The Politics of Pedagogy

A recent national conference organised by the Standing Conference for the Education and Training of Teachers on the politics of pedagogy highlighted the now well-recognised trend in England towards a more and more centralist direction of classroom pedagogy. This was evidenced specifically in the recent introduction of a non-statutory literacy hour in primary schools and the impending numeracy hour to be introduced in late 1999. The conference raised a wide ranging debate of the many issues related to this trend. This paper aims to make a contribution to that debate. In this article, I take politics to be about the acquisition and exercise of power and decision-making. The politics of pedagogy is, therefore, about the use of power in decision-making about teaching and, by implication, learning. I consider how the politics of classroom pedagogy in England has been shaped by the politics of the State since 1988. I argue that power concentrated predominantly in the hands of the State is damaging to the effectiveness of some important pedagogical practices and teachers' professional confidence. Too much centralised power has generated a pedagogy in both teacher training and in schools, which is silencing enquiry and diverse critical perspectives of both teachers and children. It is also leading to convergence of training methods as witnessed, for example, in the literacy hour training and to increased levels of convergent teaching in classrooms. Rather than accept the inevitability of too much central control, we should, I argue, struggle with the difficulties and ambiguities created by requiring power to be exercised responsibly by all pedagogical stakeholders - the State, teachers and pupils - for herein lies the opportunity for a range of interest groups to participate in shaping pedagogical knowledge, especially through professional action research.