Pedagogiek - Volume 39, Issue 3, 2019

Cultural historical pedagogy as a narrative about good education: a reflection on 50 years theory-guided innovation in educational practice

In this article, we reflect on the contribution of cultural historical theory for the innovation and improvement of educational practice in the Netherlands. As a first step, we will show how different narratives about good education are constructed and passed on in educational discourse. Next, we will discuss the characteristics of a cultural historical narrative about good education. To illustrate this narrative, we will present one particular story that has been developed over the past decades: Developmental Education. Developmental Education is a specific approach to education that is based on and rooted in cultural historical theory. A special feature of this narrative is the close and inseparable relation between theory and practice. We will show how this vision on the theory-practice relation leads to a specific interpretation of teachers’ professional development. Using two examples, we will illustrate how teachers, teacher trainers, educational developers, and researchers within the Developmental Education community collaboratively innovate and improve educational practice in a theory-driven manner.

’I acted spontaneously and did what I thought was right.’ Pedagogical experiences of teachers in vocational education

What is it like to teach at a vocational school? What are the pedagogical challenges for teachers who are responsible for vocational training for young people? Since September 2015, the Research Center Urban Talent of the Rotterdam University of Applied Sciences has conducted field research at six different schools of vocational education. As a member of the center’s research staff, I conducted a series of conversations with a team of vocational teachers at each school between September 2015 and July 2018.

This paper offers an account of this field research. The research focused on the pedagogical experiences of vocational teachers and aimed to get the teachers to articulate their experiences and to investigate their meanings. The approach was phenomenological. The teachers were encouraged to share and reflect on their experiences. The paper continues with a phenomenological analysis of several topics that were discussed in the conversation with the teachers. It ends with a plea for phenomenological research in education.

The pedagogical relationship as initiation: Speaking to children as a ‘worldly’ gesture

Parents are generally the first to speak to their children. This sharing of a language is more than just helping children to develop their linguistic skills, or to enlarge their vocabulary, or to negotiate rules. It is a sharing of a world, or at least inviting their children into that world. Drawing on Stanley Cavell’s understanding of Wittgenstein’s account of language, of ‘the entire body and spirit of human conduct and feeling which goes in to the capacity for speech’ (Cavell, 1979, p. 168), I revisit the concept of initiation in forms of life to show what is entailed, and at stake, in this sharing of a language and (thus) a world. Against the background of the current ‘parenting culture’, I discuss (what Cavell calls) arrivals at an impasse between educators and ‘beginners’ (our children) – Wittgenstein’s famous ‘This is simply what I do’ and ‘But can’t you see . . .?’ – to indicate that in the relationship between parents and their children a world is always at stake. I argue that the pedagogical nature of upbringing and the conception of the parent as a pedagogical figure can be understood as intimately linked to this idea of the world being at stake. I locate the pedagogical of the pedagogical relationship in the possibility of the educator standing exposed and being called upon to question her own ‘sanity’ and that of the world she is representing and passing on, thus not only opening to a world, but, inevitably simultaneously, opening it up for questioning and, perhaps, change.

The bankruptcy of tailor-made education. The need for pedagogic (work)places

Education, youth work and youth care confront many challenges which are interpreted in many different ways and receive various responses. However, one type of response seems to be widely applauded: education and care should be tailor-made or become so: tailored to children and youngsters, to their talents and their lifeworld. This call for tailor-made education and care is often accompanied by an emphasis on the need for the development of talents and on the value of feeling-well. In this contribution we indicate how this response entails an approach to education as form of socialization. I.e. as practices that assist the (re-)production of a particular societal regime which calls upon us to conceive of ourselves as entrepreneurs and to permanently take care of our profile. The experience of a meaningful life risks thereby to become exclusively dependent on social recognition and comparison. In so doing tailor-made education risks to deny youngsters the chance for a pedagogical workplace i.e. a place where the world is presented and disclosed to them in such a way that it can provide them with a measure outside of themselves and allows them an experience of a meaningful life in relation to the work which is taking place there.