Dear Ljubomir,

I try to answer using only three other concepts: formative project, educational environment, interactive learning.

From here onwards is only an infinite literature and bibliography.

Regards,

Mauro

Thanks Abdalla sir for informative response.

Ljubomir Jerinic dear friend, I think we should start with the concept of education :-)

Education encompasses teaching and learning processes. But not only learn things and information. The four pillars of education UNESCO talk about learning to know, learning to do, learning to live together and learning to be. So it is to maintain and perpetuate the new generations the values ​​and principles that are important for human survival and the planet. This is related to an ethics that must be global and capable of ensuring the full development of multiple human capabilities in its multiple dimensions (including spiritual). It is a process that ends only with death and can occur in multiple social spaces, including the school. Conceptually it's not something so palpable (for me at least) hence the difficulty in conceptualizing. I think that is something that stems primarily from human relationships, our interactions, and imponderable character that is in us humans. Great teachers and teachers are imponderables. Respond in unexpected ways. Or choose not to respond (which in itself is also an answer). For me it is something that happens (and permeates through subtly) the space between the learning of facts and things and a hidden language that arises from the human capacity to learn by symbolic language and even body language. In pedagogy there is a term "hidden curriculum" (but I talk about this in a more expanded form to social life) who speaks a little of those things we have learned but are not placed on teaching goals and objectives but we will at our deciphering coexistence and our ways of interacting with people, things, events and institutions that will form a "learning" (education extended sense) of the world and the things that are subjective and individual.

Regards,

S.

An interesting and informative overview of the history and meaning of these terms by Mark K. Smith can be found at http://infed.org/mobi/what-is-pedagogy/

@Denise, Tx. nice overview by Mark.

Thanks Abdalla for concise explanations. A little more content to expand it further is added here:

Pedagogy is the science, art or profession of teaching. It provides specifically the instructional theory. An instructor develops conceptual knowledge and manages the content of learning activities in pedagogical settings such as recognizing, recalling, analyzing, reflecting, applying, creating, understanding, and evaluating in such a way that the student will have a greater ability to learn.

A didactic method is a teaching method that follows a consistent scientific approach or educational style to engage the student’s mind. Didactics refers only to the science of teaching. The theory of Didactic Learning methods focuses on the baseline knowledge students possess and seeks to improve upon and convey this information. It also refers to the foundation or starting point in a lesson plan, where the overall goal is knowledge. A teacher or educator functions in this role as an authoritative figure, but also as both a guide and a resource for students.

@Nageswara

Yes, but what is then Methodics (or in Slovenian languages Metodika)? Eastern European educators have this term, field... whatever?

@Ljubomir: I could not find it any of the literature I was scanning.

Yes, me too. I mean I did not find term "Methodics (or in Slovenian languages Metodika)" in literature of Western Europe, USA, Australia, and UK... It would be nice to have some colleagues from Eastern Europe included in this discussion...

IMHO there is nothing special about the word / term / concept "Methodics" for pedagogy or educational science in general. All words starting with "metho..." are derived from an old Greek word "met'odos" which means "along the way", thus it literally refers to HOW to do something. In other words, a method tells you precisely, like a route map, which way to take to arrive at a certain stated goal.

Methodology is the logic or science of all sort of methods, mostly for scientific purposes (like e.g. research methodology), but I could imagine something like 'sport methodology' or 'musical methodology' too.

And yes, there is also 'educational methodology', not to be confused with a particular educational method or class of methods, e.g. e-learning or e-teaching.

Probably, 'Methodics' is just this 'educational methodology', while you may disntinguish between a more theoretical Methodics and a more practical Methodics. Theoretical Methodics will try to find general, rational principles for educational methods (criteria, yardstick), whereas Practical Methodics will take a look at concrete educational practices in order to find general patterns of educational methods in real world. Both forms need each other, of course, but some people are more interested in the one type than the other type.

@Paul Tx. Interesting...

In Portuguese we have the word "metódica" (in English = methodical, systematic, orderly, well-arranged). This word in Portuguese is an adjective and refers to someone who has or follows a particular method. For example: When we say a person is "metódica" we mean that it has a method he uses or follows. The etymology of this word in Portuguese refers to the Latin (methodicus) and Greek (methodikos).

So for us, being methodical is to follow a method. A person who has a "path" to follow a "path" or "map" to do something. In the educational field, for example, would amount to a method for teaching reading and writing, for example. What steps or phases must follow to teach a child to read and write. Thus, the methodical teacher is one who follows a certain "way" or "steps" to teach such skills to children.

