Pedagogy first? Whatever....and yes! whenever

Following a recent 140 character chat, George Siemens seems to have finally tired of the platitude "pedagogy first" (although in fairness 140 characters do lend themselves to platitudes). Also (and again to be fair, he didn't have a problem with using platitudes at all but the content of this particular one) To see what he thought check out his blog post Pedagogy first? Whatever

I admit I felt a bit attacked by the post, as I am firmly in the "pedagogy first" camp and had declared such in one of my 140 characters, but mostly I welcomed the opportunity to have the discussion and debate. But where to engage in the debate - as a tweet (bound to be over simple - 1-4-0-issue), as a comment on his blog (right location but moderated, and reluctant to start with a negative when I more frequently agree with his posts than disagree - hmmm), on my own blog (why? well why not? and mostly cos this is where I need to think aloud). So my comment submitted to his blog is produced below too, would welcome comments of others on this.

An interesting post. I agree with much more of it than I disagree but I would still put forward a case to support the notion of "pedagogy first" or at the very least "pedagogy at all". Of course there is a lot more going on in any curriculum design/development decision than pedagogy alone...but hopefully it is in the mix and preferably at the begining of the mix. There are lots of other factors and context is as good a word for it as anything, it needs to be a holistic decision, and there are a number of instances where ease, efficiency, flexibility, convenience, skill levels are prevailing factors and that's fine but what a shame to miss an opportunity to discuss pedagogy in the planning. Seven or eight years ago there was lots of talk about "pedagogy by stealth" around learning technologies - by enthusing staff about technology it was an opportunity to discuss and explore their curriculum design, pedagogical models and, often most important of all, assessment strategies. With early adopters and technology enthusiasts (the ones for example likely to give teaching in SL a go) this is less of an issue, but for a lot of staff they look for the "pedagogy first" conversation to reassure them that this isn't about using students as guinea pigs, having their best interests at heart (and yes instructional designers use it exactly as you suggest - as some kind of entry fee - "please let me talk to you, I'm not just going to push technology at you like a travelling salesman"). Also in my experience, often the "pedagogy first" conversations are rarely about sticking with what we know or are comfortable with, technology opens doors to new pedagogical opportunities and some of the best conversations start with the staff member declaring "I can't use technology, it doesn't fit with my own pedagogical model"...

I absolutely agree that there are lot more factors than pedagogy when deciding what technology to use and they can be frustratingly chicken and egg decisions - for example if we want our students to use SL then we have to offer SL access on-campus (as a point of principle) and of course the technical people who need to be convinced that it is worth their while to do the work (and around we go). On the other hand, we have a small number staff who love a tool which is pedagogically interesting but can be confusing to students and expensive to administer. The decisions here are certainly not "pedagogy first". How about I propose a complementary consideration - it may not be pedagogy first in all decisions about what technology to use, but it ought to be pedagogy first when considering how technology is applied to a learning context but not about the pedagogical safezone about pedagogic opportunity. We need to think bigger and when there are opportunities for students to learn better we should not confine ourselves to learning differently.


[Then I spent some time contemplating the whole moderated comment approach to blog admin - and concluding that is not really my bag.]