Engaging Minds

Evolving Learning and Teaching

Brent Davis, Krista Francis

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781000589108
• Edition: 4
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education Curricula

Engaging Minds: Evolving Learning and Teaching explores the diverse beliefs and practices that define the current landscape of formal education. The revised, updated, and expanded fourth edition of this groundbreaking introduction to current interdisciplinary studies of teaching and teacher education is structured around five prominent "frames" of formal education, together offering an overview of the historical and conceptual influences on educational practice:

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• Early Formal Education – likely emerged alongside the creation of origin myths and the invention of symbol-based writing systems, presenting needs for individuals charged with communicating, interpreting, and maintaining such knowledge;

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• Standardized Education – began to unfold in the 1600s, when public education was invented as a response to the cultural convulsions of industrialization, urbanization, and imperialism;

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• Authentic Education – rose to prominence over the last century as researchers began to untangle the complexity of human cognition;

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• Democratic Citizenship Education – fuelled by civil rights movements of the 1960s, with the realization that schools often contribute to (or at least help to perpetuate) inequities and injustices;

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• Systemic Sustainability Education – an emerging trend, as schools and other cultural institutions find themselves out of step with the transition from a mechanization-focused industrialized society to an ecologically-minded and information-based society.

These frames serve as the foci of the five chapters of the book, each with three sections that deal, respectively, with history, epistemology, and pedagogy within the frame. Richly illustrated and designed, additional pedagogical features include multiple strategies to highlight and distinguish important vocabulary in the text, as well as suggestions for delving deeper into a given topic.

The fourth edition is also complemented by an online resource, learningdiscourses.com, that provides analyses of more than two thousand discourses on learning in education – including summaries and critiques, along with details on their authorship, their imagery, and their associated discourses.

FRAME 1 • early formal education

In brief ...

“Modern schooling” is only a few centuries old, but most of its defining features have ancient roots. Some of their influences span traditions that reach back millennia, including models of education that are based on notions of restoring natural orders, recovering veiled knowledge, and retracing sacred paths.

1.1 • The context ...

In the first and second millennia BCE, across southern Asia, northern Africa, and southern Europe, there was a trans-societal turn away from tribalism and warfare toward diplomacy and wisdom. In the east, these trends were oriented toward better understanding the complex unity of being. In the west, trends were defined by separations of the real from ideal, human from natural, physical from mental, and so on.

1.2 • On knowledge and learning ...

Early formal education in Europe shared two major influences – ancient Greek philosophy and nascent Christian belief. Both assumed an orderly universe, and both were concerned with profound meaning. Schools, accordingly, were oriented to the discovery and recovery of profound truth, typically casting knowledge in terms of WAYS and LIGHTS and interpreting learning in terms of PATH-FOLLOWING and ILLUMINATION.

1.3 • On teaching ...

Many conceptions of teaching were manifest, but common elements emerged. Some of these are apparent across the multiple meanings of the word of DISCIPLINE – as subject matter (DISCIPLINES were taught), as teacher authority (DISCIPLINE was meted out), and as learner responsibility (DISCIPLINE was demonstrated).

§1.1 The Emergence of Early Formal Education

What’s teaching?

Or, more precisely, how might we describe a teaching that fits with the time and place we find ourselves?

On the surface, these questions might sound like simple ones. But they’re not, as evidenced by an incredible array of synonyms and metaphors for teach in the English language. Here are the first 100 that popped up when we entered the word in a few online thesauruses.

ADMONISH	DIRECT ATTENTION TO	GIVE INSTRUCTION	INFILTRATE	PROFESS
ADVISE	DISCIPLINE	GIVE NEW IDEAS	INFIX	PRIME
BEAT INTO	DISSEMINATE	GIVE THE FACTS	INFORM	PUT IN THE WAY OF
BRAINWASH	DRAW IN	GRAFT	INFUSE	PUT UP TO
BREAK	DRAW OUT	GROUND	INGRAFT	QUALIFY
BREAK IN	DRILL	GUIDE	INITIATE	READ A LESSON
BREED	EDIFY	HABITUATE	INOCULATE	REAR
BRIEF	EDUCATE	HOLD FORTH	INSTILL	SCHOOL
BRING FORWARD	ENLARGE THE MIND	ILLUSTRATE	INSTRUCT	SERMONIZE
BRING UP	ENLIGHTEN	IMBUE	INTERPRET	SET RIGHT
BRING UP TO	EXERCISE	IMPART	INURE	SHAPE
CATECHIZE	EXPLAIN	IMPLANT	LECTURE	SHARPEN
COACH	EXPOUND	IMPREGNATE	MORALIZE	SHARPEN THE WITS
COMMUNICATE	FAMILIARIZE WITH	IMPRESS UPON THE MIND	NURTURE	SHOW
CONVERT	FORM	IMPRESS UPON MEMORY	OPEN EYES	SHOW THE ROPES
CONVINCE	GIVE A DISCOURSE	IMPROVE	POLISH UP	SOW THE SEEDS OF
CRAM	GIVE A LECTURE	IMPROVE MIND	POUND INTO	TAKE IN HAND
DEMONSTRATE	GIVE A LESSON	INCEPT	PRACTICE	TAME
DEVELOP	GIVE A SERMON	INCULCATE	PREACH	TRAIN
DIRECT	GIVE AN IDEA OF	INDOCTRINATE	PREPARE	TUTOR

