Terry’s Blog

Pedagogy, the art or science of teaching, initially referred to the teaching of the young (Greek - child leading). This led more recently to the coinage Andragogy to signify the teaching of adults (Greek - adult leading). Apparently  education is derived from the Latin educare meaning “to raise”, “to bring up”, “to train”.  Closer perhaps to the greek derived terms is educere, meaning “to lead out” or “to lead forth”. Therefore one possible meaning of education is also ‘the art or science of teaching’ but since it has many possible meanings pedagogy seems to be the preferred term.  And pedagogy, concerned with teaching, is distinct from learning theories. Presumably good pedagogy  depends upon and incorporates good theories of learning.

The question is, how do we connect good theories of learning through good pedagogy to the practical activities of good teaching (which facilitates effective learning in the students)? To paraphrase Jerome Bruner, picture the face-to-face tutor working with a tutorial group, the lecturer addressing 300 students, the on-line tutor working in an asynchronous discussion in a VLE, and ask what sort of theoretical knowledge would help them, both in the design of the teaching activity and in its delivery or execution.

Bruner talks of the most common ‘presenting problem’ for all teachers and students - how do teachers reach the minds of students and how do students understand what the teacher is getting at. One way or another, explicitly or implicitly, teachers and students deploy a range of more-or-less intuitive  ’folk’ pedagogies that inform their strategies and activities and impact upon the success or failure of the teaching and learning that is going on.  And, to quote from Bruner;

[...] in theorising about the practice of education [...] you had better take into account the folk theories that those engaged in teaching and learning already have. For any innovations that you, as a ‘proper’ pedagogical theorist, may wish to introduce will have to compete with, replace or otherwise modify the folk theories that already guide both teachers and students.

It is all very well trying to encourage effective learning on the basis of some learner-centred constructivist model of learning but if teachers and students both subscribe to the ‘authority filling empty vessels’ model of learning, then the proposed learning design and activity may seem unstructured, unfocussed and without any clear educational purpose or payoff. In fact, a waste of time and effort.

Ref: Bruner J (1999) Folk Pedagogies in Learners and Pedagogy Leach J and Moon B (eds) OU Press 1999

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