Researching the Art of Teaching

Ethnography for Educational Use

Peter Woods

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781136168475
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

This book is a follow-up to Inside Schools. It reviews the position of ethnography in educational research in the light of current issues and of the author's own research over the past ten years. Starting from an analysis of teaching as science and as art, Peter Woods goes on to review the general interactionist framework in which his own work is situated, and how this relates to postmodernist trends in qualitative research. The approach is illustrated through reference to the author's own personal history and research career, and his recent research on creative teaching, critical events, and his teachers reactions to school inspections. How to represent such research is a central feature, and includes a consideration of the tools used in that task and how they relate to the ethnographer's self, whatever forms of representation are selected, however, the audiences' own concerns will guide them in their interpretation of the work.
Prominent themes include:
* the person of the ethnographer in research
* the art of teaching and new ways of representing it, while not forgetting the science of teaching and of research
* research for educational use, and the uses of educational research
* collaborative work between researchers and teachers
The issues covered include such matters as research purposes, research design, research careers, access, data collection, data analysis, truth criteria, the relationship between theory and research methods, writing-up, and dissemination.

1 The art and science of teaching

INTRODUCTION: THE ISSUE

Is teaching a science or an art? The question, in one form or another, has long intrigued educationists. In essence, the debate is about whether teaching is an activity where some general laws or principles can be identified, and which can be understood in scientific terms, facilitating planning or prediction; or whether it is largely an individualistic, intuitive, spontaneous process, involving so many factors that it is impossible to specify general lines of direction, and producing work of creative imagination. It is a small step from here to another popular, intriguing question: are teachers born or made? If teaching is knowable in scientific terms, it can be taught. We can build on knowledge, cumulate wisdom, get better and better. If it is to do chiefly with inherent abilities, instinct, imagination and emotion, then it might be argued that people either have these abilities or dispositions or they do not.

The debate, too, might be identified, to some extent, with the progressive–traditional issue, which reveals some implications for teacher practice. The former approach favours learning by discovery and through play, creative activity, learning through doing, holism and integration; the latter emphasizes instruction, factual knowledge organized by academic discipline, systematization, structured learning, clear objectives, formal testing (Bell, 1981). In some respects this is a false dichotomy, for most teachers appear to show aspects of both. But the tensions are still there. For example, in the debate leading up to the 1988 Education Reform Act, there were complaints about the loss of teachers’ artistic qualities (Brighouse, 1987; Barker, 1987).

Educational aims and methods are inevitably value-led, concerned with the kind of society we wish to promote, and the kind of education best suited to that aim. We might ask whether, over and above the values, there is a purer heart of education. Whatever the ends, are they best promoted by scientific or artistic means? I shall examine the cases for teaching as a science and as an art, before trying to draw a conclusion.

TEACHING AS SCIENCE

The objectives model

To say that teaching is a science is to say that it is a rational activity, subject to general principles and laws, that are discoverable through research. As we come to know them, so teaching can become more systematic, structured and stable. Our aims are inevitably value-oriented, but, as J.S. Mill observed, we have to ‘hand [our ends] over to science’ for the best methods of achieving them. The more clearly we can specify our aims, the better. In one form, such thinking promotes the rational planning of a curriculum by objectives, which are harder-edged and more precise than general aims, and which, preferably, can be measured. This ‘behavioural-objectives’ model is the most prominent example of this approach, defining education as the ‘changing of behaviour’ (which includes thinking and feeling). As Sockett (1976, p. 17) points out, ‘By eliminating the value aspect from the definition, the processes of education can be tackled by science. Furthermore, by making objectives measurable, you can see exactly what has been achieved, and what more needs to be done.’

