Academic teaching

04.10.2022
Pedagogy, teachers and students.
Becoming an academic teacher
 Topics for the course
1. Pedagogy, teachers and students. Becoming
an academic teacher
2. Lecture vs. seminar – two types of a teaching
organization
3. Designing teaching processes. Creative
teaching methods
4. Learning and teaching
5. Educational assessment
 Pedagogy, teachers and students. Becoming an academic teacher

• Pedagogy, foundations of education and theory of

teaching. Theory of teaching and its contribution to
educational reserach
• Pedagogical traditions and tendencies and their impact
on tertiary education
• Teacher and her role
• School and university education
• Different perspectives on education: teaching, learning
and care.
• Is there the perfect method of teaching?
Pedagogy and foundations of education
• Pedagogy and its domian and subdisciplines: the
scientific character of the field
• Three pedagogical theories:
Erziehungswissenschaft, Philosophie der
Erziehung, Praktische Pädagogik (Gudjons, 2003,
p. 35)
• The foundations of pedagogy: psychology,
sociology, philosophy
• Foundations and foundationalism
 The aims or the objectives
• ‘long-term aims’ versus ‘immediate objectives’
• „The general aim of education which a teacher
holds must logically relate in some way to his
immediate objectives. The establishement of only
a general aim of education would make for
difficulties in trying to evaluate the achievement of
particular tasks selected in the process of teaching
and lay the teacher open to the risk of vagueness
and lack of direction.” (Higginbotham, 1976, p. 43)
 The aims or the objectives
• „…a general aim does not directly dictate
particular objectives, it can and perhaps ought
to act as a standard against which the value of
all planned activities can be judged. In this
way a generalised aim gives a direction and
coherence to the pupil’s total educational
experience.” (p. 43)
 Possible senses of teaching

• Performative character of teaching

• Effective/ineffective teaching and the main goals
of teaching
• Instrumental/technicist conception of teaching
• Technocratic view of teaching expertise and the
competence model of professional preparation
• Teaching as skill-acqusition
 The aims or the objectives

• Teachers make decisions in both areas, that is

they decide about aims as well as about
objectives.
• Is it possible to leave the aims and just focus
on objectives?
 Teacher and her role
• Authority, personality and character
• Charisma
• Teaching as virtue (Techne versus phronesis)
• Teaching as a moral practice
• Teaching as an occupation/a profession
• Teaching as a vocation
• The enigmatic character of the occupation
 Styles of teaching and learning
• Styles versus methods
• „Style is not to be identified with method, for
people will infuse different methods with
their own styles. For example, lecturing is not
a style, In our conception, for people with
distinctive styles will infuse their respective
lectures with their own unique qualities.”
(Fisher and Fisher, 1979, p. 245)
 Teaching as a style
• „The idea of teaching style is quite different from the method of
instruction used by a teacher. It refers to a classroom mode, a pervasive
way of approaching the learners that might be consistent with several
methods of teaching. Two teachers may both use lectures, small group
discussions, and audiovisual and still differ identifiably from each other.”
(Fisher and Fisher, 1979, p. 251)
Styles of teaching:
•  The Task-Oriented
•  The Cooperative Planner
•  The Student Centered
•  The Subject Centered
•  The Learning Centered
•  The Emotionally Exciting and Its Counterpart
 The style of learning
Individual reading:
• Barbara Bree Fischer and Louis Fischer, Styles
in Teaching and Learning, „Educational
Leadership”, 1979, January 1979, No 4, Vol.
36:
http://www.ascd.org/ASCD/pdf/journals/ed_l
ead/el_197901_fischer.pdf#page=6&zoom=au
to,0,7
Integrity of teaching and learning styles
 Is there the perfect method of teaching?

• Methods of teaching and the integrity of

teaching and learning styles
• Why do we think in terms of a perfect
method?
• Practice and the idea of the perfect method
• Is it possible to teach without methods?
 Literature for further reading
• Carr D. , Making Sense of Education. An introduction
to the philosophy and theory of education and
teaching, RoutledgeFalmer, London and New York
2003.
• Ellsworth E. , Teaching Positions. Difference,
Pedagogy, and the Power of Address, Teachers
College, Columbia University, New York and London
1997.
•  D. Muijs , D. Reynolds, Effective Teaching. Evidence
and Practice, Sage Publications, London 2011.