top of page

Walking on the glacier: those elusive teaching methods

From 'A Critique of Pure Teaching Methods: the case of Synthetic Phonics'. November 2017)

​

Recently I visited Iceland and took part in a walk on a vast glacier. Our small group was supplied with ice axes and crampons by a young instructor who guided us with slightly irritating enthusiasm. Nevertheless, I attended carefully to what he said about how to travel on the ice. ‘Walk with feet apart, except when going down hill.’ ‘If walking sideways along a slope, keep the foot on the downward side slightly pointing in that direction.’ ‘Don’t use just part of the foot – ensure that you are using all the crampons as far as possible.’ ‘Don’t bend forwards – and if going down hill and using a stick or ice axe for support, keep it a little behind you.’ (Expert ice walkers may wish to dismiss this as amateurish nonsense – but please bear with me because the precise details do not have to be ‘correct’ for the point I hope to make with this example.)

​

So I had, for good or ill, absorbed some fairly general principles that  would improve my chances of surviving the glacier ‘hike’. The principles were framed at a low level of specificity, on the assumption that I would exercise significant (and hopefully, intelligent) autonomy in how I applied them. While we followed the guide in single file (more or less), there were many moments when the character of the ice I was traversing diverged from that covered by the guide, or even the person immediately in front of me. My body and my habitual walking habits are to a degree idiosyncratic, even though there will have been much in common with others in the group. I wear glasses with varifocal lenses, and I suspect that what I saw sometimes differed from my fellow hikers (which is not to imply that they were all seeing the same things as each other either).  Needless to say, the guide had no idea of all these idiosyncrasies, but he had no need to know given, as I say, that he took it for granted that I would make my own applications of his guidance. Certain things had been ruled out in advance-  for instance, we would not have been allowed on the ice if we had medical conditions that were serious beyond a certain point. Nevertheless, we had considerable freedom of action. We did not behave exactly the same as each other in terms of how we used our feet, our crampons and our bodies more generally.

​

Freedom  was essential for the guidelines to work. Our guide could not have offered more specific rules. Over-prescription might increase the probability of death. We would have been unable to walk on the ice at all if attempting to follow very specific injunctions. 

​

Compare the freedom needed here with that which a teacher should enjoy even if seeking to follow a set of guidelines closely. Teachers need more scope for choices than I had on the ice. Pupils make judgments about responding to their teachers during exchanges, and also, if the teacher permits, about how to respond to their peers. Teachers choose how, if at all, to react to pupil responses. Guidelines are of no use whatever to teachers unless offered at a level of generality that affords teachers significant latitude to make decisions with students ‘on the hoof’. Once we take account of these decisions, we begin to lose an identifiable approach whose success in promoting learning could possibly be supported by research evidence. There will be nothing that remotely corresponds with, say, the drugs that are legitimately and rigorously tested with randomised controlled trials. While the contexts  for drug administration vary, the dosage, frequency and chemical constitution can be tightly specified and user agreement on this is readily attainable.

​

To achieve a researchable teaching method identity and the possibility of consistent judgments about it, we seem to be driven to forms of pedagogical recipes that no teacher could afford to follow. Obviously, a teacher working with a whole class cannot address each individual’s existing knowledge, motivation and concentration at every moment. Nevertheless, she ought to take account of it in some ways during the lesson or at least shortly after it. That is why one teacher's lesson may differ significantly from another's, even if the same content and similar age and attainment groupings of pupils are involved. 

bottom of page