The concept of authentic pedagogy captured my attention from the concepts we were afforded to discuss. I had not heard this concept before. I found this link to a blog at the University of Vermont (2012) which states:

What is Authentic Pedagogy?

Authentic Pedagogy was first defined as instruction and assessment which promoted authentic student achievement.

Authentic student achievement refers to intellectual accomplishments that are worthwhile, significant, and meaningful – such as those produced by successful adults in today’s work force.

Authentic teaching occurs when the teacher utilizes information about how students learn and designs learning experiences or tasks based upon this knowledge.

Construction of knowledge is the active processing of experience, defined as the consolidation and internalization of information and procedures by the learner in a way that is both personally meaningful and conceptually coherent.

Questions play a central role as they provide the starting point for the processes through which new information is integrated into memory, old information is put together in new ways, and faulty generalizations are corrected.

Authentic pedagogy is another take on both the sociocultural and constructionist view of learning heavily influenced by Vygotskian thinking, especially the forms of learning mediated through social, cultural, historical and institutional factors (Daniels, 2016). I am struck by a chord of my heart beating insistently about the lightness and shade/dark upon which the project of learning is a spectrum. One-part light: where learning can be a truly democratic process and can alternatively become an assiduous tool of darkness (i.e. societal control, control of the media to communicate knowledge).

Learning is a dangerous idea and a project of societal liberation in and of itself, if you are inclined to believe Paulo Friere (1968). If there is no learning environment, or if the dominant and controlling elite of society (whether political, professional, or professorial) can mitigate the democratic functions of learning…. then a status quo can be maintained. Vygotsky as well, understood this: pedagogy in and of itself is never politically indifferent (Daniels, 2016).

So, perhaps in unpacking authentic pedagogy, we must debate the articulation of what is authentic (learner driven) and what is pedagogic (that which is political)? Perhaps this also depends on point of view?

As a professor, I see a role in authentic pedagogy as one in which I enable learners to learn by designing learning experiences that help guide learners to creating artifacts of knowing through doing. But I am not being entirely democratic or liberating or allowing only the imprimatur of authenticity, as I have a standard to which they must benchmark the work. It is not knowledge for knowing’s sake. I exert a social control over the group’s products, whether through the Socratic questions I ask for in discussion or by the rubric.

I appreciate that Kalantis and Cope (https://newlearningonline.com/literacies/chapter-5/kalantzis-and-cope-debating-authentic-pedagogy) have provided some validation that teaching cannot be entirely democratized. All learners are not the same. Some will respond to having more structure and others perhaps more preparedness toward liberated learning. I take away from them, the most authentic way to teach is to not be the “bearer of knowledge”. Most importantly, the heart of the teacher still matters. I can pivot to increasing the liberation of learning, while keeping in mind I have a duty to my profession as an occupational therapists to create scholars of the discipline: it’s ways of knowing, philosophy, terminology, and acts of doing.

References:

Jaser. (February 29, 20212). What is authentic pedagogy? Retrieved from https://blogs.lt.vt.edu/janos/2012/02/29/what-is-authentic-pedagogy

Britton, J. (1987). Vygotsky’s contribution to pedagogical theory. English in Education, 21(3), https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1754-8845.1987.tb00951.x

Daniels, H. (2016). Vgytosky and pedagogy. Classic edition. New York: Routledge

Friere, P. (1968). Pedagogy of the oppressed.