Christopher D. Sessums :: Blog :: Teaching: More art than science?

I have always had trouble with the argument that teaching is more art than science. On the surface, it reduces an extremely complex activity like teaching or painting to a simple act of creation or classroom management, neither of which are simple at all.

Art, science, and teaching are generative processes that run off a set of rules that, in turn, set in motion a series of actions that produce new ideas, new ways of seeing, new understandings, new knowledge.

Sociologist Dan Lortie (1975) coined the term apprenticeship of observation to describe the process by which prospective teachers develop their understanding of teaching based on their own experience as students. While prospective educators do have a great deal of experience in a classroom, most have not considered teaching through any pedagogical filter, or in a practical, problematic, or scientific sense.

Learning to teach is more than acquiring skills. It involves the ability to develop:

• an authoritative presence
  
  
• a good radar for observing and interpreting what many students are doing and feeling at each moment
  
  
  
  
• skills for explaining, questioning, discussing, giving feedback, constructing meaningful tasks, facilitating work, and managing the learning environment – all at once (Hammerness, et al., 2005).
  

Hardly a simple or mechanistic task.

Good teaching is also informed by factual and theoretical knowledge as well as an ability to adapt to different contexts and different student needs. It is not by luck that good teachers acquire such adaptive expertise. This process of becoming involves time, experience, an open mind, a strong pedagogical framework, a desire to improve one’s practice, and the ability to actively reflect upon and enact changes based on internal and external needs.

Perhaps my trouble with the argument that teaching is more art than science is that the notion of art seems to get short shrift. The creation of that which we call art involves a high level of discipline and a mastery of specific skills that often takes years to build.

In this sense, artists are a lot like scientists – artists make observations, they derive ways (theories) to explain these observations, and attempt to challenge these theories through experimentation.

Similarly, successful artists, scientists, and educators operate within a framework that involves

• Vision -- “imagining the possible;”
  
  
• Understanding – a knowledge of content, methods, forms, purposes, etc.;
  
  
• Tools – both theoretical and practical;
  
  
• Practices – a repertoire for enacting and engaging; and
  
  
• Disposition – habits of mind and developing and refining one’s philosophical or moral stance (adapted from Hammerness et al, 2005).
  

So while it is perhaps fun to rhetorically separate science and art, such an exercise does injustice to the level of understanding and ability associated with science, art, teaching and learning.


References:

Hammerness, et al. (2005). How teachers learn and develop. In L. Darling-Hammond and J. Bransford (Eds.), Preparing teachers for a changing world. (pp. 358-389). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Lortie, D.C. (1975). Schoolteacher; a sociological study. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.


Art:
hokusai – the wave

cezanne -- still life with apples and oranges