Historic and current views of pedagogy
These notes are part of a series for the book. Pedagogy is emergent; it shapes practices and practices shape pedagogy. This article investigates the emergent nature of pedagogy by looking at how pedagogy has been defined in the past and how its definition is currently changing.
Outline
- Introduction
- Changing perceptions of pedagogy
- Developments in views about learning and teaching
- Redefining pedagogy
- Perspectives on feminist pedagogy
- Summary
Notes
People look to pedagogy as one way to fix inequalities:
- Ideologies such as those about ethnicity and gender socialize students in a way to prepare them for their future roles in society.
- The organization of institutions also inform students about the relative power of different groups and different subjects of study (and how those subjects are reflected in jobs).
History of pedagogy
Below is a timeline of how pedagogy has been defined and understood.
1. The integration of knowledge with education was based on associationist psychological theories of learning
Associationist views dominated in the U.K. in the 1890s. Associationism is an empiricist view, in which experience is seen as the main source of knowledge. For example, behaviorism is an associationist theory that is interested in strengthening the association between stimulus and response.
The purpose of education is to increase good habits and reduce the consequences of bad ones (which were seen as crime and poverty).
2. Use of the word ‘class’
There was a shift in organization, from mixed ages to same-age classes. The purpose of education is to develop rational abilities.
3. Psychometrics
Psychometrics is measuring mental abilities and processes. Testing was based on mental age, which presumes a norm (normal abilities and achievement for a child of a specific age). So, this also capped what an individual was seen as able to do, and led to the idea that intelligence is hereditary.
4. Child-centered theories of pedagogy or non-directive pedagogy
Examples of this thinking include Piaget’s theories. At this time, children were believed to have potentials that they could realize if given the correct environment. The development occurs when the child discovers something in that environment during play, assuming that the child is of an appropriate stage of development for the learning to occur.
A teacher is a guide, guiding the child during their individual growth. The student is an agent who actively constructs meaning.
Since Piaget, constructivist and socioculturalist theories have continued to maintain the idea of student agency.
5. Operative knowledge and metacognition
If a student is agentive, it follows that students need to develop operative knowledge — an understanding of what they know and how they came to know it, so that they can use that knowledge to solve problems. Operative knowledge can be taught by teaching metacognition skills.
6. Ties between language and learning, with language used to understand others and to mediate actions, and ultimately to learn higher mental processes
Examples include the theories of Bruner and Vygotsky. Scaffolding is used until the student masters the content, and that’s one of the reasons we focus on formative assessments.
The teachers try to know what the students understand, and then provide a model that is within their experience. This modeling and referencing between teachers and students is a dialectical relationship.
7. Dialectical relationship
Just as modeling and referencing is a dialectical relationship, so is the learning process according to Paulo Friere, who saw learning as going from action to reflection, and then from that reflection to a new action.
8. Role of context in learning: context is the common knowledge
This is problematic when activities portend to draw upon a shared context, but the context is not shared among all groups (for example, boys and girls).
9. Situated cognition
You cannot separate what is learned from how it is learned and used. Learning happens as part of negotiation, so students need to have access to the negotiation process. When making sure they have access, we need to look at gender, ethnicity, socio-economic brackets to make sure.
The teachers’ role is to help students negotiate meaning. Authentic tasks are critical for developing knowledge.
‘In current theories of learning, the responsibility for learning rests with students and teachers. Students are expected to engage in dialogue with each other, and with teachers, and to validate their own understandings rather than merely accept transmitted views’ (Murphy, 1996, p. 33).
Current debates about pedagogy
Sociocultural theory sees the role of the teacher as one who scaffolds learning. To do that effectively, the teacher must know where the student stands with regards to the learning — and so, formative assessment becomes very important to the pedagogy.
Murphy’s view is similar to Robin Alexander’s pedagogy of mutuality, but Murphy is definitely locating the mind as non-local (whereas it is unclear that Alexander does so). Murphy sees pedagogy as being ‘about the interactions between teachers, students, and the learning environment and learning tasks’ (Murphy, 1996, p. 35).
| Murphy's article about pedagogy | Alexander's article about pedagogy |
|---|---|
| Classrooms are cultural settings, so it is important to look at the histories people have with participation. Their histories mediate their learning, so we should pay attention to the enacted curriculum. But, pedagogy also includes the experienced curriculum. | The enacted curriculum is pedagogy. Pedagogy does not include the experienced curriculum. |
| Tasks and activities be meaningful to the learner, and extend mutuality to them. | Tasks and activities are structuring resources. |
| We should let students participate in 'specialist discourses' and as theorists themselves so that they can deconstruct the information in the curriculum and thus understand it better. | The pedagogy of enculturation helps learners view their world critically. |
Didactics: ‘the study of the relationship between learners, teachers and educational subject knowledge…. Didactics is concerned with the processes of the person learning and the particular content to be learned (the knowledge and the know-how)’ (Murphy, 1996, p. 34). Central to the idea of didactics is praxis: ‘a term used to describe the dialectical relationship between theory and practice in teaching — a form of reasoning informed by action’ (Murphy, 1996, p. 34).
Feminist contributions to the debate about pedagogy
Feminism looks at the difference between the realities of males and females. To discuss this difference as it is in schools, it must look at pedagogy.
One technique that is used in feminist theory can also be applied generally so that teachers can help make explicit their students’ knowledge: ‘Feminist pedagogy advocates making students theorists by encouraging them to interrogate and analyse their own experiences in order to gain an critical understanding of them. This theorizing starts with students conceptualizing their own experiences and then, through action and dialogue on aspects of subjects, students gain new awareness and understanding, which, with the support of the teacher and peers, are analysed, organized and evaluated in relation to others’ understandings. In this way, students and teachers can deconstruct the ‘cultural wisdom’ that shapes the curriculum and thus understand it’ (Murphy, 1996, p. 36).
Summary
‘We remain with an unresolved question and debate. We need to ask “what is an educated person?” in a world that recognizes difference and how answers to this question help define a curriculum and pedagogy for equity’ (Murphy, 1996, p. 37).