Comparative Pedagogy: Making Sense of Cultural Complexity

Abstract

One challenge for comparative research is providing a convincing and comprehensive account of how social and political value positions translate into situated acts of teaching; or bringing values and practice together to allow teaching embedded in one context to be compared with teaching embedded in another so as to better inform educationalists and policy makers. This can be done through a focus on and comparison of pedagogy. Following a theorisation of pedagogy, this article discusses methodological approaches which allow researchers to identify patterns in complex social practice in order to make comparisons across contexts. Such approaches allow implications to be drawn with some confidence without losing the richness and messiness of real life. The approaches suggested attempt to be relatively straightforward to avoid hindering comparison by adding further to an already contextually complex picture. Comparing Pedagogy Comparing Teachers and Teaching Increasingly, education policy making in many countries is underpinned by a shared assumption (Adams, 2008); teaching is treated as if it is in a linear and causal relation with student performance, and good teaching is often reduced to 'what works' in improving student test scores (for example, in Denmark [Ministeriet for Børn og Undervisning, 2010]; in England [DfES, 2003, 2005]; in Germany [Döbert et al, 2004]). One consequence of this view has been that for several years national governments have looked to countries deemed more successful than theirs to identify promising teaching approaches which they have then torn from their discursive contexts. But international surveys of student achievement (such as Robitaille & Taylor, 1997; OECD, 2007), and research which makes simple comparisons between countries on the basis of these comparisons in order to 'borrow' effective policy (

From Ideas to Action: Transforming Learning to Inspire Action on Critical Global Issues

“…There is difficulty in finding pedagogical approaches that fully respect this complexity, but some information can be used from work in international development and cultural values. Firstly, international development work has shown that it is inappropriate to import curriculum from one context, including "model countries, " without respecting local contexts (Kelly 2013). Secondly, it is important to note the variety of value orientations when designing learning materials so that they can allow for flexibility of approach.…”

What does the research evidence base tell us about the use and impact of sustainability pedagogies in initial teacher education?

“…In reality there are no formal mechanisms for locking specific pedagogical methods to any one particular orientation. Teaching does not ascribe to a linear and causal relation and categorising pedagogy, in itself, is not necessarily useful as it ignores the complexity of teaching and learning and limits capacity to further develop pedagogical understanding (Kelly 2013). We take the position that there are many different (existing and novel) approaches to teaching and learning and effective teachers draw from a broad range of pedagogies as the situation demands (Killen 2015).…”

Translating, transmitting and transforming Waldorf curricula: one hundred years after the first published curriculum in 1925

“…The ideal type provides the researcher with a model that can be used as a heuristic to judge the extent to which an actual phenomenon relates to the theoretical model (Kelly, 2013;Serpa, 2018). We do not know if Steiner was aware of Weber's construct, though they both shared a wish to establish the Geisteswissenschaften or humanities complementary to the positivist natural sciences, in order enable the scientific study of human beings and human society.…”