Pedagogy

Pedagogy, literally translated, is the art or science of teaching children. In modern day usage, it is a synonym for "teaching" or "education", and is used extensively in scholarly articles. The word comes from the ancient Greek paidagogos, a compound comprised of "paidos" (child) and "agogos" (leader). While the term is often used to mean the art of teaching in general, some prefer to make the distinction between pedagogy (teaching children) and andragogy (teaching adults). The terms "pedagogy" and "andragogy" are also used to describe teacher/subject based instruction and student centered/directed instruction, respectively.

The term "critical pedagogy", coined by Brazilian educator Paulo Freire, is traditionally defined as educational theory and teaching/learning practices designed to raise learners' critical consciousness regarding oppressive social conditions. Critical pedagogy is particularly concerned with reconfiguring the traditional teacher/student relationship using meaningful dialogue.

An honorary academic degree, Ped.D., Doctor of Pedagogy, is awarded by some American universities to distinguished educators. The term is also used with earned degrees to denote an emphasis in education within a field (for instance, a Doctor of Music degree "in piano pedagogy").

The History of Pedagogy in Education

Circa 3000 B.C.E., the advent of writing resulted in a style of education that was more self-reflective, with specialized occupations requiring particular skills and knowledge: scribes, astronomers, etc.. From the very beginning, educators have tried to find specific, interesting ways to bring out the possibilities of intelligence and a love of learning from their pupils. In ancient Greece, philosophy helped questions of educational methods enter national discourse. In both 'Republic' and 'Dialogues", Plato advocates a system of instruction involving the Socratic method of teaching through questions. Through the clever use of questions and answers, Socrates was able to show even an uneducated slave boy how the logic leading to the Pythagorean Theorem was within him.

During the mid 1600's in what is now the Czech Republic, an educator named Comenius wrote the first childrens' textbook containing vivid illustrations, entitled 'The Visible World in Pictures'. Known as the "Father of Modern Education", Comenius believed in a holistic approach to education. He taught that education began in the earliest days of childhood and continued throughout life, and that learning, spiritual, and emotional growth were all woven together. Unlike most of society at the time, he advocated the formal education of women. Well respected throughout northern Europe, he was asked to restructure the entire Swedish school system.

During the 1700's, the philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau presented his methodology on the education of children in his novel Emile, a story of the education of a young boy. Within the novel, Rousseau describes the importance of a focus on the environment and personal experience. Different learning stages are described; for example, during the "The age of Nature" (from ages 2 to 12), a boy should receive no moral instruction or verbal learning, as the mind should be "left undisturbed until its faculties have developed". Instead, education during this stage is focused on physical and sensory development. Books are eschewed during education, with the exception of "Robinson Crusoe", a novel that reinforces Rousseau's ideal of the solitary, self-sufficient man.

Learning Theories and Pedagogy

In psychology and education, learning theories describe how people learn; these theories aid in the development of various pedagogical approaches to learning. There are three main perspectives in learning theories, Behaviorism, Cognitivism, and Constructivism.

Behaviorism

Behaviorism, a term coined by American psychologist John Watson, is based around the idea of a stimulus-response pattern of conditioned behavior. One of the most famous experiments in classical conditioning was performed by Russian physiologist Pavlov. By introducing the sound of a bell before placing food in front of a dog, Pavlov was able to create a conditioned response in the dog where the dog would salivate at the ringing of the bell alone. Some of the most important developments in behaviorism, especially as it relates to pedagogy, occured in the mid-twentieth century with B.F. Skinner. Skinner studied operant, or voluntary, behaviors, and called his approach "operant conditioning". Skinner's mechanisms included: positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement, non-reinforcement, and punishment. In a classroom setting, negative reinforcement might consist of being excused from writing a paper because of previous good work, while non-reinforcement might consist of ignoring misbehavior in the hope that lack of reinforcement will stop the behavior.

Cognitivism

Cognitivism, also known as Cognitive Information Processing (CIP), became the dominant force in psychology in the late twentieth century, replacing behaviorism as the most popular paradigm for understanding the learning process. Cognitive theory is not a refutation of behaviorism, but rather an expansion that uses changes in behavior as indicators for processes within a learner's mind. The concept of cognitive theory utilizes the concept of "schema", a structure of internal knowledge, as well as the concept of short and long term memory. Cognitive theory suggests that meaningful information is easier to retain, and new information is affected by context, environment, and previous schema.

Constructivism

Constructivism views learning as a process in which the learner actively constructs or builds new ideas or concepts based upon current and past knowledge. In other words, "learning involves constructing one's own knowledge from one's own experiences.Constructivist learning, therefore, is a very personal endeavor, whereby internalized concepts, rules, and general principles may consequently be applied in a practical real-world context.The teacher acts as a facilitator who encourages students to discover principles for themselves and to construct knowledge by working to solve realistic problems. This is also known as knowledge construction as a social process. We can work to clarify and organize their ideas so we can voice them to others. It gives us opportunities to elaborate on what they learned. We are exposed to the views of others. It enables us to discover flaws and inconsistencies by learning we can get good results. Constructivism itself has many variations, such as Generative Learning, Discovery Learning, and knowledge building. Regardless of the variety, constructivism promotes a student's free exploration within a given framework or structure.

Informal and Post-Modern theories

Informal theories of education deal with more practical breakdown of the learning process. One of these deals with whether learning should take place as a building of concepts toward an overall idea, or the understanding of the overall idea with the details filled in later. Modern thinkers favour the latter.

