Filling the Pot or Lighting the Fire? Cultural Variations in Conceptions of Pedagogy

This reflective account describes the impact of different cultural conceptions of pedagogy on one person in the course of an academic career. It begins with the experience of pedagogy in a school in Taiwan and the way in which a lack of meaningful connection is overcome by memorising under the strictest discipline. It goes on to describe the culture shock of arriving at an ancient English University, which appears to represent the opposite pole of the pedagogic spectrum, with a failure to provide structured supervision on the grounds that postgraduates are mature. (It suggests also that there are 'microclimates' of pedagogic ethos within cultures and nations, which may be more salient than those between them.) Finally, it moves to assess the European experience on the basis of focus groups discussing different teaching styles, and meets with demands from students both for less discipline and, at the same time, for more, which appears paradoxical. This paradox is explained by the work of Sapochnik who views it in terms of the adolescent need for a well-disciplined and safe pedagogic structure within which they can have room for their experiments in self-realisation.