A topic in teaching science
The term pedagogy originally meant the guiding of children, but today it is widely used in relation to teaching generally, regardless of the age of the learners.
Pedagogy can mean the study of teaching or the 'science of teaching'.
But the term is also used in the sense of a pedagogy – a particular approach / methodology of teaching, and so references may be made to 'enquiry pedagogy', 'child-centred pedagogy', 'constructivist pedagogy', 'traditional pedagogy' and so forth.
Read about 'Constructivist pedagogy'
Pedagogies – strategies and tactics
There are many teaching approaches and methods that may be labelled as pedagogies. Generally these pedagogies are 'fuzzy' concepts – that is they usually do not have absolute criteria that are always used to decide if something is, or is not, an example of some pedagogy. So, terminology is necessarily imprecise (the same approach might be described under different headings by different people, and many real teaching approaches have elements of more than one of the pedagogies that have been described.
At a very simple level we might consider that there are overall strategies, teaching methodologies, that are used on a broad scale, as well as more specific tactics, particular techniques used in specific teaching episodes.
Read about blended learning
Read about context-based learning
Read about dialogic teaching and learning
Read about enquiry-based science education
Read about flipped learning
Read about project-based learning
Making the unfamiliar familiar
Teaching can be considered the process of making the unfamiliar familiar. Sometimes we can make the unfamiliar familiar by directly introducing it. (If someone does not know what a conical flask is, we can show them one, get them to handle one, get them to use one…). However often in science we teach about things that are too small, large or dangerous for his, and often we teach about abstract ideas that cannot be introduced in this way. The constructionist perspective suggests that to make the unfamiliar familiar, as a first step in teaching new ideas, is to show the unfamiliar is somewhat like something already familiar. Teachers use a range of techniques to do this, including metaphor, simile, analogy, anthropomorphism, and so forth.
Read about making the unfamiliar familiar
Read about metaphors in science
Read about analogies in science
Investigating pedagogy
Pedagogy is informed both by theoretical perspectives on learning or epistemology (the nature of knowledge, and how people come to knowledge), and by research into different teaching approaches. Unfortunately developing evidence-based teaching practice through research is hampered by a number of complications:
- many of the terms used to describe teaching (e.g. 'direct instruction', 'constructivist teaching', etc.) are used quite differently by different authors – so one has to be careful to check what actually happened in the teaching and learning context, rather than rely on the labels used in the titles/abstracts of research reports;
- there are many complications with carrying out experimental research in education which mean that despite the best efforts of researchers, most studies are subject to rather major weaknesses, and so conclusions are usually subject (whether this is made clear in the report or not) to some rather substantial provisos;
- what works with one group of students in one classroom studying some topic, may not work elsewhere with students of a different age studying a different topic: generalisation from studies of research into teaching and learning is highly problematic.
Read about 'Experimental research into teaching innovations: responding to methodological and ethical challenges'
Educational research is subject to many complexities and constraints – but can offer teachers useful guidance on which innovations are worth evaluating in their classrooms
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Constructivism and direct instruction as competing instructional paradigms.
