Joanna Swann

How Science can Contribute to the Improvement of Educational Practice

The practices of students, teachers, educational policymakers and managers are laden with assumptions of fact and value. Clearly, assumptions of value influence the way in which individuals and groups construe the nature and purpose of education, but this should not blind us to the existence of assumptions of fact about how to promote learning and improve the conduct and organisation of teaching. Many of these assumptions of fact may be false or inadequate, and as such they may limit the success of our educational endeavours. Using the UKs national literacy strategy as its principal illustration, this paper shows how a Popperian approach to science can advance our knowledge of what is the case about learning, teaching, and the organisation and conduct of formal education, and how such a non-positivist science can contribute to the improvement of educational practice.

What Doesn't Happen in Teaching and Learning?

ABSTRACT This paper, drawing on the philosophy of Karl Popper, outlines the transmission theory of teaching, and argues that it reflects discredited ideas about learning and knowledge. The transmission theory is criticised in terms of its implied acceptance of theory‐free observation, learning by an inductive process, and secure knowledge. Poppers alternative theories of learning and the growth of knowledge are discussed, and some of their implications for educational practice are outlined. Readers who are in sympathy with the transmission theory are challenged to give an account of the processes involved, one not based on analogies between people and inanimate objects (as in the idea of ‘delivering’ a national curriculum).