Teaching: Art or Science?

Teachers love to debate this one! During a lively conversation in the TLN daily discussion group, Mary T. offered her take:

When I did my practicum, I was a recent English major graduate with only one education class under my belt. Thinking about getting my license, I returned to undergraduate school and took Early Childhood Development (a textbook I found exceedingly useful as I raised my own children but in the classroom the usefulness of that course escaped me), a student-teaching practicum, another American History course and — ta da! — I was a teacher.

Though my adviser told me I was a "born teacher," I shudder to think what kind of teacher I was in 1979. But now, after having read endless professional development books and absorbing best practices from my colleagues, I think the artistry that comes from any "born teacher" genes I may have is able to show itself because I have stuffed hundreds of methods in my brain to apply at a moment's notice.

The art, I think, comes in knowing what's missing in a child's understanding and reaching into a mental bag of tricks to help them out. Took years to gain all of that. That's what worries me about high turnover in teaching. Even our born teachers need years of experience to be confident practitioners — and the desire to continue to learn themselves.

Comments

[John Norton]

[John H, a painter and pre-school teacher, wrote:]

As an artist who never dreamed I would teach until I turned 23 (and I don't teach art), I believe teaching requires the brain of a scientist and the soul of an artist. I can't help but think of all the approaches I have learned about over the years from scientifically based professional development that fail in teachers classrooms because their application is soulless. When you take the practice out of the artist's hands it becomes hollow.

[John Norton]

[Nancy replied:]

The days when I have been most successful as a teacher were buoyed by inspiration. That said, good teachers are not simply born—they are made. A compassionate and dedicated person will not automatically become a good teacher, no matter how much they want to. There are substantive and defineable skills and knowlege around good teaching, a knowledge base or science of teaching. It's our responsibility as teacher leaders to try to build that base.

[John Norton]

[Susan G. wrote:]

Here's my take on art and science. Teaching has three components, concept knowledge, pedagogy skills, motivational instincts.

Effective teachers know thier content and how children learn. This can be taught but must be continually updated. Effective teachers have developed skill in delivering content, assessing student work, and mananging a learning environment. Skills can and should be taught, but they can only be refined with regular practice and reflection.

Motivating students is an art. It requires a certain amount of what we call charisma. But I think that this "quality" is an instinctive and continual application of physcology. It is reading people by observing, analyzing and responding to hundreds of tiny and subtle cues from one's audience. The language can be learned, and the instincts can be polished and refined, but it is unlikely that someone who is deficient in this area will succeed in the classroom. I studied French, but I never became fluent because I never moved past translating into thinking in French. Translating back and forth takes so much working brain space, I fall behind in the conversation and am limited to communicating not what I want to say, but what I have the words to say. I'm not dumb, I just don't seem to have much success with this particular kind of brain process.

Is it odd or is it predictable that education has a difficult time acknowledging that most individuals seem to have some instinctive skills? After all, teaching is really an effort to help someone refine what we know instinctively and to master that which is not instinctive at all. I'm reminded of the animal school story. We might teach some squirrels to glide or horses to jump, but we will never make them birds. And our best efforts are unlikely to get that cow to jump over the moon.

[John Norton]

[Renee wrote:]

Once when I was working in a teacher researcher group, I was trying to explain this concept of teaching as science or art. The analogy I came up with was one of a jazz musician (I am a big jazz fan) performing improvisation (think Ella Fitzgerald on vocal scat or Dizzy Gillespie on one of his wild trumpet solos). It looks deceptively simple, as if its all just fun and inspiration. And certainly, those elements are often there. But behind that jam session is a lifetime of practice, dues-paying performances in empty juke joints, hours of watching and listening to other masterful musicians, a keen sensitivity both to fellow musicians on the stage and to the audience.

In that same research project, I determined that in every teachable moment (the classroom equivalent of a jam session), the teacher must process over 30 distinct learning factors and their interrelationships while determining and executing the proper pedagogical response and maintaining classroom mangement! Quite an accomplishment.....and most of us do it many, many times in a week or day. Teaching is the consummate profession.