A thought experiment:
Scenario 1:
Two pedagogy-passionate colleagues (of the same subject) are being observed by a non-specialist. The observer sees all the hallmarks of modern teaching: great explanations considering cognitive load, great use of mini white boards for checking for understanding, and great responsive teaching. The observer appears happy that both teachers are doing the same great teaching and that the students are heading in the same direction.
Same content, same pedagogy, same direction.
Scenario 2:
Yet, a specialist with deep subject knowledge then repeats the process, and while they also observe the same good pedagogy, they note differences in the process of meaning making of the subject content. The difference was due to the teacher's differing philosophical stances on their subjects, and so, the learning outcomes are different. The teachers use their pedagogical strategies to bias the meaning making of the students.
Same content, same pedagogy, but different outcomes.
As I have said in this blog post:
'Curriculum design is not about the layering of content, but about enabling students to find meaning in the content they learn. It’s about developing a way of seeing. It’s about developing mental models, cognitive organisation, and patterns of thinking that are not lost when the content fades with time.'
It is precisely these things that are affected most by the philosophy of the teacher. The two teachers above may both have great questioning techniques and fantastic responsive pedagogy, but the questions they ask, and the responses they make, will depend entirely on their own 'way of seeing' their subject. They will bias student meaning making accordingly.
The trouble is that this deep understanding is not captured by the typical short-answer questions used in assessment and often goes unnoticed (and possibly undesired). Nevertheless, an interview with a student, in which they are encouraged to explain what they felt some subject content means, is likely to provide clues.
An example from biology
In biology we can find competing 'ways of seeing' (a philosophical stance on) organisms.
One is related closely to Richard Dawkins, which sees organisms as simply 'vehicles' for the all-controlling and all-important genome. This genome determines how the organism 'is' and 'behaves' in the interests of the genome, which is simply to make copies of 'itself'.
Another way of seeing is that organisms are dynamic systems that use the genome as a 'resource', like a 'bank of memory tokens' of successful system strategies, so that it can confront different contexts and make decisions about what to do in their best interests for surviving and reproducing. Here the whole organism takes centre stage.
If you subscribe to the former then the genome, and what's happening at the level of molecules, is what takes explanatory importance. As a teacher, you would therefore use your good pedagogical techniques to nudge students towards making meaning of life in this manner, and vice versa. You can see my philosophical stance on this particular point here.
In another scenario however, and one that may be common, a teacher may teach content without providing a way of seeing at all, as if biology is just the learning of how things work in nature. An unfortunate stance of 'if you have all the facts, then you'll know it all'. In this case, meaning making is diminished, as the goal is simply to know about lots of mechanisms, for example, about how the immune system works, or how energy is transferred in a food chain.
What does it mean to understand in my subject?
If, in the mind of a biology teacher (T1), biology is simply about learning how things work in nature, then practice may be reduced to a matter of practice quizzes only, in which students name components and functions, and recount steps in processes. Student success in these activities would indicate understanding to that teacher.
Yet, if another biology teacher (T2) has a specific way of seeing that they want students to use for meaning making, then the practice activities they make will be made according to that way of seeing. Success for this teacher will be different from the one above.
During a lesson, T1 may prioritise class time ensuring students know the exact steps in a mechanism, such as protein synthesis, while T2 may prioritise class time ensuring students are making meaning of the metaphors used in this mechanism, such as 'information' (what does that mean?), or how genes may contribute to organismal phenotype.
If you think this may sound silly, and I should just get on with teaching the content, then it may be because you have yet to come across differing ways of seeing in your subject, and therefore have not discerned this dimension of thinking.
In the UK, science degrees are notorious for the lack of history and philosophy of science. Without philosophy, biology risks becoming just a lump of things to know, and it may be like that for our secondary students also if we are not careful.
While developing our pedagogical knowledge and skills as teachers is key, thinking about the philosophy of our subject cannot be separated from pedagogy, and thus should never be far away, or overlooked.
My books: Difference Maker | Biology Made Real, or my other posts.
Download the first chapters of each book for free here.
