Inventions of Teaching

This updated edition of Inventions of Teaching: A Genealogy presents an examination of the many and varied metaphors of teaching in English. These metaphors serve as sites to excavate conflicting historical, con-ceptual, and philosophical influences that have contributed to modern teaching practices.

Though the Eurocentric perspectives of the first edition remain a focus, they are placed in a broader context that acknowledges their, as the authors coin it, ‘WEIRDness’ (i.e., western, educated, industrialized, rich, democratic nature). In this revised and expanded edition, these perspectives are accompanied by multiple case studies of non-Western and Indigenous educational traditions. Chapter discussions are organized as a genealogy around key conceptual bifurcations in thought rather than case-by-case analysis or a chronology. This structure allows the authors to examine the origins of distinctions that are often taken for granted, such as cognitivism vs. behaviorism, or constructivism vs. positivism. The genealogy develops around breaks in opinion that gave or are giving rise to diverse interpretations of knowledge, learning, and teaching--highlighting historical moments in which vibrant new figurative understandings of teaching emerged. A new chapter has been added, addressing the habits of interpretation needed to render the ‘WEIRD’ world sensible; alongside a much elaborated closing discussion, intended to bring WEIRD inventions of teaching into sharper relief by contrasting them with non-WEIRD cultures and some of their approaches to teaching.

Inventions of Teaching: A Genealogy is an informative text for senior undergraduate and graduate courses in curriculum studies and foundations of teaching, It is also relevant for students, faculty, and researchers across the field of education who want to explore the consequences of diversities of opinion, belief, and practice concerning teaching and closely related topics of learning, knowing and formal education.