Quality Teaching

A Sample of Cases

Profesor Edgar Stones, Edgar Stones

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2002
• Print ISBN: 9781138421509
• eBook ISBN: 9781134811540
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

First Published in 2004. By detailed analysis of numerous classroom case studies, the author aims to show that true quality teaching is achieved only by sensitivitiy to the interplay between the processes by which children acquire knowledge.

1 Learning of quality

‘When I use a word’, Humpty Dumpty said in a rather scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.’

‘The question is’, said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean different things.’

‘The question is’, said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master— that’s all.’

(Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-glass 1871)

QUALITY THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS

Like Humpty Dumpty, the British Department of Education and Science (DES) has a way with words. One example for the connoisseur was the title of a Government White Paper Education: A Framework for Expansion (DES 1973), which led to a sphincteral contraction in educational provision in Britain. A decade later this was followed by another masterpiece: Teaching Quality, also a White Paper (DES 1983), which is doing for quality what Framework for Expansion did for quantity. Humpty Dumpty would have approved not only the title, which maintained the tradition of Education: A Framework for Expansion in meaning what they wanted it to mean, but also in a central theme echoing Humpty Dumpty’s clinching assertion about the nature of the real question: ‘which is to be master?’

In an attempt to get out of this looking-glass world I have found myself turning around not only the title of the 1983 White Paper, which purported to be a programme for improving the quality of teaching, but also its central theses. Thus in Quality Teaching I argue that the prescriptions in the Government’s Teaching Quality are likely to achieve the opposite of its declared intentions.

The reasons for the apparent paradox of my suggestion that the prescriptions of Teaching Quality are likely to produce effects the opposite of those promulgated, are complex. Some of the more potent ones, such as ‘which is to be master?’, are beyond the scope of this book. However, at the heart of Teaching Quality is a view of teaching that sustains and gives it life. Since its enunciation, this view of teaching has thrived and has, in recent years, permeated education in many countries. It is a view that seems to regard education as a commodity and teachers as the people who deliver it.

Lest it be thought I imply that the British have a monopoly on pedagogical sophistry, or that the 1983 White Paper was a passing cloud, let me draw readers’ attention to recent trends in teacher education worldwide. In the USA Tomorrow’s Teachers, purportedly a prospectus for the professionalisation of teaching, has been seen more as a mask for its ‘ongoing “proletarianisation”’ (Gottleib and Cornbleth 1989). Current trends in Britain have fulfilled the threats of Teaching Quality, and, to rub salt into the wound, the Government reprinted the report in 1985. This renewal of the message was followed by an upsurge in comment on the subject, well illustrated by a collection of papers edited by Carr on the subject in 1989. Gilroy (1991), comparing current trends with changes beginning to emerge in the USSR, sees a deep irony in the contrast between attempts to discard a failed ‘system of overwhelming social control and management’ and British attempts to introduce just such a system.

A recent international colloquium on teacher education found participants from many countries grappling with very similar problems (Stones 1990). They recognised that teacher education was in need of improvement but found that Humpty Dumpty had put his finger on the key question. No matter how assiduously teacher educators worked to develop effective methods of teaching, or how diligently they tried to remedy the deficiencies in their practice, their efforts seemed doomed to frustration in the face of a force majeur imposing its own version of teaching on them.

The collection of papers by Carr analyses the reasons for the current predicament of teacher education in which the idea of ‘quality’ in teaching has been defined in terms calculated to lead to the derogation of theory of teaching and an elevation of control mechanisms (Carr 1989). This echoes the appraisal of the White Paper in the Journal of Education for Teaching (Stones 1983) which saw the paper as more a mechanism of control than a serious grappling with the complexities of teaching and teacher training.

