Mea Culpa: Know Your Audience 

By Maria Davou

teacher, teacher trainer, reasearcher, school owner, public speaker, storyteller, author, publisher, education visionary

In my talks, seminars and workshops, I’ve been giving business tips to school owners about how they need to know their audience and custom their educational product accordingly. I’ve even given tips on how to profile their audience, categorize them and learn how to address their needs. In several discussions with school owners on what materials, books, methodologies they should use, I always said, ‘it depends on your audience’. For example, it’s not the same target group if your school is in the city center with the market in a high-end suburb.

Although I still think there’s great value in knowing our audience, my tip has been basically useless; also, it’s blatantly wrong. OK, sure, we need to know our audience. We need to analyze them, profile them, categorize them. We need to know them so that we can communicate our brand/ identity/ business better. But do we base our educational decisions on this analysis? Do we say, for instance, I will use a more grammar-based approach or an exam-oriented framework or a communicative methodology depending on where my school is located? My new answer is a big, huge, NO!

Does a doctor change their prescription based on the patient’s wants, perceptions or ideologies? Does an engineer ask us about the best mixture to make our house foundations solid? And to take it in our field, does a mathematician ask parents how they believe algebra should be taught? Why then do we feel that in our (equally scientific) field, we should investigate parents’ wishes before deciding which is the right way to go? Doesn’t this show that we, ourselves, diminish our expertise into a market trend? Don’t we know what is scientifically proven as the best methodology for young learners or for teenagers? Don’t we know about the applied linguistics research findings, about modern pedagogical theories, about how neuroscience informs learning? Well, if we do, isn’t it time to take ourselves seriously and sell what we have: knowledge and expertise?

I will therefore, take back what I very often preached. Know your audience only for communication purposes. Respect your audience and educate them. Train them. But let’s not fall into the trap of having the non-expert dictate the way to the expert.

Mea culpa, I admit.