The Pedagogy of Performing Learning and Teaching to Increase Students' Success in the African Diaspora and the World Class and Beyond

Abstract

Fred Newman “Performing the World” and his theory and practice of the “performative” are particularly useful in that students’ learning increases significantly more when students “perform” learning and both professors and students “perform” teaching. In addition, Paulo Freire’s revolutionary teaching pedagogy, the problem-posing and problem-solving methods of education, which he opposes to the banking system of education, and in particular the concept of conscientizaçaõ, are also very helpful to increase students’ awareness of how they learn and how they know that they know what they know. Moreover, James Baldwin’s famous plea in “A Talk to Teachers” by which he calls for the necessity to be truthful in letting students know that the environment they are accustomed to is no accident, is also useful to heighten students’ awareness that there is a direct connection between living and learning and between “performing” and living, learning, and teaching.

The paper seeks to examine how these theories, which are rooted in performing the acts of living, learning, and teaching, become strategies for success in the classroom and beyond.