One problem over the years has been the too-ready acceptance by teachers and teacher educators of the meanings imposed by politicians and administrators. Thus, centrally inspired versions of ‘appraisal’ of teaching have been embraced, and in many countries conferences about appraisal reached epidemic proportions in the 1980s with virtually no examination of its content or methods. ‘Quality’ is receiving similar treatment in the early 1990s. There may now be somewhat more hope, however, for a principled and informed resistance to the central imposition of a mechanistic view of teaching and an insistence on the participation of teachers and teacher educators in defining such things as ‘teaching’, ‘appraisal’ and ‘quality’. Professionals are beginning to resist and even, on occasion, defy non-professional impositions that fly in the face of their pedagogical understanding. I discuss this question in a later chapter. However, as a brief example, let me cite the case of the Papua New Guinea teacher trainers who opposed the bureaucratic imposition on the colleges of a method of examining English as a second language that lacked validity and reliability and fostered rote learning (McLaughlin 1991). They defended an approach stressing language for communication with great force and energy. Whether they will eventually carry the day has still to be seen. But the significant development is the scale of their resistance. This example is a microcosm of conditions in many countries as is attested by comments from other contributors to the same issue of the journal in which the Papua New Guinea report appeared. Their analyses examined the relationship of the Papua New Guinea experience to the plight of teacher education in their own countries (Alarcão et al., 1991).

A fundamental thesis of Teaching Quality which is still alive and thriving in many parts of the world is that it is sufficient for teachers to have a thorough knowledge of subject matter and practical classroom experience: the former, to ensure that they are up-to-date on the product they are to deliver, and the latter to ensure that they know how to deliver it. Subject study in higher education, it is averred, will equip teachers with the material to transmit, and practical classroom experience will equip them with effective transmission skills. There is no suggestion in this outlook that there is a place for theoretical knowledge about the nature of teaching. When educational theory is mentioned by those who espouse this view of teaching, it is usually to denigrate it as irrelevant to practice. It is rare, however, to find any substantiating analytical argument. (See, for example, Cox 1989.)

Few, surely, would disagree that teachers should have a good grasp of subject knowledge and should also be familiar with schools and classrooms. However, the ‘delivery’ view of teaching grossly oversimplifies its true nature, and the prescriptions intended to improve it are doomed to fail because of the lack of understanding of its complexities.

To substantiate my appraisal of this view of teaching I shall examine what seem to me its key misconceptions. Then I shall propose methods of enhancing our understanding of its complexities to enable us to take steps that really do offer hope of improving teaching. In the discussion I draw on theoretical understandings that relate to practical teaching. I also present and analyse examples of actual teaching by student teachers and by experienced teachers using a theory-informed approach to their teaching. I hope that this way of discussing and analysing teaching will be useful to teachers and student teachers wishing to improve the quality of their teaching and their ability to reflect on their practice with the insight afforded by a grasp of theoretical principles. I also hope that it will interest educationists wishing to explore the possible nature of pedagogical theory and its relationship to practical teaching.

Writing for such a wide and disparate readership is a difficult task, especially when one is considering a topic as complex as teaching. This difficulty is compounded by the widespread underestimation of this complexity. Thus the writer needs to relate sufficiently closely to the concerns of serious-minded practising teachers to suggest to them that the message holds promise of genuine improvement in their teaching and also to engage researchers and teacher-educators interested in rigorous and analytical approaches to theoretical issues. Thus, one travels between the Scylla of explicating the obvious to one population and the Charybdis of blinding the other with science. All the time one is trying to expound one’s views on some very complex concepts and establish convincing links with practical teaching in a context of mutual misunderstanding and sometimes deprecation by both groups of the other’s main activities.

I am referring here both to the widespread distrust of theory among teachers and to the low regard of practical teaching manifested by the inferior status it is accorded in many training institutions in many countries. A recent example of the former may be found in the address to a British teachers’ union by its general secretary (Dawson 1990). He called for a two-year course with less theory and an emphasis on learning to ‘control’ the pupils. He asserted that there was evidence to demonstrate that training courses had little impact on the quality of teaching. An illustration from the USA of the low esteem of practical teaching in academe may be found in an article by Clark (Clark 1988). Here he comments on the inferior status accorded in teacher training institutions to clinical supervision in which graduate students act as overseers and on the speculation as to who should be responsible. Similar attitudes are found outside the USA. As I commented in a discussion of supervision, when I first started to work in teacher education in England, I received no induction to the practice of supervision but a great deal to the organisation of transport of student teachers to teaching practice schools (Stones 1984a). No mention was ever made of a theory that might be relevant to supervision, nor have I heard it mentioned since, except when I have raised the subject.