I do not know if I helped at something l0l

See you later,

S.

Dear @Ljubomir, thank you for the question and the detailed literature. I agree with @Abdalla El-Mowafy.

In your question you mentioned "Education", "Pedagogy", "Didactics" and "Methodics". "Education", from Latin e-ducere =(free translation) to help to grow up, is the most general, I think. "Pedagogy" brings out the literal restriction to children, as Old Greek "paidos" just means "child" or even "boy". Therefore, some scholars were keen enough to introduce "Andragogy", which literally means "the raising of man". I am surprised not to find the term "Gynagogy", which would mean "the raising of woman".

All these words have a very general meaning, not confined to school settings. "Didactics" has such a restricted meaning, as "didaksis" mean "the teaching or training". Many of such words started off as denotating the "act or praxis of ....", but by way of sloppy language ended up as the names for the corresponding "science of ...".

"Methodics" is quite different. First, because it is not (yet?) an english word, second, because it is not in any way specifically related to the praxis or science of education (and all its derived subfields, see above). It is just what is ordinarily called "methodology", the science of methods. Of course, you may confine your research interest to educational methods, but then I see no difference with "didactics".

The list of terms does not end here, however. Methodology is usually considered a branch of philosophy, closely connected with epistemology, the science of knowledge. This makes sense, because you may ask both questions: "what can I know" and "how do I know", which are obviously two distinct, but intermingled questions and research areas.

For many people, this connection to philosophy does rule it out as something viable, because it tends to be very far from practical, technical issues and concerns. Thus they strive for a more pragmatic (=action-oriented) approach of technics, which you may think of as step-by-step plans how to accomplish something. All the possible degrees of freedom which might still be in existing "methods" is systematically replaced by fixed rules. The science of such "technics" is called technology, but because it sounds so good many people use "technologies" also for what are actually "technics". Sloppy language again.

And still more. In society there is an unstoppable trend to standards, norms, laws. Methods are good, techniques are better, standards etc. are the best guidelines, because they are based on social processes of negotation and agreement to single out one and only one of the many possible techniques which then becomes the standard, norm or law in town / state.

That need not be the best one from a scientific point of view, on the contrary. But it is usually one which is simple enough for the majority, easy to implement and - last but not least - cheap enough. It will be clear, that a lot of quality will be sacrificed in this way, but that will be the price for a minimal agreed upon convention (so that the discussion can be closed forever).

There is a field in the U.S. that is booming, called "Assessment"; it addresses ways to evaluate student learning and to follow up by improving the classroom environment and the presentation of course material. A condition of accreditation is assessment; and it is widely seen that faculty members in higher-ed are not uniformly enthusiastic about assessment. I was at a large conference in Indianapolis called the "Assessment Institute" last month, my first experience in this field as a computer scientist. It seemed to be attended by many campus directors of assessment and some faculty.

http://www.framingham.edu/~dkeil/grading-methods.pdf

@ David Keil :-: "Assessment" is a term used by many players in the field of education (and beyond: any field where outcomes of some sort are compared to benchmarks, criteria, standards, etc.), but each player has his own conception of what assessment is or should be, and that may even vary from time to time and from context to conetxt - even for the same player!

At least, this is my conclusion after more than 7 years of literature research on this most interesting topic. I am not so sure about the booming of "assessment": in comparison to innovative research projects and publications about other educational topics, e.g. e-learning, virtual learning, collaborative learning, flipped classroom etc. etc., my impression is that when it comes to educational assessment:

I have no explanation for this deplorable state of affairs - assuming that my observation is correct (one may easily counter that I have been very selective in my choice of relevant projects and publications, but then I would very much like to see references to "all those evidences" of a booming research activity - or isn't it research after all?).

Perhaps it is because educational assessment is so closely tied with educational policy and standards setting (accreditation)? Because faculty members are not uniformly enthusiastic about assessment, as you wrote, pointing at the possibility that assessment is strongly associated with personal opinions and values and interests, making assessment forever a non-topic for scientific research?

@ David Keil :-: I have been quickly reading your paper attached to your last contribution. It is really fascinating reading, especially because I have been teaching also in the area of computer science.

Again (cf. my previous comment), we see here at least two different meanings of assessment one should always distinguish very well:

• the process of assessment including the design of assessment tasks (the "assignments") and the selection of appropriate behaviours to observe and judge (the "outcomes")
• the product of assessment which may range from unstructured verbal feedback to highly structured quantitative scoring on several well-chosen, well-defined dimensions (aka criteria).

