Indirect Education

Exploring Indirectness in Teaching and Research

Herner Saeverot

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781000542424
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Didattica
• Subtopic: Ricerca nella didattica

Indirect Education discusses direct and indirect pedagogies and the complexities of these concepts within the field of education practice and research. It addresses the question of when it is most beneficial to be indirect with regard to teaching and educational research.

The book offers an original approach to education in how it reasserts our right to a sense of ownership and agency in educational explorations. It argues that there should be space for indirect ways of teaching and communication when matters without clear answers and objectives enter the educational sphere. Bringing together a mix of empirical studies presented with a degree of storytelling, the book explores the literature of educational theory to make a novel and relatable argument for making space for indirectness in learning contexts.

Putting forward a compelling case that is necessary for education in the difficult times that we are living in, the book will appeal to academics, researchers and students in the fields of educational theory, pedagogy, leadership studies and educational practice.

The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

Chapter 1 Justification Education is indirect by nature—so what’s the problem?

DOI: 10.4324/9781003193463-2

The theme justification and the title of this chapter may seem confusing at first glance. It indicates that one should justify indirect pedagogy, even though education is indirect by nature. Why justify something that already exists? The thing is that indirect forms can easily take control of the teaching. Therefore I shall argue that teachers need to be aware of indirect forms which may affect the teaching and simultaneously take control of these indirect forms and turn them into educational opportunities. There is also a tendency to believe that education globally has become too one-sided directly. Teachers should, therefore, so I argue, deliberately integrate indirect elements into their teaching. With such preconditions, indirectness can be beneficial for the students.

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Let me begin with the hypothesis that education is indirect by nature. For example, most of the activities that take place in schools are artificial in the sense that the teaching often occurs through indirect approaches related to society and to what we perceive as real. For instance, teachers make use of intermediaries that operate in between the teacher and the student, be it books, pictures and other sorts of learning materials to explain and define things that are happening outside the school. Instead of travelling to St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, the students may encounter this church through words, pictures and film. Nonetheless, it is a fact that in many cases, schools do attempt to shorten the distance between the students and society and real life as much as possible. This may happen through excursions to places outside the school, where students may be given opportunities to touch, smell and look at real flowers. This example shows that education can also be direct by nature, so we must not think that education is only indirect. However, education is indirect to a much larger degree than we may believe.

Why am I then proclaiming to focus more on indirect approaches in education? Is there not an adequate amount of indirect approaches in education already? The answer to these questions is twofold. Firstly, it is not just about quantity, where the focus is to implement more indirect approaches in education. One should also assess the quality of indirect approaches in education; for example, whether the indirect approach is educative or detrimental. Secondly, it would be appropriate to know when and in what situations one should use either direct or indirect approaches or both at the same time. Overall, the book aims at increasing the awareness of direct and indirect forms in relation to teaching (see Chapters 2, 3, 4 and 5) and educational research (see Chapters 6 and 7).

The argument in this chapter looks like this. Teachers, and everyone involved in education, should increase their awareness of intermediaries that may be involved in teaching. Such an awareness can happen through communication theory. Furthermore, teachers should not just be aware of intermediaries, but they should also strive to make them into educational means and be able to control them—as far as possible. However, it is not possible to control the intermediaries completely. One can therefore not control what kind of effect they may have on students. In fact, it is not the intention to control the intermediaries completely. The intermediaries must, to a certain extent, be released; that is, teachers must let them have an impact on the students and leave it up to the students to respond or not respond. Teachers thus move between control and non-control. The fact that teachers let go of control corresponds to risk, bold actions and permissiveness. All these actions, from awareness of intermediaries to the movement between control and non-control, are prerequisites to provide space for the educative benefits of indirectness. The chapter concludes with several examples of what such educative benefits may be.

Increased awareness of indirectness through communication theory

In terms of education, there are many different forms of indirect approach. Teachers act indirectly all the time. For example, imagine the teacher who gives praise to a student in front of the other students because the student has cleared her desk. Such praise functions as an indirect appeal to the other students in the class to clear their desks too. However, these kinds of indirect approaches often do not work very well, at least not in the long run, as children become ever more experienced and become capable of revealing such strategies.¹ Another reason has to do with the fact that this strategy is indirect but yet restrictive because the teacher’s intention with this form of praise is rather obvious. For that reason, teachers have several possible choices. They can choose to continue along the same track as they did before, even though their intentions keep being revealed, or they can resign and take a more direct approach. Another possibility is to continuously attempt to find new and more advanced forms of indirect approaches, with the risk of ending up manipulating children (I elaborate on this in Chapter 4). Teachers who choose this approach should aim to find “new” forms of indirect approaches (i.e., new to the child) and at the same time to increase their consciousness around these forms so that they may avoid any kind of manipulation.

The question is whether it is possible to control all intermediaries completely. If we turn to classic communication theory, the reply to the question of whether it is possible to control all intermediaries completely is that this is almost certainly impossible because there is no direct line from the sender to the receiver (Adler, Rosenfeld, & Towne, 1996; Arnold & Bowers, 1984; Wood, 2016). The senders cannot avoid indirection, as they must use one or several intermediaries. Here are some examples. First of all, the senders must turn inwards and decide what kind of message they want to communicate. Secondly, senders must choose a way to express what they wish to communicate. As for the receivers, they must be able to interpret the message being communicated and preferably in the same way that the sender intended. There are many factors and intermediaries that play a part here. For instance, there are emotions that must be coherent between the sender and the receiver to avoid any problems with their communication. Furthermore, non-verbal communication—for instance, tone of voice—plays a part. It is well-known that many children become afraid of deep men’s voices and misunderstand it as a threat. Another example is when we use our intonation and tone of voice differently. To this, there is also body language: the body’s position, the way we move our head, our facial expressions, our arm gestures, our eye movements and so forth. This kind of communication is complex in itself, and it is a challenge in relation to communication. In addition to all of this, things are even more complicated when we take into consideration the various combinations of forms of intermediaries the sender can use.