Despite the difficulties of the task it is essential that an effort be made to navigate the straits of sterile theorising and blind practice. Quality teaching cannot be a-theoretical, nor can it be nurtured by disquisitions on the nature of teaching by theorists with their feet in the clouds. Both theory and practice are essential. Indeed, they are inseparable. Quality teaching is more properly conceived of as a unified field embracing both theory and practice in which teachers, teacher educators and researchers are jointly responsible for the development of theoretical understanding and the improvement of teaching (Stones 1986a, Erickson 1988). I develop this theme in the pages that follow. In so doing, I shall not be reporting, in conventional ways, outcomes of experiments or reviews of work on teaching as it is now, but on explorations of teaching as it might be.

VIEWS OF TEACHING

Current orthodoxy in the ‘delivery’ camp often supports its view that good teaching results from a combination of subject study and practical experience by citing the procedures in British ‘public’ schools (i.e. expensive private schools). The claim is that these schools are noted for the excellence of their teaching largely because they have traditionally recruited teachers who have not had formal teacher training and, therefore, have not been influenced by educational theorists (Cox 1989). This argument contains several fallacies that need to be clarified by anyone who wishes to make a serious study of teaching.

The first fallacy is to assume that there is a consensus about the nature of ‘good teaching’. The nature of much current argument on this question is unequivocally ideologically partisan which, in itself, is enough to make the point that the idea of ‘good teaching’ is a value-laden concept. This kind of argument is rarely well informed, and the field of teaching and teacher training is no exception. In fact a considerable body of research in the field suggests that there is no general consensus on what constitutes good teaching, (See Leinhardt 1990 for a discussion of various approaches to the problem. See also Medley 1987.) The second fallacy, that subject expertise and not teacher training makes for good teachers, falls if there is no agreement about what ‘good teaching’ is.

Other factors to be considered in this line of argument are that the British public schools, especially the most expensive and prestigious ones, recruit from a very privileged stratum of society, have small classes, are well equipped compared to most state schools and enjoy a network of connections within the state apparatus and the country’s élite universities. The success of these schools is commonly measured by the number of their pupils who obtain entrance to these universities, particularly Oxford and Cambridge. Even if we accept this criterion as an indicator of good teaching, the assertion that this is because the teachers are uncontaminated by teacher training can be no more than opinion. Is it beyond the bounds of possibility that the other factors mentioned may influence these schools’ success far more than the lack of training enjoyed by the teachers? One could equally well argue that they achieve success despite their teachers’ lack of training and that they would perform even better if the teachers were knowledgeable in pedagogical theory.

A further illustration of the value-laden nature of the idea of ‘good teacher’ may be taken from attitudes to corporal punishment. Many people who have held political office in recent years in the British educational system are, or were, in favour of corporal punishment and would presumably not exclude people who beat children from the category of ‘good teacher’. The European Community takes a different view of ‘good teacher’ and bans corporal punishment in member states, and Britain has had to fall into line. Interestingly, the ‘public’ schools held up as paragons of good teaching in some quarters, being outside the state system, are currently allowed to carry on beating. Many states in the USA permit teachers to inflict corporal punishment. Presumably they see no conflict between the idea of a good teacher and the use of corporal punishment. Any teacher who used it, however, would fail the European test of a good teacher.

Should anyone argue that the public schools get their ‘superior’ results because they beat the pupils, I doubt that they would persuade many people nowadays to accept beating as a means to this end. I think people in most countries would prefer unbeaten children who had had less of the curriculum delivered to them to those who had had it beaten into them.

In fact, there is an extensive literature that indicates that punishment does not encourage learning. I have to admit, however, that anyone who finds being beaten pleasurable would probably learn better. This could well be the reason for the continuation of the practice in the British ‘public schools’.

