Teaching And Learning Pedagogy, Curriculum And Culture Case Study

This first chapter from Moore’s book “Teaching and Learning: pedagogy, curriculum and culture”, which was published in 2012, examines 4 of what Moore believes to be the most ‘influential’ educational theories from the past 80 years with a focus on theories of language and learning. Moore shares his perspective that theories are not ‘influential’ necessarily because they have shaped policy, suggesting that there is not much explicit reference to theories in public policy anyway. To him, an ‘influential’ theory is rather that which has affected classroom practices the most and has taken a lot of space within the public debate and discourse on education. In this chapter Moore attempts to review the work of Skinner, Piaget, Vygotsky and Bruner, …show more content…
I realize that it is not easy to be comprehensive, also that being comprehensive was not his objective and that he introduces other resources for those who need comprehensive introductions/ resources or discussions of learning theories, but I suppose that he could be more comprehensive in the sense of introducing the different schools of learning theories rather than 4 specific theories only. It is more expansive and broad to see the reflection of, for example, behavioral vs. cognitive vs. constructivist theories in the education system and educational practices than to focus only on reflections of Skinner, Piaget, Vygotsky and Bruner. Moore also realizes and acknowledges that the 4 theories are psychological in nature and have come about as a result of experiential research on children overlooking the fact that the development of the individual mind is not to be separated from the context in which these minds are or the context in which education is taking …show more content…
I specifically agree with Bloom’s point that ‘the wholesale acceptance or rejection of specific theories is not generally recommended’ because we can see how each theory, even if we at face value find it easy to agree or disagree with it, has aspects that are embedded within education systems worldwide today and aspects that we would like to maintain without holding on to the full theory or aspects that are totally absent or underdeveloped that we see the need for. It is fair to say that learning and teaching is an act that has taken place in both structured and unstructured manners since the beginning of humanity/time and hence will be affected by factors so diverse that we cannot see today a teacher or classroom or a school applying one specific theory or another, even if they are aware or familiar with a range of them and have a specific view. Learning and teaching is such a delicate form of human interaction and growth for all parties involved, it will forever be the pot in which different views/beliefs/pedagogies/theories melt within