[PEDAGOGY WHAT DOES IT MEAN?

Pedagogy - what does it mean? (Jo McShane)

Jo McShane used to think that pedagogy was just a stuffy academic way of saying
teaching, but after attending a conference on the subject she finds that it means a great deal
more

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
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[PEDAGOGY WHAT DOES IT MEAN?]

lugging behind them their immaculately boxed sets of strategy materials.

Just as this image was beginning to settle in my mind, the seminar progressed to
receive Lynn Yates of the University of Melbournes ideas about curriculum and
pedagogy, and we were invited to consider that pedagogy may be ultimately fallible.
Try telling that to a strategy consultant, I heard myself mutter. Surely all of this
stuff about there being a solid and right way to proceed with such matters cant be
wrong? After all, it is written down. And backed up by OHTs and flowcharts. And
housed in every school in the realm. An uneasy feeling spread through my being as I
considered that one day, we might be looking at Mysteries and Metacognitive
Plenaries with the same mocking retrospect with which we view the educative
processes of the Victorian age. I suddenly realised that I had some awful news to
break to my fellow pedagogues as I walked beside them, glumly carrying my once
beloved copy of the Teachers Toolkit.
Further shocking revelations were just seconds away as Tamara Bibby from the
Institute of Education (London) bade us consider the impact of defining pedagogy as
the interrelationships of people on our understanding of learning and teaching. What
does the slave/scholar relationship really mean in a modern context as we walk our
charges through SATs and beyond, and what is the significance of the one too
manyness of the classroom in this long and potentially hazardous journey. How many
lyres and lutes can a modern teacher juggle?
Reclaiming passion
The final leg of our journey was a stirring one, led by David Halpin (Institute of
Education, London University), who urged us to reclaim passion in our educative
practices by considering the relationship between love in its many forms and
pedagogy. Yes! I cried (internally). At last, I have worked out what this is all about.
Pedagogy is about service, an educative journey, interrelationships and to a certain
extent rhetoric and persuasion. But it is also about love. We do not have to tread the
holy ground between the teacher and taught, referred to by DH Lawrence, to talk
meaningfully about the functional role passionate yearning for success can have in the
educational journey. As Halpin himself says: Love, after all, is at the summit of our
moral vocabulary, while education is a profoundly ethical activity, concerned centrally
with enabling individuals to pursue worthwhile lives, using pedagogic means that are
appreciative and beneficent.
So there we have it. Pedagogy is so much more than a barely pronounceable verb used
by the stuffy, the academic, the out of touch and the soon-to-be-interviewed. The
ancient footsteps of the pedagogue lead us to a vast and dynamic world whose loves,
practices and relationships must move with our ever-evolving social, industrial and
communal needs. I challenge you to set down your lyre for a moment and consider
what that means to you.

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Further information on the journal Pedagogy, Culture & Society is available at www.tandf.co.uk/
journals/titles/14681366.asp

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