Some have felt that these techniques are more appropriate for ‘training’ than for ‘education’, that they form a constraining strait-jacket on teachers, and ignore the educational worth of processes as opposed to ends (Stenhouse, 1975). They are about efficiency more than educational quality. Nor can they so easily be separated from values. Specifying objectives is useful for teacher accountability as well as assessing student achievement. The whole framework seems ready-made for the marketing ideology that has informed government policy in the 1980s and 1990s (Ball, 1993). In short, the objectives model may represent a scientific means, but in respect of a highly specific and limited view of education.

The knowledge base of teaching

In an attempt to conceive of teaching in a more comprehensive way and from the point of view of the teacher, for the purposes of teacher training, Shulman (1986, 1987) advances a ‘knowledge-base’ model. The knowledge base, in summary, consists of content knowledge, general pedagogical knowledge, curriculum knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge, knowledge of learners, educational contexts, educational ends, purposes and values. To take one example, pedagogical content knowledge includes

The most useful forms of representation of those ideas, the most powerful analogies, illustrations, examples, explanations and demonstrations – in a word, the ways of representing and formulating the subject that makes it comprehensible to others. Since there are no single most powerful forms of representation, the teacher must have at hand a veritable armamentarium of alternative forms of representation, some of which derive from research whereas others originate in the wisdom of practice.

(1986, p. 9)

Shulman maps out the area rather like early cartographers, who knew where to look and could sketch outlines, though without precision. The next part of the enterprise will be for researchers to ‘collect, collate and interpret the practical knowledge of teachers for the purposes of establishing and codifying its principles, precedents and parables’ (1987, p. 12). Shulman is keen that the ‘knowledge-base approach does not produce an overly technical image of teaching, a scientific enterprise that has lost its soul’ (p. 20) – as perhaps it did under the objectives model. He clearly recognizes the circumstantial nature of teachers’ knowledge. Some feel that, in practice, he has ‘begun to build a new educational science, a new foundational knowledge-base for teaching’ (Hargreaves, 1994a, p. 19).

A socio-historical explanation

If Shulman points to the possibilities, why has it not been done before? Both teaching and science have been around for some time. Simon (1988) provides an historical answer. In an article entitled ‘Why no pedagogy in England?’ (where ‘pedagogy’ means ‘science of teaching’), he argues that such a concept has become ‘alien to our experience and way of thinking’ (p. 336). He is critical, for example, of the now defunct Schools Council (1964–81), whose work he asserts was informed by no science of teaching, no theories of the child or learning, and was in consequence doomed. Why is the concept of pedagogy shunned in this way? It is not because of any intrinsic defects or inadequacies in science, nor because of poor teaching, but, argues Simon, because of social and political factors. In the nineteenth century, one of these was the influence of the dominant elite institutions – the ancient universities and the leading public schools – which saw the profession of teaching as a gentlemanly one, not requiring training as such, but learning through experience for those with the ‘appropriate social origins’ (p. 337). The main purpose of these schools was socialization, and the formation of character. Teachers, students and parents of these schools formed a common, self-perpetuating culture. Also, in the two leading universities of Oxford and Cambridge, education, until recently, has had a low profile – low prestige, few resources for research, lack of quality output.

Simon feels there was a great opportunity towards the end of the century, with the publication of Alexander Bain’s book Education as a Science (first published 1879, reprinted sixteen times before 1900), where a programme was laid out for the scientific study of such things as child development, the purposes and principles of curriculum, motivation and discipline. However, the early 1900s saw the demise of the elementary school (which might have made a good forum for the development of pedagogy) as a vehicle for mass education, and the rise of the local authority secondary schools, which required children to be differentiated at the end of elementary education. Elementary education became a matter of containment; and the emphasis on selection bred a preoccupation with mental measurement, and psychometric theories which laid stress on inherited ability.

