Critically adaptive pedagogical relations: the relevance for education policy and practice

In this article Morwenna Griffiths argues that teacher education policies should be predicated on a proper and full understanding of pedagogical relations as contingent, responsive, and adaptive over the course of a career. Griffiths uses the example of the recent report on teacher education in Scotland, by Graham Donaldson, to argue that for all the report’s considerable merits, it remains deficient because it does not attend to the complexity and contingency of pedagogical relations. The complexity arises from the existence of (at least) four analytically distinguishable pedagogical relations, each of which interacts with the others. These relations are contingent on the embodiment of teacher and students and on the political and sociocultural context of the class. Therefore they are also contingent on time, as teachers age and as the political and sociocultural context changes. Griffiths concludes the article with suggestions for creating a teaching profession in which teachers are reflectively and critically adaptive during the course of their careers.