Pedagogics

Pedagogics is the systematic, scientific study of the educational process. Unlike pedagogy, which retains an emphasis on the humanistic disciplines within the teaching profession, pedagogics almost always refers to the study of teaching and education from the perspective of empirical science. The term is not frequently used in the United States, but it is commonly found in South Africa, Germany, and a few other European countries. Whereas pedagogy implies the practice of teaching, texts on pedagogics stress the analysis of educational phenomena with the goal of understanding education from the perspective of an objective observer.

Beginning in the early 20th century, researchers who preferred pedagogics to pedagogy (or education) sought to establish pedagogics as a science distinct from all other fields. In this respect, pedagogics developed similarly to the field of economics, which sought to distinguish itself from politics and ethics. Before this time, politics, ethics, and economics were inseparable. The most significant book published in the United States on pedagogics was Francis Wayland Parker's Talks on Pedagogics: An Outline of the Theory of Concentration, published in 1937. Despite the success of this one book, however, pedagogics never really took off in the United States (nor did pedagogy). Educational researchers in newly established U.S. research universities preferred the term education to refer to the kind of work that was being done under the name of pedagogics in Germany and other European countries.

Where it did develop mostly outside of the United States, however, the new science of pedagogics sought to establish its own area of expertise developed by pedagogicians, or experts in the science of pedagogics. Distinguishing itself from the practice of pedagogy, the field of pedagogics grew alongside the new specialization of analytic philosophy. Experts in pedagogics began to explain social phenomena using the methods of analytical philosophers, but they chose to concentrate on their own areas of expertise found within schools, families, and other educational situations. One text by three South African scholars of pedag-ogicsJ. L. du Plooy, G. A. J. Griessel, and M. O. Oberholzerdescribes the field as a child of philosophy, but then argues that pedagogics has become an independent science in its own right. These authors go on to explain that pedagogics, as a special type of science, exists to produce knowledge that is verifiable, supplemented by the findings of other scientists, rationally or intellectually obtained, accounted for in a methodical way, generally accepted as being valid, communicable and intelligible, and which may be applied in everyday life by men and women who engage in pedagogical acts. In another text, Griessel describes pedagogics as a field that should inquire into the universal and enduring aspects of education.

The goals of modern social science lay at the heart of pedagogics. The relationship between theory and practice within pedagogics is similar to the relationship between theory and practice in economics. Economists describe how money flows from one area of society to another, but they only rarely venture into the realm of telling practitioners what to do with their money. Similarly, peda-gogicians work to explain how learning takes place within various educational settings, but, being scientists, their role is not to provide guidance for teachers and parents about how they should educate their children. Practitioners may use the descriptions that pedagogicians produce, [Page 634]but the ends toward which they use these descriptions are to be determined entirely by practitioners. The job of pedagogicians is only to explain how the learning mechanism works.

...