Of Hybridity and Literacy

Many a times in class discussions, teachers may find pupils bringing in their personal experiences in conjunction with the topic being discussed or even behaving and reacting in a certain way when assigned to perform tasks in class. No one child is the same. Coming from families with different socio-economic status, religious and racial background, pupils present to the class a plethora of attitudes, beliefs and values. During my contract teaching, a memorable discussion with my Primary 5 Social Studies class spurred me to relate it to the concept of hybridity. We were on the topic of Singapore's separation from Malaysia. While the facts are being laid down and discussed, one student expressed displeasingly, audible enough for the class to hear, that his parents did not like Malaysia. While this may sound like an opportunity to create a third space in learning, I did not manage to do so. Instead, I dismissed him off and well, ignored the remark signalling that the statement was of no relevance to the discussion. Clearly, this was not the best move. I should have better managed the situation and instead explore the conflicting remark further and bring the discussion to another level so that the child as well his fellow classmates could achieve a shared and deeper understanding of where the resentment comes from and how to work their way out to a more neutral stance.

This kind of teachable moment would never have the opportunity to come out in the open at a better time and thus, teachers should be better informed and trained to seize moments like those. In my opinion, exploring Gutierrez's perspective on hybridity both as a theoretical lens for understanding diversity and as a method for organising learning seem to be a reasonable concept to be applied within the Singapore educational context. Unknowingly, we might have even applied it or missed the chance to apply it in our classrooms especially during class discussion. Thus, training the teachers to identify the teachable moments is essential. Even when these moments are not abundant, teachers should be able to create conflicting views of a common fact and lead pupils to justify why certain facts are so. In view of the changing education landscape in Singapore that encourages pupils to be creative and critical thinkers and problem solvers, what better way than the third space to mediate their thought processes.