The Nature of Method

“In brief, the method of teaching is the method of an art, of action intelligently directed by ends” (p. 177).

Morning View from Doublehead Mountain

“But since thinking is a directed movement of subject matter to a completing issue, and since mind is the deliberate and intentional phase of the process, the notion of any such split [of subject matter from method] is radically false” (pp. 171-172)

This is similar to a theme we've discussed quite a bit, that in any communication what is communicated is carried in how it is communicated.  This is true of the arts, in speach, and in teaching.  It is only in reflection or analysis that we seperate these into individual parts.  I remember this theme being argued in Art as Experience and I feel like there are other parallels as well in the next few citations. 

“Method means that arrangement of subject matter which makes it most effective in use. Never is method something outside of the material” (p. 172).

“Method is not antithetical to subject matter; it is the effective direction of subject matter to desired results” (p. 172).

The above citation in particular reminds me of Dewey's discussions on the artistic process.

“When a man is eating, he is eating food. He does not divide his act into eating and food… Such reflection upon experience gives rise to a distinction of what we experience (the experienced) and the experiencing -- the how. When we give names to this distinction we have subject matter and method as our terms” (p. 173).

“This distinction is so natural and so important for certain purposes, that we are only too apt to regard it as a separation in existence and not as a distinction in thought. Then we make a division between a self and the environment or world” (p. 173).

“Just as the organs of the organism are a continuous part of the very world in which food materials exist, so the capacities of seeing, hearing, loving, imagining are intrinsically connected with the subject matter of the world. They are more truly ways in which the environment enters into experience and functions there than they are independent acts brought to bear upon things” (p. 174).

I like that Dewey reverses the assumed oder of operations here, that we don't have the ability to hear and then apply it to the world, but that the world applies itself to our experience through the avenue of hearing.  This feels related to how Dewey discusses mind, or knowledge, that mind exists because of the objects of our experience, and that knowing doesn't happen on it's own, knowing is making meaning of some-thing.

“Getting an idea of how the experience proceeds indicates to us what factors must be secured or modified in order that it may go on more successfully. This is only a somewhat elaborate way of saying that if a man watches carefully the growth of several plants, some of which do well and some of which amount to little or nothing, he may be able to detect the special conditions upon which the prosperous development of a plant depends. These conditions, stated in an orderly sequence, would constitute the method or way or manner of its growth. There is no difference between the growth of a plant and the prosperous development of an experience” (p. 174).

“Nothing has brought pedagogical theory into greater disrepute than the belief that it is identified with handing out to teachers recipes and models to be followed in teaching” (pp. 176-177).

This I think is a major issue today, as there is quite a market for educational programs and the push for aligned curricula.  I think that if teaching were about following recipes computers could do a far better job than people.   Then this also makes me think about the comment you wrote one how we learn to teach, how we think now.  There seems to be such a strong paradigm of how teaching is done, and part of what is assumed I think is that pedagogy is a series of models to be followed.  The ambitious teacher today goes to workshops or takes classes and learns some new recipes (under the guise of practical activities?) but I don't think many teachers assume pedagogy as something similar trying to grow a variety of plants.

“In brief, the method of teaching is the method of an art, of action intelligently directed by ends” (p. 177).

“But after all, cases are like, not identical. To be used intelligently, existing practices, however authorized they may be, have to be adapted to the exigencies of particular cases” (p. 178).

“How one person's abilities compare in quantity with those of another is none of the teacher's business” (p. 179).

This last citation, sadly, is close to a 180 from the practice of education today.  There is very real pressure to get all students performing tasks on a particular level of achievment.  I've heard people discussing how NCLB reinforces this at the expense of the more giften students, but I have not heard much about changing the current law. 

“Exorbitant desire for uniformity of procedure and for prompt external results are the chief foes which the open-minded attitude meets in school. The teacher who does not permit and encourage diversity of operation in dealing with questions is imposing intellectual blinders upon pupils -- restricting their vision to the one path the teacher's mind happens to approve” (p. 182).

“Were all instructors to realize that the quality of mental process, not the production of correct answers, is the measure of educative growth something hardly less than a revolution in teaching would be worked” (p. 183).

So obviously many of our current issues were identified almost 100 years ago. 

“By responsibility as an element in intellectual attitude is meant the disposition to consider in advance the probable consequences of any projected step and deliberately to accept them: to accept them in the sense of taking them into account, acknowledging them in action, not yielding a mere verbal assent. Ideas, as we have seen, are intrinsically standpoints and methods for bringing about a solution of a perplexing situation; forecasts calculated to influence responses” (p. 185).

“It would be much better to have fewer facts and truths in instruction -- that is, fewer things supposedly accepted, -- if a smaller number of situations could be intellectually worked out to the point where conviction meant something real -- some identification of the self with the type of conduct demanded by facts and foresight of results” (p. 186).