Pedagogy - ARGH!
Post Archive (15-Dec-2008)
I began the journey towards my PhD (Education, Training and Performance Improvement) for two reasons. One, I am a passionate believer in the transformative power of education regardless of its incarnation, as education, training, learning, or any other related word. Two, I am a passionate believer that most corporate/commercial educators (aka trainers and instructors) and the writers of corporate training materials (aka curriculum or course developers) are simply not prepared to do the job. And since their managers generally rise up through the ranks, the management of said functions or organizations is equally unprepared. I want to change that.
In my own learning, I came across the term pedagogy (aka the science of teaching), and it was perplexing at first. After all, if it is a science, there has to be significant hoard of research that outlines the proven best techniques. It is simply a matter of learning from that research, and then spreading that knowledge out into the training world. WHEEW! This is going to be easy.
But, alas, one will quickly come to the conclusion that pedagogy is not a science. I thought I was alone in this thought. Then, Donald Clark in his Plan B blog wrote this excellent piece on pedagogy. Donald says everything that I think needs to be said. Read it. I’ll only add this to the discussion. After you read this point, send it to everyone you know with an interest in this professional. Post it on every blog you write. Save it as a link of importance on websites and wikis. Spread this far and wide. I think this has the possibility of being a classic.