Defining Pedagogy

Pedagogy is a term widely used in educational writing but all too often its meaning is assumed to be self-evident. An examination of how the term is used and the implicit assumptions about teaching and education that underlie its use is a valuable way of understanding how the education process is perceived. Many of the strategies that have been developed to redress inequity in schooling have targeted classroom practice and teaching as an important site of change. For this reason, attention has been paid to pedagogy, its meaning and relationship to curriculum. Feminist research has revealed how particular relations are reflected and reproduced in schooling at a number of levels. At the ideological level, ideologies of ‘race’, ‘ethnicism’ and ‘gender’ act to socialize students for their future roles. At the structural and organizational level of institutions, both in their overt and covert practices, messages are relayed to students about the relative power positions of different groups and individuals; and about the subjects and aspects of those subjects which are deemed appropriate for them to study. These subject divisions typically reflect the occupational structures in societies and the sources and selection of knowledge represented in curriculum subjects. In different cultures at different points of time in history, the meaning and status of pedagogy have shifted. Simon (1981) describes the situation in Britain where the ‘dominant educational institutions ... have had no concern with theory, its relation to practice, with pedagogy’ (p. 11). The absence of critical accounts of pedagogy in Britain contrasts with other western and eastern European countries where pedagogy has a tradition of study. However, in spite of this tradition or because of it, the study of pedagogy is one of confusion, ambiguity and change (Best, 1988). In Best’s view, the status and meaning of pedagogy have changed in recent times and have been ‘devalued, deflected from its original meaning or even discredited’. The failure to examine pedagogy limits the potential for effecting change through education. Simon quotes Fletcher’s (1889) view that ‘without something like scientific discussion on educational subjects, without pedagogy, we shall never obtain a body of organised opinion on education.’ This viewpoint is echoed by Shulman (1987). He argues that to advance teacher reform it is essential to develop ‘codified representations of the practical pedagogical wisdom of able teachers’. For Shulman, one of the major problems 2