SchoolsRetooled TM

Organizing the Faculty around the Children on a Broader Pedagogical Base

June 26, 2014 at 9:02 PM Leave a comment

A 21^st century plan …unbundled products, individualized education strategies, and liberated teaching styles to facilitate a brilliant collaboration among practitioners that develops their differences in a medley of learning experiences for their students.

Broad-based pedagogy could be seen as an amalgam of elements from all the canned systems, one that cherry-picks the best of what each has to offer while declining the confinement of the packaged deal. It begins with the picture of the educated child at each developmental level, defines competencies that underlie that stage as well as the knowledge, analysis, and judgment that are within his or her grasp. A wider variety of learning opportunities are designed to reach every student. That child’s ability to think and reason, the problems that can be solved, and the maturity implicit in one’s behavior…all are evidence that the process in on track.

Children bring unique styles, predispositions, and time lines to class. In combination, the possibilities are endless. Fortunately, technology can enable pedagogy with a similar breadth of dimensions for personalized learning strategies. But the human factor cannot be eliminated. There is no complete tech solution nor is there one teacher who can address the needs of all their students all of the time. Try as we might, we cannot make a call to Central Casting and order up the latest model teacher equipped with the latest fads in pedagogy. Been there, done that. Instead, a team of teachers must triangulate around knowledge, stamina for learning, and maturity in their students using any tool available.

Learning how to teach all the children, beginning with a paradoxical look in the mirror…

At a recent author event, I heard a neuro-psychologist, among other things, challenging his peers to reflect on the biases they brought to their patient care. Every consultation that arose from a defined point of view, regardless of their foundations as cognitive therapists or psychoanalysts, for example, threatened to derail the process of unraveling the patient’s problems. Commitment within the discipline to draw consistent conclusions was the flaw in the process. Skepticism toward one’s preconceptions was necessary for actually hearing one’s patients.

I could see analogies within schools of pedagogical thought as well as a partial solution in self-awareness on the part of the practitioner. Just as neuro-psychologists must open their practices to input from other disciplines, educators must seek a dynamic equilibrium among divergent pedagogies and teaching styles for a diverse population of students. It creates the demand for team teaching…without the inherent group think that often accompanies it.

For a teacher who loves a subject, the urge to move the child to think like oneself is compelling. ”If you could see what I see, you would be able to do so much more,” begets a quest that is mired in teacher-centric thought regardless of the number of things a child experiences hands-on. Sometimes a child just wants to get procedural knowledge and move on. Wallowing in the building of every cog in the machinery of analysis will never engage them. But they can marvel at the beauty and efficiency of the smoothly functioning algorithm. Conversely, memorizing words and equations sets up cognitive conflict for a child who is driven internally to prove theorems. The procedure begs to be challenged, the exceptions rooted out.

Dispensing with the normative language around style…

Historically, directors of instruction have often become married to pedagogical approaches like serial monogamists, finding early adopters of a learning system, then letting professional development be driven toward co-opting the rest of the faculty until all have capitulated…by which point the strategy has achieved obsolescence. The process is exhausting and breeds failed teachers, those without the resilience to let others repeatedly reinvent them without their permission.

Added to the conundrum is the simple fact that teachers do not necessarily enjoy teaching outside of their own comfort zones. Yes, teachers who remain in the profession for the long haul need to be prepared to grow and stay ahead of the curve. And they need a combination of options for horizontal and vertical mobility to learn from new challenges and broaden their experiential knowledge. But preferred contexts for their work may persist. This does not have to be a problem.

We may well be finding ourselves in the zone for brilliant collaboration among educators…one that matches complementary skills among teachers to better reach the children. Evidence is emerging that we have been neglecting memory, for example; we definitely have struggled over deep versus broad knowledge; and we may have spiraled our way out of our students’ bandwidths at times. And we have discarded education practices that had become cumbersome rituals when we have apps to revitalize the essence of their lessons. Our collective memory for pedagogy, coupled with modern tools of the trade, should prove to be a potent force.

Entry filed under: Pedagogy.