First came the generally accepted science of reading, now there’s the science of learning. Teacher Learning Network executive officer Michael Victory asks if a science of teaching is next.
Scientific method is described as “a fixed procedure starting from observations and description of a phenomenon, progressing to formulation of a hypothesis, designing and conducting experiments to test the hypothesis, analysing the results, and ending with a conclusion”.
I doubt that those who are interested in a science ofteaching really want to implement that scientific method inthe classroom.
I suspect that the elements of the scientific method that are of interest are the certainty, repetition and guaranteed outcomes that come once the process has been completed; people want the conclusion after the testing of the hypothesis and analysis of the results. This is understandable.
No specific formula
Governments want to know that an investment of X dollars will bring Y results (in NAPLAN, PISA or similar). Employers want to know that students who have attended X years of schooling will have Y skills for the workplace.
Parents want the certainty that they will get Y results because there is an agreed way to reach the curriculum goals for the child.
For teachers who are struggling with workload and complex student needs, the idea of getting a predictable result, each and every time, is enormously appealing.
Repetition and guaranteed outcomes are tantalising enticements for following the scientific method.
However, the outcomes of the scientific method, let alone the process itself, are not achievable in education.
This is not an argument against science. Science has brought significant advances in our understanding of the world, and to our ability to live healthy and productive lives.
However, I agree with US educational researcher Robert Marzano, who says “there can be no formula for teaching”. What science has done for medicine it cannot dofor education.
Functions of teaching
Teaching, as we understand it today, as an accredited profession, is not essential to all learning. People learn all the time, with and without formally qualified teachers, in and out of schools and structured education. For thousands of years, people have learned complex concepts without the benefit of trained and registered teachers. So what is the function of a teacher if people can learn without us?
I want to focus on two aspects. Firstly, teachers are asked to create an environment in which people can come together to learn with and from each other. Secondly, teachers are asked to bring to that learning community knowledge, concepts, ideas and material from outside the experience of the group.
That begins what many have called the art of teaching – a creative process that draws on the teacher’s judgement about the group.
Purpose of education
Purpose is defined by government, the wider community and employers, systemic authorities – and sometimes by a particular ideology or philosophy.
One of the best thinkers on purpose of education is Dutch education philosopher, Gert Biesta. He has summarised the three interrelated purposes of education (2013):
•qualification – equipping people with the knowledge skills and dispositions that enable them to do things in their world, for example learning to read, gaining access to university or higher education
• socialisation – how people ‘become part of existing social, cultural and political practices and traditions’, for example what do students need to know to engage with the world in which they live, or how to be a citizen in the world
• subjectification – essentially, how a person is encouraged to exist fully as a free and independent person.
Another source for thinking about the purpose of education is the Australian Early Years Learning Framework (EYLF) – Belonging, Being and Becoming.
The document aims for children to have a strong sense of identity, to relate to and contribute to their world, to have a strong sense of wellbeing, and to be confident and involved learners and effective communicators.
If I was to draw some common ideas from Biesta and the EYLF, it is that formal education occurs in a community to which people belong, and that learning is a social activity that occurs within that community.
If learning in schools or early childhood settings is a communal (or social) activity, it logically follows that teaching is also a social encounter.
Teachers teach people, we do not teach rocks or trees or inanimate objects. We teach people as part of a social encounter; we communicate with them and they with us. Teachers are in a relationship with students. At that point, certainty and guaranteed outcomes break down.
First Nations’ knowledge
If we retreat to the earliest examples of formal education in the western world, we find schools where mentors like Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus and Paul of Tarsus gathered people into communities to learn together about a new way to live. The essential element of these education settings was bringing people into relationship.
For tens of thousands of years, First Nations people have gathered to learn with and from each other. We are beginning to learn more about the sophisticated pedagogy of First Nations teachers, who had no access to the scientific method. Our 21st century schools reflect their heritage.
Social encounters and communication
Education occurs in social encounters between people who have been brought into a relationship, with communication moving back and forward between teacher and student.
It is not certain, it is not guaranteed and it cannot be repeated. We know from research how a child can be impacted each day by immediate or intergenerational trauma.
We know from the relationship-based education work by John Hendry (former IEU representative at Geelong Grammar School) of the daily impact of the relational quotient and attachment theory on the capacity for students to learn.
The research and the anecdotal observations of teachers are in accord: people learn most effectively from those with whom they have a positive relationship.
All about relationships
Teachers can and should learn from science, but in that moment of encounter between teacher and student, the one that occurs thousands of times in a teaching day, science cannot provide the answer about the best way to teach an idea, a concept or a formula to that person at that time. It requires judgment, it requires creativity, it requires a commitment to the ‘other’.
The art of teaching is about making a judgement on what I can do in that moment, on that day, with that student, in that classroom, that can make a positive difference.
This is the teaching encounter. As teachers, we should claim this knowledge, be proud of our skill, but keep learning to be more effective in each encounter.
For our profession, science can be a helpful guide, but our work will always call from us the art of building teaching relationships.
References
Biesta G 2013 The Beautiful Risk of Education, Paradigm Press, Boulder Colorado
Hendry J (no date) Relationship Based Educationwww.parentsvictoria.asn.au
Marzano R. 2007 The art and science of teaching; A comprehensive framework for effective instruction, ASCD, Alexandria, Virginia
plato.stanford.edu/entries/scientific-method/ (retrieved 24/4/2024)