Pedagogy for Economic Competitiveness and Sustainable Development

Accelerating threats to a sustainable relationship between economic growth and the capacity of the global social-ecological system to support it require that the implications of competitiveness be reassessed. Today, the capacities that underlie economic competitiveness must also be brought to bear on policy and pedagogy to prepare the coming generation to face an unprecedented and dangerous global future. This article argues that the bureaucratic ‘industrial’, standards-driven model of schooling currently fails to release the talents of students either for the competitiveness or collaboration that will be crucial in facing the demands of the decades ahead. It argues for policies, schools and pedagogies that promote creativity and a human capacity for innovation, not the relentless pursuit of externally imposed measurable standards. The types of necessary learning experiences are explored and examples are provided of principles and practices that teachers and schools need to develop further. Education for economic competitiveness on one hand and education for sustainable development on the other both require similar open minds, creative skills and teaching methods to prepare students for the transformations and innovations ahead. In answering the question ‘what do competitiveness and sustainable development require from schools and teachers?’ we conclude that most elements of appropriate pedagogies are available but they need to be extended. Managing their extension on a large scale to transform complex education systems is a major challenge for policy-makers and educators at all levels.     

Is Understanding the Professional Knowledge of Teachers a Theory-Practice Problem?

The currently fashionable professional ideal of reflective practice has focused on how good teaching might be informed by theoretical (invariably social scientific) enquiry and has been commonly construed as a matter of the effective application of theory. This paper rejects technicist assumptions underpinning the idea of applied theory, tracing them to confusion between two different sorts of practical deliberation, phronesis and techne. Understanding professional reflection primarily in term of phronesis calls into doubt both the precise role of genuine theoretical studies in professional reflection and the very status as theoretical of the sort of the principled understanding and deliberation required for the wise conduct of education.     

‘What Could Be Better Than This?’ Conflicting Visions of the Good Life in Traditional Education

Traditional (especially religious) education draws on a received vision of the good life to guide its educational efforts. But rich traditions have multiple visions of the good life. Educators who aspire to openness as well as rootedness seek canonical stories that raise for discussion these multiple visions. Such discussions negotiate a relationship with outside, majority culture, but also foster rich internal discussion on the meaning of life. They allow for the growth of tradition in the light of changing reality, as well as its preservation. As an illustration, the paper considers an ancient Jewish religious tale as a means of 'pulling students up short' and thereby making actual and vivid within the curriculum issues concerning the good life and the nature of tolerance. The discussion raises questions concerning communitarianism, liberalism and religious education, as well as considering possibilities of autonomy in conditions of pluralism.     

A discipline apart: the challenges of ‘Fostering a Community of Learners’ in a mathematics classroom

This is the fifth in a series that examines the challenges that teachers in different domains face as they attempt to implement the pedagogical reform ‘Fostering a Community of Learners’ (FCL). Here we focus on the relationship between FCL and the teaching of mathematics. We argue that it is possible to teach mathematics through the FCL pedagogy, but that doing so requires some rethinking of both mathematics instruction and FCL. In particular, we describe three shifts that aided a teacher's implementation of FCL pedagogy with mathematics: the teacher developed a new perspective on mathematics that emphasized the importance of having students learn both mathematical concepts and processes; the teacher developed a new understanding of the role of the teacher in mathematics‐education reform; and the teacher modified his understanding of FCL, coming to believe that a discourse community could be the basis for FCL pedagogy in a mathematics classroom.