When signature pedagogies clash: Making way for the oral majority with connected learning

In McCloskey’s classic Make Way for Ducklings, two mallards attempt to raise their brood in busy Boston. The ducklings struggle with city life, and the family needs help navigating that environment to travel to a safer island home. Throughout the story, kind advocates stop traffic and make way for these vulnerable residents. Likewise, a large group of vulnerable adults finds the literate world less than inviting. Adults with limited formal education (ALFE, al-phee) or oral learners often need others to make way for them as well. Whether due to war, catastrophe, cultural beliefs, learning disabilities, or family circumstances, oral learners may lack educational opportunities and prefer non-textual ways of learning. Ranging from refugees to the average day laborer, billions participate in this shared identity and vastly outnumber highly literate adults. The ways ALFE learn differ significantly from that of cross-cultural workers who seek to share God’s Word with them. Global servants tend to learn by lecture and discussion, critical analysis, or tackling exegesis and preaching, signature pedagogies of western theological education. However, these familiar pedagogies are foreign to oral learners. What happens when two sets of signature pedagogies meet and clash? Do literates make way for oral learners, or are these adults forced into a reading mode? This article explores the foundational learning culture of ALFE and the signature pedagogies they prefer. Research-backed advice equips advocates to make way for ALFE and serves to inform the training of global workers to utilize connected learning pedagogies.