Abstract:
Teachers are the significant actors influencing students' learning in schools. Primarily teachers enact this influence through their pedagogy. And pedagogy is particularly important for those so-called ‘disadvantaged' students from lower socio-economic status communities. As such, pedagogy has been a focus for critical educational research and several attempts have been made to codify pedagogy in theories and frameworks. Such frameworks often marginalise the teacher's role and propose overly abstract notions of pedagogy that are not practitioner friendly. Responding to that challenge, the focus of this paper is to re-centre the role of the teacher in debates about pedagogy by investigating the practices of one teacher whose pedagogy has been recognised by his peers to be ‘making a difference' for his students.
This critical case study utilised ethnographical methods, in particular, interviews, based on Burgess' notions of the ‘purposeful conversation'. As well, classroom practices were examined via observation and time-lapse photography. Borrowing from visual-ethnography photographs were used to elicit responses from the participants and observations were also drawn on in a second round of ‘purposeful conversations'.
This paper presents a narrative portrait of one teacher's stories which provide insights into his progression from beginning teacher to accomplished pedagogue. His understandings of what actually constitutes pedagogy are explained. We argue that his views of pedagogy enable him to capture some of the intricacies of teachers' work. In particular, his views of curriculum and the role of passion as an affective force within the classroom are explored. The importance of relationships, relevance and rigour are conceptualised as key themes for theorising ‘pedagogies of connection'.