Reflections on Autobiography

Weeks 3: Didactic Approaches to Teaching and Learning

 

Marie Morgan

 

 Return to module outline.

Last updated 10.10.11.

 

This week we turn our attention to the didactic approach to teaching and learning.  One of the most famous thinkers associated with didacticism is Jon Amos Comenius (1592-1670).  Comenius was a Czech teacher, writer and religious figure. One of his most famous works is The Great Didactic (written between 1633 and 1638) and much of your essential reading for this week and next comes from this text.  You also have a reading from The School of Infancy (written in 1631).

      

First we will consider the philosophical foundations of didacticism, the principles and ideals that underpin it.  Second, we will consider forms of didactic education in practice.   Next week we will continue our explorations of the didactic approach and look back to the experiential approach in preparation for your essay (hand in: Monday, week 6).  Next week’s session will provide an opportunity for you to work in groups, to revisit the themes and principles of experiential and didactic approaches and to think about how they relate to your own previous experiences of education.                 

 

 

Philosophical Foundations of Didacticism  

 

The didactic approach to teaching and learning is founded in the belief that there is a universal method of education that can be identified and implemented. 

 

There is a body of universal knowledge that is essential and timeless.

 

The didactic approach is grounded in the notion of education as a lifelong process.  

 

This education is one that works for the universal good where it is not only knowledge that is learned but virtue also.  Education in this sense is not restricted to a particular sector of education, but is something that continues through life.

 

Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) believed that education determines not only our intellectual development but also our moral and cultural development.  He argued,

 

‘Man can only become man by education.  He is merely what education makes of him.  It is noticeable that man is only educated by man -that is, by men who have themselves been educated.’ (Kant, 1991:6) 

 

Kant was concerned with what he believed to be the inadequacies of the education of children.  Education, he believed, not only determines our intellectual development, but also our moral and cultural development thus ‘it must nurture, discipline, cultivate, civilize and moralize human beings’ (Louden, 2000:53).  Thus the role of education is to not only develop the child’s knowledge, but also their sense of morality and culture. 

 

He said

‘Under the present educational system man does not fully attain to the object of his being; for in what various ways men live!

Uniformity can only result when all men act according to the same principles, which principles would have to become with them a second nature.  What we can do is to work out a scheme of education better suited to further its objects, and hand down to posterity directions as to how this scheme may be carried into practice, so that they might be able to realise it gradually.’ (Kant, 1991:9).    

 

To achieve this end education must be based on universal aims for which it must reach beyond the specifics of individuality (not just of the individual person but also of any particular State because even with regard to the State particular interests dominate).

 

Louden explains it thus:

 

‘What is wrong with educational schemes that do serve simply parental or national purposes?  They are morally objectionable because they violate the injunction to treat humanity as an end in itself: they treat students as instruments rather than as ends in themselves’ (Louden, 2000:55).

 

Kant helps us to understand this further:

 

‘Parents usually care only that their children get on well in the world, and princes regard their subjects merely as instruments… for their own designs.  Parents care for the home, princes for the state.  Neither have as their final end the highest good in the world… and the perfection to which humanity is destined, and for which it also has the disposition’ (Kant, cited in Louden, 2000:55).        

 

 

Theories of childhood

 

Methods of education have always been entwined with theories of childhood and beliefs about the nature of childhood have a great influence on ideas about how children should be taught.     

 

John Locke (1632-1704) is famous for his theory of mind which argues the child is born a ‘blank slate’ or a ‘tabula rasa’ on which the education could (and should) write.   This led him to argue that

 

‘…education means deliberately moulding human character in accordance with an ideal of human nature that changes as the values within current society change’ (Locke, 1968:59)

 

John Henry Newman (1801-1890) says of the child…

‘for some years his intellect is little more than an instrument for taking in facts, or a receptacle for storing them; he welcomes them as fast as they come to him; he lives on what is without; he has his eyes ever about him; he has a lively susceptibility of impressions; he imbibes information of every kind; and little does he make his own in a true sense of the word’ (Newman, 1955:52)   

 

For Newman, the child:

 

‘absorbs from around him’ (Newman, 1955:52)

 

‘is almost passive in his acquisition of knowledge’ (Newman, 1955:52)

 

‘when he leaves for the University, he is mainly the creature of foreign influences and circumstances…’ (Newman, 1955:52)   

 

The didactic approach to education is based on the belief that there is a universal methodology that can be identified and implemented in practice.

