Pedagogy and teacher identity - tying it all together while the chimp and the owl have tea

Week 4 Blog – Pedagogy and teacher identity – tying it all together while the chimp and the owl have tea

My inquiry process to date has included identifying my beliefs, values and attitudes about students and teachers, developing an inquiry question and defining component parts of the question. Through this experience, I have enjoyed the discovery of definitions, the feedback from colleagues and instructors and opportunity to reflect on my own thinking, perhaps even critically, thinking about my thinking. For this week four blog, I will try to tie some of these ideas together.

I thought I would start with Michael’s suggestion of reading Max van Manen. This was a familiar name to me so I was excited to print off this article and read it. As is usually the case, I found myself browsing the reference list and before I knew it, I had another four articles of interest to browse. Fenstermacher’s response to van Manen, van Manen’s reponse to Fenstermacher and two other post-modern and poststructural writings, for another time.

Max van Manen (thanks Michael) argued that pedagogy is about the interactions between student and teacher and that they are always relational (social work is about relationships). Additionally, he noted that these pedagogical relations demonstrate lasting pedagogical consequences. I have a number of personal examples I can share about pedagogical consequences and have chosen one to demonstrate this idea. Calculus in grade 13 was a challenging subject for me and our teacher demonstrated tremendous passion for the subject and for student success.  He worked tirelessly making himself available during lunch hours and before and after school for any and all students to come for additional help. He was at time mocked by students for grading papers while he attended varsity sports events. He celebrated with childlike enthusiasm when students successfully completed a question on the board, the dreaded place to have to go to show your work to the entire group. It made us all smile and laugh as he demonstrated theatrics by way of waving his arms, enthusiastically nodding his head, jumping up and down, and verbally praising success.  He was equally clear about student’s need for assistance when they were not successful and directly reminded us all of his extra tutoring/instruction time. It was not his instruction that was the pedagogical consequence. It was the manner in which he related to each and every student in the class. He wanted everyone to be successful and the manner in which he related to each student while reviewing their work, was evidence of his commitment and integration of his values, beliefs and attitudes. His message was clear; you can do this and I believe in you! The pedagogical consequence for me was that it opened up my mind to possibilities. I could believe that calculus was possible for success and it helped me to re-exam my beliefs about myself and the potentials that I held. Van Manen suggested that “we abide by the principle of hope, possibility, and the as if…as if they were real possibilities; then possibilities do become realities” (van Manen, 1994, p. 148).

My chimp and owl are relational. The teacher as curious learner and the student as wise teacher relate with one another in the development of knowledge. It is not just the delivery of knowledge from the teacher to the student that counts. The importance lies in the understanding that the pedagogical relation a student holds significant beyond the intended purpose of the experience (van Manen, 1994), meaning, learners take that life experience and connect it to another life experience. It is these connections that lead us to the next part of this blog, the inquiry question.

The inquiry question was ‘why would it be important for social work students to experience inquiry to become critical thinkers?’.  I see as important, the connections of the terms. How does the personal paradigm of the learner (me) fit with the research question, the way in which I defined the terms, the relevance of the definitions and the connections between the terms themselves.  Mulder (2010) identifies inquiry as a process of connections and relationships between variables. As a suggestion, the inquiry process can use the model of progression that lead to students building and testing hypothesis. Participating in these activities facilitate the student’s ability to think critically and at the same time students who can think critically are successful at inquiry activities (Mulder, 2010).  There is a connection and relational aspect to these two concepts, just as pedagogy reveals the interactions between students and teachers as relational.

Critical thinking is conceptualized as not only engaging in purposeful, self-regulatory judgement (Abrami et al, 2008) but also as connecting to the social, political and ethical challenges in everyday life. This definition expands critical thinking to incorporate connections outside of the self (thanks Jules!) These ideas of inquiry, knowledge of the relations between the variables, and critical thinking, the purposeful judgement and evaluation outside of the self, can tie in nicely with pedagogy and pedagogical relations in that the pedagogical relations can foster both the inquiry process and critical thinking skills.  Interestingly, Giesecke suggests that “it is virtually impossible for the teacher to maintain pedagogical relations with every one of the students he or she teaches” (van Manen, 1994). Based on my experiences in life, I would have to disagree. I think if , as was suggested by Giesecke, professional educators struggle from an understanding of their professional identity as a teacher, it may have more to do with inattention to their knowledge, values, attitudes and world view as it relates to teaching and learning, then it does to their ability to engage in activities defined as pedagogical relations.  In other words, I would support the position that it is possible.

In terms of the relevance of the literature, I would say the Mulder et al (2010) article is relevant to my research question in that there are connections between inquiry and critical thinking as it does appear important for the development of critical thinking skills to engage in a process of hypothesis testing found within inquiry and that the use of inquiry also develops critical thinking skills.

Van Manen’s conception of pedagogy relation fits well with my understanding of the constructivist paradigm and the construction of social relations. After successfully arguing in favour of pedagogical relations as a critical aspect of teaching, the author then presents an alternative view that questioned the necessity of pedagogical relation in contemporary family arrangements. Given my bend to toward relations being socially constructed, this second argument appears irrelevant. Whatever the societal values of families, whether contemporary or from another era, relations would be constructed based on the values of the time and the language used to construct those relations (Payne, 2005).

Having considered my work until this point, I am settled on the inquiry question and believe it is important for social work students to experience inquiry to become critical thinkers. Moving forward, I would now want to consider the potential methods involved for teaching inquiry in social work education, starting with epistemology, or ‘this I believe’ to begin to construct my ideas about how to answer this next area of inquiry.

Abrami, P., Bernard, R., Borokovski, E., wade, A., Surkes, M., Taman, R., & Zhang, d. (2008). Instructional interventions affecting critical thinking skills and dispositions: A stage 1 meta-analysis. Review of Educational Research, 78(4), 1102-1134.

Mulder, Y., Lazonder, A. & Jong, T. (2010). Finding out how they find it out. An empirical analysis of inquiry learners’ need for support. International Journal of Science Education, 31(15), 2033-2053.

Payne, M. (2005). Modern Social Work Theory. Third Edition. Palgrave Macmillan. UK.

Van Manen, M. (1994). Pedagogy, Virtue, and Narative Identity in Teaching. Curriculum Inquiry, 24(2), 135-170.