Clearly, there’s a wide range of interpretation.

Where did this diversity of opinion and belief come from? Why have some perspectives prevailed over others? And how does that matter for the classroom?

This book is about what it means to teach well, and it’s written from the realization that what “good teach-ing” is depends on many layers of assumption – about the nature of knowledge, what knowledge is worth knowing, the character of learners, the dynamics of learning ... the list goes on.

The discussion is structured around multiple conceptions of formal education, all of which are vibrantly present in modern schooling, even though some aspects are not at all compatible. These frames are:

A key metaphor in this book is that “a worldview is a frame” – and so, when the word frame is mentioned, it’s in reference to some extensive and complex web of meaning.

It’s also an acknowledgment of a deep history. Frame has the same root as the word from. Both terms point to origins and movements. People are framed by where they are from.

In different terms, frames are not something you look at, but something you look through. That is, frames are meant to slip into the unnoticed background, even as they define what is and is not seen. western sensibilities. Teaching is coming to be seen in terms of helping to develop awareness of self, others, humanity, and the more-than-human world.

While we focus on just five frames in this book, it’s important to make clear that our analyses don’t begin to reflect the complexity and dynamism of the field of education.

To assist with that, we have indexed key ideas to the website, learningdiscourses.com. Further information on boldfaced terms can be found on that site, which includes details on authorship, associations with other notions, and critical commentary for more than 2000 constructs and discourses in education ...

... including the five frames described on these pages, as well as clusters of associated theories on knowledge, learning, and teaching.

• Early Formal Education: The “modern school” dates back only a few centuries, but most of its defining structures, practices, and subject matters have ancient roots – across almost all of which teaching was seen mainly in terms of helping individuals understand their place in the universe.
• Standardized Education: Public education, as it is popularly understood, really only began in the 1600s and 1700s. It was invented as a response to such cultural convulsions as industrialization, urbanization, and capitalism. Teaching came to focus on facts and skills, and it was modeled after working on a factory line.
• Authentic Education: Over the last century, researchers began to untangle the complexity of human cognition. helping educators to realize the inadequacies of popular beliefs about learning. Models of teaching arose that are less directive and more attentive to individuals.
• Democratic Citizenship Education: Prompted by civil rights movements of the 1960s, it became apparent that schools often contribute to (or at least help to perpetuate) inequities and injustices. Teaching came to be seen as a means to address inequalities and suppressions through raising awarenesses.
• Systemic Sustainability Education: Other built-in biases of formal education have been exposed over recent decades, including a human-centered myopia and widespread ignorances of non-modern and non-

We explore these frames iteratively in the five chapters of this text. Each iteration comprises three discussions: history and context of the frame, its associated conceptions of knowledge and learning, and its models of education and teaching.

We start in this opening chapter by looking at the emergence of formal education. At the same time, we lay out the structures and devices used throughout the text. For example, margin notes are used to introduce, illustrate, and amplify key points. Many of these side-notes in this chapter are focused on the some of the structures and strategies used in every part of the book.

The invention of teaching

Humankind has vast knowledge because it is a teaching species. Through teaching, each generation is able to extend what all previous generations have learned.

That means that there must be many modes of teaching, given diversities of cultures and ways of being. In modern times, many attempts have been made to identify and categorize these modes, and these Teaching Styles Discourses tend to occupy a good deal of space in the many how-to-teach manuals that are so popular in teacher education programs.

We’re less interested in classifying styles here, and more interested in how modes of teaching arise with and are coupled to broader human activity...