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Everyone knows what pedagogy means, dont they? Its that word no one quite knows
how to pronounce (hard or soft second g?) used by Ofsted inspectors, PGCE tutors
and other suited educationalists to describe what most mortals know as teaching.
You might occasionally wheel it out yourself for occasions when one would wish to
appear scholarly. Yes, pedagogy is what you call teaching when you are being
interviewed for a whole-school teaching and learning post, or filling in your NPQH
application. End of story?
I thought so, until I attended an international seminar organised by the School of
Education at the University of Manchester on the issue. Sponsored by the journal
Pedagogy, Culture & Society, the seminar sought to explore pedagogy as an object of
research via a variety of presentations. The theme for the day rested on an important
premise: that there can be no assumption that a true definition of pedagogy exists
only defensible definitions.
The slave and the scholar
We kicked off with David Hamilton (Ume University, Sweden), who proposed some
important considerations about the link between pedagogy and demagogy, both of
which I had to Wiki. The results of this were provoking. According to Wikipedia,
pedagogy is the art or science of being a teacher and it generally refers to
strategies of instruction, or a style of instruction. The word comes from the ancient
Greek paidagogeo, literally to lead the child. In ancient Greece, the paidagogos was
a slave who supervised the education of his masters son and led him to school. So
pedagogy is about walking the walk, or leading your learners.
And what of demagogy? According to Wikipedia, it is a political strategy for obtaining
and gaining political power by appealing to the popular prejudices, fears and
expectations of the public. Was Hamilton implying that we teachers are quite
literally engaged with walking the walk beside our learners while coaxing them to
follow us deeper into the educational wilderness with our motivational and
aspirational rhetoric, goals and gilded hoops? Certainly, to say that the educational
process is about supporting, walking beside and leading is true. Also true is the fact
that the educational world is infused with a potent combination of theoretical and
political rhetoric, which makes Hamiltons musings feasible on a number of levels.
I smiled as I imagined a cast of beleaguered teachers walking beside their classes and
|http://www.teachingexpertise.com/articles/pedagogy-what-does-it-mean-2370
|http://www.teachingexpertise.com/articles/pedagogy-what-does-it-mean-2370
|http://www.teachingexpertise.com/articles/pedagogy-what-does-it-mean-2370