Orality Journal Volume 3, Number 1, 2014 | Page 34

32 Orality Journal, Volume 3, Number 1, 2014 teachers from the West working in a non-Western cultural context. In such circumstances, it is critical that the teacher understand the hearer’s preexisting conceptions and builds upon them. It is true that I am guided in my perspective by a high view of culture. By “high view,” I do not mean that culture itself is sacred. In fact, I believe that all cultures must come under the corrective scrutiny of the gospel. But I also believe that God has placed within all cultures the culturally appropriate elements and methods for successful communication, including communication of the gospel. In other words, God willingly “uses culture” as a vehicle for his message. Unfortunately, in many cultures, “natural vehicles” (e.g., songs, proverbs, dance, drama, narrative) have been suppressed (if not buried) under the influence of Western educational pressure, and missionaries have not been immune to such error. The result has been that native peoples are often ashamed of those culturally-accepted instruments of communication and see them as inferior to those of the West. Constructivist teaching/ learning can help identify and use Phil Thornton many of those natural vehicles for communication which have heretofore been lost or forbidden. The constructivist approach to teaching/learning can remove some of those imposed obstacles and allow non-Western (and particularly oral) learners to rediscover culturally appropriate avenues for both packaging and delivering the gospel message. In a certain sense cross-cultural constructivist teaching/learning parallels the emphasis of appreciative inquiry in that it seeks to identify and use what a people do well, rather than eliminating what they do wrong (or, at least, what we think they are doing wrong). The more traditional approach to teaching/learning in Western education, including that of pastoral training, focuses on the material (curriculum), beginning with the individual parts and building to the whole. Basic skills are emphasized, and typically there is a rather strict adherence to the fixed curriculum. The curriculum (material to be taught) is highly valued. The primary sources of learning are textbooks and workbooks. Teachers deliver information to the learners with learners becoming recipients of