Teaching and learning: philosophies,

principles and practices

Teaching: a purposeful intervention with the aim of promoting,
facilitating and causing learning
Learning: a process by which change occurs through development
or advancement of mental, physical and emotional abilities

Teaching and learning have remained largely fragmented activities until

relatively recently
New interventions emphasising the interdisciplinarity of t & l have led to
schools of thought which are amalgams of psychology, sociology, science,
philosophy and para-educational areas, such as counselling, politics etc.
Perhaps the most important development is the development of new
research approaches and techniques and the ways in which these are
converging to uncover the complexities of t & l.

Examples of new work in t & l

Problem solving, knowledge organisation and performancecompetency research from cognitive psychology
The advancement of early learning abilities which make
innovative and demanding curricula more possible
The centrality of cultural and social norms to affect the
content and transferability of learning at work and in
communities
Theories as to the wisdom aspects of knowledge and how
these might contribute to successful application of learning
Comprehension of the learning enhancement and
recognition of difference that technology might provide

Trends in teaching and learning

In the early part of this century, education focused on the
acquisition of literacy skills: reading, writing and calculation
Education was also based on the deficit model of memory and
instruction
The notions of oracy, voice, critical thinking, persuasion and
problem solving-ness were alien to most peoples experience
Arguably, there has been a wholesale change: the flexibility of
jobs, the inflated requirements of work, the need for participation
in democracies, has created a new meaning for education
Further, the sheer colossus which is modern knowledge and
understanding, renders a deficit model defunct: what is needed
now are tools for understanding, interrogation, insight,
application and transfer.

Ideas about teaching and learning

First, it is quite a new idea that the way in which learning occurs
and about who is capable of learning and what and when, can
powerfully affect peoples lives
Over this last century, there have been many arguments about
the location of the learning environment; the purpose of a
learning environment to begin with; the role of the teacher in
causing learning; the type of learning which is (or is not) valued
Recent learning research suggests that we can all enhance our
learning in some way, if we recognise the fact that learning and
teaching can happen in diverse and sometimes unexpected
ways.

Principles in the evolving disciplines

of teaching and learning
Watson (1913): behaviourism is merely another word for the
soul of more ancient times..
Based on the empiricist tradition, behaviourists believed that
learning was a connection making process of stimulus and
response, and rewards stimulated the production of
connections, to reinforce the correct response. In this model,
learning could be explained without reference to thinking at all
In the late 1950s, cognitive science emerged as a major force
in explaining learning, and with it, the growth of complex
models of learning, theorised by Bruner, Lave and Wenger
among others.

The inexorable rise of teaching and

learning for understanding

A major tenet of all new learning theories and models is the

notion of understanding:
This can be understood in many ways: with the teacher as
an empowerer; with the learner as a conduit; with the
teacher and learning interaction as the transformation and
discovery team
But that is not to say that new learning discounts facts:
expertise and therefore true understanding is a synthesis
of knowledge, usability, applicability, transfer and insight above all, it is about ways of knowing.

Knowledge and knowing

Prior knowledge: the importance of knowing in a lived and
believed sense
Intuitive knowledge: the importance of knowing in an
observed and folk sense
Active knowledge: the importance of knowing in your own
words and meanings rather than in terms of someone elses
What is common to all these concepts however, is the idea
of sense-making, and consequently, how one is changed as
a result of having made sense of something.

An example of expert knowing

Experts notice features and meaningful patterns of information that
are not noticed by novices
Experts have acquired a great deal of content knowledge that is
organized in ways that reflect a deep understanding of their subject
matter
Experts knowledge cannot be reduced to a set of isolated facts or
propositions, but instead reflects contexts of applicability: that is,
the knowledge is conditionalised on a set of circumstances
Experts are able to flexibly retrieve important aspects of their
knowledge with little attention to effort
Though experts know their disciplines thoroughly, this does not
guarantee that they are able to teach others
Experts have varying levels of flexibility in their approach to new
situations.

De Groot (1965)
Increasing experience and exposure to complexity, can lead to
abstraction being replaced by perception
Problems thus become issues of perception rather than problems in
their own right
As a result, knowing is a matter of subjective seeing and sensemaking rather than inherent qualities of the object

For the expert, learning becomes a synthesis of the declarative (what)

intuiting with the procedural (how) and illuminated by the reflective
(why) but tempered by the conditional (when)
The growing awareness of this model of what we could be if we learned
from expert knowledge and skill representation, has led to a more
accommodating view of not just learning, but also, teaching, and the
curriculum.

Towards a typology of educational,

teaching and learning purposes
Humanism: liberation, autonomy, emotional growth (Hirsch,
Adler, Rogers)
Social Reconstructionism: society, world purposes, issues
(Vygotsky, Freire, Giroux)
Technicism: skills, work, wealth creation (Dewey, Piaget,
Holt)
Academicism: knowledge, inquiry, logic (Socrates, Jenkins,
Keefe)