Every year has its own curriculum focus and 2001 may be the Year of Pedagogy. It seems to be a word suddenly on everyone’s tongue. Why now at this point of time in the development of NSW curriculum and its implementation is pedagogy getting so much attention?

What do we mean by pedagogy?
Both the Macquarie and Oxford dictionaries bring out two meanings in relation to teaching. In the Oxford, pedagogy is a Greek word referring to the work of a pedagogue, “ a man having the oversight of a child …who led the boy to school” and “ a school master, teacher, preceptor… hostile, with implication of pedantry, dogmatism or severity.” So pedagogy can carry two meanings: “the function, profession or practice of a pedagogue” and “instruction, discipline, training”.

In the Macquarie these two meanings of pedagogy have a more modern interpretation as “the function, work or art of a teacher” and “instruction”, coming from its second meaning of pedagogue, “person who is pedantic, dogmatic and formal”.

When talking about pedagogy the form of instruction can be from the highly disciplined and dogmatic to a focus on the art of teaching in its most liberal sense. In other words, pedagogy could legitimately mean different things to different people. The pedagogy of A S Neill and of some religious orders of previous centuries could be at different ends of a continuum. Some of these
continuums have been described as student-centred to teacher-centred, discipline-centred to fully integrated, enterprise teaching to traditional teaching. We all recognise the continuums but the questions are: Where are we as individuals on them and where are we expected to be?

Continuums
As teachers, we know in our minds that students learn in different ways and that teachers teach in different ways. Just as it is not productive to stereotype students into particular learning styles, teachers need also to focus on variety. It is here that the concept of a continuum
becomes important and time becomes an important factor.

Sometimes didactic methods are the fastest and, for most students, the appropriate way to teach particular concepts or to provide specific information. But imagine if all lessons were like this. How can science be taught without engagement of scientific method, or English without writing, or history without enquiry? There is a methodology that underpins the disciplines and a variety of pedagogy is needed to explore and apprehend these methodologies.

The encouragement to teachers has been to move away from teacher-centred approaches to a style of learning where the teacher becomes a co-learner and students accept more responsibility for their own learning.

Generally known as student-centred learning, enquiry methodology has dominated the subjects of this learning area and teachers have been encouraged to use an everincreasing variety of resources as well as teaching strategies to achieve this pedagogical shift in their learning environments.

An example of a continuum in pedagogy which encourages a student-centred approach is illustrated in the table below.

Promotion of student-centred pedagogy
These moves to a student-centred pedagogy come mainly from a constructivist approach to learning. This approach requires students to build their own knowledge and not to be simply passive recipients of information. Being active, students construct their own meaning by modifying existing knowledge, exploring meaning with others and addressing content in a variety of contexts.

Constructivist learning may require changes to teaching. Teachers need to help students construct understanding of concepts for themselves. Instead of memorising material, filling in worksheets, and repetitiously doing the same sort of task, students solve new problems, research and integrate information, and create knowledge for themselves. A constructivist view of teaching and learning requires changes in other components of schooling, namely, curriculum and assessment.

While this move to more student-centred learning based on a constructivist approach continues, teachers often perceive curriculum and systemic change as forcing them back to more teacher-centred approaches. This perception needs to be explored.

New HSC courses
The curriculum changes to the new HSC have consumed teachers’ thinking during the initial period of implementation. Programming, course content and assessment issues have dominated teachers’ thinking and, as they have tried to cope with the volume of change, pedagogy has been a real sleeper.

One of the key decisions of the new HSC curriculum was to abolish differentiated courses as far as
possible. The reasons for this decision have been well researched and need not be a focus of discussion in this article. However, having single courses in most subjects to cater for a wide range of students has implications for pedagogy. In fact, what we now have is not differentiated courses but a need for differentiated pedagogy, and for many teachers this is a challenge to aspects of their current practice.

Most teachers like to be in control and, like their students, to follow a corporate program and teach to the whole class. The thought that students might need to progress at different paces and possibly be doing different topics at the one time is seen as a burden they do not want. Besides how would you meet Board of Studies requirements for assessment programs and common tasks?

The current syllabuses have opted for a position that gives a high level of detail about what is to be learnt, so that the examinations can be fair for all students by testing what they have been taught against explicit standards. An alternative would be to have an outcomes curriculum with the HSC examination as a challenge test. The syllabuses may not need to be as specific and students could sit the exam when they believe they have achieved the outcomes. In such a system, teaching pedagogy could be truly student-centred but could become test-oriented, as the test becomes more important and dictates the curriculum.

As teachers grapple with the amount of content in the new syllabuses, they need to think less about how they can get through all this material and think more about how the students can become more involved in, and take more responsibility for, their learning. This engagement can be achieved through a pedagogy that involves teaching strategies that encourage each student to
construct knowledge and concepts in such a way as to reach his or her highest level of achievement.

