Teaching- Art and Science

Teaching- Art and Science

Prepared by- Vinod Varghese A.

“If teaching is something you naturally know how to do, then it can't really be taught. But the ability to teach competently isn't something people organically acquire.”- Elizabeth Green

I believe that education is a science.  In order to be an educator, and a good educator, you need to know the formula for education. It takes knowledge of curriculum, behavior, philosophy, psychology and other areas to successfully become an educator. A scientist working in a lab (inside or outside) needs to consistently factor several variables and constants when doing experiments, to successfully reach the desired outcomes.  In education, we call these outcomes “learning.” We want our students to learn.  We want our students to grow up and become active members of a society we hope to one day have.  This is why we have meetings to discuss curriculum, common code, standards, much more.  We meet with other educational scientists and debate the methods being used in school districts far and wide to judge our students against those throughout the world.  When we see that our students are not meeting the same rigors that other students are meeting, we up the experiment by providing standardized testing.  Some schools get the testing, and some schools don’t. This is called the “Scientific Method”.

To the degree that teaching is a creative act, it might be said to be an artistic enterprise.  It is also true that painters or sculptors choose their tools and materials with intention, just as a teacher might decide upon a range of methods in the classroom.  Our best artists and teachers also pose powerful questions, many of which do not have easy answers (or, for that matter, any answers at all).  This is where the comparison runs out of steam, though.  In the end, an artist acts upon a canvas or a mound of clay to create something masterful.  The materials themselves have no agency; you'd never see a bit of orange paint offer the artist some feedback.  This, of course, is very different from our students, each of whom must use what she or he learns in our courses to fashion a life outside of the university.  To envision teaching as an art, then, is to see it as a one-way transaction with the instructor as a kind of Pygmalion figure charged with shaping the countless Galateas sitting in our classrooms.  This is hardly the case.

This artistic argument has also led to one of the most problematic misconceptions about teaching:  if teaching is an art, then aren't our best teachers simply born to stand in front of the classroom in the same way that those who are talented in other pursuits come by their skills naturally?  The answer to this is a resounding "No," and it should be said that many artists balk at the idea that their success has more to do with natural gifts than with hard work.  In particular, the notion that good teaching is innate can sometimes be demoralizing (“I’m just not good enough, and I never will be"), or it can serve as a convenient excuse not to improve (“I’m just not gifted in that way, so why bother”).  We can’t deny that some people are inherently more gifted at public speaking than others, but it is simply not true that people are born to be excellent teachers, and the perpetuation of this myth ultimately does higher education more harm than good.

Because outstanding teaching is primarily about creating the conditions in which our students can learn most effectively, being an excellent teacher does not hinge on genetic predisposition, but—instead—on a solid understanding of how human beings learn (particularly, but not exclusively, in connection with a given discipline) and on having a genuine empathy for students.  Also, a lot of hard work.

It is fairly easy to see the applicability of the scientific method to teaching.  Our greatest teachers observe their students and create rudimentary hypotheses about the best ways to ensure their students are learning.  They then test these hypotheses via activities, assignments, and other kinds of assessments, and evaluate the results.

However, this view of teaching is sometimes criticized for being impersonal.  After all, our students are not experimental subjects.  They bring with them into our classrooms their hopes, fears, joys, and sorrows.  They have the potential to surprise us, to create new knowledge, to develop insights that move our disciplines forward.  Science can certainly be surprising, but the scientific comparison takes away some of the human interaction that makes teaching such an amazing, exhilarating profession to begin with.

In truth, teaching is probably a little bit of art and a little bit of science when it is done well, but what if we shifted the nature of the discussion altogether?

The biggest problem with both of these comparisons is that they focus primarily on what is happening at the front of the classroom.  The emphasis in the art/science divide is placed on the teacher, rather than the students.  The most effective teaching is that which helps students learn to the greatest extent possible. 

So how might we change the art vs. science question to reflect this positioning of learning?  Though we'll have to sacrifice the nicely compact nature of the original, a new version of this question might ask whether achieving a deep understanding of how our students learn (both in general and about our fields) is more of an art or a science.

The sorts of collaborations with students that might reveal this knowledge could certainly be called creative and even artistic.  I also think there is something of an art to being attuned to students' individual approaches to learning (or their Zones of Proximal Development) and adjusting our strategies and techniques accordingly in order to ensure we are helping as many students as possible.

Learning has its basis in the neurobiological mechanisms of the body, where science has much to teach us about learning.  Learning is also rooted in the social world as well, so the fields of sociology and psychology provide further opportunities for understanding.  If we embrace the science of learning, it becomes much easier to see teaching as something that every instructor can do well.  Scientific principles of learning, which are firmly grounded in research, can help to establish a solid foundation on which we may all build effective, even exemplary, courses.