'TEACHING IN A LEARNING SOCIETY, THE ACQUISITION OF PROFESSIONAL SKILLS'
Paper presented at the ESRC Teaching and Learning Research Programme First Annual Conference - University of Leicester, Friday 10th November 2000
Dr. Patrick Ainley, Reader in Learning Policy, School of Post-Compulsory Education and Training, University of Greenwich.
E-mail:
Addressing Theme 2. transforming knowledge about learning into effective teaching practices
25 minute presentation allowing 25 minutes for questions and debate
based on a description of ongoing research building upon recently completed empirical work
500 WORD ABSTRACT:
TITLE: 'TEACHING IN A LEARNING SOCIETY, THE ACQUISITION OF PROFESSIONAL SKILLS'
Background: A pilot evaluation of the University of Greenwich School of Post-Compulsory Education and Training Integrated PGCE/CertEd assessed the effect of full-time, part-time and distance modes of study upon the delivery of a newly integrated certificate programme. Remarkable consistency was reported in interviews with students on all three modes in the skills and knowledge they stated they had acquired on the course. However, they also revealed consistent conceptual confusion between the distinctions made by Tomlinson et al of teaching from telling and the techniques involved in both effective teaching and telling (or instruction). It would be valuable for the presenters of this paper to know how much participants in the conference feel this confusion is common also to courses of school teacher education.
Recent evidence from studies of primary schools shows teachers there spend more time than previously 'telling' and using largely closed-ended questions (Galton et al, 1999; also Pollard et al 2000) as opposed to 'teaching' to negotiate meanings with students. Yet it is well established that the former is associated with 'surface' approaches to learning and the latter with 'deep' approaches as the different levels of learning are commonly referred to, eg. by Entwhistle and Ramsden 1983 and by Marton et al 1984.
With reference to the 'Requirements for Courses of Initial Teacher Training' (DfEE Circular 4/98, which may be compared with DfEE 2000), proposed research aims to extend the pilot evaluation already undertaken to samples of one-year primary and secondary PGCE and four-year BEd students in the School of Education at the University of Greenwich using the methods of interviews, observations and questionnaires. Results will indicate to what extent trainee teachers follow 'surface' approaches to learning on their courses, as is widely alleged, and how much, if this is the case, it contradicts their 'responsibility for their own professional development.. to keep up to date with research and developments in pedagogy and the subjects that they teach' (DfEE o.c. 1998, 16). This relates to issues of the 'professionalism' of teachers in all sectors of education and to other demands made upon them that may be 'deskilling', 'multiskilling' or 'upskilling' them (Keep and Mayhew 1999).
The knowledge gained in relation to the learning of trainee teachers will indicate effective practices to promote the negotiation of meaning necessary for deep learning that could be adopted in teacher education for both Foundation and Lifelong Learning.
Epigraph
'the genius of the heart who makes everything loud and self-satisfied fall silent and teaches it to listen, who smoothes rough souls and gives them a new desire to savour - the desire to lie still as a mirror, that the deep sky may mirror itself in them -; the genius of the heart who teaches the stupid and hasty hand to hesitate and grasp more delicately; who divines the hidden and forgotten treasure, the drop of goodness and sweet spirituality under thick and opaque ice, and is a divining-rod for every grain of gold which has lain long in the prison of much mud and sand; the genius of the heart from whose touch everyone goes away richer, not favoured and surprised, not as if blessed and oppressed with the goods of others, but richer in himself, newer to himself than before, broken open, blown upon and sounded out by a thawing wind, more uncertain perhaps, more delicate, more fragile, more broken, but full of hopes that as yet have no names, full of new will and current, full of new ill-will and counter-current..'
NIETZSCHE Beyond Good and Evil
'The materialist doctrine that men are products of circumstances and upbringing, and that, therefore, changed men are products of other circumstances and changed upbringing, forgets that it is men that change circumstances and that the educator himself needs educating. Hence, this doctrine necessarily arrives at dividing society into two parts, of which one is superior to society (in Robert Owen, for example).'
MARX Third Thesis on Feuerbach
'Teaching in a Learning Society, the acquisition of professional skills'
Introduction
It is a paradox that notions of teaching have been all but eclipsed by the emphasis upon learning in contemporary education policy and practice. As a result, the 'Learning Age' is not also the 'Teaching Age', nor the 'Learning Society' also the 'Teaching Society', nor does 'Lifelong Learning' entail 'Lifelong Teaching'. Indeed, while education, education, education is presented as the solution to all society's problems and as essential for economic growth and Tony Blair once proclaimed, 'teaching is probably the single most important profession for the future of our nation' (Spectator Lecture 22/3/95), teachers are rarely seen by government as part of the solution but often as the main problem en route to the educational progress it desires. Yet because learning can take place without teaching, this does not mean that teachers are necessarily reduced to the level of facilitators of other people's self-managed learning. Nor that, with the centralised production and dissemination of a National Curriculum in schools, while colleges and universities also increasingly rely on electronically updated resources from elsewhere, teachers at all levels are reduced to technicians transmitting pre-packaged bits of information. But what is the professional standing of teachers in a society in which they are just one of many 'providers' competing in an education and training market with rival sources of learning ranging from 'edutainment' to customised, computer-delivered packages?
