Signature Pedagogies

In our project we relied on 5 specific theories of practice. 

1. Professor Bill Lucas

From Prof Bill Lucas: as an ongoing critical academic friend of Rooty Hill High School Bill ran workshops for teachers on ‘A Focus on Capabilities’ and vocational learning where he posed questions for teachers to consider that would shape thinking around teaching practices to best prepare students for their future, such as:

• What’s driving the trend towards dispositional learning? 

• What are the purposes of a school with a capability-driven curriculum? 

• What are the key capabilities? 

• What is the relationship between teaching capabilities and subject-based learning? 

• How can RHHS’s instructional core be further strengthened? 

• How can RHHS demonstrate to its stakeholders that capabilities are valued? 

• How do we create better practice in dispositional teaching? 

• How do we prepare students for their 19-year-old future

Professor Lucas met with the PLLT in 2018 to facilitate discussion on our purpose asking about the processes being employed to develop new perspectives and a shared understanding of various pedagogical practices. He challenged our thinking about teacher expertise – as knowledge gurus or in their pedagogy? And about the best way to improve performance among people who are already trained and on-the-job . There is research suggesting teachers stop developing subject expertise after their 5th-6th year. How can we develop teachers beyond their 5th and 6th years?

In his work “Thinking Like an Engineer” where the rationale and process for the development of six (6) engineering habits of mind was outlined,  the question first explored was - “what are the barriers to developing engineering in school” and later, “Can we redesign the education system in terms of its pedagogy so that it is more likely to produce more people who think and act like engineers?” (page 12). This led to thinking about the pedagogies secondary teachers employed that called on students to think like experts of an academic discipline (an historian, a mathematician, a musician or a scientist for example).

To challenge the thinking of the PLLT Bill asked the team ‘Why signature pedagogies?’ and the responses included:

• a) They provide a way for teachers to think about specific disciplinary skills

• b) Through the use of specific subject-based teaching practices student dispositions can be developed

• c) Subject teacher expertise can be acknowledged, developed through purposeful practice and linked to student success

2. Lee Shulam 

From Lee Shulman, Signature Pedagogies in the Professions AND Those Who Understand: Knowledge Growth in Teaching

• “The psychoanalyst Erik Erikson once observed that if you wish to understand a culture, study its nurseries.” (Signature Pedagogies in the Professions page 52 Dædalus Summer 2005). And so, according to Shulman if we want to understand why members of professions think, perform and behave with integrity we should look to their professional preparation. Shulman researched into the teaching and learning employed specifically in the education of law, medical or engineering students noting that these disciplines had their own discrete ‘schools’. Where modes of teaching and learning are identified as ‘signature’ they must not be unique to a particular teacher, program, institution or school, but should be found replicated in nearly all institutions that educate in these domains. “They implicitly define what counts as knowledge in a field and how things become known.” (p54). 

Signature pedagogies, in Shulman’s research, applied specifically to tertiary education, and each one has three dimensions:

• Surface structure – the concrete, operational acts of teaching and learning

• Deep structure - a set of assumptions about how best to impart a certain body of knowledge and know-how

• Implicit structure – a moral dimension with a set of beliefs about professional attitudes, values and dispositions. 

Accordingly, in our ongoing work to improve student outcomes through expert classroom practices, at Rooty Hill High School we asked: 

• What teaching practices do our teachers use to ensure our senior students learn to think and behave as an expert in a discipline?

• Are these teaching practices unique to specific disciplines?

• How can all teachers continue to improve these signature teaching practices throughout their career?

3. Exploring Signature Pedagogies, edited by Regan A R Gurung, Nancy L Chick & Aeron Haynie 

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• The authors interrogate the notion of ‘teaching disciplinary understandings’ in the tertiary education sector. They set out to find the ‘best ways to teach students’ 

• The 2 volumes are divided into various chapters each one covering a discipline or course taught at various USA universities. Each chapter provides an overview of the ‘scholarship on teaching and learning’ in the particular area and attempts to answer the questions – ‘What are we teaching, and what are our students learning?’ 

• In essence, the chapters are coming to grips with this idea:

• Teachers “want students to learn more than basic content; we want them to understand and practice disciplinary ways of thinking or habits of mind. But do the individual disciplines have unique pedagogies that foster these ways of thinking?”

• “Educating (tertiary) students to practice the intellectual moves and values of experts in the field has been a subtext of most disciplinary learning outcomes… this goal requires specific pedagogical techniques that may be unique to that discipline – what is called a signature pedagogy.”

5. From Decoding the Disciplines: A Model for Helping Students Learn Disciplinary Ways of Thinking by Joan Middledorf and David Pace

This particular chapter, from Decoding the Disciplines: Helping Students Learn Disciplinary Ways of Thinking: New Directions for Teaching and Learning, Number 98 Edited by David Pace and Joan Middendorf presents a model used by tertiary academics to consider how students think and learn in their disciplines.  

