We're moving on now to talk about the dimensions of literacy pedagogy. And what we've done is we've sort of built four alternative models of how literacy pedagogy might work. The first model we've called didactic pedagogy, and that's what we deal with in this section. Later on, we're going to come and deal with what we call authentic pedagogy. Then after that, what we talk about functional literacy pedagogy and then finally critical literacy pedagogy. So if you like, these are four traditions in literacy pedagogy. Now we're going to start first with the paradigm of what we call didactic literacy pedagogy. We're using the word didactic in the way that it's used in English. In fact, in a lot of other European languages generally in the world, didactic is just used to mean pedagogy. But in English it has a little bit of a loading to which is sometimes a bit critical and sometimes a bit negative. The loading is that it's very like this, we're telling you things, and you're going to listen. And it's a quite a strong tradition about the authority figure of the teacher and the obedient relationship of the learner in relation to knowledge. So people often use the word didactic in a negative kind of way. That person's being very didactic, they're trying to tell me things. So we're using the word in that sense in which it's used in English. >> This section focuses on classroom ecologies, that is, the choices that teachers make and how this impacts on learner experiences. We've already said that pedagogy is one of the key to learning outcomes. So what is it that we're talking about? Pedagogy is the consciously designed sequence of learning activities. But we're asking you to consider how and why these choices are made. What is it that is involved in any pedagogical process? Well of course there's the content that you choose. And in literacy, it will involve reading, writing, speaking, and listening, and if you follow the multi-literacies approach, also viewing and touching and other modes. It involves how content is organized, that is, what comes first, what follows, and who decides. It involves what instructional processes are selected. That means what kind of actions are required from the learner and of course from the teacher. And finally, as a consequence of these choices, what sort of relationships are established between the teacher and the student and the student and other students? These choices together produce an ecology of learning. That is, there's a relationship between learning and living. And each of these choices creates a setting, an experience that involves moods, expectation, habits of mind, ways of working. So together we talk about the ecology of the classroom, and we need to reflect how our choices influence that and what it does for the learning and the learners. We're specifically talking about didactive teaching which is a choice, a deliberate choice or perhaps a set of habits. And we have to reflect again on why and who decides on didactive teaching as an approach. Typically this approach involves carefully spelling out or guiding learning content in a very explicit sort of way. It involves presenting facts and theories of a discipline in a clear and a coherent way. And it expects learners to memorize the content as it's presented and to be able to repeat it or represent it in some way for examination at some point. This didactive pedagogy is also sometimes called transmission pedagogy because it's something that's transmitted from the expert to the learner, from the teacher to the student. And also, it's also called direct instruction because it involves a very explicit one way relationship of learning to learner. Didactic comes from the Greek work to instruct. And it has a very, very long tradition. And it has been very useful in preparing people in farming and industrial life that required order and repetition and authority and has served societies for many, many centuries. It's still used, and it has appropriate uses. And indeed an older generation find didactive pedagogy familiar in something they can trust because the authority is with the teacher. >> What we have here is some pictures of a classical classroom of didactic pedagogy. In fact it's photographs of a little village school in Greece a few decades ago. And in this first photograph what we're doing is we're seeing the teacher's perspective on the didactic classroom. So there are all the students sitting in rows, and they've got their heads down reading their books. And when we turned around the other way and we look at the classroom from the students' perspective, there we can see sitting up at the front of the room the teacher on his little stage looking down over the students. So this is the classic relationship of teachers to students. Now what kind of work do the students do in this kind of literacy classroom? So here have a picture of a student in the class who's reading a book, okay? So this book can be a number of, in literacy it could be a number of things. It could be a reading book, like a reader. Maybe if he's getting a bit older, it might even be a novel. Or it might be a textbook which has grammar exercises in it. Or actually it could be reading comprehension which is a small passage and a kind of set questions at the end. So what we have in this classroom is these textual artifacts which are brought into the classroom. And of course every kid in the classroom has the same book, and they're supposed to be on the same page, more or less at the same time. Now, what we also have the students do in this classroom is we have them do work. So here the students got their finger on the page over here, which is the textbook, and they're writing notes over here. Maybe it's writing out the answers to an exercise, maybe it's writing a story. But in any event, there's this close relationship between the transmitted knowledge, the textbook that the student has her finger on on the left, and the notes which help you remember what you're being taught in that transmitted knowledge. So in fact, what we've seen here now is two, so far, two sources of transmission in this classroom. One is the teacher is at the front, and they might give a little lecture about a particular topic, about a novel or a ruling grammar or spelling rules or some such. Then we have the textbook, which re-represents that knowledge and summarizes literacy knowledge in a way which is useful to learners, really lays out very clearly what the learners are meant to be learning in the literacy classroom. And then, what we have is these writing books or exercise books which help the exercise of learning, memory, retention, all those kinds of things. Now, this is a particular kind of learning architecture. Now, in this next image, I'm looking down over the classrooms, and normally the students are all supposed to be looking towards the teacher. So the way in which it's set out is eyes to the front, look to the teacher while the teacher's talking. Or put your head down and look at the book while you're doing the work from the textbook. So this is the way in which in a kind of a gestural bodily kind of way the human beings in this classroom are arranged. And see here, I'm looking at the classroom from the perspective of the teacher now. And this little girl looks up. So as a teacher, what am I to think? Well perhaps she's thinking about the answer to a question. Perhaps it's a moment of contemplation. It's what she's doing is relevant and useful to the exercise of literacy learning. Perhaps not, I really don't know to be quite frank. I mean, it's something where maybe as a teacher I need to be on alert. But then in the next image something terrible happens, here we are. Now, the architecture of this space was not designed for this kind of move. And in fact, probably the student in the row in front is about to disturb the students behind during their work. So what we have is a kind of a discursive architecture in this literacy classroom is a kind of a hub and spoke model. The teacher is at the hub. The spokes of knowledge go out like this to each of the students. And whether that knowledge is transmitted by the textbook or the teacher speaking, the teacher orchestrates that whole purpose. So I've done this in order to do a kind of a thumbnail outline of the dimensions of didactic literacy pedagogy as a kind of reference point. Because when we come, we're going to analyze this more in fact in the materials in this program and in these videos. But it's a kind of reference point also for what's different about the other models of pedagogy which we're going to be examining, authentic, functional, critical.