One of the challenges facing the NP3 team was how to describe and differentiate between the pedagogical practices in the classrooms that we were researching. In essence, what were the key features of practice that needed to be considered in order to differentiate between the teaching in each setting? The obvious answer seemed to be to use core theories of learning and development as the basis for a framework to help us compare pedagogy across contexts. Patricia Murphy therefore devised the Innovative Pedagogy Framework, starting with the following theoretical positions:
- Traditional (Behaviourist/Information Processing)
- Constructivist
- Cognitive/Piagetian
- Radical
- Social
- Innovative (Sociocultural)
For each theoretical position she identified their stance in relation to the following key dimensions/categories:
- Purpose of schooling/educational goals
- View of learner and learning
- Views of teachers and teaching
- View of knowledge
The resulting framework is shown below and you can download as a double sided A3 pdf document.