Edgar Stones

Quality Teaching : A Sample of Cases

1. Learning of Quality 2. Aiming for Quality 3. Analyses of Quality 1: Cognitive Analysis 4. Analyses of Quality 2: Pedagogical Analysis 5. Concepts of Quality 6. Skills of Quality 7. Solution of Quality 8. Assessment of Quality 1: Problems of Testing 9. Assessment of Quality 2: A Sample of Studies 10. Cultivating Quality.

2 Perspectives in pedagogy

The paper discusses the dominant place of expository verbal teaching in most teaching institutions, and argues that it is deleterious to pupil learning. It goes on to propose that greater attention to pedagogy is essential to break out of current transmission modes of teaching. In particular, it is crucial to develop teaching for conceptual learning and for problem solving, and it is suggested that there is information from learning psychology that can be fruitfully related to practical teaching to achieve these developments. However, it is not suggested that teachers merely applylearning theory, but that they explore its relevance and mode of application to real teaching situations. In teacher education there is a serious problem of lack of pedagogical understanding in supervisory staff of student teachers. This is a vital deficiency that will need to be repaired before advances in teacher preparation can be realistically expected.

Towards a Systemic Approach to Research in Teaching: the place of investigative pedagogy

In a comment to the Conference of the National Foundation for Educational Research in October 1982, the Minister of Education remarked that educational research on classroom teaching is patchy and urged researchers to make good use of their findings by helping teachers employ them in the classroom (TES, 1982). This was followed by the White Paper Teaching Quality (HMSO, 1983) and about a year later by advertisements for research in teacher education by the ESRC. I suggest that the White Paper and the ESRC guidelines are recipes for exactly the kind of research that the Minister was bemoaning. The message that is coming from the Department of Education and Science and associated bodies is that research on teaching and teacher education will be subject or age group specific. There will also be a strong emphasis on selection and on assessment of teaching competence. Taken with the fact that over 50% of all government educational research funding is for work on testing and examinations, one gets a flavour of type of problems being addressed (Nisbet & Nisbet, 1985). There is no mention of work related to the improvement of teaching. There is no evidence of any thought that there might be generic teaching skills, that is, skills that are common to all learning situations. Insofar as it is possible to detect any conception of pedagogy, it seems to adhere to the traditional apprenticeship view, a view that is supported by the heavy emphasis on the virtues of practical experience. The confused nature of these views is apparent when one considers their implications. If teaching skills are subject specific, what, or who is the arbiter of the level of specificity to which they relate? And if they are specific, is there an implication that pedagogy is a fragmented and incohate study with no hope of general utility? 167

Teacher education and pedagogy

This paper discusses the neglect of the study of pedagogy in teacher education. Transmission modes of imparting theory are criticized as is the undue elevation of atheoretical practical teaching in the preparation of teachers. The study of pedagogy as a central focus for teacher education is proposed with an emphasis on the practical application of theoretical notions in general teaching skills. The effective application of these skills to practice is suggested as the crucial element in the study of pedagogy. Attention is drawn to the need for pedagogical theory for various academic subjects, and for the need for systematic training of supervisors of practical teaching. Examples of the approach discussed are referred to.

Teacher Education in Britain: a JET symposium with politicians

ABSTRACT This paper reports on a symposium with the participation of the editor and deputy editor of the Journal of Education for Teaching and two senior British politicians on the current situation of teacher education in Britain. Topics discussed include: control and accountability, the influence of political and bureaucratic forces, the threat from unelected, non‐responsible bodies, threats to institutions, to the links of teacher education with higher education and the threat of the deskilling of the teaching professions. A concluding section considers the possibility that the policy of the Government is failing through its own structural defects and the possibility of the professions subsequent recovery.

implications for course design of failure and retrieval rates in initial teacher education

Summary This paper reports the findings of an investigation into student teacher failure in final teaching practice in training institutions in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland. Very few students who complete a course of training actually fail. Reasons for this finding are discussed. A reappraisal of the approach to the final assessment of teaching practice is suggested involving the discontinuance of the pass/fail dichotomy and its replacement by ipsative formative profiling. The implications of the findings for the assessment of student teachers and for the design of teacher education courses are considered.

THE COLOUR OF CONCEPTUAL LEARNING

In this chapter I should like to discuss some aspects of psychology and education that have interested me for a number of years but which have recently attracted particular attention through the work of Jensen. I refer to questions concerned with children’s learning and the problem of improving this learning in school. This pedagogical orientation is, of course, different from Jensen’s main preoccupation which seems to be with ethnic differences in learning ability or intelligence. However, he has suggested pedagogical procedures on the basis of his work and it is this aspect of his work that I wish to focus on.

JET : Directions for the future

From the early days of the Journal of Education for Teaching the editors have organised international colloquia at which leading teacher educators have discussed key issues concerning teacher education. Colloquists have been predominantly but not exclusively Anglophone. The aim of the meetings was to consider matters of common interest that might be helpful to teacher educators in all systems of teacher education.

The Development of the British Educational Research Association

*Previously published in Shipman, M. (1985) Educational Research: principles, policies and practice (Falmer).

What Should They Know of England Who Only England Know

(2001). What Should They Know of England Who Only England Know? Journal of Education for Teaching: Vol. 27, No. 2, pp. 133-134.