RESEARCH UNDERSTANDING OUR WORK RESEARCH IN PRACTICE
Study the component parts of teaching to understand the whole
In the eighth and final article in our series discussing ‘Teaching: art, craft or science?’, Michael Smith argues that assessing students is a craft due to the integral role of human faculties, such as judgement.
Ask a roomful of teachers what teaching is and you’ll undoubtedly get a rich set of responses. Some might argue that it’s about human connections, about communities of learning – what Michael Oakeshott (1960) termed the ‘conversation of mankind’. Others might suggest that it’s about direct instruction, or collaboration, or inducting learners into a knowledge- rich curriculum. Some may liken themselves to gardeners, architects, orchestral conductors. Teaching is complex, evolving and often nebulous. No uniform interpretation exists that encompasses every facet of a teacher’s work. Despite this, there is clearly value in exploring what we understand about teaching, and the interpretations we arrive at. Our experiences, in particular those we formed as learners in our formative years, have shaped our understanding of what teaching is, and what it is about. When training and developing ourselves professionally as teachers, we review our practice alongside the Professional Standards for Further Education Teachers in England. We are also commonly mentored by more experienced colleagues. In this tradition, there is a nod to the
‘craft’ of teaching, something that is “learned through an apprenticeship model of transmitted wisdom, handed down carefully through generations” (Bennett, 2018). But craft alone does not comprise the whole picture of teaching. If we take teaching to mean ‘the act of
REFERENCES
• Bennett, T. (2018). Bennett on the Art, Craft and Science of Teaching. inTuition issue 32.
• Black, P & Wiliam, D. (1998). Inside the Black Box: Raising standards through classroom assessment, School of Education, King’s College, London, United Kingdom.
• Boud, D. (2007). Reframing assessment as if 18 ISSUE 36 • SUMMER 2019 inTUITION
learning was important. In Boud, D. & Falchikov, N. (Eds.) Rethinking Assessment for Higher Education: Learning for the Longer Term. Routledge.
• Hattie, J. (2012). Visible learning for Teachers: maximizing impact on learning. Routledge. • Oakeshott, M. (1960). The Voice of Poetry
in the Conversation of Mankind. Les Etudes Philosophiques 15 (1):119-119.
• Rosenshine, B. (2012). Principles of Instruction: Research-Based Strategies That All Teachers Should Know. American Educator, v36 (1), p12-19.
conveying information’, then it is possible to view it as an art because the process of conveying information is very much a personal expression of meaning through creative and imaginative means from a position of agency. Alternatively, if we take teaching to mean ‘helping learners learn’ we can observe it to be of a scientific nature, in which evidence-informed conclusions are suitably positioned to inform teachers on how best to do this. We might infer that, through enquiry, it is possible to determine effective ways to teach that have been empirically verified. Science certainly provides a
strong foundation on which to build a pedagogical approach, but it is challenged when faced with new, emerging or unforeseen events, as is often the case in the classroom. In such instances the ability to think on one’s feet is perhaps more useful. And this invariably involves a deviation from the elements identifiable within a scientific frame. To illustrate my points further I have chosen to focus on one aspect of a teacher’s role – assessment. The intention is not to sideline other aspects of teaching in the debate but rather to better understand the fundamental nature of teaching by considering the nature of one of its key components. Assessment’s prominence in effective teaching is well-supported in the academic literature. Black and Wiliam’s Inside the Black Box (1998) argues that effective assessment can substantially
raise standards in the quality of teacher/ learner interactions and in learners taking responsibility for their own learning, as well as help develop habits necessary for becoming successful lifelong learners. John Hattie’s Visible Learning for
Teachers (2012), drawing from research meta-analyses spanning 50,000 studies, concludes that feedback arising from assessment is one of the single most powerful influences in enhancing learner achievement. Further to this, research in cognitive science has in recent years enjoyed significant traction in successfully making a case for how assessment can be effectively deployed to foster learning. One notable example, Rosenshine’s
Principles of Instruction (2012), observes the value of short reviews of previous learning, asking large numbers of questions and checking the responses of all learners, providing scaffolds for difficult tasks, and engaging students in weekly and monthly reviews of learning, all of which fall under the umbrella of assessment to some degree. Research evidence has helped the teaching profession make significant strides in its approaches to assessment. But assessment is not an exact science. It is, at its core, a complex and subjective process that relies on uniquely human faculties in order to be completed successfully, most notably judgement. It is worth briefly exploring the concept of judgement. Boud (2007) suggests it comprises “the capacity to evaluate evidence, appraise situations and
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40
