Discursive Construction of “Good Teaching:” A Crossdisciplinary Framework

Theorizing about good teaching is complicated by the preparadigmatic state of learning theory, the existence of separately conceived and independently coherent notions of learning championed in various branches of psychology (e.g., behavioral, developmental, cognitive, sociocultural). Historically, educators have responded by partnering with one or another of the schools (usually the dominant one, as with behaviorism or cognitivism through much of the last century). More recently we’ve aligned with dialectical theories like situated cognition theory or social constructivism that explore the complementarity of independently conceived notions of learning within a complex unity. Both of these solutions are problematic, the former because any individual conception of learning is incomplete with respect to the agendas of education, the latter because dialectical syntheses tend to be theoretically intractable and intuitively opaque. The current paper stakes out a new response to the preparadigmatic status of learning theory. The crossdisciplinary approach identifies the independently coherent notions of learning that motivate educational practice, and articulates discrete pedagogical practices, each indexed to a single notion of learning. This strategy breaks with our current construction of good teaching as a unitary or integrated set of practices that somehow is to address all of our valued learning goals. Adopting this approach redraws the relationship of pedagogical theory to psychology and to the world of educational practice.