Pedagogy Content and its Form

Abstract:

Educators, researchers, and policy makers have advocated student involvement for some time as
an essential aspect of meaningful learning. In the past twenty years engineering educators have
implemented several means of better engaging their classroom students, including active and
cooperative learning, learning communities, service learning, cooperative education, inquiry and
problem-based learning, and team projects.
In recent years interest has grown in pedagogy within English-language discussions of education.
The impetus has come from different directions. A common way of approaching pedagogy is as
the art and science (and maybe even craft) of teaching. As we will see, viewing pedagogy in this
way both fails to honor the historical experience, and to connect crucial areas of theory and
practice. Here we suggest that a good way of exploring pedagogy is as the process of
accompanying learners; caring for and about them; and bringing learning into life. This paper is
concerned mainly with the practical operationalization of learner autonomy and its implementation in the
classroom.

Introduction
What is Pedagogy?
Pedagogy is the science and art of education, specifically instructional theory. An instructor
develops conceptual knowledge and manages the content of learning activities in pedagogical
settings. These theorists have laid a foundation for pedagogy where sequential development of
individual mental processes, such as recognize, recall, analyze, reflect, apply, create, understand,
and evaluate, are scaffold. Students learn as they internalize the procedures, organization, and
structures encountered in social contexts as their own schema. The learner requires assistance to
integrate prior knowledge with new knowledge. Children must also develop metacognition, or the
ability to learn how to learn.
The key difference between learner-centered and traditional curriculum development is that, in
the former, the curriculum is a collaborative effort between teachers and learners, since learners
are closely involved in the decision-making process regarding the content of the curriculum and
how it is taught.

Characteristics of Successful Pedagogy:

Structured lessons
Clear presentations
Appropriate pacing
Modelling skills
Conceptual mapping
Interactive questioning

 Individual/group practice
Assessment and diagnosis
Matching learning tasks to student attributes
Content of Pedagogy:
Education includes the nurture of the child and, as it grows, its culture. The latter is firstly
negative, consisting of discipline; that is, merely the correcting of faults. Secondly, culture is
positive, consisting of instruction and guidance (and thus forming part of education). Guidance
means directing the pupil in putting into practice what he has been taught. Hence the difference
between a private teacher who merely instructs, and a tutor or governor who guides and directs
his pupil. The one trains for school only, the other for life.
Following are content of successful pedagogy
Content of Pedagogy

INVOLVES

APPROAC

Specific courses or short courses where the focus is on

developing skills for independent learning and raising
students awareness of the importance of learning
outside the classroom.
Such courses usually include strategy instruction and
often also include general study skills, rather than
language learning skills on

H Learner training

Strategy instruction

Self-access

Language advising
or language counselling

Specific tools

Often offered as part of regular classroom teaching,

and sometimes offered as specific classes or short
courses on language learning strategies.
Often considered the most common way of implementing
autonomy: the provision of a self-access center or
on-line self-access materials usually involves making
available resources for independent learning and staff
support.
Sometimes self-access learning is integrated into
the classroom, with the teacher working with students
in the center, and sometimes self-access is used outside
classroom time, for remedial or practice purposes, either
with a teacher or independently.
A type of language support whereby a teacher and a
learner meet to discuss the learners needs and
progress, and where the adviser offers feedback,
recommends materials, and helps the learner to plan
their learning.
Many institutions have developed or link to(on-line or
print) tools for the management of the language learning
process that often aim explicitly to foster learner
autonomy. Examples include (electronic) portfolios, such
as those developed by the European Union, tandem
learning programs and personal learning environments that aim to
facilitate and create links between formal and informal learning.
Some have developed on-line learning environments that offer
materials for self-study, tips for independent learning, and
opportunities for staff and student communication.

Identifying needs for applying Pedagogy in the classroom

In many classrooms, learners are simply given scores that indicate their general levels, but not
always individualized profiles of their strengths and weaknesses, including their learning needs.
More importantly, learners individual needs often do not directly inform classroom practice and
learners may be forgiven for wondering what the relation is between their learning and the
teachers teaching. It is surprising how often learners have no clear idea of their language needs,
and the discrepancies that exist between what learners think they need and where their actual
weaknesses lie. Equally worryingly, many learners have little idea of their learning needs In other
words: they have little knowledge of their strengths and weaknesses as language learners. They
may know,
For example, that they need to improve their writing skills, but may not know that they are poor at
learning with and from others, which is a learning skill, and one that will affect their success in
writing.

Development of learner autonomy:

Autonomy is the ability to take charge of one's own learning. Learning Autonomy is essentially a matter
of the learner's psychological relation to the process and content of learning. Autonomy is a situation in
which the learner is totally responsible for all the decisions concerned with his [or her] learning and the
implementation of those decisions. Autonomy is a recognition of the rights of learners within educational
systems'.
Setting goals

Identifying learning needs

Assessment and Revision

Planning learning

Reflection
Motivation
Interaction
Monitoring Progress

Practice

Selecting resource

Selecting strategies

Stages in the development of learner autonomy

Learning Stages

Teacher Directed

Learn Directed

Identifying needs

Placement tests, Teacher

Feedback

Learner experiences difficulties

in using the language.

