Productive Pedagogies: seeking a common vocabulary and framework for talking about pedagogy with Pre-service teachers

Chapter 14. (pp 205-2115) In T. Townsend & R. Bates (Eds.), Globalization, Standards and Professionalism: Teacher Education in Times of Change: Kluwers.

The chapter first provides the background to the development of Productive Pedagogies and reviews the research focussing on Productive Pedagogies in the training of pre-service teachers. It outlines how the first year pre-service teachers were introduced to the concepts of the pedagogical language of Productive Pedagogies, while reflecting on the cultural capital of pre-service teachers and the implications of a critical language for pre-service teachers with which they might be equipped to read education, pedagogy and schooling. It concludes by analysing the students’
observations of teaching practice to ascertain if Productive Pedagogies’ language is not just useful in the development of pre-service teachers’ understanding of teaching, but whether this reconceptualisation of pedagogy can be efficaciously introduced to first year students as Gore et al. (2001) conclude is necessary.

Engaging Pedagogies and Pedagogues – Examining student engagement in action.

The phrases “engagement in school” and “school connectedness” are cited often in both lay and academic circles, as an essential component of dropout prevention programs for students at-risk . This research explores the notion that active and authentic engagement of all students, but in particular those most at-risk, can be achieved through enhancing the pedagogical practice of teachers. The issue of student (dis)engagement is addressed through a case study of small teams of teachers and their students in one secondary school, through a focus on their teaching practice and the students’ perception of that practice that goes beyond narrow ideas of students being on task and complying with teachers’ wishes. I ask (how) pedagogies that engage at-risk students can improve their educational outcomes for students. The argument of this research is that a connected or generative pedagogy, which has at its core students’ backgrounds and lived experiences, will improve student educational outcomes for all but in particular for those nominated as at-risk students.
Following reviews of the literature on school-based programs that seek to ameliorate student risk, or improve the connectedness and engagement of the educational outcomes for disadvantaged students, I analyse how these programs contribute to an understanding of good practice in addressing student disengagement from school. On the basis of their social justice orientation and understanding of the purpose(s) of school, I identify three sometimes overlapping and sometimes contesting standpoints in relation to pedagogy for students at-risk, student connectedness and engagement, which I have referred to as instrumentalist or rational technical, socio-constructivist or individualist and critical transformative or empowering.
In making these distinctions, I draw attention to the persistent and predictable structural inequalities that continue to advantage and disadvantage social groups. I develop the concept of a connected education through reference to the work of critical pedagogy and argue that calls for a more practical real life curriculum for at-risk students may be a masquerade that serves to further disempower marginalised youth and can create as many problems of disengagement and disconnectedness and student alienation as it seeks to solve. I critically reconceptualise student connectedness and reject the discourse that equates student engagement with academic achievement, concluding that not all forms of student engagement are equally worthwhile, asking how student engagement might be differently conceived in order to achieve the twin goals of social justice and academic achievement (Butler-Kisber & Portelli, 2003).
Using critical theory as the conceptual framework for this thesis, I acknowledge the social, political and economic positioning of myself as researcher. The post-colonial and critical gender discourses of bell hooks’ Engaged Pedagogy (hooks, 1994; 2003), together with the working class critique of Ira Shor’s Empowering Education (Shor, 1987; 1992; 1996) provide the tools for a Critical Discourse Analysis of the student and teacher narratives produced and the examination of the Beachside Secondary College’s (BSC) context, history, its population of teachers, students, the parents and the broader school community demography of The Sands through a range of data from a variety of sources in order to understand more clearly the background of the students and teachers who are part of the research at BSC. I also introduce the individual teachers who participated in the research with a summary of the teachers’ demographic data and a brief characterisation of their work, training, teaching and some self-reflections about each teacher extracted from interviews. I argue, that based on this evidence, the school and its population are typical of many lower socio-economic schools located in working class and disadvantaged neighbourhoods, but that this is not necessarily the viewpoint adopted by (all) the students or (all) their teachers. Using the three discourses of risk, connectedness and engagement, I explore how the term “student engagement” is variously constructed, used and understood by the Year 7 teachers at BSC and the students as they participate in these changes through pedagogical reciprocity. A (re)conception of student engagement - based on the critical-democratic practice of teachers - is contrasted with conservative instrumental and liberal social constructivist views of engagement, that in my view ‘simply reproduce the inequities of the status quo’ (McMahon & Portelli, 2004, 61).
In conclusion, I suggest that a CORE Pedagogy summarises the crucial elements of an empowering and counter-hegemonic pedagogy: Connecting to students’ backgrounds, Engaging recognitively with their differences, Responding to their real life needs and Empowering students to be active participants in their restructuring of their lives. Such pedagogy must also include the crucial element of action for social justice and social change. This is particularly important if teachers and schools are effectively and authentically to engage marginalised and at-risk students.