Ramón Flecha

Critical Communicative Methodology: Informing Real Social Transformation Through Research

The critical communicative methodology (CCM) is a methodological response to the dialogic turn of societies and sciences that has already had an important impact in transforming situations of inequality and exclusion. Research conducted with the CCM implies continuous and egalitarian dialogue among researchers and the people involved in the communities and realities being studied. To this dialogue, researchers bring existing scientific knowledge, and the researched subjects contribute knowledge from their lifeworlds. In this process, new understandings emerge informing solutions to many social problems. Later, social actors lobby for the development of effective social policy based on those solutions. This article presents the CCM, its main principles, techniques, and achievements relating them to the life and person of Jesús Gómez (“Pato”), who deeply engaged in the development of this methodology, always with passion and intellectual rigor and a profound commitment to social justice.

Turning difficulties into possibilities: engaging Roma families and students in school through dialogic learning

Schools and communities may have a key role in reversing the cycle of inequality that the Roma suffer in Europe. Aiming at reducing existing inequalities, dialogic learning aims to ensure high levels of academic learning for all children, by involving the whole community through egalitarian dialogue. Less well known are the implications of this approach for the Roma in highly marginalised areas. This article presents the results of a longitudinal case study in a Spanish primary school, undertaken as part of the European Union-funded INCLUD-ED Integrated Project. It reports on educational actions grounded in dialogic learning, which have succeeded in engaging families and communities in the school, the classroom and other learning spaces. Based on a dialogic school-based transformation, Roma families participated in children’s learning activities and decision-making spaces. We explore how these actions involving Roma families are developed and the effect they may have in improving learning and engagement.

The Dialogic Sociology of Education.

Reproduction theories emphasised the idea that schools reproduce relations of oppression. Later, postmodernism has increased the language of impossibility by analysing all educational actions in terms of power relations. Therefore, educational actions in line with any of those sociological approaches cannot act as tools that schools and communities need today to tackle inequalities from education and thus contribute to social inclusion. But sociology of education is already on the move. It has become dialogic, studying and showing that, actually, there are Successful Educational Actions (SEAs) worldwide that challenge structures and provide all children with the education they deserve to not only have equal chances but also, and more importantly, equal results. This dialogic sociology of education develops in dialogue with social agents and, as a result, has greater chances to improve their lives.

Cambio, inclusión y calidad en las comunidades de aprendizaje

Resumen Partiendo del hecho que en la sociedad de la información el aprendizaje depende de la correlación de las interacciones del alumnado en sus diversos contextos, se plantea que las teorías más eficaces, las que están promoviendo mejores niveles de aprendizaje, son aquellas que estudian el aprendizaje desde las interacciones sociales existentes entre el alumnado y las personas adultas de la comunidad educativa. La transformación de las interacciones que tienen lugar en el contexto escolar hace posible transformar los actuales centros educativos que no están respondiendo a las demandas y necesidades planteadas por la sociedad de la información. Un planteamiento que el autor advierte como urgente, especialmente en vistas de los resultados extraídos en los últimos informes PISA. Se ejemplifican diferentes intervenciones a partir del aprendizaje dialógico en centros transformados en comunidades de aprendizaje en España, donde se pueden ver cómo se están consiguiendo transformar estas interacciones aumentando el aprendizaje del alumnado y creando un clima de solidaridad que contribuye a superar los problemas de convivencia.

The challenge for Mondragon: Searching for the cooperative values in times of internationalization:

Competitiveness today requires being able to operate at a global scale. The financial crisis invigorated this requirement, posing new challenges to the economic viability of conventional companies and demanding alternative organizational forms of production. Although a wealth of research has focused on capitalist companies, little attention has been paid to the way these challenges affected worker cooperatives. Drawing from a qualitative case study of the Mondragon Cooperative Group, this article discusses the obstacles to internationalization faced by worker cooperatives, as well as the specific conditions and implications involved. In particular, the article analyzes Mondragon’s contradiction between being forced to expand and trying to keep cooperative values during this expansion. Two main actions aimed at responding to this contradiction are analyzed: the creation of mixed cooperatives and the extension of the corporate management model. The analysis of this process will shed light on actions for the global expansion of worker cooperatives.

