Getting It Right From the Beginning: Locating a Praxis-Based Pedagogy for Educating the Professional Novice

• In Event: 52.083 - Roundtable Session 19
  In Roundtable Session: 52.083-10 - From Challenges to Opportunities: Pedagogical Principles for the Next Generation of Educating Professionals

Abstract

The structured nature of professional schools communicates the movement from novice to expert that culminates in qualitative cognitive and non-cognitive differences between professionals and those who seek their services. The commonly used phrase of “thinking like a (fill in professional category)” implies a cognitive end-point, but educators understand that the developmental route of the professional entails not only knowing, but also acting and being that begins in professional schools but continues through a lifetime. Notwithstanding, the beginning is of particular concern.

CHALLENGE

In an effort to meet the needs of novice learners, to enjoin cognitive goals with activity-based procedural goals, and to address motivational, meta-cognitive and self-regulating aspects of learning, those who teach in professional schools look to educational theories. Unfortunately, some of these theories prove epistemologically incompatible with others, rest on tenuous empirical bases, or simply do not translate very easily into pedagogical practices (Biesta, 2007). For example, reliance on theories related to more radical versions of constructivism, learning styles, automatic processing, and developmental stages have misled educational practitioners who sincerely desire to address the shortcomings they observe in their professional preparation programs, especially regarding novices (Kirschner et al, 2006). In addition, these same educators face a new student demographic – more diverse, seemingly more self-assured but perceptively less academically prepared, and well-practiced in literacies ill-suited to those required for professional studies and practice (Flanagan, forthcoming). Finally, professional organizations cannot ignore the continued performance gap that casts a shadow of inequality over all levels of education in the US, and accept the duty to address the disproportionate representation of racial, ethnic, and social minorities within the professions (Redfield, 2009).

OPPORTUNITY

This paper argues that sociocultural theory (SCT) drawn from the life’s work of Lev Vygotsky and continued through those who have extended that work provides a coherent and comprehensive theoretical grounding for professional education, which, from the beginning, sets out to orient the novice to the tasks and tools of the given profession. SCT posits theory as an instrument for change, rests on a dialectical logic that connects scientific knowledge with disciplinary practices, places at its center the role of culture and social activity in structuring, through language, human consciousness, and recognizes a “pedagogical imperative” in that teaching/learning is a leading activity of development (Karpov, 2014, Lantolf & Poehner, 2014;). SCT directly relates the development of “higher mental processes,” so obviously crucial in professional education, to pedagogy in a way that explains the process of how material matter is transformed into the workings of mind.

This paper describes a praxis-oriented intervention in which SCT principles of materialization, verbalization, mediation, collaboration, and internalization (self-regulation) oriented classroom practices for prospective law students deemed educationally and economically disadvantaged. In addition, it presents data on the effectiveness of a similarly designed program for first-semester students admitted to a four-year university through an affirmative action program. In short, students presented with well-structured conceptual knowledge to draw upon in authentic problem settings with various forms of mediation gained high levels of self-regulation of disciplinary tasks.

Author

• Dorothy H. Evensen, The Pennsylvania State University