2 Perspectives in pedagogy

The paper discusses the dominant place of expository verbal teaching in most teaching institutions, and argues that it is deleterious to pupil learning. It goes on to propose that greater attention to pedagogy is essential to break out of current transmission modes of teaching. In particular, it is crucial to develop teaching for conceptual learning and for problem solving, and it is suggested that there is information from learning psychology that can be fruitfully related to practical teaching to achieve these developments. However, it is not suggested that teachers merely applylearning theory, but that they explore its relevance and mode of application to real teaching situations. In teacher education there is a serious problem of lack of pedagogical understanding in supervisory staff of student teachers. This is a vital deficiency that will need to be repaired before advances in teacher preparation can be realistically expected.