Setting goals

Determined by the course,

relatively fixed
Determined by the teacher.
Somewhat flexible.

Contextually determined,
relatively flexible
Contextually determined. Very
flexible.

Selecting resources
Selecting learning
strategies

Provided by teacher
Teacher models and
instructions.

Self-selection by learners
Self-selection by learners

Practice

Exercises and activities

provided by teacher

Implementation (language use)

and experimentation

Planning learning

Regular classroom feedback

and comments on assignments
and tasks
Tests, curriculum changes
Assessment and revision
EARNING STAGES TEACHER-DIRECTED LEARNER-DIRECTED
Monitoring progress

Self-monitoring, peer feedback

Self-assessment, reflection

Scenario of current Teacher Education with same curriculum:

When India attained freedom, the then existing educational system was accepted as such
because it was thought that an abrupt departure from the same would be disturbing and
destabilizing. Thus a predisposition to retain the system acquired preponderance and all
that was envisaged by way of changes was its rearrangement. Consequently, education
including teacher education largely remained isolated from the needs and aspirations of
the people. During the last five decades certain efforts have been made to indigenize the
system. The gaps, however, are still wide and visible. The need for improved levels of
educational participation for overall progress is well recognized. The key role of
educational institutions in realising it is reflected in a variety of initiatives taken to
transform the nature and function of education -- both formal as well as non-formal.
Universal accessibility to quality education is considered essential for development. This
has necessitated improvement in the system of teacher education so as to prepare quality
teachers.
Good School with Superior working :
Teacher education is an integral component of the educational system. It is intimately
connected with society and is conditioned by the ethos, culture and character of a nation.
The constitutional goals, the directive principles of the state policy, the socio-economic
problems and the growth of knowledge, the emerging expectations and the changes
operating in education, etc. call for an appropriate response from a futuristic education

system and provide the perspective within which teacher education programmes need to
be viewed

Perhaps the strongest conclusion that can be made is the least surprising. Simply
put, the greater the students involvement or engagement in academic work or in the
academic experience of college, the greater his or her level of knowledge acquisition
and general cognitive development If the level of involvement were totally
determined by individual student motivation, interest, and ability, the above
conclusion would be uninteresting as well as unsurprising. However, a substantial
amount of evidence indicates that there are instructional and programmatic
interventions that not only increase a students active engagement in learning and
academic work but also enhance knowledge acquisition and some dimensions of
both cognitive and psychosocial change
How to apply pedagogical framework in Classroom
Various Commissions and Committees appointed by the Central and the State Governments in
recent decades have invariably emphasised the need for quality teacher education suited to the
needs of the educational system. The Secondary Education Commission (1953) observed that a
major factor responsible for the educational reconstruction at the secondary stage is teachers'
professional training. The Education Commission (1964-66) stressed that 'in a world based on
science and technology it is education that determines the level of prosperity, welfare and
security of the people' and that 'a sound programme of professional education of teachers is
essential for the qualitative improvement of education.'

Following are ways to which we can apply in the classroom:

Excellent organizational skills teachers make sure all children understand
the learning objectives and associated concepts and have extremely well
organized resources and smooth classroom routines.
Positive classroom climate adults and children in the class like and
respect one another. Classrooms are happy places, children are less
disruptive and behavior management is sensitive (no-one is humiliated).
Personalized teaching - teachers are sensitive to the individual needs of
children and provide resources to match those needs. The teachers are more
likely to link learning in the classroom with the world outside the classroom
door and to provide homework that links directly to lesson content. Dialogic
teaching and learning this harnesses the power of talk to extend and
stimulate student thinking to advance their learning and understanding. It
provides opportunities for higher order thinking.
Plenaries teachers in the best schools are twice as likely as teachers in
poor schools to use a plenary and they use it to recap on the lesson, provide

feedback, challenge thinking and provide opportunities for further

discussion.
CONCLUSION:

In highly-resourced school settings, where teachers have continual access to

high quality equipment at school and at home, and are able to make frequent
use of it in their teaching, the potential of these features is being incorporated
into their pedagogical reasoning. Studies of typical teachers in such settings
have provided evidence that most characteristics of effective teaching, clear
presentations, appropriate pacing, modelling of skills, interactive questioning,
smooth flow of activity, efficient resource management, assessment/
diagnosis/feedback and matching learning tasks to student attributes.

Bibliography:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedagogy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experiential_education
http://www.ce.umn.edu/~smith/docs/Smith-Pedagogies_of_Engagement.pdf
http://ro.ecu.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1454&context=ajte
http://education.qld.gov.au/curriculum/pdfs/pedagogical-framework-faqs.pdf
http://infed.org/mobi/what-is-pedagogy/#pedagogues
http://www.ncte-india.org/pub/curr/curr.htm#21
http://www.oecd.org/education/school/31672150.pdf