Years 7 -10
The current review of Years 7-10 by way of a curriculum framework for Years K-10 is partly driven by issues of pedagogy. The performance of students in the early years of high school and their increasing disengagement with learning have worried teachers for many years. One element in this concern is the curriculum, and this concern is being addressed by the Board of Studies. While the Board has the legislative framework to prescribe curriculum, it is mainly a matter for systems, individual schools and teachers to decide how a course is taught.

Although the Board may recommend pedagogy, it is unlikely to prescribe it. Pedagogy, the “art of teaching”, remains the province of individual teachers, and their endeavours to improve this aspect of their work need every encouragement and a professional development focus.

Over recent years the Curriculum Support Directorate has been producing materials that have encouraged the use of a range of teaching strategies. This pedagogy has focused on student-centred learning and encouraged teachers to diversify their teaching strategies. Some of these products include: the Geography Years 7-10 programs, History Years 9-10 programs, the Senibel resource, the Tourism kit, the CD-ROM Sites and Scenes, the resource Federation: Inclusion and exclusion, Teaching literacy in history and geography, and the document Learning Technologies in HSIE. All these materials have illustrated student-centred pedagogy as an encouragement to teachers to diversify their teaching strategies.

The issue of time
The tension between syllabus requirements and time remains an important issue in the HSIE learning area. Student-centred approaches to learning are often perceived as being more time consuming, but they need not be if students are trained in how to accept more responsibility for their learning, in how to work in groups and in how to make the most of class learning. Some
time spent in the development of student-centred approaches can yield benefits in the future and the class time spent in developing such practices can be redeemed by students working more efficiently.

Teachers have traditionally felt free to engage more student-centred approaches in Years 7-10. Now, with a focus on an end-of-Year 10 test on syllabuses with large amounts of subject matter, teachers feel that the time needed to complete these courses will discourage student-centred pedagogy. Again, good practice can be taught in Years 7-10 and these teaching and learning strategies can support student-centred learning in Years 11 and 12.

In some schools, there is a concern that the organisation model used to deliver the minimum 100 hours of Australian history and 100 hours of Australian geography in Years 9 and 10 can create a tension between time and content. These courses are rigorous, and breaking up the continuity of students’ study, or allocating only a small amount of time each week, can disrupt learning and place pressure on teachers to cover the course content by more didactic teaching.

This pedagogy denies students the opportunity to embrace the underpinning methodologies of the subject through student-centred learning. They may also create expectations for how students will learn in Years 11 and 12.

Many teachers are concerned about how history and geography will fare as subjects in Years 11 and 12 after 2002, when the current Years 9 and 10 courses are compulsory. In part, the answer lies in the pedagogy employed by teachers. If students love the subject in the same way their teacher does, then it is likely that they will pursue this subject in Years 11 and 12. If their teacher dislikes Australian history, or Australian geography, and this is reflected in the pedagogy, then the reverse may well apply.

Also in relation to time, not every student is advantaged by a teacher rushing through the Preliminary course to complete it by the end of Term 3 in Year 11. Some students could benefit from a slower pace and the opportunity to consolidate their learning from the Preliminary course. Building confidence to do the HSC course and developing pedagogy that will better support learning can be more important than creating the maximum amount of time to be spent on the HSC course. Perceived lost time can be made up in the HSC year through the improved work practices of students.

Critical pedagogy
In discussions about pedagogy the term “critical pedagogy” is common in the literature. Critical pedagogy focuses on the issue of power in teaching and learning. It asks questions about in whose interests knowledge is prescribed and passed on. It views the aim of education as setting students free to question, challenge and change society.

Critical pedagogy attempts to:
1. create new forms of knowledge by emphasising the breaking down of disciplines and creating interdisciplinary knowledge
2. provide a way of reading history to reclaim power and identity, particularly around the categories of race, gender, class, and ethnicity
3. make curriculum knowledge responsive to the everyday knowledge that constitutes peoples’ lives
4. illuminate the ethical in defining cultural practices and the language that teachers and others use.

The application of critical pedagogy can be seen in a number of ways in the current curriculum changes. Syllabuses in the HSIE learning area provide opportunities for the use of this pedagogy. The move to greater emphasis on historiography in our history courses, the thrust of society and culture and Aboriginal studies and the selection of core topics in history, legal studies and geography embrace critical pedagogy. Economics and business studies provide significant but
fewer opportunities.

HSC subjects reflect the desire to engage critical pedagogy in the classroom. The encouragement is
there for teachers, and the opportunities need to be taken up. Much has been written and said about the education of students in minority groups and socioeconomically disadvantaged areas. The syllabuses, by embracing critical pedagogy, provide teachers with the opportunities to engage these students in a pedagogy that will change their understanding of their world and free them to change their lives.

While a range of factors will affect how students learn and what they achieve, the teacher is arguably the most important factor in student learning. Teachers’ expectations, their enthusiasm for their subject and the pedagogy they develop in their classrooms are three of the key factors of success in terms of student learning outcomes and in the fulfilment of the general aims of education. If 2001 places a focus on pedagogy, then there is much to challenge each one of us.

John Gore
CEO, HSIE