collect comes from a specific area. And they might not always be the best solution for everybody out there. Yeah, you know, you can, you can only learn what you've been taught. And if we're not making sure that that fundamental education that goes into the platforms that we're using is wide ranging, has different perspectives, looks at things from different cultural points of view, you end up with a very one sided fix to the solution that might not work for everyone.
[00:16:27] Speaker C: So past four years have been shaped very much by Covid, the pandemic and all those lockdowns and social distancing, etc. I mean, this must be a major factor. I think you alluded to it at the beginning why, you know, why there is so much focus on well being, but then also compassion in language education.
[00:16:53] Speaker A: Yes. I think, like I say, this book started in 2019 and then it was the COVID years and things slowed down and everybody was busy with trying to do other things. But what the COVID years did for me personally and I think for others was highlighted just how important that social connection is, just how fundamental the social emotional dimensions of learning are. And when everything's cut down to the basics, you don't worry about the tenses, you don't worry about what you're trying to teach them. You worry about that human connection that they feel like they're being seen, that they're connected, that they're engaged, that they're talking to you. That they're seen, that they're feeling looked after. You don't care if they've got the tenses wrong, if they've got the vocab wrong, if they've got the word order wrong, because your priorities dramatically and clearly shift. It's about what really matters in the end, when everything is down to the wire, what is it that matters?
It's humanity, it's human connection, it's social relationships, it's our emotional well being, it's how we relate to one another in the world. And I think that for me, probably those two years, the two Covid years, were actually very important for this book because it brought into focus for me very sharply just how important this was to me that this lens on language teaching can help us think very explicitly about our priorities. It's not a lens that everybody's going to relate to.
Nothing in education is ever like that. But for me it sort of sharpened in focus all the things that really, really matter to me as a language educator. And yeah, that boils down in the end to me.
[00:18:38] Speaker B: To compassion thanks for listening to this episode of Talking elt, the easiest place to learn about the big issues in language teaching. Tune in again next week when we will look more closely at another aspect of compassion based language education.
Don't forget to like and subscribe if you want to learn more about this issue and others like it. To find out more about Sarah's book on compassion based language education, see the link in the episode description.