Simon goes on to specify conditions for a science of teaching – mainly a recognition that the process of learning is similar for all human beings, and that therefore there are some general principles that can be identified. This should be our starting point – identifying what children and teachers have in common (see also Galton, 1989). Unfortunately, he argues, we have been diverted in the past twenty-five years into concentrating on children’s differences. This has been due to a large extent to the overwhelming influence of the Plowden Report (1967), which stressed the uniqueness of every child. However, instead of revolutionizing teaching in the romantic way envisaged therein, it has been argued that child-centredness developed into an ideology which came to exert a constraining influence on teachers’ careers and cultures (Alexander 1984, 1992). Alexander explains:

Ideology – a group’s array of central ideas, values and beliefs – is a key element in any culture because it serves to define, justify and control a culture’s members…properly to belong one needed to accept and enact the ideology.

(1992, p. 169)

The grip of this ideology on primary teachers illustrates again the nature of teaching as a socially constructed activity. Many teachers felt that they had to pay it allegiance (careers and jobs depended on it), while practising pragmatically (and unscientifically and unartistically) in their classrooms (Simon and Willcocks, 1981).

Private troubles, public issues

Similarly, we have laboured under the idea that teaching is an individual activity. Until recently, autonomy in one’s own classroom was a central feature of teacher culture (Hargreaves, 1980). Here one could develop the practices and strategies that marked one’s own individual adaptation to the demands of teaching. We have a tendency, too, to celebrate the idiosyncratic, charismatic teacher. All the great teachers of the past were of this kind. Features in popular educational papers, such as the ‘My Best Teacher’ series in the Times Educational Supplement, encourage this mode of thought. However, we need to look at what teachers have in common. What are the regularities and patterns in their behaviour that permit us to see them as members of particular groups? What forms of reciprocal interaction take place between the teacher and these groups? What is there in a teacher’s background, such as upbringing, schooling, home life, peer groups, personal experiences, that helps explain a teacher’s behaviour? The ‘charisma’ of exceptional teachers might then be demonstrated as something learned and acquired, and available to others. Similarly, it might be shown that teaching weaknesses that might seem due to individual traits have other, stronger explanations. Societal and institutional factors, for example, can contribute to discipline problems within classrooms, though they are experienced as an individual concern. Social science reveals that what is a private trouble is a public issue (Mills, 1959), and it is at that level that it has to be tackled.

In yet another scenario, a teacher might appear to be giving a highly skilful and artistic performance. He weaves a spell with words, takes up the pupils’ spontaneous questions, puts disparate things together imaginatively, uses space, timing and cadences of the voice, creates a suspenseful atmosphere, and most of the children seem to be enjoying the lesson and respond. However, systematic observation reveals that he has twice as many interactions with the boys as with the girls, that his examples and encouraged answers from the children in a multiethnic class are monoethnic, mat the questions he asks favour middle-class pupils, that the pupils are not internalizing the teaching but engaging in coping strategies. This may be artistic teaching, but artistic for whom? The reality is less exciting, more uncomfortable and disturbing. We don’t want to believe it. It threatens to take the edge off our own enjoyment. At worst, it threatens to undermine our own hard-won positions. These are all reasons why scientific explanations may be resisted. There are other reasons.

Opposition to science

The social and educational sciences are still young, and much of their early history has been taken up with a struggle for status in the universities. Philosophical bases have to be explored, methodological development and refinement set in hand. They are imperfect sciences (though it might be claimed that they are improving as the search for rigour and relevance goes on), and there have been questions raised about the failure or inconsequence of much educational research (Anning, 1986). Also, there has been a great deal of political opposition. Under the ‘New Right’ regime of the 1980s and early 1990s, ‘educationists’ have been branded as the villains in the alleged ‘declining educational standards’ saga. ‘They’ve had their say, and they’ve had their day’, announced Prime Minister Major at the Tory party conference of 1992. It is not difficult to account for such opposition. Sociology, for example, adopts a critical approach, identifies as ideologies (such as the ‘New Right’) what politicians regard as truth (often expressed as ‘common sense’). Sociology shakes received, unsubstantiated opinion, and identifies and exposes questions of value. The best way of teaching, good teaching, the purpose of it, what pupils should learn – these are all issues on which people hold strong views. That they are questions of value is not always appreciated where they are held as articles of faith.

