Insights on student-centred and knowledge-centred teaching: Jewish studies teachers, pedagogy and community

ABSTRACT

The contrast between student-centred and knowledge-centred teaching is explored through a qualitative case study exploration of the pedagogies (Bruner’s ‘folk pedagogies’) of six teachers of Jewish studies. These teachers, based in orthodox Jewish schools in the UK and Australia, discussed their roles as teachers in the context of their responsibility for inducting students into the Jewish community. They appear to overcome (or at least mitigate) the tensions between being student-centred and knowledge-centred through understanding both students and knowledge in communal terms. This communally-focused approach, drawing on the philosophers of ‘personal’ knowledge such as Polanyi, and of personalist approaches to schooling such as those of Macmurray and Noddings, is then proposed as of value in debates on schooling and the curriculum in general, well beyond the religious context of this particular research.

KEYWORDS:

• Pedagogy
• community
• Judaism
• student-centred
• knowledge
• Buber
• Biesta
• Bruner

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

There were no external sources of funding for this research.

Notes on contributors

Julian Stern

Julian Stern is Professor of Education and Religion at Bishop Grosseteste University, and General Secretary of ISREV, the International Seminar on Religious Education and Values. He can be contacted by email on [email protected].

Eli Kohn

Eli Kohn is Senior Lecturer, Orot Israel College, Lecturer, School of Education Bar Ilan University, and can be contacted by email on [email protected].