 

The universal method of education is reliant on a ‘system’ of learning.

 

 

Jon Amos Comenius (1592-1670)

Before we examine the method of education advocated by Comenius and think about the didactic approach in practice it is necessary to consider the ideal from which they have emerged.

 

In J. A. Comenius and the Concept of Universal Education, Sadler says

‘The communication of ideas or knowledge is one of the most universal activities of mankind and this, according to Comenius, constitutes the germ of the teaching situation and the art of teaching (which is didactics) is simply the formalizing of this relationship’ (Sadler, 1966:101)

 

In Comenius, A critical reassessment of his life and work , Daniel Murphy says

‘The ideal of universal education, as conceived by Comenius, was concerned with the cultivation of an integrated concept of wisdom that comprehended three main elements: learning, morality and faith. It aimed to do so in a manner that would emphasise the essential and indivisible unity of the ideal of wisdom and that would ensure its accessibility to all, regardless of social background, intellectual ability or religious creed’ (Murphy, 1995:79).   

 

‘In order that man may be fashioned to humanity, God has granted him the years of youth, which are unsuitable for everything but education’ (Comenius, 1910:59)  

 

Why is it possible to identify a universal method of education?

‘The means of wisdom are granted to all men’ (Comenius, cited in Murphy, 1995:87).

 

Comenius was not only interested in education but also in social reform.  He argued that education should not only be for certain individuals or groups but for all.

 

 

The Printing Press

 

The promise Comenius set out in his Great Didactic:

‘We promise a Great Didactic, that is to say, the whole art of teaching all things to all men, and indeed of teaching them with certainty, so that the result cannot fail to follow; further, of teaching them pleasantly… further of teaching them thoroughly… in such a manner as to lead to true knowledge, to gentle morals, and to deepest piety’ (Comenius, cited in Sadler, 1966:97).     

 

How was this to be achieved in practice?

 

Comenius likened the universal method of education to the printing press

 

Education                                                    Printing Press

Pupils                                                          Paper

Class books/resources                                  Type

 

Voice of the master                                              Ink

 

School discipline                                          Press          

 

Whilst Comenius is clearly describing a mechanical system of instruction it is necessary to scratch beneath the surface to consider how this universal method of education could be applied to all.  There are several points that might help us to understand his belief that this method would be to the benefit of everyone.

 

For example resources must be broad,

 

‘A well managed printing press is supplied with all kinds of type, and is thus equal to every demand that can be made upon it; and, similarly, our class-books must contain everything necessary for a thorough education, that there may be no one who by their aid cannot learn whatever should be learned’ (Comenius,1910:290). 

 

The class books should be organised in a clear, coherent way so as not to confuse pupils.  There should be guide books for pupils and teachers.  Teachers must know how to give instructions and explain things most effectively.  Central to the effectiveness of the system is discipline and hence, ‘whoever wishes to learn at a school must be subjected to its discipline’ (Comenius, 1910:291).

 

Comenius equates school discipline to the efficiency of the press.

 

Three grades of discipline in school –

          Perpetual watchfulness

          Blame

          Punishment

 

‘All discipline, however, must be used with prudence and with no other object than to induce the pupils to do all their work well’ (Comenius, 2003:291).  

 

The purpose of punishment should only be employed

 

‘towards those who err.  But it is not because they have erred that that they should be punished (for what has been done cannot be undone), but in order that they may not err again in the future.  Discipline should therefore be free from personal elements, such as anger or dislike, and should be exercised with such frankness and sincerity of purpose, that even the pupils may feel that the action taken is for their good, and that those set over them are but exercising paternal authority’ (Comenius, 1910:251).   

 

Next week we will consider the didactic approach in practice.  There will also be a workshop session to help with preparation for your essay which is to be handed in by Monday of week 6.  You will find it helpful if you have your notes from the first 3 weeks of the module with you for the workshop session. 

 

 

References

Comenius, J. A. (1910) The Great Didactic, London: A & C Black

Comenius, J. A. (2003) The School of Infancy, Montana: Kessinger

Kant, I. (1960) Education, Michigan: Michigan University Press

 

Locke, J. (1968) The Educational Writings of John Locke, London: Cambridge University Press (Ed. Axtell, J.)     

Newman, J. H. (1996) The Idea of a University, London: Yale

Sadler, J. E. (1966) J. A. Comenius and the Concept of Universal Education, London: George Allen & Unwin