Even then we aren't yet taking about grades. Grades are something very artificial, very social, usually nothing to do with measurement in the strict sense, although people (especially students) seem to like the idea that they are. Of course they i.e. the students do: after so many years of experience with the grading practices of all sorts in pre-university education, students' pre-occupation with grades is all too understandable (after all, it proves that they are capable of learning by experience!). As is also the belief, that you may manipulate grades as if they were numbers, althoug they are basically symbols used for communicating a certain state of affairs, e.g. achievement of a level of competence.

In fact, grades stand at the end of a long chain of judging and reasoning, mostly involving scores of some sort, but the way they are produced has always an aura of magic, adhocery or arbitrariness. I haven't seen yet a comprehensive system of assessment scoring which can be used for the many different assessment processes that you describe in your paper. Again, this is my personal observation and conclusion after ten years of lecturing and seven years of research in this area.

@Paul: About nice discussion starting with "In your question you mentioned "Education", "Pedagogy", "Didactics" and "Methodics..." What about "Instructional design" ( Robert Gagne), the term or field of Educational Science, used mainly in US. As far as I know, as a field, instructional design is rooted in cognitive and behavioral psychology, though Constructivism learning theory.

See my next question at (https://www.researchgate.net/post/Why_is_Objectivism_used_in_eLearning_instead_of_Constructivist_approaches).

@Paul and David: About "Assessment"... What about "Bloom's taxonomy" (Benjamin Bloom) and "Bloom's Revised Taxonomy" (by Lorin Anderson).

In discussion at https://www.researchgate.net/post/eEducation-forty_years_of_promises, the term eAssessment arrise...

@For all Followers: What happens with "Project CS4EDU: Computer Science for Education". Namely, in 2008, the National Science Foundation (US) started the ambitious effort, project CS/10,000, which supports developing a new high school curriculum for computing, revising the computer science AP curriculum, and having computer science taught in 10,000 schools by 10,000 well-qualified teachers by 2015.

Does anyone know anything about this project?

I'm enjoying this discussion and have much to learn about this area which is not my field. But I think that the field of teaching and the grading and assessment aspects of it are changing so fast that almost anyone can make a contribution if they look into it. What I see is that the way I have been grading and teaching for decades is primitive and increasingly at odds with the needs of my students. And the way I've been teaching and grading is more or less what I think is the norm.

Paul, I have been learning to use a generic rubric that colleagues developed here, that scores students' solutions to problems on a scale of 0 to 6, with 2 to 6 considered "successful", from minimally successful to extraordinary. We have yet to compare scoring data, but it seems to me that if the learning objective is clearly stated, such as "solve a problem in Java requiring a loop", then scoring can be fairly objective, especially after scorers compare their reasoning. This is in sharp contrast to the traditional method of grading that evaluates an average-quality piece of student work as "C" and work at the extremes of the normal curve as "A" and "F".

What we would want is to judge by competency criteria rather than by comparison among populations of students who may be performing at wildly different levels depending on population. In that way, we could say that the meaning of a grade is the level of competency and we could break down the grade into components according to the learning objective measured. We are also enabled to guide students to attain certain objectives as a condition for passing a course. This we need to do in computer science where I teach.

Bloom's taxonomy is helpful in developing rubrics and learning objectives that guide students toward competencies in critical thinking and problem solving as opposed to shallow learning like memorizing.

@David: Do you tried to use Bloom's taxonomy and Revised Bloom's Taxonomy or Structure of Observed Learning Outcome (SOLO) Taxonomy in assessments and/or self-assessment?

@ Ljubomir : I guess, your question refers to David's mission statement "What we would want is to judge by competency criteria rather than by comparison among populations of students who may be performing at wildly different levels depending on population." If anything is booming in educational assessment, then it is indeed this "competency turn".

It is a reaction to a decade-long misunderstanding and confusion: that teachers in classroom-based assessment (CBA) should use statistical instruments, called educational-psychological tests, which have been constructed (intended) primarily for population-based comparisons between individuals and subpopulations (important for educational research and policy), rather than non-statistical tools for individual-oriented judgmental statements about achievement of certain educational goals (important for course design, teaching and learning at the level of students in classes).

• See link for a discussion of the differences and commonalities between criterion-referenced versus norm-referenced testing, with which it all started, but be aware that this debate still rests on the false assumption that statistics is the only way to approach this dilemma. For instance, another approach can be based on so-called Fuzzy Logic, which solves a lot of practical problems of classroom-based assessment as opposed to agency-based assesssment.

