Just read about the 'Permeable Curriculum' - a concept proposed by Anne Haas Dyson. From what I understand from preliminary readings is that a permeable curriculum is a porous curriculum that unlike more straight jacketed formal curricula, allows for outside knowledge brought into the classroom by students to percolate into the school curriculum. It seeks to engage students learning by allowing what is of importance and interest to students to be a part of the curriculum. A permeable curriculum is flexible, dynamic, evolving, living, student centered and values everyday lived experiences of students. One scholar explains permeable curriculum as: "A “permeable curriculum” (Dyson, 1993, 2003; Newkirk, 2002) actively invites children‟s personal interests, “unofficial” texts and vernacular literacy practices into classroom discourse and scaffolds instruction in academic literacy practices on the funds of knowledge that children bring with them to the classroom, and Dyson‟s extensive research has shown that such permeability in the language arts curriculum can be effective with supporting young literacy learners‟ development in and active engagement with academic literacy objectives." (http://permeability.wordpress.com/page/2/) Although Anne Dyson's work focused on younger children, i believe this is applicable for students of all age group. I remembered as a student, how much I detested attending classes in the university, preferring to be in my adda instead, because i found classes boring. Yet in adda we often discussed the same stuff that we did in class. I remember that I often thought how nice it would have been if college was only adda. Unfortunately, my college had an attendence policy. This made me think if educators couldn't possibly bring adda into the classroom? At least, I know that I would have been more interested in classes if it had been so. Could we not create a permeable classroom where, instead of the teacher lecturing students, we could have students participate in an adda on class topics? Learning would have been so much more fun, not to speak of being engaging, relevant and democratic, for students if only we could.