Other concerns are the origins of the drive for learning. To this end, many have split off from the mainstream holding that learning is a primarily self taught thing, and that the ideal learning situation is one that is self taught. According to this dogma, learning at its basic level is all self taught, and class rooms should be eliminated since they do not fit the perfect model of self learning.

Informal learning theory also concerns itself with book vs real-world experience learning. Many consider most schools severely lacking in the second.

Teaching method

Template:Cleanup Teaching method or educational method has a long history and relates to the questions, "What is the purpose of education?" and "What are the best ways of achieving these purposes?" For much of human history, educational method was largely unconscious and consisted of children imitating or modelling their behaviour on that of their elders, learning through observation and play, such as, how to make meals, set places for the family, hunt for food, pick berries and how to play-fight and return home with little trophies.

20th century

In the 20th century, the philosopher Eli Siegel, who believed that all children are equally capable of learning regardless of ethnic background or social class, stated: "The purpose of all education is to like the world through knowing it." This is a goal which is implicit in previous educators but in this principle is made conscious. With this principle at basis, teachers, predominantly in New York, have found that students learn the curriculum with the kind of eagerness that Pestalozzi describes for his students at Stanz centuries earlier.

Many current teaching philosophies are aimed at fulfillng the precepts of a curriculum based on Specially Designed Academic Instruction in English (SDAIE). Arguably the qualities of a SDAIE curriculum are as effective if not more so for all 'regular' classroom.

Some critical ideas in today's education evironment include:

• Instructional scaffolding
• Graphic organizers
• Standardized testing

According to Dr. Shaikh Imran, the teaching methodology in Education is a new concept in the teaching learning process. New methods involved in the teaching learning process are television, radio, computer, etc.

Other educators believe that the use of technology, while facilitating learning to some degree, is not a substitute for educational method that brings out critical thinking and a desire to learn.

Instructional theory

Instructional theory is a discipline that focuses on how to structure material for promoting the education of humans, particularly youth. Originating in the United States in the late 1970s, instructional theory is typically divided into two categories: the cognitive and behaviorist schools of thought. Instructional theory was spawned off the 1956 work of Benjamin Bloom, a University of Chicago professor, and the results of his Taxonomy of Education Objectives - one of the first modern codifications of the learning process. One of the first instructional theorists was Robert M. Gagne, who in 1965 published Conditions of Learning for the Florida State University's Department of Educational Research.

Renowned psychologist B. F. Skinner's theories of behavior were highly influential on instructional theorists because their hypotheses can be tested fairly easily with the scientific process. It is more difficult to demonstrate cognitive learning results. Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed (ISBN 0-8264-1276-9) - first published in English in 1968 - had a broad influence over a generation of American educators with his critique of various "banking" models of education and analysis of the teacher-student relationship.

In the context of e-learning, a major discussion in instructional theory is the potential of learning objects to structure and deliver content. A stand-alone educational animation is an example of a learning object that can be re-used as the basis for different learning experiences. There are currently many groups trying to set standards for the development and implementation of learning objects. At the forefront of the standards groups is the Department of Defense's Advanced Distributed Learning initiative with its SCORM standards. SCORM stands for Shareable Content Object Reference Model.

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• Knowles, M. (1975). Self-Directed Learning. Chicago: Follet. ISBN 0-8428-2215-1
• Knowles, M. (1984). The Adult Learner: A Neglected Species (3rd Ed.). Houston, TX: Gulf Publishing. ISBN 0-88415-115-8
• Knowles, M. (1984). Andragogy in Action. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. ISBN 0-608-21794-8

• Everett Dean Martin, The Meaning of a Liberal Education, Norton, 1926.
• Paul Monroe, A Text-Book in the History of Education, Macmillan, 1915.
• Gilbert Highet, The Art of Teaching, Knopf, 1950.
• The Aesthetic Realism Teaching Method.

External links

• Pedagogy.ir – Iranian Pedagogy Portal
• Pedagogy: Critical Approaches to Teaching Literature, Language, Composition, Culture
• Pedagogy Blog
• Facultad de Pedagogia – Facultad de Pedadogia Veracruz
• Rethinkingschools.org – Rethinking Schools Magazine

• One of several useful pages on learning theories from the Theory into Practice Database
• Knowles' Curriculum Vita
• Biography of Knowles from Informal Education Encyclopaedia of lifelong learning
• Statement of principles by Dr. Knowles
• Description of Andragogy from the encyclopaedia of informal education and lifelong learning

• Learning Theories
• Creating Learning Centered Classrooms. What Does Learning Theory Have To Say? ERIC Digest.
• How People Learn (and What Technology Might Have To Do with It). ERIC Digest.
• Critical-learning wiki
• Applied Constructivism
• About Learning 12 Learning Theories Described
• Theory Into Practice (TIP) database brief summaries of 50 major theories of learning and instruction
• [1]Theory of Affirmation Teaching
• Folk knowledge and academic learning. In B. J. Ellis & D. F. Bjorklund (Eds.), Origins of the social mind (pp. 493-519). New York: Guilford Publications. A paper from the perspective of evolutionary developmental psychology
• Teaching in a Computer Lab
• Encyclopaedia of Informal Education

• Educational CyberPlayGround Online Curriculum
• Advanced Distributed Learning
• Department of Educational Research
• Encyclopaedia of Informal Education

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