In view of the fact that this insight is not a recent one, but dates back to the 70es if not earlier, I fear that it will take many more generations of teachers and teachers of teachers, before the basic understanding of the issues at hand will be part of each teachers' professional identity.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criterion-referenced_test

@ Ljubomir :-: "Instructional design", yet another quasi-synonym for whatever it was called in former days. Research follows strict rules of keeping up with what appears to be more "appropriate", i.e. modernist, ways of labelling their respective fields, especially the newcomers among them. But who decides what is appropriate? I have learned the hard way to not take such label renewal too seriously ...

@ David Keil :-: In your paper you cite a conclusion of Dahlgren etal (2009) that "grading schemes, are of limited usefulness, as opposed to pass/fail systems", because "a multidimensional grading steers the students towards focusing more on the assessment task itself when planning their studies than on learning."

I disagree (with Dahlgren et al.) The reason is their focus on grading systems instead of analytical scoring systems. Grading systems, multistep or otherwise, are - by definition and by use - purely symbolic holistic judgement reporting systems. One problem is that you can't see the reasons (qualitative backing) of a high or low grade. Another frequently observed problem is that grades are misconceived as numbers on a metric scale. These problems are well-known, but nobody cares so much (in practice).

Turning from holistic to analytic scoring profiles, in which you define the multiple criteria, e.g. underlying competencies or behavioral indicators, on which the resulting scores are based, solves those apparent problems completely. Scores on such multiple criteria can be used by the teacher to discuss with the student where he has passed and where he has failed, and why.

Sometimes, for purely pragmatic reasons, one may need to stick to a holistic assessment, e.g. because of lack of time or other resources. But any well-conceived formative CBA (classroom-based assessment) will use an analytic scheme which opens up all required possibilities. Scoring rubrics are one such form, very elaborate, time-consuming to design and construct and validate, but there are other ones, similar in form, but less elaborate and thus easier to apply.

[last modification: 2014-11-15]

@ David Keil :-: You mentioned another problem in assessment: "grading group work". This is such a wide-spread problem, that I have given it a fancy name: the Team-Mate-Dilemma. Its solution is rather straightforward, once you have a couple of appropriate assessment scoring patterns. Without going into too much detail (see other contributions of mine here on RG or LinkedIn groups) I present here one such solution, pretending that you are one of the students of a group:

• you are student S07 (David Keil)
• you are in group G5
• there are 4 assignment, A1, A2, A3, A4 over the entire course
• all assignments are based on analytic(al) scoring profiles using n-point scales (n=5 usually) (not shown here)
• A1 and A3 are group assignments with a *mean score of 0,629
• A2 and A4 are individual assignments (yours) with a *mean score of 0,743
• the score of 0,743 is compared with a benchmark - here 0,500 
• this comparison yields an individual "bonus or malus" rate of "inf" (highest possible) with a medium impact of 50%
• the score of 0,629 is "multiplied" by the rate to yield a new score 0,773
• this is the final score to be converted to a grade, here 2,4 on a scale from 1 to 5 (1 being best, 5 being worst)
• the whole scheme uses only 8 configuration parameters which makes it flexible enough for almost all realistic situations

It would not be difficult at all to "transform" your assessment procedures into this general scheme with the help of the eight scoring patterns that I have used here too.

From this high level report you can't see the detailed judgements in the form of 5-point ordinal scales of qualitative judgement. If you are interested I can send you the complete Excel-VBA solution to experiment with.

P.S.: I am using this very scheme currently in my own class on Software Engineering in which students, working in groups, have got the assignment to do a software development project, from start to finish, creating a software tool that helps lecturers to build those very assessment schemes and run the assessments! Thus, most interestingly, the students will be evaluated using assessment forms which they will be able to create now using the software they have developed themselves!

P.S.: Through these experiments in assessment scoring, while discussing with my students, I have learned how difficult it is for most students to open their minds for alternative assessment schemes, not based on "points", "grades" and "averages", and using an analytical approach instead of a holistic approach. Which proves my earlier remarks couple of days ago.

@Paul very nice approach. Could you send me  that complete Excel-VBA solution? Tx.

@ Ljubomir The debate has moved beyond this, but I have not been on RG for a while and came first to your question to David and thought I might as well point to some relevant experience  of others. You will find discussion by teachers who have used Bloom's Taxonomy at  http://www.learningspy.co.uk/learning/challenging-blooms-taxonomy/

There is also the SOLO Taxonomy to consider. Accessibly explained by Biggs and Tang (http://www.amazon.com/Teaching-Learning-University-Research-Education/dp/0335242758/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1417368935&sr=8-1&keywords=Biggs+and+Tang)

An example of teachers applying this can be found at: http://www.pedagoo.org/our-learning-journey-in-tracking-pupils-learning-journey/

There are many more examples of teachers advocating and using these. You can evaluate them for yourselves.