If some object to the social sciences’ debunking and demystifying tendencies, there are others who claim that the social sciences, at times, do exactly the opposite. Thus Olson (1992, p. 91) has argued that science is often used to apply a dead hand to justify existing practices and policies, which are based on the ‘best social science available’. Thus, the ‘mystique of science is used to defend the reputation of the schools against criticism’. However, this will not work, for the simple reason that ‘experts do not know the whole story; only a small part of it. Teachers know more.’ This may be so, but it can be argued that it is still, in time, ‘knowable’ to others through scientific means. This kind of criticism is more, perhaps, one of how science is used, rather than against science itself.

Above all, perhaps, is the so-called ‘two-cultures’ mentality which continues to pervade society. Science, despite its enormous contributions and potential, remains the second culture. The public at large have little scientific understanding, more students still opt to study arts subjects at university, and the teaching of science itself in schools has a low reputation (Guardian, 25 September 1994, p. 23).

The promise of science

What then are the gains of seeing teaching as science? As a complex and difficult activity, teaching generates a great deal of myth, mystery, and homespun, pragmatic advice to new recruits. ‘Never smile until Christmas’ is a common recipe for coping through one’s first term. Much rests on intuition and instinct which defy rational explanation: ‘It just seemed right to do it that way.’ However, social science demystifies and enlightens. It establishes the nature and purpose of myths like ‘never smile’, showing them to contain a kernel – but only a kernel – of truth, but functioning as warnings and guides to action, and appealing to emotional states. It offers to explain the apparently unexplainable. In some ways teaching may be not unlike primitive societies in the guarded mysteries of its culture, standing to gain in similar ways from systematic study:

In arriving at an understanding of how such societies work, anthropologists have inevitably thrown a flood of light on general principles of social organization and have enabled us to see how, on the one hand, apparently exotic customs are simply ways of coping with common human problems that we handle in different ways.

(Worsley et al., 1977, pp. 30–31)

Similarly, sociologists show how the daily lives of individuals are connected to broader systems of organization in wider society, and how those lives are distinguished by order and regularities, rather than adventitious, unconnected events. As Worsley et al. note,

In order to understand these interconnections in the world ‘out there’, we need a body of theory which itself is systematic. We cannot, in social science, operate effectively with bits and pieces of ideas unconnected to each other, as we often tend to do in everyday life.

(ibid., p. 54)

Science depoliticizes, identifying values, ideologies, the micro-political nature of school life, and the strategies deployed in the furtherance of aims. It provides information, explanation, and intellectual tools for understanding social action, for delineating and solving problems, and for planning according to our preferred choices. Used in the service of human understanding it is a creative, imaginative activity that sometimes reveals something surprising, and can energize and inspire. There is nothing cold about the descriptions of warmth and care for their children experienced by primary teachers (Nias, 1989); or in the excitement and inspiration felt during particularly promising or rewarding teaching (Woods, 1993a); or in the analyses of humour as a teaching accessory (Stebbins, 1980). Science is not the only factor involved, since

decisions, in the end, will be made as the outcome of sets of complex pressures from many kinds of people: idea-mongers, power-wielders, organized citizens, etc., not social scientists alone, and not only on the basis of knowledge or reason.

(Worsley et al., 1977, p. 69)

But it provides a good basis, and offers a means of assessing the consequences of those decisions.

TEACHING AS ART

The limitations of science

The view of teaching as a rational and stable activity amenable to scientific methods is one th...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: the ethnographer’s self
• 1 The art and science of teaching
• 2 The promise of symbolic interactionism
• 3 Seeing into the life of things
• 4 Living and researching a school inspection
• 5 Collaborating in historical ethnography: researching critical events in education
• 6 Tools of the trade: extensions of the ethnographer’s self
• 7 Audiences and the politics of dissemination
• References
• Name index
• Subject index