So, when you hear the term pedagogy what comes to mind? Is it a teacher lecturing, is it the use of an overhead projector or PowerPoint, or is it something relegated to the online world? Further, is it even a term that still has relevance today?
Pedagogy by definition is a very instructor centered term and one that evolved out of our once standard lecturing formats. Per the Oxford Dictionary pedagogy is the “science of teaching” (p. 813), and has its roots in the term pedagogue which means school master or school teacher. Further, the American Heritage Dictionary defines pedagogy as “the art, profession, or study of teaching” (p. 505). In comparing these two definitions we see the overlap of the ideas of art and science, and thus it is fairly common to hear people describe pedagogy as the ‘art and science of teaching’. However, in today’s world as we have shifted to more of a learner-centered or constructivist view of education, the focus thus shifted to learning. So, would it now be appropriate for our understanding of pedagogy to shift to ‘the art and science of learning’?
If we dig into these terms in a bit more depth what is it that we mean by the art of teaching? As with all art forms this implies a sense of creativity and expression. Thus, if teaching is an art is it an art of how we approach our teaching style or is it an art in terms of how we get our students to learn? Or is it the creative approaches we try when working with a student that is struggling to understand a concept? However, at the heart of this art is the student and the learning process.
If we now examine the idea of the science of teaching, then are we talking about a scientific method of trial and error, of hypothesis testing, and the scientific approach or are we describing something else. If it is the scientific method, is what we are doing really testing various approaches on students to see which ones work the best. I’d like to think that is not our ultimate end state.
Thus, in examining these ideas a bit deeper we see that we have this interesting mix of creative approaches that by definition are a sort of experiment on our leaners to see what may work in helping them understand the concepts, to help motivate them, and to encourage greater exploration. Also, we should question if pedagogy has changed over the years, or is it our approaches to teaching with new technologies that has changed? If we stay with the teacher-centered idea around pedagogy then what is it that we do as teachers? We lecture, we present information, we group students to have them explore ideas, we assess reading, writing, and oral presentations, and we try to motivate. Does technology change this or is it just our approaches using technology that changes?
In searching the web, I found that the ideas mentioned above around the notion of art and science of teaching, mirror those presented by Josh Eyler (2015) in a post titled ‘Is Teaching an Art or a Science’ that appeared on the Rice University Center for Teaching Excellence site. In his post Josh discusses many of the same ideas around the art and science of teaching. However, he also asks if we are asking the wrong questions when it comes to the concept of the art and science of teaching.
Returning to my earlier premise, if the focus today is on learning then should our definition of pedagogy shift to ‘the art and science of learning’ or do we need another term? This is not an easy question, for the way we learn has not fundamentally shifted for centuries. We read, we write, we listen, we observe, we debate and question, we take notes, we recap our thoughts, we experiment in situated realistic scenarios or in labs, and we think about the concepts presented to us. So, is there an art to this? It could be argued that the art form comes through our experiences as we develop our metacognitive skills, however this could also be viewed as the science portion as we experiment with different approaches until we understand our learning preferences and metacognitive approaches. These ideas definitely fit better with our notion of social-constructivist learning where we are learning how new knowledge fits within our existing mental schema and where we are having both internal dialogue and external dialogue (with others) to test our thinking and understanding. This notion of learning also makes it a very personal experience where the original idea around pedagogy was that about the group and how to teach to the group.
So, when we use the word pedagogy we must take time to understand what we are truly referring to. When one states they changed pedagogy is that accurate or is it they are trying a new approach. And is what they are doing teacher-centered or student-centered, one being about teaching and the other about learning.
If we now shift our stance from the focus on K-12 and traditional aged students to adults we run into yet another term – Andragogy. While many relate this term with Malcolm Knowles it has its roots in Europe and was first used by a German high school teacher Alexander Kapp in 1833 (Jost, 2004) where he discusses the need for lifelong learning and the ideas of self-reflection and life experiences related learning. In the 1960’s when Knowles introduced his description of Andragogy he was focused on the teaching of adults, but turned the attention to the learning process for adults “the art and science of helping adults learn” (Jost, 2004, p.3). However, in Knowles treatment of Andragogy the focus was primarily on key characteristics of adults and not necessarily the learning process. Thus, it is common to think of adult learners having existing careers, needing to find a work/life/school balance, wanting to use what they learn today at work tomorrow, and that the learning must have relevance to their own life. Thus, Knowles ideas were very learner focused and at the individual level. This is quite different from the idea of pedagogy as currently defined, but points to the need to redefine the term or come up with a new term that better reflects the learning process.
It is important to note that in later years Knowles moved away from the idea of andragogy being about the art and science of how adults learn, and recognized that his approach was one that defined key adult learner characteristics that teachers and designers of instruction needed to understand.
Thus, we have these two terms that are commonly used and likely misused in terms of the true understanding of the words and underlying meaning. As a discipline education and/or distance education & adult education should revisit these concepts to update them for today’s technology enhanced learning spaces.
References
Eyler, J. (2015). Is Teaching an Art or Science? [Blog Post]. Retrieved from http://cte.rice.edu/blogarchive/2015/09/13/isteachingartorscience
Jost, R. (2004): Andragogy. History, Meaning, Context, Function. Retrieved from http://www.andragogy.net. Version Sept. 9, 2004.
The American Heritage Dictionary (2nd ed.). (1983). New York, NY: Dell Publishing.
The Concise Oxford Dictionary: New Edition (6th ed.). (1976). Oxford: Oxford University Press.