María Eugenia Falabella
FUNIBER – Fundación Universitaria Iberoamericana
Abstract
Over time, men and women have invented, created, built up and used an infinite number of objects: tools, crafts, costumes, among others. These objects, together with the books and articles written, photographies taken and interviews carried out, are testimonies that talk to us about different societies. When a historian takes the decision to put into practice a research work, making questions about the origin and the use of those objects, for instance, is paramount. Thus, these materials become source of rich information that paves the way for the reconstruction of the history of any culture. Fortunately, museums and public libraries have been created to preserve this cultural heritage and are those informal scenes of education the ones that are open not only to investigators, but also to every single member of a society.
It is the aim of this article to show the way, we, educators of a new century, can create meaningful and cross curricular teaching sequences, relating and interrelating the above mentioned informal contexts with formal ones as the school is, and explicitly expose the way the teaching of English at primary school should be understood, considering the foreign language under question as a means to reach an end and not as an end itself.
In the subsequent passages, I will start by stating the main differences between formal and informal contexts in connection with both teaching and learning aspects, to further devote some paragraphs to deeply explain the impact of informal contexts as new scenes in education. Finally, I will exemplify the way informal contexts, like public libraries, can become the place to implement a cross-curricular, literacy-based project work, relating Literature, Language, History, the Teaching of English as a language that differs from the mother tongue, and incorporating the formal context, as well.
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Autora: Eugenia Falabella.