Just because, as Tomlinson and Kilner say (1992, 6), echoing Hirst (1973, 171), 'learning has a logical priority in relation to teaching' because 'learning is defined in its own terms, without reference to teaching, whereas teaching is only definable in terms of learning', this does not mean that, as Galileo is often quoted as saying, 'You cannot teach anyone anything; you can only help them to find it out for themselves.' For although a leap of the learner's imagination is called for to 'grasp' any new item of information or change in behaviour, let alone to integrate those within frameworks of knowledge or skill, on the other hand, you cannot force anyone to learn - or only up to a point. (It is part of the point of this paper to point towards the point at which it might be possible to tell, instruct or drill, if not to teach, someone something by more or less covert/ symbolic violence.)
In particular, as Tomlinson and Kilner continue, 'as a purposeful activity teaching aims at particular intended learning outcomes, though this does not exclude incidental or opportunistic gains. Therefore teachers require an understanding of the nature and specification of.. [their] subject knowledge.' This specification of what is to be taught in the form of outcomes and/or a curriculum does not, of course, answer the question of what teaching is, which this paper suggests is now in as much - or even more! - conceptual confusion as is the nature of learning. As an instance of this widespread confusion, an advertisement in the recruitment campaign that the Teacher Training Agency ran earlier this year on television and in cinemas presented school teachers as 'advocates', 'counsellors', 'diplomats' and 'managers' but left out the definitive role of 'teacher'.
This theoretical lacuna hides consistent conceptual confusion between specific 'teaching skills or expertise' and 'other skills' as well as with the information and knowledge (ie. subject) content of their course such as was reflected in pilot interviews with trainee teachers on a (PG)CE FE course reported in this paper. Further research intends to explore to what extent this conceptual confusion is shared with school teacher education courses and this paper is in the nature of an enquiry from experts in the field as to the extent to which they think this might be the case.
To this extent, the paper is an exercise in definition, 'To shew the fly [= the authors in this case!] the way out of the fly-bottle.' And in this connection a common confusion of 'teaching' has in recent years come to be with 'training', which is associated with activity aimed at practical competence and skill acquisition as opposed to teaching primarily information and knowledge. We follow Winch in not seeking to make training an alternative to teaching because, although they are 'distinct concepts, the boundaries between the two are not very clear in substance' (1998, 50). Training, Winch argues, has only become dissociated from teaching because of its association with behaviourism, although he points out that 'Even the model of animal learning that behaviourist psychologists call "operant conditioning" is quite inadequate to grasp what an animal learns when it is trained.' (ibid) This is not only because training may be to high levels - as in 'teacher training' or training in other academic disciplines and trade crafts - but because, as Winch quotes Wittgenstein to remind us, 'Any explanation has its foundation in training. (Educators ought to remember this.)' Therefore, rather than distinguish between different 'levels of learning' in relation to teaching and training, or the academic versus the vocational, knowing that from knowing how, intellection over manipulation, the mental above the physical, mind distinct from and superior to body, we seek to establish levels of learning and teaching in relation to the real cognitive activities of learners and teachers.
In this way, we follow Tomlinson et al (1992, 4), in defining teaching at its simplest as 'an interaction which involves activity by one person (the teacher) designed to promote learning by another person or persons (the learners). Insofar as learning may be defined as the acquisition of capacities or values as a result of action or experience, then teaching involves engaging learners in activities and/or experience whereby they are likely to learn, ie. acquire capacities or values.' As an interaction, 'teaching is a form of dialogue, an extension of dialogue' (Bruner 1983, 191). Teaching, as distinct from merely telling or instructing, therefore involves some negotiation of meaning between teacher(s) and student(s) additional to the competences or techniques involved in communicating the teacher's intended meaning as clearly and effectively as possible. Negotiation of meaning is, of course, also possible amongst learners individually or collectively, or between learners and the tools that they are working with, or the materials they are working on, as well as in relation to sources of knowledge and information other than teachers and instructors, typically as represented in print and other media (see Hutchins 1995).
Both teaching, in the sense of negotiating meaning between teacher and taught, and telling that requires acceptance without negotiation of the teacher's meaning by the taught, and which are the terms in which we would seek to distinguish levels of learning and teaching, also require technique to enable teachers to convey and learners to grasp information and competence or knowledge and skill. Techniques of transmission, or instruction and drilling (telling), also have their place in the acquisition of necessary information and competence, which are often the foundation for deeper knowledge and the accomplishment of holistic skills. These complementary activities we believe can be demonstrated in the practice of teaching in order to clarify the nature of teaching and distinguish it from other activities, as well as from telling and the techniques of both teaching and telling.
They can also be related to the changing nature of teacher professionalism - from the traditional conception of public servants to the new ideal of self-managing, reflective practitioners - that historically have influenced the claims of classroom teachers to professional status. This enables us to consider whether it is possible to be both a teacher and a manager or whether a new division within the teacher workforce is indeed opening up, as between the 'core' and 'periphery' in other areas of employment. This has been alleged to be already the case in further education (Ainley & Bailey 1997) and the present implementation of performance management as the central pillar of proposed performance related pay makes this more likely in schools. Already, many teachers typically complain they have 'no time for teaching anymore', they are so busy with administration. Possibly however, teaching is becoming both more demanding in terms of the skill and underpinning knowledge required to sustain successful practice and at the same time also in terms of processing bits of information and competently meeting various performance targets. Paradoxically though, as their job arguably becomes more demanding and intensive, teachers are held in less respect by society at large, so much so that their always precarious professional status is now in question more than ever before.