The model offers a 7 Step Framework and asks experts to begin by considering what often stops students from learning (What is a bottleneck to learning in this class?) and how they might go about overcoming this block (How does an expert do these things?). The model calls on experts to deconstruct the teaching they might employ to improve student knowledge and motivation to learn. 

This model provided the structure for the collegial workshop at the secondary education conference (#RHOCtober19) held to examine specific curricular and teaching and learning practices for student excellence.  The workshops, involving teachers from schools and organisations from all parts of NSW and facilitated by secondary subject experts explored the ‘big question’: What do we do to shape instruction (pedagogy) to match the specific learning and thinking requirements of each academic field?  and subsidiary questions:

• What kind of thinking is critical to learning in each discipline / subject? 

• What assessment practices do we employ to judge the degree to which students have mastered the ways of thinking that are essential to particular disciplines / subjects? 

QUESTIONS TO DIRECT TEACHERS THROUGH THE 7 STEP FRAMEWORK to support students into the culture of thinking in a specific discipline: 

i. What are the points (or obstacles) at which our students struggle with their learning (or understanding) in this subject? 

ii. How does an expert in this subject go about mastering this learning? What are the components of the thinking process in this subject? 

iii. What practices do experts use to explicitly (and repeatedly, employing different media, for most complex ways of thinking) model the steps they use intuitively in this critical subject-based thinking? 

iv. What are the tasks that we create to enable students to gain incremental proficiencies that will lead to mastering the various thinking and learning skills of the experts? What feedback do teachers offer students throughout this practice process so that they can move from ‘learning about’ to ‘thinking about (and reflecting on)’ to putting it in to action. 

v. How do teachers ‘capture students as learning partners’? How do teachers incrementally build student confidence and success (while maintaining high expectations for academic and intellectual gains) and thereby ensure motivation? 

vi. What assessment practices for each of the disciplinary processes do we set up for students to gain ongoing feedback on their development of skills that support their critical thinking? 

vii. How do we explicitly communicate with other professionals the key (often intuitive) components of our practice that are essential to increase student learning as experts in the subject? 

6. Dr Linda Hobbs - Research 

• Teaching ‘Out-of-Field’ as a Boundary-Crossing Event: Factors Shaping Teacher Identity;

• Characterising Secondary School Teacher Imperatives as Subject (signature) Pedagogies: A Pedagogy of Support in Maths and a Pedagogy of engagement in Science; 

• A Model For Understanding the Relationship Between Subject Culture and Pedagogy; 

• Workshop Presentation – ‘Subject Based Teaching and Learning Practices – why we teach the way we do and why it’s important for students’ futures.’

The PLLT was first introduced to Dr Hobbs’ work through her research into ‘out-of-field’ teachers who teach subjects for which they have neither qualification nor training. She explored the impacts of ‘boundary crossing’ (professional support, personal resources, school context) on teacher identity and pedagogy and drew the conclusion that under some circumstances student learning can be hindered when teachers are unable to view the gap between they know and the unknown (‘the border’) as an opportunity.

In a study involving two Victorian schools, Hobbs sought to describe the signature pedagogies used by teachers of Mathematics and Science in the light of the Shulman framework – surface structures (teachers’ practice), deep structure (teachers’ basic assumptions) and implicit structures (subject pedagogies arising out of central pedagogical imperatives). In Mathematics, she found the sequential and hierarchical nature of the skills and content led teachers to use a ‘pedagogy of support’ (both relational and cognitive) involving formative assessments and on-time interventions in positive and support risk-taking environment, to ensure students developed firm foundations allowing for progression through increasingly complex levels of content. Whenever possible and appropriate this was expedited through hands-on activities and open-ended problem solving. 

In Science, the ‘pedagogy of engagement’ through practical work, was proposed as signature for the teaching and viewed as important not only to motivate students but to enable them to participate in the scientific process, as scientists. While the sequential nature of the science curriculum was recognised, teachers worked to ensure that students engaged with concepts at various levels. As students progressed through secondary schooling these science concepts become more complex requiring deeper, more specialised knowledge of teachers teaching these concepts. This pedagogy of engagement assisted student deep understanding of science concepts, and at its best could ‘promote wonder’.

Hobbs put forward the proposition that there are a number of influences or lenses through which a subject pedagogy is developed and viewed. Broadly, these are:

individual school culture – as expressed through ‘certain beliefs about pedagogy & curriculum’ which may require teachers to translate particular ‘imperatives’ into their teaching’ 

disciplinary culture – the ‘practices, beliefs, assumptions, expectations and knowledge’ traditionally considered and implemented by teachers of the subject 

faculty culture – the specific ‘goals, purposes, practices, assumptions & commitments’ that influence the teaching of a subject at a particular school.

All of the above influences, together with the individual beliefs and experiences of the teacher, create the personal lens through which they construct their own interpretation of ‘what it means to teach the subject’.