Text: Pedagogy and more

Nind, Curtin and Hall (2007; p.12) explain that researchers and policymakers in education have prominently called for teaching to be an evidence-based practice profession to bring together a closer connection between research, policy and classroom practice (Slavin 2002; 2004; Sebba 2004). The act of teaching is often referred to or defined by the term pedagogy (Refs).

Pedagogy is fundamentally concerned with what people perceive to be meaningful, important and relevant as they engage in teaching-related activity and develop competence and expertise in practice (Nind, Curtin and Hall, 2007; p.9). 

Pedagogy as an art, craft and science

Nind & co (2017; p.50) explain that in educational theory and research, pedagogy is variously positioned as an art (Eisher, 1979), a craft (Brown and McIntyre, 1993) or science (Kornbeck and Jenson, 2009). These different perspectives have implications for how research is conducted and measured, and in turn what counts as valuable knowledge and evidence towards understanding the effectiveness of teaching and learning.

Pedagogical research as a science starts from the premise of applying accepted theory to measure and record teaching practices or implementation to elucidate best practice (Nind, Curtin and Hall, 2007; P.55). This perspective doesn’t question the constructed nature of knowledge, but does allude to the more positivist collection of quantitative data to evidence elements like trends, themes and collate numerical results. Some examples of scientific measurements in digital accessibility education are that of satisfaction surveys using likert scales (ref), surveys to compare pre and post course knowledge (ref) or vote on preferred elements of the course for inclusion as future content (ref). Beyond that there are assessment scores, completion of worksheets (ref) or measuring performance and compliance against the checklist criteria of the (WCAG) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (refs). Unless crafted very carefully this type of data can often overlook many of the hidden social intricacies of the teaching and learning experience.

Pedagogical research that focuses on the craft of teaching is centred on action oriented knowledge used by teachers in their classroom settings. The knowledge is very much situated from the point of view of the teacher and based upon their own experiences and how their practice can be understood or improved. It heavily relies on how teachers view their personal practices and how their own values interact to develop and apply teaching knowledge (Nind, Curtin and Hall, 2007; P.59). This data is very much interpretive in nature and could include examples of teacher case studies describing the journey of creating a course structure and implementation (Ref), practitioner reflections and data from teaching their own courses (Ref) or a review of values taken from reflecting on similar practices to create or improve their own (Ref). The emphasis is very much on the voice and experience of the teacher as researcher and as a result can be very subjective if this isn’t taken into full consideration.

Pedagogical research as an art pays more attention to the interactions between teachers, learners and stakeholders sharing an interest in the process of teaching and learning. It more heavily appreciates the imagination, emotion, expression and creativity in the relationships forged in the teaching and learning context. It is driven by the essence of a particular shared lived experience for those involved, such as depictions of interactions, conversations and relational elements of understanding through and between the individuals and actors within a community of practice or classroom environment (Nind, Curtin and Hall, 2007; p.??). The shared experience of learning takes on a more socially constructivist research approach. This amplifies the voices of participants, for example interviews with learner participants (Ref), the voices of third party participants testing learner creations (Ref) or the bringing together of a range of professional opinions and stakeholders to input into a shared endeavour of course creation (Ref). 

Conceptually with pedagogy as a multifaceted set of interactions or understandings for the art, craft and science of teaching, acknowledging aspects of them all could facilitate a more mixed methods and robust research design that gets to the heart of what we can know about the teaching and learning process. It could also help take account of those harder to measure and much deeper personal pedagogical experiences (Nind, Curtin and Hall, 2007; p.53). This could help analyse and triangulate findings to build a more comprehensive picture, especially when exploring a brand new curriculum topic or intervention.

This mixed method approach potentially steers this research towards a pragmatic research design to be able to determine the findings for ‘what works’ (ref) in digital accessibility education, but this only is part of the methodological picture.

Pedagogy also describes several aspects involved in the teaching and learning process and sequentially how it can be organised, measured or analysed at each stage, such as pedagogy as planned, pedagogy as enacted and pedagogy as experienced. 

Pedagogy as planned, enacted and experienced

Pedagogy as planned conveys messages about what society deems as valuable and valued in the curriculum (Nind, Curtin and Hall, 2007; p.10). It refers to those decisions about what content is chosen to be covered, in what order they are delivered, who makes these choices and what influenced those decisions? In terms of a research, we also need to understand if the learning is planned specifically to test an idea or a hypothesis, or planned based on data about what is needed, or planned based on previous lesson experiences and refinements from reflections and feedback. 

Interestingly, during the planning stage even the simplest variable such as the word ‘accessibility’ in the name of a course or learning intervention can impact participant perception, engagement and the findings or future actions for the research (Keates 2011; 2015, Wilson, 2020).

Pedagogy as enacted is similar to that of teaching as a craft, as it depends on how a teacher breathes life into a topic through their actions and resources, and this can be dependent on the teachers own history, experience and competency, as well as their position and power to make decisions and judgements about what and how to teach a subject (Nind, Curtin and Hall, 2007; p.11). 

Pedagogy as experienced echoes that of the art of teaching as being about the experience of the learners being taught as an important aspect of the learning, as well as how they and the teachers interact, interpret and decode the learning phenomenon differently. 

The multiple stakeholders for this pedagogical research

An important consideration is that the experience of learning and the teaching of a subject cannot always be separated from social identities, power relations, interests, purposes, agendas of participants, existing resources and organisational or institutional practices.

This all takes into account the real significance and relevance of lived realities, experiences and perspectives of the stakeholders such as teachers, mentors and learners (Nind, Curtin and Hall, 2007; p.11). If you then align this to the different lenses and models around the knowledge and lived experiences of disabilities, the various perspectives of how to teach digital accessibility and IT skills, the complexity of all parts of the pedagogical process and stakeholder viewpoints for teaching digital accessibility, all have their role to play in the research design for exploring a new curriculum.

The voices of the disability community, teachers and learners, as well as the discipline of computer science all have equal validity. 

Socially constructed concepts of voices. MORE.

Additional mixed methods data will help to supplement the social constructivist nature of this research.