By Max Van Manen
“Pedagogy is the ability of actively distinguishing what is “good” from what is not good, what is appropriate from what is less appropriate in interacting with children or young people.”
In general, when we think of the term ‘pedagogy’, we often relate it to various teaching strategies, methods, or techniques that influence learning. Often times, these strategies were meant to be learned from teacher education programs by teacher candidates, informed by evidence-based research. However, the definition of pedagogy, stated above, seems to be different from every day use of the term. As an ability, I think that this quote suggests that pedagogy is some form of gut-feeling.That is, it is a combination of intuition, logic, and emotion when making decisions on the fly in classroom situations. This is somewhat related to the following quote:
“Only aloof and “detached” teachers … may be able to adopt a more or less calculating or rationally deliberative relational approach to their minute to minute interactions with children.”
When interacting with children, the above quote seems to suggest that in the absence of either intuition, logic, or emotion, teachers become detached from the lived curriculum. This quote seems to me to be somewhat harsh on teachers. Sometimes it may be the case that teachers will appear to be deliberatively detached in order to gain better insight in a classroom situation. I think that a good teacher would seamlessly move between being semi detached to fully invested when needed. So “good teachers often have difficulty identifying why things work so well for them.”
If we assume that it is hard for good teachers to identify and share those ‘things’ that work out for them in the classrooms, then it may be the case that novice teacher candidates like me would have to experience these ‘things’ in the classrooms. Regardless, it is always nice to be informed about these ‘things’ through the lived experiences of teachers, whether good or bad.