EL MODELO DIALOGICO DE LA PEDAGOGÍA: UN APORTE DESDE LAS EXPERIENCIAS DE COMUNIDADES DE APRENDIZAJE

Abstract over the last two decades a transfor-mational project has emerged in different contexts (Spain, Brazil and chile) in schools that are mostly attended by pupils from vul-nerable social and economic backgrounds. This project is entitled Learning Communities . The fundamental characteristic of this project is the involvement of the whole community in order to achieve a quality education for every pupil. When examining the abundant documents that have been published to date about this project, a new educational model comes to light. However, this model is still not systematised as such in the existing bibliography. This article will carry out that systematisation through the instrumental use of specialised theoretical categories (edu-cational conceptualization, type of personal construction, type of society, focus of the curriculum, educational model, didactic model and concept of evaluation) and will propose a new educational model which has been entitled the dialogic educational model. In this way an attempt is being made in this article to contribute to the specific field of education, by systematising an educational alternative which efficiently resolves problems

Communicative Methodology: Successful actions and dialogic democracy

Framed in a context of questioning of the social sciences by European institutions, this article offers an example of a way of doing organic public sociology for and with civil society. The authors employ the Communicative Methodology, which goes beyond oppositions between descriptive and normative sociology. It does so by using the concept of ‘successful actions,’ which brings scientific knowledge into dialogue with the knowledge of people from the communities and institutions involved. Thanks to Communicative Methodology, the European Parliament approved the successful actions from a study of a Roma neighborhood in extreme poverty, leading to the creation of a successful cooperative with sustainable employment. In sum, this public sociology calls for a dialogic democracy accountable to all voices, in which the successful actions that researchers analyze then get recreated in collaboration with the publics, so that society can implement them to improve people’s living conditions.

Desde los actos de habla de Austin a los actos comunicativos: Perspectivas desde Searle, Habermas y CREA

El concepto de acto de habla ha sido una gran aportacion de la filosofia del lenguaje al estudio de los procesos de comunicacion que esta tomando mayor importancia con el actual giro dialogico de las sociedades y las propias ciencias sociales. El desarrollo posterior que hizo Searle de las contribuciones de Austin fue tomado como el punto de partida de la concepcion de actos de habla y actos comunicativos que Ha-bermas considero una de las bases de su teoria de la accion comunicativa. Sin embargo, en el trabajo conjunto de Searle y CREA se clarificaron los errores de comprension que Habermas tuvo de la concepcion de Searle. De ese debate surgio la importancia del desarrollo de la concepcion de actos comunicativos dialogicos y actos comunicativos de poder que ha sido incorporada al proyecto INCLuD-ED1 cuyo equipo ha continuado desarrollandola hasta la actualidad en diferentes ambitos. En este articulo se desarrolla esa evolucion a partir de un analisis de las aportaciones recientes de la filosofia del lenguaje, seguidamente de una explicacion de los actos de habla y los actos comunicativos y finalmente un analisis de las relaciones de poder y las relaciones dialogicas que se dan en los diferentes actos comunicativos.

Using Mixed Methods from a Communicative Orientation: Researching with Grassroots Roma.

Over a decade ago, researchers in Roma studies shifted their approach, from an exclusionary stance to a more communicative one. Despite major positive changes since then, researchers still do not adequately reflect the voices of the majority of the world’s Roma. In this article, we draw on a communicative mixed methods case study, conducted within the INCLUD-ED project in one of Spain’s most underprivileged neighborhoods, to show how it was possible to engage in intersubjective dialogue with grassroots Roma throughout the entire research process. Through such engagement, it is possible to develop new knowledge that can transform local conditions, as they shift from diagnosing social exclusion to identifying the approaches that work best to reduce it.

Formación del profesorado en las comunidades de aprendizaje

En las comunidades de aprendizaje, la formacion del profesorado es parte de aquella en la que se involucra el conjunto de agentes educativos (profesorado, familiares, personal no docente, voluntariado). Mientras las escuelas heredadas de la sociedad industrial se van transformando en comunidades de aprendizaje de la sociedad de la informacion, la formacion del profesorado –centrada en los conocimientos previos y las adaptaciones curriculares– va siendo transformada en formacion de todos los agentes educativos, para coordinar y optimizar sus interacciones con los alumnos. La primera parte del articulo explica el proceso de formacion del profesorado en las comunidades de aprendizaje, que tambien es llevado a cabo parcialmente en otros centros. La segunda parte, desarrolla los contenidos de la formacion centrada en el aprendizaje dialogico, es decir, una formacion dialogante, competente, transformadora, instrumental, creadora de sentido, solidaria e igualitaria en las diferencias.