Language teaching and learning strategies for understanding and communication

Convergent Pedagogy

Ségou, Mali

This is an active learning method which is centered mainly on the learner. This convergent pedagogy values the learner's milieu, whose native language constitutes one of its essential elements. Used in Mali within the framework of the program for the introduction of national languages in the school plans, it has allowed the carrying out of a project that emerges as an innovative response to the high failure rate in this country. Besides, it has allowed carrying out a better integration of the learners' culture.

The convergent pedagogy project in Mali is a readjustment effort, a reinforcement of the leading national languages teaching methods scheme at school. It organizes the transfer in French of the competence acquired in the national languages, in other words, it intends to optimize the advantages of a school-learned linguistic competence belonging to the students' own culture, by means of integrating the teaching of these languages into the classic curriculum. That means a deeper sensitizing of the foreign languages teaching within a context of devaluation of it, by means of an appraisal of the local culture and by a wider integration of the school into the learner's milieu. That is why two model classes have been opened in the town of Ségou, in order to experiment this new pedagogical step, which is today on its way to becoming generalized.

The convergent pedagogy program falls within the domain of the struggle against school dropout rate and the constant decrease of the students' performance level in French. It is based upon the outcomes of evaluations and comparisons of students' performance in schools that have started an experimentation policy regarding the teaching of national languages, with other students following the classical study plan. The fact is that, despite the better results and obvious progress of the former, there are still real problems for some of them to acquire the basic knowledge necessary to think of a rectification program.

Mr. Youssouf Haidara (DNAFLA)
Mr. Samba Traoré (I.P.N.)
Ministère de l'Education de Base (Ministry of Elementary Education)
National Pedagogical Institute (I.P.N.)
B.P.1583 Bamako Mali
Tel.: (223) 22 21 26 Fax: (223) 22 77 67

Institutional Partners
Ministère de l'Education de Base. Direction de l'Enseignement Fondamentale (DNAFLA) (Basic Education Bureau)
Financial Partners
ACCT
USAID

The first approach has been started in October 1987, after the program evolved. It entered its generalization phase in 1994.

Several evaluations have allowed the correction and redefinition of the project.
The project has been awarded the BIE 's Comenius Medal (in 1996).