The problematic nature of defining ‘good teaching’ has not deterred a large number of people involved in education from devising schemes for appraising teachers’ performance. In English-speaking countries teacher appraisal schemes have proliferated in recent years. In practically all such schemes, teaching is conceived of in the sense of ‘delivering the curriculum’. Teacher appraisal schemes of this type became so prevalent in Britain in the mid-1980s that in 1986 the British Educational Research Association mounted a conference to draw to the attention of educationists the degree to which the schemes ignored the complex nature of teaching (Stones and Wilcox 1986).

There is one other current pressure on teaching that reinforces the view of teaching as ‘telling’ or ‘delivering’. This pressure is towards focusing attention on the teaching of ‘facts’, rather than processes and problem solving. It may be characterised as a ‘back to basics’ movement. This is an abiding influence in education in many countries. In nineteenth-century Britain the education of the populace was restricted to the learning of sufficient facts and simple processes for them to be able to cope with the demands of industry, but no more, for fear that learning to think might lead to revolution. In the twentieth century the necessary skills may be more complex, but judging by the words and deeds of many people with influence over education in many countries, the kind of learning favoured is little different. Later, I shall examine the nature of this type of learning and explain why I believe it necessary to avoid it wherever possible.

Even the modicum of instruction proposed in the early nineteenth century was too much for some, whose views were encapsulated in 1807 by the words of Giddy in Parliament:

However specious in theory the project might be, of giving education to the labouring classes of the poor, it would teach them to despise their lot in life, instead of making them good servants in agriculture and other laborious employment to which their rank in society has destined them; instead of teaching them subordination, it would render them factious and refractory as was evident in the manufacturing counties; it would enable them to read seditious pamphlets, vicious books, and publications against Christianity; it would render them insolent to their superiors; and in a few years the result would be that the legislature would find it necessary to direct the strong arm of power towards them and to furnish the executive magistrate with more vigorous laws than were now in force.

(Barnard 1952)

The same sentiments appear to be abroad at the end of the twentieth century. There are those who believe this to be the case. In Britain this is expressed by critiques of government-inspired divisions in education with ‘training’ for one group and ‘education’ for an élite (Hextall 1988). Hextall, in fact, quotes a British teacher who describes recent developments in British education in terms not dissimilar to Giddy’s but with opposite intent: ‘Education is being reduced to a mechanistic process for turning out well-programmed, but unquestioning, operatives for the Thatcherite New Jerusalem’ (Hextall 1988:74). Berman, writing about recent developments in the USA, describes similar processes with a track for a privileged group to be educated in new technological skills and a ‘slow’ learner track (Berman 1988). Berman also comments on the implications of the factory view of schooling for the way teachers are perceived. Teachers are seen as assembly line workers implementing programmes decided upon at higher levels. In both Britain and the USA there is an increasingly overt penetration of representatives of business interests in the making of those decisions. Pressure for the learning of facts fits in well with this view of teaching. Facts can easily be dispensed or ‘delivered’. Little is demanded of teachers except compliance.

However, Berman goes on to draw attention to an important possible counteracting force. Teacher-educators may take the call for ‘excellence’, which he sees as a code word for more emphasis on sciences, mathematics and technical subjects and decreased emphasis of everything el...

Table of contents

• COVER PAGE
• TITLE PAGE
• COPYRIGHT PAGE
• FIGURES
• 1. LEARNING OF QUALITY
• 2. AIMING FOR QUALITY
• 3. ANALYSES OF QUALITY 1: CONCEPTUAL ANALYSIS
• 4. ANALYSES OF QUALITY 2: PEDAGOGICAL ANALYSIS
• 5. CONCEPTS OF QUALITY
• 6. SKILLS OF QUALITY
• 7. QUALITY PROBLEM SOLVING
• 8. ASSESSMENT OF QUALITY 1: PROBLEMS OF TESTING
• 9. ASSESSMENT OF QUALITY 2: A SAMPLE OF STUDIES
• 10. CULTIVATING QUALITY
• 11. QUALITY QUALITY
• APPENDIX
• BIBLIOGRAPHY