Dull pedagogies

Pedagogy: a word with varying meanings. We take pedagogy to be more than the methods used by teachers, although this is how it is most usually used in Britain. We understand pedagogy as the totality of a learning experience: the ways in which relationships are developed and conversations are held; the practice used to sequence, pace and scaffold knowledge and skills; the use of time/space; the monitoring and formative and summative assessment of learning; the ethos of the classroom and school; and the ways in which the everyday lives of students are recognised, valued and used to connect them to what counts in schooling.

Dullness is not about teacher-directed learning. Dullness is situated in predictability and universality – the day after day of the same pedagogy regardless of what is to be learnt. Dullness is located in unadulterated textbook-or PowerPoint presentation-based learning that fails to connect with students’ existing understandings and experiences. Dullness is located in remoteness – students unable to interpret material for themselves, inhibited by the constant administration of ritualised right/wrong questions-and-answer routines. Dullness is coverage prioritised over understanding. Dullness is material thinly presented – difficult material skated over so that students do not have time to get to grips with its key ideas and practices. Dullness is the refusal to allow feeling and bodies into the conversation. Sameness and monotony numbs students and teachers alike.

Ironically, dull pedagogies are often used with the intent of producing rich and deep learnings, though they frequently work counter to this aim. Dullness can be being asked to respond to half a book or an event in history taken out of context, or being asked to grapple with a contemporary crisis like climate change without having access to useful concepts and terminology. Dull pedagogies fail to ignite students’ passion for a discipline, fail to spark new lines of thought and fail to kindle the desire to learn more, to dig deeper, to explore further.

Dullness matters. In England, default structures like the ‘three-part lesson’, introduced originally as improvement strategies for underperforming teachers, have become overused and decoupled from deep learning. Too many students and teachers feel trapped in pedagogic routines designed to service accountability goals and audit regimes (see, for example, Gillborn and Youdell, 2000; Ball et al, 2012; Kulz, 2017; Ward and Quennerstedt, 2018).