Questions that should be at the heart of each subject
How do individual subjects | academic disciplines (a) discover new knowledge, and (b) apprentice new learners?
These questions go to the heart of teaching a subject: what counts as knowledge within each academic discipline and how things become known. What leads to significant learning builds on the answer to both these questions.
Signature pedagogies refer to the approaches to teaching and learning which are most conducive to cultivating particular capabilities.
In his article ‘Signature Pedagogies in the Profession’ (2005) Lee S. Shulman uses the term ‘signature pedagogies’ to speak of the ways in which future practitioners are educated for their new professions. In these signature pedagogies, the apprentices are instructed in critical aspects of the three fundamental dimensions of professional work - to think (the head), to perform (the hand), and to act with integrity (the heart).
The Carnegie Foundation sponsored a series of comparative studies that examined how the members of different professions (e.g., clergy, 2005; lawyers, 2007; engineers, 2008; nurses, 2009; and physicians, 2010) are educated for their responsibilities in the communities they serve. Novices learn how to think like a lawyer, perform like a physician. What is interesting is that professional education is not for understanding alone. It is preparing people to act in responsible ways in the service of others.
Gurung, Chick, and Haynie (2009) recognized that academic disciplines also have their signature disciplinary pedagogies. For example, geography’s signature pedagogies include the field trip and a particular way of thinking about geography as a profession which are distinct from other subjects.
Signature pedagogies is a useful lens to help us think (head) not only how knowledge and meaning are constructed within individual subjects, but also to ask how is the subject applied (hand) and within which ethical framework (heart).
Signature pedagogies may also be a helpful way of thinking about interdisciplinary teaching and learning. If students are helped to put on a mathematician | economist | historian | scientist etc hat they can ask how would a subject specialist think, perform and act with integrity if they were to approach this task | problem?