It is possible to claim that a message must go through many intermediaries and that the probability of being able to control all of these intermediaries is minimal. Furthermore, it is also possible to claim that being pedagogical means to be distinct and to deliver a clear message; that is, one should attempt to control as many intermediaries as possible, even though it is not possible to control them completely. Even modern curricula, which have been heavily criticised because of their distinct learning objectives (Deng, 2018; Priestley & Minty, 2013), cannot live up to a form of direct pedagogy that can control the teaching situation completely. The relationships between the teacher and the student are inherently indirect. We might believe that education happens in a direct fashion, but that is because we are deceived by simple explanations of reality, which is always more complex than we imagine and therefore very difficult to describe in words (Roberts & Saeverot, 2018).

Furthermore, when we use indirect approaches, we can never be sure what the result will be. It is not in the power of the teacher to control the end result, at least not completely. Both outcomes and end results are much easier to control by way of direct instructions. That is perhaps one major reason why directness has become a huge part of the visible learning paradigm (Terhart, 2011). By controlling the intermediaries, teachers may be able to ensure a direct line between the teaching and the student. By taking as many precautions as possible concerning the various intermediaries in teaching and learning, unlike in a more indirect form of pedagogy, teachers can to a relatively large extent achieve what they planned beforehand (Biesta, 2014; Lewis, 2018).

Communication theory shows that there are a number of intermediaries involved in the communication between a sender and a receiver. Since communication is part of the teaching, insight into communication theory can make teachers aware that they are subject to a number of intermediaries which cannot be fully controlled. But still, even if one cannot control the intermediaries completely, teachers should strive to control them as best they can while consciously creating space for intermediaries. Let me elaborate on this.

Being indirect, yet controlling the intermediaries

To be pedagogical may in the perspective provided earlier be perceived in two ways. One can be pedagogical in the traditional sense, and that corresponds to minimising and controlling intermediaries and communication noise in the best possible way so that the information can be as clear as possible for the receiver. An example of this is to use short sentences, speaking slowly and clearly, while minimising the use of gestures and body movements. Another way to be pedagogical is to consciously make use of various intermediaries in teaching and then leave it to the receiver to interpret, respond, etc. Instead of trying to minimise the intermediaries and trying to control them completely, the teacher creates space for intermediaries while at the same time trying to control them to a certain degree.

We can take a closer look at how a teacher may use intermediaries while trying to control them through the following example. Let us imagine that the teacher has taken the class to an art exhibition. The teacher knows that one of the students has a big interest in cars, particularly race cars. In the distance, the teacher sees an art picture with a red Ferrari and starts to point in the direction of the art picture while he says, “Look, a race car!” The teacher’s intentions are good. He wants to create a direct connection between the boy and the art picture. However, it is arguable that the teacher has appeared as an unnecessary intermediary between the art picture and the boy, as he has blocked the moment of surprise and the boy’s feeling of having seen the picture himself.

Another way to do this is as follows. Once the teacher sees the picture of the race car, he can discreetly make sure to change the walking direction of the student so that he can have the pleasure of discovering the artwork himself. Changing the walking direction of the student can be done physically. For example, the teacher can position himself in such a way that the boy is forced to walk towards the art picture. No matter how it is done, the teacher must act; however, the intention of this action remains invisible to the student. The intermediary in this situation is the teacher’s discrete change of the boy’s walking direction. By way of this controlling of an intermediary, the art picture can touch the boy directly, without having to take a detour via the teacher as was the case in the first example. “Did you see that race car?” asks the student with excitement. “Yes,” says the teacher and pretends that he only saw the art picture after the boy made him aware of it, so he does not spoil the boy’s excitement and pleasure of having discovered the pictured race car. The teacher plays a role by pretending that he did not see the artwork before the student made him aware of it (cf. Burbules & Rice, 2010), hence we might call this act “the pious deceit of education.”

So far this is an initiating phase of education. What I mean by that is that the student, thanks to the teacher’s indirect act, is faced with a picture that interests him. The teacher now has an opportunity to follow up with questions and viewpoints that may be educative for the student.

Making space for intermediaries means knowingly staging and arranging various indirect elements in situations involved in teaching. Here is another example. A student in elementary school is working on a project that she will present in two weeks. She is very excited and happy with her own work effort and shows the teacher what she has achieved as if she has finalised the whole project. The teacher may of course respond in several ways. One response may take the form of praising the student and emphasising that her work is very good. Alternatively, the teacher can choose to emphasise that the student needs to work more since there are two more weeks until the presentation of the project. A third approach is to let praise, criticism and summoning interact dialectically, thus, “This is very good; you have come this far, even though there are two weeks until the presentation.”

If we start by looking at the first reaction, where the teacher praises the student, the problem is that the teacher submits to the student’s enthusiasm over her own work efforts. Thus, important learning leading up to the performance in two weeks may not happen. The teacher’s positive response confirms the student’s satisfaction with her work effort, and she might not put more work into the project over the next two weeks. The second response, where the teacher emphasises that the student must work more, corresponds to a direct summoning. The problem here is that the student has to submit to the teacher’s will; hence, there is a danger that the student’s enthusiasm and interest in the assignment may decrease.

In the third approach, the teacher makes use of three intermediaries which function as educational means—that is, praise, criticism and summoning in one and the same sentence. The teacher also tries to control these intermediaries as well as possible. By starting with praise...