What Is “pe-də-ˌgō-jē” and Do Students Need It?
pe-də-ˌgō-jē
Pedagogy
- the art, science, or profession of teaching (1)
In all of my elementary, primary, and secondary education, I had been taught by trained and certified teachers.
Sometimes, I understood everything my teacher said.
Sometimes, I understood nothing my teacher said.
Take those last two sentences and replace teacher with textbook, homework, readings — any source of knowledge which students interacted with — and you’ll have sentiments expressed at some point by every student in the entire world.
The question becomes, how do we get from “nothing” to “everything” — or, more realistically, how do we get from “something that isn’t quite everything” to “everything”?
In the classroom, one can ask a teacher for clarification. Maybe stay after class is over to ask the teacher to go over something. Or just figure it out later.
And one can figure it out later by themselves or with the help of another student. There is obviously merit in individually persevering when attempting to understand a particular subject (1). This article, however, will examine the latter case. When we are stuck on a problem in our math homework and have tried “everything”, including our parents who swear that they’ve forgotten everything they learned in high school, we turn to our friends…
From my own experience and speaking to other students, I’ve learned this style of peer learning and teaching is common at all levels of primary and secondary education. From students doing homework together after school to having group chats through text and Facebook, it is clear that students help each other when schoolwork becomes unclear.
But when a student tutors a friend and assumes the role of a teacher, how is the student supposed to help? I’ve had many experiences in throughout my education like the following:
Sometimes, I’d begroan to myself:
I’d much rather have the conversation be something akin to:
Research (1) (2) has indicated that peer tutoring has a positive influence on academic success, and it is clear that disseminating basic best practices for pedagogy to students would increase the effectiveness of this peer tutoring.
So how should this information be disseminated?
Should teachers themselves teach these strategies (1)? Or should teachers just provide pedagogical training resources for students to consult (1)? Maybe the teachers should let the students learn by doing and have students develop lesson plans and teach an actual class (1) (2) (3)?
What do you think?
