LEADERSHIP BY EXAMPLE
PEDAGOGY
Being clear about pedagogy DR FIONA AUBREY-SMITH discusses the importance of understanding and considering pedagogy when making decisions in schools
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he term ‘pedagogy’ refers to how we think about supporting learning (Aubrey-Smith and Twining, 2023) therefore, it is healthy for us all to remember that all decisions made in school – which are designed to be places of learning – are, ultimately, pedagogical decisions because every decision will, directly or indirectly, influence the choices that can be made about supporting learning. Some of these are obvious – a feedback and marking policy, an approach to behaviour, lesson planning or how we organise boards and tables in our classrooms; these all directly influence relationships and interactions between teachers and students (Aubrey-Smith, 2020). However, many decisions contain implicit pedagogy which will affect learning – for example, the way our admin systems organise data will influence how we analyse and act upon it, how laptops are distributed or timetabled defines how we incorporate technology into classroom practice, the purchasing of exercise books influences when, where and how learning is recorded (Twining et al, 2017). Whatever role we have, we all implicitly act as pedagogical
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gatekeepers and so, at every point of decision-making, we should all be asking ourselves, ‘What aspects of pedagogy (supporting learning) is this decision encouraging, influencing or preventing?’ Furthermore, we ought to be ensuring that every single person in our schools who makes decisions has an awareness of what influences effective pedagogy. Importantly, this includes the wide range of professional support roles in schools and trusts – spanning administration, finance, IT, catering and estates. For example, decisions about grounds maintenance, lunchtime nutrition and wireless locations are just three of the ‘non-teaching’ decisions made that will absolutely impact learning. Importantly, new research from the Technology, Pedagogy and Education Association (TPEA) has found there to be significant variances within individual schools when defining effective pedagogy (Aubrey-Smith, 2022); this means that you can expect different colleagues within your school to have different views about what learning ‘should’ look like. For example, the TPEA study found that roughly 25% of staff aligned with a traditionalist view, roughly 60% aligned with a constructivist view, and roughly 15% aligned with a socio-cultural view.