Are Pedagogical Ideals Embraced or Imposed? The Case of Reading Instruction in the Republic of Guinea

Abstract

This chapter examines ideals of “best practice” or “good teaching,” beginning from the premise that pedagogical ideals represent cultural and social constructions, not the simple discovery of scientific truth. But, if pedagogical ideals are culturally constructed, who constructs them, when, where and how? Where do notions of good teaching come from and how do people respond when they encounter a new notion? Through a case study of the Republic of Guinea in West Africa we examine how certain ideals of reading instruction, such as the “mixed method” or the notion of teachers’ professional autonomy, get defined as good practice. We clarify what we mean by “foreign” ideals in the context of an educational system originally imported from outside Guinea. We show that the Guinean elite had occasion and motivation for embracing foreign ideals willingly, but we also raise doubts about how deeply Guineans accepted certain ideals. There is evidence of the donors’ clear economic power over Guinean decision-makers, but also of the Guineans’ far-from-passive responses to that power. The debates provoked by new language arts textbooks illustrate how difficult it becomes to distinguish purely strategic mastery of Western notions from true appropriation of the ideals.