Perhaps, one question is how useful are such taxonomies  for reflection by students and teachers in constructing and going through the teaching and learning process together versus how useful are they for formal assessment, whether formative or summative?

I am sure Paul can help us there. 

@ Colin & others interested in learning taxonomies: Here is my pennyworth of thoughts about taxonomies of assessment or evaluation criteria. Although I am certainly not an expert in such taxonomies, I have occasionally had a chance to look at some.

Basically, it is  good idea to try and specify such structured models of learning quality criteria, e.g. as part of teacher training courses. But as you rightfully pointed out, Bloom's taxonomy isn't the only one and has undergone "uplifting" over time itself. In other words: it is an empirical contextual question, how "good" such a taxonomy happens to be (for a while) and how "well" it will be accepted by a given community of educational teachers or researchers.

I myself prefer and recommend what are called reference models, or meta-models, which don't necessarily specify lists of criteria (apart from some basic ones, like the 5C's for content quality, in the manner in which programming languages offer primitive data structures and functions), but offer a general simple-to-use framework for specifying "your" own criteria, fully adapted to "your" courses and the needs of "your" institution.

• Here, "your" may refer to a single teacher or assessor as well as to a small team or faculty or perhaps an entire department, but certainly not extending up to the level of state or nation; for that, we have so-called standards based assessment approaches which rely on psychometric approaches which are highly sophisticated and resource-intensive.

One example is the well-known scoring rubrics, for which there are a couple of nice (introductory) texts and a lot of first-hand records and reports (use cases) and advice for practical use. Nevertheless, although its basics are rather straighforward, one should not underestimate the effort it may take to put it to testing and working, especially if it will be used by a team of teachers (discussion and negotation may be time-consuming) and your intention is to stick to it for a couple of years (but then, you're probably back to the taxonomy fallacy).

Another example is my own assessment approach which doesn't prescribe any sort of verbally specified "levels of accomplishment" of "levels of competence" as in the case of scoring rubrics or the above taxonomies. Thus although it is able to mimick scoring rubrics and taxonomies, my approach is more general and open to hard to predict local contexts and unforeseen circumstances, allows quite different tactics and - in contrast to scoring rubrics - offers solutions for a rich variety of practical assessment problems and score aggregation patterns found in practice, as well as a module for score to grade conversion. In other words: it represents a systems approach to assessment in contrast to approaches which only look at a single sort of assessment question.

In the end it boils down to the old dilemma:

• are you willing to rely on a fixed system of generic quality criteria which you have to relate to the specifics of your instructional design OR do you want a system that enables you to customize your assessment design according to your specific instructional design?

[last updated 2014-12-01]

The term "didactics" is not used in education circles that I know of here in the U.S. The words "pedagogy" and "teaching methods" are used, and mean roughly the same thing; more the latter than the former.

A short book that has been used in faculty workshops where I teach is Ken Bain, 'What the Best College Teachers Do".

Another that is referenced often is Carol Dweck, 'Mindset'; the latter book differentiates a 'growth mindset' that is ready to learn in any field from a 'fixed mindset' that is often an obstacle to performance, because persons with the fixed mindset may believe that talent rather than effort assure success.

A third text that has helped me is Alfie Kohn, 'Punished by Rewards.' It deconstructs the widely held idea that learning is promoted by rewards and punishments and suggests that it promotes a negative attitude toward learning because the student may see the teacher as a manipulator rather than a provider of learning support. 

The term "metodika" (the Bulgarian term is the same) is to be translate in English as Methodology (in French - Méthodologie), or better as Didactics. The meaning of "metodika" is the same as "didactics".

In some places, notably UK and USA, educators "inaugurate" terms straight from the Greek dictionary, probably because earlier works from ancient Greek philosophers influenced their studies.

Thus, "pedagogy"( =to teach children) is exactly "education", nothing more.

"Didactics" is "what you teach"

"Methodics" is methods used to teach.

@Michael, nice,  clear definitions and explanations, I agree. Others?

Hey people, Anders and Michel Michael stated a wonderful discussion about my question and/or dilemma. Your opinion?

Hey people, Anders and Michel Michael stated a wonderful discussion about my question and/or dilemma. Your opinion?

Hey people, Anders and Michel Michael stated a wonderful discussion about my question and/or dilemma. Your opinion?

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