Do students and teachers disagree on what makes effective classroom practice?

A great deal of work is going into ensuring that teachers are not only aware of, but are also applying techniques in education to ensure the progress of students. Evidence-based practice and research in the classroom are informing what happens in schools, with many teachers buying into new and innovative ideas. There is, however, one issue apparent in my experience: whilst we have a definite idea of what pedagogy looks like, it does not match the students’ ideas about what makes effective classroom practice. How pupils think we learn best is a construct they put together over time through experience, but what if that experience, or at least the attribution of causality, is flawed? Jerome Bruner (1999) coined the term ‘folk pedagogy’ when expanding on the idea that all children are epistemologists in their own right; they are interpreting how, and why, they progress in academic spheres and beyond. This informs a model of how knowledge and intelligence are developed by learners.