Theories of learning and pedagogy: issues for teacher development

ISSN： 1366-4530

Source： Teacher Development, Vol.7, Iss.3, 2003-10, pp. : 345-362

Disclaimer: Any content in publications that violate the sovereignty, the constitution or regulations of the PRC is not accepted or approved by CNPIEC.

Previous Menu Next

Abstract

The authors argue that since learning is the central concern of teachers they need to be equipped with a well-informed understanding of learning that takes account in particular of its socially situated dimensions. Learning is a phenomenon detachable from context and transferable elsewhere only under specific conditions. Nor is learning a purely individual accomplishment, being achieved alongside others in definable circumstances and in relation to particular cultural communities. Our account of this situatedness of learning is presented in terms of two well-known examples, Brazilian street vendors and English girls at home and at nursery school. The authors present a view of pedagogy consistent with the theoretical account of learning and based on four elements: situated practice, overt instruction, critical framing and transformed practice. This view is not so much prescriptive as a means of providing a vocabulary for critical discussion of teaching and learning in practice. Such a perspective inevitably entails a critical but constructive view of the crude assumptions about learning embedded in the National Curriculum in England and Wales and its associated testing. The article draws out implications for teacher development at a time when there are particular constraints on pedagogy. Centraliseds, highly specified curriculum and its associated assessment procedures limit the possibilities. Perhaps most damaging, however, are the limitations imposed by narrow orthodoxies on teachers' capacities to adopt imaginative, problem solving approaches to teaching in the practical situation. The approach in the article represents no criticism of teachers as conscientious professionals. The authors locate the problems for the advancement of pedagogy within the wider political and social circumstances of teachers' work.